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.