In Your Facebook

It's been a wee while again since I last blogged. Sorry about that. I've been having an affair with Facebook. I resisted as long as I could but a friend posted some pictures on there in which I had a supporting role. And being the massive narcissist that I am, I could not not see them. This meant signing-up. Clever 'eh? That's how they get you.

Anyways, I became addicted like that [clicks fingers]. I did feel bad about neglecting you though all the time I was filling my Facebook boots. I'm not prepared to give it up just yet, you understand, but I'm sure we can reach an accommodation - a sort of I.T ménage à trois. What's the worst that can happen?

I'll Be Back

I've been away for a long weekend. It was the August bank holiday here in the UK yesterday - the traditional end of the Summer. We spent the weekend under canvas as is our wont at this time of year. The weather, for once, was tremendous.

We spent the weekend pursuing very low-impact pastimes: croquet, crabbing, eating and drinking, and a bit of camp football. I don't mean we were mincing up the wing à la Quentin Crisp. I mean we were playing on the campsite, which necessitates careful reining in of the male instinct to twat the leather off the ball irrespective of the tactical advantage to be gained. We did quite well in this regard.

Gene Slacker

It's been a splendid weekend in London. The sun shone and the sap was high. The wife and I spent the time constructively. We went to a barbie on Saturday evening. And Sunday we spent crabbing. Everyone was in rare form down at the coast yesterday. Even the crabs seemed to be enjoying the process. We then popped the tin hat on this world-beating weekend by charging around to our local for a brace of sharpeners last thing Sunday evening.

Sadly the pub was empty. That's the way to plays here in the UK on those rare occasions when the sun's cracking the stones. Our average denizen can't resist pouring drink down himself like a man whose lungs are on fire as soon as the temperature crawls above twenty Celsius. By the time we pitched up then, the rest of the vulgar mob had shot off home to assume the recovery position. I suppose it's for the best. I don't want to be harangued after a trying day crabbing.

Post Mortem

I've been away for a long weekend at the Cambridge folk festival, which is why no posts. I'm back at my desk now however. I don't think it's overstating matters to say that I'm absolutely shattered. Physically, mentally, spiritually, and financially I'm at my lowest ebb. This is a short, bleak post as a consequence. Sorry. I really don't have a positive or mildly amusing thing to say.

Porn Free

There's not much happening chez me at the moment, so I've forgone the usual format today and have decided to list some punning porn star names. I know it's trivial. I'm not a comprehensive twat, you know.

Okay, here goes...

Dr Evadne Minge

Fuckinem Alice (I may have overstepped the mark here)

John Vein

King Conkers

Shafter Askey (one for the kids, there)

Fellatio Hornblower

Suck Norris

Dolly Partem

Screw Edwards

Princess Michael of C*nt

Wank Hilliams

Jizz Taylor

Toss Hogg

Wristo Stoychkov

Forrest Hump

The Vapours

I suffered a migraine yesterday. All right, I over-egging the situation somewhat. I was on the foot-slopes of migraine. The initial symptoms didn't make it to maturity. I dodged a bullet there, I you tell.

For those who've never been afflicted, it's a nightmare - absolutely debilitating. For me, it begins with an inability to see properly. I can see. My brain just can't make sense of the picture. Firstly, I'm unable to read, and quickly thereafter I lose depth and finally I develop a kind of tunnel vision. The next stage is paisley visual hallucinations. By now, I need to get home because stage three is photo-phobia - a hugely popular and now slightly passé migraine symptom. The final iteration involves a stupefying headache, right down the centre of the noggin. This is sometimes accompanied by nausea.

I used to get migraines regularly in my late teens, and then, as suddenly as they'd entered my life, they withdrew. I haven't had a sniff of a problem for nigh-on twenty years. The keen amateur mathematicians among you will be a able age me from the above facts. Yesterday really put the wind up me, I'm unafraid to admit. What surprised about the whole episode was how phlegmatic I was as a youngster about the whole thing.

I remember getting my first one. I quickly and accurately assessed my own symptoms as they unfolded. And then I just sat it out. Had yesterday's been my first migraine, I'd have been convinced I was dying. Absolutely convinced.

It's not unlike a trip, the migraine. I mean a trip in the "wow, man" sense - not four hours in Whitstable. Luckily, no-one's felt moved to record a psychedelic album rendering the experience. If they had, it would sound like someone feeding a chalk goat through a slate mincer.

Cobb(L)ers

We're in the midst of an Ashes series here in England (let's not pretend the Celtic fringe are in the least bit interested in cricket because thems am not). For any foreigners reading this, the Ashes is a series of cricket matches played between England & Australia. Doesn't sound like much, does it? It's HUGE. It means so much to the respective countries that it's hard to quantify its impact on the collective psyche.

England have today beaten Australia in the second test (match), which enabled anyone with access to an Aussie male to let him have it le big style.

English and Australian men have a sibling mentality toward one another, particularly when it comes to sport. The Australians in particular won't thank me for pointing this out, but they and the English are essentially the same race, which is why they squabble so much. I am able to distance myself somewhat from "Englishness" by dint of my Irish lineage, but even I find it difficult not to gloat when England have the upper hand.

Australia are breath-takingly better than England at most sports you care to mention. The reason for this is that they take sport seriously, in a way that the English cannot bring themselves to do. To take sport that seriously is taken to be very gauche. So when the English lord it over the Aussies on the back to a rare victory, it's taken to be a bit of good natured ribbing. To the Aussies, however, it's no laughing matter.

It's this dichotomy that causes such problems between the two nations. The English can't believe the Aussies really take sport as seriously as they appear to. And the Aussies can't believe the English don't. It reminds one slightly of when an American starts up about God, thanking Him for a successful business meeting or a bountiful lunch table. It's toe-curlingly embarrassing for the English, this - really excruciating. The same is true, to a lesser extent, with Aussie sport fetishisation. Come on, mate, let it go. It's just a game.

I'll Just Feel That Again...

There's a wonderful, thoughtful piece on the BBC web site today (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8144793.stm) regarding porn for blind people.

Possibly the worst thing the able-bodied do to the disabled is to reduce them all to the category of the "brave". This is also useful because removes the requirement for them to have sex lives. If the disabled are battling so hard just to keep going from day to wretched day, then the last thing on their collective mind is knocking one out or getting their legs over.

Disabled people aren't all brave. There, I've said it. Some are. Others are cowards. Some are fat, some thin. Some are shits and some are entertaining. We all know this, but no-one wants to admit it for some reason. I suppose it allows us able-bodied types to rationalise the whole situation. Why him, and not me? Well, he's brave. I couldn't possibly cope. It must have been fate. Thanks, God.

If they're not all brave, moral paragons then, it follows that they're probably subject to the same disgusting desires that drive the rest of us. It's sex, food and booze in that order, isn't it.

I'm very much taken with the idea of blind porn. It's bound to be better thought out than most of the pneumatic anodyne rutting that litters the Internet currently. Unless of course it's just blind women with impossibly sexy voices pretending to have sex with plumbers.

In case you haven't already guessed, I'm fairly able-bodied. I am, however, colour-blind. I'm working on a film script in which Audrey Tatou fails the ishihara test and then has athletic sex with the strapping male test adjudicator. Who wouldn't like to see that?

Snort. Who said that??

In spite of my previous, apparent, insouciance regarding swine flu, I've been given cause to revise my opinion of its threat potential and start quivering like a nervous jelly. (I was about to type "the proverbial nervous jelly". I don't know any such proverb, but it's about time there was one, let's face it.) The reason I'm backtracking shamelessly is that someone I sit close to at work is clearly infected. He's spent all day hacking and spluttering like Billy O(cean). I have no hard evidence to suppose he's contracted H1N1, but the hysterical, circumstantial case is starting to look compelling. His wife works in a hospital (the pork ward), and he has kids, those renowned harbingers of viruses.

I'm already feeling under the weather. What's the incubation period for pig sniffles? If my fears are correct, it can't be much more than two hundred minutes. I felt okay before lunch. We're doomed. Still the weather's nice. I think I'll have a pint tonight. Might as well go out in a blaze of self-harm. I appreciate it's not exactly Iggy Pop.

Eye Tea

I'm on the cust of developing a tumour in my anguish and frustration at the IT in my new job. The main thrust of my role (if I might dignify my labours with that term) is to analyse sales data for a national newspaper. To do this, it's traditional to mine huge gobs of data (stop me if I'm getting too technical for you), and spin it into an array of bewildering, scarcely plausible graphs. Unfortunately, the reporting system I've been tasked with operating cannot spit out more that two lines of sales data at any one time. I am literally spending my days sitting in front of a computer twiddling my thumbs. Is it any wonder I go home and drink? What would you do, dear reader?

If it gets any facking slower, I'm going to be forced to bring four cans of Guinness to work each day and drink them at my desk. I *refuse* to spend what's left of my wretched tenure on this planet being defied by a laptop. I simply won't have it.

Next to Godliness

I'll be honest with you - I cycle to work. That usually requires that I have a shower when I get to the office. I'm lucky in my current job; the facilities for the sweaty cyclists are vee good. We have a bank of power showers at our disposal. I was scrubbing the mire off the other morning when I spotted a plug had been placed in each cubicle. What's the thinking behind that?

The base of the shower cubicle is a little, recessed trough about four inches deep. It is possible then to fill this space with warm, soapy water if so desired. The plug was in the plughole when I arrived this morning. I shudder to think what the previous occupant had been up to, but whatever it was, he's more flexible than yours truely. I suppose one could squat down like a sumo wrestler and park the spuds in the water, but it's gilding the lily really.

Dreaming Spires and all that

I've just returned from an idyllic weekend away in Oxford. Being an idle sort, I never troubled the Oxford admissions people with my presence when considering an academic career. However, I did have enough about me to marry an Oxonian. The wife's alma mater were having an old members' garden party, so off we went.

There's no greater place on Earth in high Summer than the front quod of an Oxford college, with a complimentary glass of Pimms in one hand and a croquet mallet in the other. After an hour of croquet, approximately three pints of Pimms and a relaxing chat with old friends, we topped the day off with a curry. Marvelous. There is big crepe sub-culture in Oxford I noticed. Hampstead has a big crepe fanbase too. People queue for miles for them outside Hampstead's pubs. I've never understood why. They absolutely lose their collective minds for the things. It's like middle-class catnip.

In other news, there's a wafer-thin "thought" piece on the BBC web site today about fat celebs being a bad influence on children and others. I don't know about that. It seems to be the logical apotheosis of the culture of blaming others for one's own shortcoming. As my Mother used the ask rhetorically: "If he jumped in the fire, would you?".

Having said all that though, I was brought up short by those nude shots of Beth Ditto in some magazine or other recently. She's an attractive, young women, Beth, and she dresses in a striking and considered way. Good for her. She is, though, a big old lump. There's no getting away from the fact. I know we could argue long into the night about female body image fascism and her striking a blow for the sisterhood and all that, but she's a big, fat old whack without her drawers on. I'm all for young women being freed from the tyranny of size zero role models, but hasn't the pendulum swung slight too far in the opposite direction when a morbidly obese role model is substituted for them?

Ad Fart I Sing

Eight out of ten owners said their twats preferred it.

Moo-ve It

There's a piece on the BBC web site today about what do to should a cow attack when you're out walking in the great outdoors. Their sage conclusion is that you should run away (I'm summarising).

It's a serious business apparently - bovine assault. The beeb reckon eighteen people have been killed by cows over the last eight years. Actually it's not that a great a threat statistically now I think on it. I imagine feathers or static have seen off more people than that in the same period. My wife and I go walking in the country a lot - most weekends in fact. We've been doing this for some years. She's always derided me for packing a pick axe along with the Thermos. I've attached it to a couple of yards of chain for extra purchase in battle. I've never had to use it on a cow, thank God, but it's a comfort knowing it's there. Her majesty's constabulary took some convincing though.

East End Style Geezerism

Money is a big deal in the horse world (Quelle surprise). If the people where I work are not actually piddling greenbacks up the wall backing nags, they're talking about it at some length. There was a protracted discussion in the office today about London slang terms for amounts of cash.

Most British readers will be familiar with the expressions "pony" (£50) and "monkey" (£500). Anyone brought up in the UK will have heard them a million times. But have you heard of a "macaque" (£11)? Or better still an "otter", which apparently is an old east end term for £8.50. It wasn't made clear why one might need a one-word, handy shorthand for this arcane amount. If I find out, I'll let you know.

And...they're off

Now that I'm working at the coalface of the horse-racing world, I've become acutely aware of how poorly the wretched beasts are named. It's always "Qango Crackers in the 4.10" or "Jamestown Quimty on the stand side". If I owned a racehorse, I'd give it a solid name like Eddie or Justin. I'm sure the punters would appreciate that. Even if Eddie was little more than an outrageously ambitious donkey, people would know he'd given of his best in each race.

He'd be the Bryan Robson of national hunt racing, constantly picking up injuries in his valiant bids to catch an actual horse. Yes, he's clumsy. No, he's not the brightest. But you can't question his commitment. Come on, Eddie, the people's champion.

Unfortunately, Justin developed a headache and had to be destroyed. Still it helps encourage the others. Oh, don't look at me like that. You can't make a omelette without euthanizing livestock. Everyone knows that.

Thierry Ennui

Blimey, I am getting lazy. It's been five days since the last update. I'm not likely to win any literary prizes with output like that.

I'm still beavering away at the new role, you'll be pleased to here. I tried a different tack yesterday: I decided to apply myself to the task at hand - much like a properly socialised adult might in fact. It worked to a certain extent. I did feel better about myself - so much so that I went home and got pissed.

I'm so bored to could evaporate, I tell you. How do ordinary people cope? Answers on a carte postale please.

Back to the Grind

I've been rather slack of late. Sorry about that, but I do have heavyweight mitigating circs. I've been on holiday, and I have a new job.

The holiday was lovely, thank you for asking - a week in genuinely sunny Cornwall followed by a few days camping it up in north Norfolk. The job, however, is proving to be more of a challenge.

I suffer from a condition known as impostor syndrome. I've had periodic bouts of this my whole life, but it's particularly acute when changing jobs. I've been at the new post for four days now, and I think it safe to say that I don't know what the phuck I'm doing. Worse still - I've been given an underling to tutor. What I'm supposed to say to him is anyone's guess. Still onwards and upwards. What's the worst that could happen? Public humiliation swiftly followed by the right royal sack. It's not like I'm in Guantanamo Bay or anything. I rock myself to sleep each night repeating those words like a sacred mantra. I honestly thought adult life would be a walk in the park compared with childhood. It appears I misjudged the situation hugely. Still, we'll always have Paris.

Parliament of Whores (forgive me, Madam)

Tory MP Julie Kirkbride is under pressure to resign following allegations in today's Telegraph that she claimed £250,000 expenses for "The wind beneath my wings". Where will this end?

Get your cloak - you've pulled.

The speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, has been resigned. This is huge. Sacking the speaker is like setting fire to Princess Anne - you just don't do it. In fact if you even dream it, you better wake up and apologise, modda fokka.


There is a precedent for this dismissal however. In 1680, the then speaker, Eddie something, was shown the door. He'd been caught spuds deep in the King's favourite Labrador, and had to go. Even then, they tried to hush it up, but apparently the puppies looked just like him. It was only a matter of time before the papers got hold of it.

Everyone is jockeying for advantage in the race to fill Martin's position. Traditionally it would be a well thought of parliamentary "face". In these extraordinary times, though, tradition can go hang. It's thought that a raft of new, independent MPs might soon be appointed, and that the new speaker might come from their unsullied ranks. Even Esther Ranzen's thrown her sombrero in the ring.

She's only the first to declare an interest. Rumour is rife about who else the PM has approached to fill this important role. As we went to press, The Chuckle Brothers were the bookies' favourite. But the race is a long one, and the brothers are rather too Icarus like to last I think. My money's on either Michael Bentine or Wolf from Gladiator.

Ahhhhnnnnddd....relax

We had a new bod at yoga last night (how middle-aged and middle-class have I become?). She let slip during the initial exchange of pleasantries that she's a teacher. I had my suspicions before this confirmation to be honest. Professional teachers find it difficult to mix properly with other adults. They find it beyond them to converse as equal partners. Some are better than others, but you can always sense their nascent irritation when others are talking intelligently or cogently. No-one likes a show-off.

Anyways, I thought it might queer the pitch for a good yogic atmos, which is critical, a bit like having Wolverine in the class losing his rag because he can't perform the locust properly. But actually I had a good session. Thanks, Miss.

Swine Flu Update - it's officially a damp squib. Move along now. Nothing to see here.

Fatigued I

Series two of the "The Wire" has begun again in earnest, which means I'm getting by on about six-hundred seconds sleep per night. It starts at 11.20pm. Yes, we've got a video (do people still can them that these days?), but it's compelling stuff. I always reason I'll be able to watch the first two minutes, and then simply yawn theatrically and retire for the night. Trouble is by two minutes in, I'm hooked and too far awake to rest.

I only got into it a couple of months ago when the first series went to air on British, terrestrial television finally. Once I got a taste, I was lost. Helpfully, the BBC realised what potent and cogent stuff it was and scheduled an episode every night of the working week.

I only found out recently that Dominic West, who plays James "Jimmy" McNulty in the series, is British. What's more, he's an old Etonian, thereby proving once again that while Etonians may not be the best educated posh boys on the planet, they are the most breathtakingly confident. What kind of conkers must a posh, white, English-born actor possess to take on a role such as this. It beggars belief.

That's Eton for you though. It looks like a senior Oxford college, and the boys dress like Jeeves. Of course they're confident. It's also the only school in Earth where a boy wouldn't be told to sod off by his careers teacher for suggesting he might like to have a crack at prime-ministering for a bit when he left school.

In fact, you must hear some crazy, fcuked-up shit as Eton's careers teacher.

"Polar explorer, you say? I think I've got a leaflet here
somewhere about that. Yes, here it is. It says you need to go to Eton, go to
Oxford and go to the North pole in that order. You also need
to look and sound like Prince Andrew or Brian Sewell. Bingo!"

Account Code of Conduct

There's absolute uproar here in the UK because our elected representatives in the House of Commons have, it appears, been filling their boots with our hard earned for a number of years. Journalists (those friends of the oppressed) have uncovered a culture of systemic expense account abuse.

The scandal transcends party allegiances too. They're all at it. It's the one area in which there's some political accord. I suppose we should be thankful for that at least. The problem stems from the fact that the members of parliament (MPs) policed their own expense claims. Yes, one could argue that this presents a conflict of interest, but what price hindsight like that?

The story started with a few unimportant MPs being hauled over the coals for making dubious claims. However, seasoned MP watchers pretty quickly realised this wasn't the end of it by the reaction of each of the parties. They shuffled about uneasily and refused to score a few easy points at their opponents' expense (rimshot). Consensus in the British parliament occurs very rarely - generally when we're declaring war, and we haven't done that for months. No, the only explanation was that they were all at it, and felt shamed into silence.

The level of the abuse is staggering. Consider the following:

One unnamed Lib Dem backbencher claimed expenses for having the gaps in his teeth examined by a "registered" faith healer. No treatment was prescribed, but the one-off consultation cost £204.

Another claimed £18 for a bag of conkers he apparently collected for his twelve-year-old son while one tory MP bought a £3000 trampoline, which he claimed was a valid business expense because he'd forgotten to claim for the fax machine in his constituency office, the price of which was £124.99.

And finally, one eminent former cabinet minister claimed nearly £194,000 in expenses over a fourteen month period because he "was concerned by an unpleasant smell in the street - possibly emanating from a neighbouring property".

Top of the Yawning

We've just got back from a weekend in Ireland. It's First Holy Communion season there. My niece had to leap over the broom, or whatever the accepted metaphor for communicants is. Actually, the allusion to marriage is not a fanciful one because the little girls dress like brides. It's faintly distressing to see your infant flesh and blood trussed-up like this. The boys, on the other hand, were all dressed like they were expecting to be interviewed for a middle-management role. Why not top hat and tails?

Anyhoo, we ate too much and drank too much for three solid days, which I'm sure is what the Lord Himself would have wanted. I also foolishly engaged my nine-year-old nephew in ten minutes of hurling in the garden. That's not as actionable as it sounds to any non-Irish readers. Hurling is the national game of the Republic. Google it. It's a sort of actual bodily hockey. I'm feeling it today though - too old, you see.


On the flight back we were sat in front of a group of early twenty something girls. They seemed quite relaxed and chatty during boarding, but one of their number turned out to be a nervous flier. I first became aware of this the moment the plane left the ground because she hooted loudly as if she was unaware that this eventuality might come to pass. And it wasn't an American, frat-boy, high-five hoot either. It was one of distressed surprise. Not realising that manned-flight involves leaving the ground is right up there with not knowing the facts of life in this day and age, don't you think? And what did she think was going to happen? That we were going to thunder along the tarmac for the entire trip?

A little while later, we encountered some turbulence, at which she burst into tears. The crew intervened at this point as she and her friends were sitting in an emergency exit row. They tried to spare her befuddled feelings by cock-and-bulling her that she might be more comfortable in the row behind. Don't fret though. I shot her one of my "we can't have someone with bovine reasoning like you between us and safety" looks. She realised the score and looked suitably chastened.

I suppose charitable types would argue that she couldn't help it as fears like this are inherently irrational. All that is true. But then I don't like spiders, so I take great pains to avoid being locked in a metal tube with hundreds of spider-fanciers while Ryanair hand out bags of tarantulas and insist we fondle them for seventy minutes.

Long Weekend in Nod

Following on from my dream recollections yesterday, I bypassed the whole scenario last night and fell into a dreamless fatigue and red wine induced coma. Unfortunately my usually reliable catholic guilt let me down for once and I slept through the alarm, which meant having to start the day with a well crafted lie.

I am a good liar. There's no point in my being coy about it. I have an incorrigibly plausible manner. I discovered this quite early in life. I would make up something outlandish to amuse my school friends, and they'd (to my amazement) lap it up like mother's milk.

The temptation to use this skill for evil is huge, and one is always straddling the border between good and bad. It can make me appear withdrawn and brooding at times, like a bullshit Batman. It can also cause people to question my (genuinely) good intentions. Take my boss for example. Let's call him Commissioner Gordon for the sake of argument. I told Commissioner Gordon a bare-faced untruth this morning to explain my lateness, and he believed it. What's more, he wanted to believe it. We all crave narrative completion - disclosure followed by closure. And I did him the honour of creating a back story to the lie. He felt loved and I dodged a bullet - a victimless crime.

If there are any keen amateur liars reading this, the back story is critical. Otherwise your fib is like the faux cowboy town in Blazing Saddles: from the hilltop, it works, but as soon as the baddies ride into the valley, you're screwed.

Any Dream Will Do

I was in the middle of a particularly vivid dream this morning when the alarm went off. It's never nice being roused in this way. It does, however, mean you can remember said dream in glorious HD-ready quality. I dreamt I was playing tournament tennis against late Tory minister, and serial philanderer, Alan Clark.

The game took place in brilliant sunshine. We were in a huge ground that was slightly past its best, and there were very few paying punters around to watch the spectacle unfold. The right honourable member started off brightly enough, but after two points, his service game fell away somewhat. I'm being kind; he went to pieces. Not only did all his attempts at service miss the service box, they barely troubled the court at all. The final indignity was a huge looping service attempt that landed hopelessly out, bounced over the thirty-foot perimeter wall at the back of the court and then disappeared forever.

I felt terrible. Poor Alan - a once virile and dangerous opponent and I was beating him without laying racquet on ball. He hid his emotions behind a huge pair of jet black sunglasses, the kind that only teenage girls and very posh retired gentlemen can get away with. I didn't sense any anger in him, only resignation, as if my besting of him was the final confirmation he needed that the sap had left the building with a one-way ticket tucked into its hatband.

I don't know what this dream says for yours truly, but let's accentuate the positive. I beat a deceased old man at tennis. In your face, New Right. You made an implacable enemy of me when you came to power in 1979. I swore then I'd ruin you and your loved ones. This is only the beginning.

I May Be Some Time

Well, we've returned intact from our weekend's camping. It was a fairly uneventful trip. There was a real ale festival at the pub on the site. (For non-British readers, real ale is traditional form of British beer. It's delicious, but it does tend to attract joyless, bearded obsessive types. They're usually harmless unless you get talking to one about hop varieties, in which case you're likely to experience a virtual stroke due to boredom.)

However, I'd forgotten how cold it gets in England at night. The days were nice enough, but as soon as the sun went down, it got seriously chilly. I went to bed each night wearing all my belongings, and I was still frozen solid. And it was a real battle of wills to overcome the urge to urinate in the small hours. I had to lay it on the line to my bladder and central nervous system: we're going nowhere until daylight, so roll over and get some sleep. Also, some of our neighbours thought it might aid the sleeping process if they sat up all night inexpertly playing a shrill banjo. It's a testament to how much beer I'd stuck away that I was able to zone out the extraneous noise and get ten hours solid dreamless a night. I'm not by nature a deep sleeper. At home, the sound of dust settling is usually enough to disturb me.

In the news today I see serial offender Joey Barton has got it all over his shoes again. He was sent-off yesterday for confusing football with greco-roman wrestling. When his manager, Alan Shearer, questioned the wisdom of his commitment to the game, he got the right royal hump. Anyways, the upshot is he's been suspended by the club (again).
Now I don't believe I'm betraying any great confidence when I say that Barton's got history in this department. Everyone outside the game appears to realise that he has (ahem) issues with authority, and that he'll fly off the handle as inevitably as night follows day, and yet clubs are queueing up to buy him. They always argue that he's turned over a new leaf or at least deserves another second chance. Someone will give him a job if Newcastle sack him, and he'll be okay for about ten minutes before getting the red mists again. What does he have to do to get sacked? Take hostages or organise a drive-by? Even if he did either of these, he'd be employed again because between assaults, he's a decent footballer. This dubious logic doesn't extend to other professionals thank God or Fred West would still be in work. Yes, he murdered a few, but look at the quality of that grouting.

When Life Gives Me Lemons...(01.05.09)

I was sifting through a modest mound of spam this morning as usual when I happened across an interesting innovation in the genre. As you'll be no doubt aware, spam generally attempts to sell faux viagra at knock down prices to men (sorry, ladies). It does this by employing vaguely sexy subject lines to entice the male readership. Sometimes, however, the author seriously misjudges the tone, and you end up with straps like:

"Deeper in her entrails"

Thanks, jsuarez. I'm not squeamish when it comes to sex, but this allusion really doesn't do it for me. Perhaps I'm losing my mojo.

You have to feel for spammers. The competition is cut throat, which is why you get bold approaches like:

"America against swine flu - Your love will never be routine with such advantages"

Ten out of ten for effort and chutzpah, Sir. Chapeaux.

There’s a distressing piece in today’s Times (London Times) regarding an Australian city councillor named Jajnal Ban who willingly underwent “excruciating” surgery to stretch her legs three full inches.

[Councillors must weald a damn site more power in Oz than they do in the UK because the journalist employed the word “politician” to describe her. Here they’re little more than friendless, congenitally nosey underachievers.]

Ms Ban had to travel to Russia, that paragon of medical excellence and probity, to receive the treatment. She did this apparently because she feared she wasn’t being taken seriously in political circles due to her lack of visible inches. She’s now five feet four inches “tall”. As every right thinking person knows, the threshold for being taken seriously in the developed world is 5’2’’, so the procedure has been deemed a complete success, and Councillor Ban has pronounced herself delighted with the result.

I wouldn’t like to be accused of raining on Ban’s parade, or whacking off into her hat for that matter, but why didn’t she just buy some lifts or stand on a box? I’m led to believe by short acquaintances that three inches is more than achievable with modern lift insoles. And while I’m at it, might I suggest that the reason she’s not taken seriously is that she's the kind of person who would travel half way round the world to have her legs broken by a Russian. If she wanted to impress people, why didn’t she learn Latin or bulk-up on steroids like the rest of us?

Camp as Christmas

There's a bank holiday weekend looming here in merry England, and that means we're off camping. Camping's got a lot more popular now due to people having no disposable income and an exchange rate that makes Europe as expensive to get to as geo-stationary orbit. Despite the fact that it's all over the weekend lifestyle supplements, a lot of people still have misguided notions of what camping involves. They baulk when you tell them you're proposing to spend a couple of nights under the stars. They clearly picture you marooned on a shear cliff face, drinking boiled urine and eating lichen. I suppose there are some hardcore Northerners who spend their downtime like this, but they're definitely in the minority. Yes, there are many shades of camper in New Labour's Britain, and I'm firmly in the airbed, disposable barbecue and plenty of stiff drink category.

We went to see "Oliver" last week. It's effortlessly brilliant. When the opening number of a musical is as good as "Food Glorious Food", you know you're in for a rare treat.

I read somewhere that one of Lionel Bart's teachers recognised his talent and wrote to the boy's parents suggesting that they might have sired a genius. I was initially mightily impressed by this. Then I thought again. How insightful does one need to be to recognise genius, particularly musical genius? Not very is the conclusion I came to.

"Sir, Sir, I've written a song."

(wearily) "Very well, Bart, let's hear it."

Two bars in and the bottom lip would have been trembling and the foot tapping like a good un. You don't need five years at the Royal Academy to recognise genius like that. You just need two good ears with a brain slung between them.

Swine flu update: it's spreading like wild garlic. Between this and the economy imploding, it's not been a vintage year, has it? I'm going to build an ark.

Swine Update (29.04.09)

Apparently British boffins are at the forefront of the war against Mexican Pig sniffles. They're working away on a vaccine that might save the world if push comes to shove. Unfortunately, it takes about six months to develop. Pleasingly though, the experimental work is carried out on ferrets. Unlikely as it might seem, la ferret reacts to being infected with flu in an uncannily human way. If you own a ferret then, don't be surprised if he 'phones in sick in a couple of weeks' time, claiming to have inadvertently eaten a half-cooked sausage at a family barbecue the evening before. The weasel.

On a more domestic note, the wife's been working some brutal hours lately. Bizarrely, this has left me feeling slightly resentful and neglected. I say bizarrely because it implies she's having a whale of a time burning the midnight oil in the office pouring over reams of brightly-coloured and ultimately meaningless graphs. I'm turning into a bored trophy wife à la Mad Men. Before we know where we are I'll be drinking gin before lunch and having unsatisfying rough sex with a semi-literate gardener. We don't have a gardener, or a garden for that matter, but the point is well made. I'm walking the edge here.

Oink-ment (28.04.09)

This potential swine flu pandemic is getting beyond the joke. Ordinarily I wouldn't care a tinker's cuss for it. I don't fit the profile of likely fatality: I'm (relatively) young, fit, and I'm not a large animal vet, slaughter man, or pig farmer.

I was nodding contentedly to myself the other day, having just revisited the above facts, when I remembered that the wife and I had popped to a farm shop last week. We did this primarily to buy happy eggs, but we ended up rubbing some agreeable looking pigs in a nearby field. They were a bit stand-offish but absolutely charming nonetheless.

We then shot home, and I helped prepare dinner before washing my hands. I did think of this at the time, but I thought the worst that might happen was a bout of "crackling finger" or some other suitably minor pig-borne condition. Shite.

What would Jesus do? Tell a confusing story and run off I dare say.