Po-Mo-phobia

I had an odd night, last night.  I went to a 'talk' given by the writer of the Drunken Bakers, Barney Farmer.  That's a Viz strip, for the classicists among you who are unfamiliar with it.  You really should get yourself  up to speed with it, however, if we're ever going to be friends.  Here's a handy cook's tour of the oeuvre for you.

I say 'talk', but that's taking heroic liberties with the generally accepted meaning of the term.  Barney Farmer was drunk, not legless - not by any manor of means - but drunk.  Artist Mark Lecky lobbed a few topics at him and Farmer just started riffing.  It sounds horrific written down like this - a wretched cross between a 60s 'happening' and free-jazz.  In reality it was wildly entertaining and very, very funny.  As with most good comic writers, Farmer is fluent.  And his fluency is aided when he gets out of his own way.  Too much self-awareness would be ruinous for him - hence, the drink.

My companion and I left before the end.  I was enjoying it, but the bar ran out of beer and I started to feel a bit ill at ease with the atmosphere.  There's a danger with work like Farmer's in that it attracts the wrong sort, people who like being associated with things, dark things that their parents would fear and dislike.  The excessive drinking attracts the same sort.  It suits their post-college dalliances with nihilism.  These are dalliances for the most part.  The bourgeois self-preservation gene kicks in after about 30 months and they sober-up, get promoted and buy property.  Working class people don't dally with drink and drugs because there's no safety net for them.  Who's going to bail you out if you screw up?  Your parents?  Forget that.  They haven't the money or the wherewithal any more than you do.  Consequently, intoxication is either kept on a short leash or it becomes one's vocation.  You learn to live with it and still earn, knowing that it'll be with you forever.

The DBs is very bleak; it's funny too, but the humour comes more from the framing device than from the work itself.  The fact that someone has taken to the time and trouble to set this down and get it published in a comic is hilariously inappropriate.  None of the strips goes anywhere either.  They're just exercises in voyeurism.

Pain, fatigue, life, the universe and everything

It's warm in London for once, properly warm.  This is to be welcomed of course.  Unfortunately, I'm a bit out of practice with heat, as it's been grey and cool in the capital for about forty months or so.  This is why I forgot until after I'd turned in last night that the only fan I own was in the loft.  Being bone idle, I couldn't summon up enough enthusiasm to clamber up there and fetch it, which meant I got a wretched night's sleep - absolutely wretched.

Today has dragged something diabolical; I won't lie to you.  I've done very little.  My knee hurts and the soles of my feet and my hip have jumped on the bandwagon too.  This isn't helping my resolve.  Please, please make it stop.

Ennui Go

Oh, God, I'm bored today.  This is due to a number of factors.  Firstly, it's a glorious day out - sunny, still and warm.  That doesn't help.  Also, the office is as warm as a geriatric ward, as it must always be, to allow our, presumably consumptive, bought-ledger clerks to go about their duties.  Anything below thirty Celsius and they down tools.  Finally, I'm 47 and generally, therefore, bored almost literally shitless.

It's an odd age, 47.  I have tons of money, but realise I can no longer spend it on champagne and KFC without killing myself.  So I have the wherewithal but not the chassis for the journey.  It's like being given the run of a harem but without being able to take your trousers off.  This is opposite of one's salad days of course, when the only thing that stops you carousing is indigence or your finals, not the thought of a disappointing cholesterol test or a bout of mediaeval indigestion.

Best of the west

We flew back from Shannon yesterday after having spent a few days with my parents.  There was some congestion around Heathrow, and after sitting in what I assume must be the Bovingdon stack for a while, we performed a long slow loop over east London at about eight thousand feet before straightening up and 'establishing' for final approach

The light was great and the views spectacular.  I could see individual people around the foot of 1 Canada Square and could read the advertising hordings inside Brisbane Road.  It's amazing what a bit of half-decent light and