Silly Season

There was almost literally nothing to watch or listen to in England last evening.  Radio 4 had a gob on and broadcast back-to-back bleak documentaries.  They kicked-off with some wretched paean to business, presented by former CBI chief Digby Jones.  This scintillating hour consisted of the Digster gadding about the Black Country (on expenses one supposes) , talking to self-important Tory-voting yammies about why business is a force for good on Earth and not simply a necessary evil, which is what most of us, rightly, believe.  People who take extreme positions on business, or the market, or whatever are collosal arseholes, and need to be shunned by polite society.  They, both left and right, should be sent to Rockall to establish who's right once and for all.  That should lighten the load for the rest of us.

After this, they broadcast a white-knuckle piece of reportage that set out to convince me I was probably suffering from an overabundance of iron in the system, and/or paranoid schizophrenia.  I'm actually only mildly neurotic.  This manifests itself in a minor case OCD that only rears its nut when I'm  washing-up.  I'm quite slovenly by nature in most matters, but when it comes to cleaning crockery and the like, I go mental, like an impoverished cockney Howard Hughes.

Beeb, see me.  Must do better.

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?

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?

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.