Happy new year

Happy New Year!

Well. That shot by, didn't it? I'm inclined to agree with the panel game comedian who suggested we skip straight onto 2014. We've had to look at 2013 since April, as we're in the 2012 / 2013 tax year, and it's not an aesthetically pleasing number.

Geto Boys, My Mind Playin tricks On Me

The lyric deals with paranoia, and other delusions, and the song samples Isaac Hayes' Hung Up On MY Baby. Insistent, laid-back beat. Like this a lot.

A quiet curry – and a doggy bag

We had a NYE curry after dropping DLL off to her party. She placed her take-out order as soon as she knew we were dropping in for a curry, so I couldn't resist over ordering and coming away with enough for a bit of breakfast tomorrow.

That could be a new year's resolution: more ethnic food for breakfast.

They're all out and about and seeing in the new year. MM's gone back up to town, K's coming down from town for a more local party, DLL's out. We've eaten, so BLISS has hit her postprandial tiredness, and I'm going to struggle to see midnight.

Mr Love Pants

On the back of the Ian Dury lyrics book, I've dug this out. Not up there with New Boots and DIY, there a lot of jazzy elements to the fore, and more of the spoken delivery, like on Razzle in My Pocket and My Old Man.

Then there's the words, Geraldine:

“I'm in love with the person in the sandwich centre,

If she didn't exist I'd have to invent her...”

“I know there's much more to life than the physical side

I should put these thoughts on hold

But when she's buttering my baguette

My blood runs hot and cold”

Bed of roses No.9:

“I knew it wouldn't be a bed of roses

I've seen the bloody grind that love entails

But one door shuts and then another closes

And now I'm on a bloody bed of nails”

Zombie Virus on Mulberry Avenue...

...was, actually a perfectly serviceable horror film, well-paced, tidily delivered, and with one of those Sean of the Dead cricket bat improvised zombie killing tool moments, when the big bartender goes at them with his frying pan.

I was writing stuff up at the time so didn't pay it the attention it probably deserved, so will have another look at some stage.

It's two hoots past tweet-tweet o'clock

An unusual complaint

Last night could have seen me (tired and grumpy after getting up at stupid to catch the tide and walk the dog) calling the police out to the noise nuisance from the neighbour's party, while BLISS was in attendance. No doubt it's happened before somewhere. But it wasn't that sort of party. It was a stand around and chatter party. BLISS described it as four hours of “like, networking”. Now, normally those parties make up for the lack of music, noise, er, fun and joy, by at least providing some decent nosebag for the unfortunates having to look interested in the other guests.

Nope. Not even that. Not much choice and little quality or quantity by the sound of it.

It sounds as if the highlights were playing faux par bingo. Apparently the cards filled rapidly.

Leftovers, almost the final instalment

Getting ever more inventive. Turkey Dhansak. Hot and sour, with lentils (the menu would've said), served with pilau rice. Salt and spice lassi to drink. Had that with MM watching the Arsenal...

...A wee club from the North East...

According to, as we like to call him, Demento. Or That [insert whatever you like here] Ferguson. Newcastle looked okay for about sixty minutes. Injury crisis and tiredness after the 4-3 defeat notwithstanding. They came back from 1-0, 2-1, and 3-2 down to square it up at 3-3, before it went 4-3 (still nervous), then 5-3 (phew, two-goal cushion), then 6-3 (thank god, three-goal cushion), then 7-3 (enough guys, don't waste all those goals on this cushion thing). Even then Giroud hit the bar when he could've completed a twenty-minute hat trick.

Wenger and Pardew got another ninety minutes at the same venue, together, without punching up (a pity, Wenger spent most of the game trying to fix the zip on his stupid Michelin man coat – you'd think they'd just run over to the shop and grab him another one, not great advertising when you think he probably gets better quality than mere mortals), although judging by their handshake at the end, relations remain on the absolute zero side of 'frosty'.

It's, er, tweety o'clock

Not the most inspired Christmas gift purchase in history. A clock with a bird positioned (that's a picture of a bird, not a stuffed or tethered live 3D version) at each hour, that plays recorded birdsong at that hour. It had rave reviews on Amazon. It looked bigger in the photos. Maybe the last of samples of the bird noises should have triggered some suspicions.

I don't know why, but some of them really make me giggle when they go off.

This tidying up electronic files thing...

...never ending, isn't it? It might help if BLISS were not such a memory-stick black hole. I'm still trying to finish off saving the Christmas day photos from the various cameras that were clicking away during the day.

Serendipity

Library roulette

Serendipity, I think it's called. A happy accident. With Internet access, there's real and virtual serendipity.

I only went into the library to keep BLISS and DLL company. I've plenty on the go at the moment, book-wise. There, on the main stand, facing the doors, in pride of place, was Hallo Sausages – The Lyrics of Ian Dury. Edited by Jemima Dury. Brand new. Very first loan. Flicking through, I saw the photo of Dury's battered old Rotring pen and ink bottle. Sold.

Then on the way out, again right in the you-can't-miss-seeing-this slot of the display stand, there was a copy of Ablutions. The cover caught my eye and the artwork looked vaguely familiar. By Patrick DeWitt. The name rang some bells, too. He wrote The Sisters Brothers, one of the best books I'd read last year. It had been on the 2011 Booker shortlist. Terse, sparse, fast-paced Cormac McCarthy type narrative, with a huge added dollop of very black humour and irony. Main characters are brothers differentiated by one being just little bit meaner, more ruthless and more psychopathic than the other. Superbly jet black, bleak and unremittingly hilarious. Another unexpected lucky find.

Great when it happens like that. Small but satisfying. Like finding that pound coin the return slot of the pay and display ticket machine.

Same happens electronically. Search the library or other repositories on line and there's plenty of tangents and off-piste stuff to find, plenty of gems among the rubbish.

On the beach...

...with the dog in the dark this morning.

Inconvenient tides, out at 06:30, before sunrise.

Came away with some odd, spooky and shaky photos, as the wind was a bit fierce, too.

Turkey curry

The Guardian 2012 music quiz

I had a go at the online quiz. I wasn't anticipating doing too well, but I wasn't ready for the disaster.

Three questions right. Out of twenty five. Must do better. That's absolutely appalling. No excuses. I had a total nightmare. Round about forty years ago, when the first job on a Wednesday was to run down to the newsagents and pick up that week's copies of NME and Sounds, I guess I'd've been playing off scratch, twenty four or a 100% twenty five.

The BBC softly softly sacking

Chris Patten to the then BBC director general George Entwistle:

“We are not urging you to go, but we are not urging you to stay.”

That's the way Chris. You told him. Told him good and proper. Sounds like Reggie's boss in an episode of The Rise and Fall...

“Do you know what a cliché is to me, George? A cliché is like a red rag to a bull to me and the others on the board, George. We are neither urging you to go, nor to stay, George. We are, you could say, resisting the urge to urge altogether. However, we are not urging you to do nothing. Doing nothing is not an option George. That's what got us in this state in the first place. We need urgent action. Whatever you do, and we are not urging you in any direction, you need to do it urgently, straight away. George...George...”

Even when football club boards give their managers a vote of confidence, the meaning is clear: “you're getting sacked in the morning” (as the song has it). “but we are not urging you to stay”? what does that mean, exactly? “Stay if you like, but us, we're just the custodians of the publicly-funded corporation and, like, dude, we just totally don't care, like we don't give one, okay, either way? So stay. Or like go. Whatever.”

Zombie Virus...

...on Mulholland Drive remains unwatched. This classic, recommended highly by both Billy Chainsaw and Dread Central, is just sitting there, begging to be watched, loved and appreciated. How much longer can such an unmissable, dazzling cinematic gem just lie there, still in the shrinkwrap?

Well, not too much linger, is the answer, because I'm desperate to find out just how bad it actually is.

Leftovers

We've had two lots of bubble and squeak. The classic: potato, sprouts and greens, salt and pepper; and the enhanced: with added mashed swede, stuffing and additional greens, and a beaten egg, part cooked in the pan, then grilled on top.

We've had turkey: curry (hot, spicy, lemon and coconutty, using the dark meat (come over to the dark side, young breast meat only people)), turkey sandwiches (mine were with gherkins, garlic butter and drizzled with chilli sauce (green jalapeño Tabasco)); and a Chinese-style turkey and vegetable soup.

There's enough for a couple more meals, then that's it, and the new year resolution, butchers only, no more no-welfare supermarket meat starts.

Crystal Castles

Listening to these today, the album (III). A full, deep, wash-over sound. First listen on the headphones will be interesting.

Dodgy City?

Chips with everything

The traditional Christmas poker session saw DLL triumphant. She was chip leader when time was called and we all assembled to watch the Jack Whitehall DVD. She's brilliantly uncomplicated sometimes.

“Why don't we start with hundreds, make the reds five hundreds, the blues thousands and the greens five grand?” I suggested. More exciting to say “I'll see your ten, and raise you fifteen grand” I thought.

“Why don't we stick with one, five, ten and twenty fives as usual, small blind one and big blind two to begin with?”

“Okay”. Shot down again.

There was a bible-toting station officer, at a large, multi-appliance fire station. I had a temporary posting there. After some weeks of rumour and whispers, a memo had been circulated. After 'an unfortunate incident' involving 'gambling for high stakes' on a night shift, all officers in charge were to ensure that, if any card games were played for money, the stakes were to be moderate and the games strictly controlled. Mr Bible had gone to town on this. He'd gone to great lengths to ensure everyone understood the message. To use the Brigade technical term, he'd properly torn the arse out of it. He seemed to be one of those that thought a pack of playing cards was an evil entity donated by the devil.

The 'unfortunate incident', depending on where on the rumour spectrum you were, involved anything from visits to A&E for running repairs to firearms offences; and the 'high stakes' were hundreds of pounds, or cars, houses and possibly wives.

Later, between night shifts one of the blokes was paid for some work he'd done, and unexpectedly, weighed out in a large amount of cashmoney. Station Officer Bible walked into the mess room and there we were, somewhere around six thousand in used notes in piles around the table, cards laid out in Texas Hold-'em style. Give him credit, he said:

“****ing hell. What's this? Dodge ****ing City?”

Ah. Isn't it nice to know we're in such safe hands?

This is a Tory MP, from his interview in the Guardian. He had described the proposed gay marriage laws as 'barking mad'.

“I haven't done years of diversity training, so sometimes I say things which are probably tactless...these feelings are hard to articulate...[without upsetting] a whole lot of people, some of whom I actually quite like.”

If you need years of diversity training to respect and treat others properly, mate, you're bit of a lost cause. Like most fundamentalists, your fundamental flaw is thinking all other fundamentalists are absolutely wrong. You are entrusted with looking after our free speech in a country with free speech supposedly enshrined in the constitution. If your feelings might upset someone, go for it. Articulate away. If by “difficult to articulate” you mean “difficult to articulate while remaining remotely electable”, then you've no right standing for election in the first place. That's my opinion, articulated, right there.

That 'whole lot of people, some of whom I actually quite like'? That's invented journalistic irony, right? Does anyone say things like: “actually, some of my friends are black / gay / Jews / not public school educated, why, just the other day I had a long conversation with a chap who didn't have a nanny and didn't ride out with the local hunt, can you imagine...”

Not much call for those, 'round here

Looks like the headline writers had Christmas day off...

...at the Guardian:

Heavy rain raises threat of flooding

As opposed to what raising the flood risk? Light drizzle? A prolonged dry spell?

But...it's the single most popular cheese...

“Ah. How about Cheddar?”

“Well, we don't get much call for it around here, sir.”

“Not much ca...but it's the single most popular cheese in the world.”

“Not 'round here, sir.”

Apparently, despite their universal (or so I thought) and seasonal popularity, you can't give Twiglets and Cheese Footballs away, not in these parts. Not even special mini Twiglets, in Christmas livery, including a top tip for the empty container (reuse as a plant pot); pictures of snow-laden trees and a snowman; and a topical joke: what's Santa's favourite pizza? One that's deep pan, crisp and even. There's not enough crunch in the wholegrain munch to make it an attractive snack to my lot.

The Cheese footballs are a uniquely Christmas snack. Wafer spheres, with a dollop of some sort of cheese-flavoured chemical jollop in the middle. More controversial than the Twiglets (at 80% wholegrain, high in fibre, no artificial colours or flavours and baked not fried, they're bordering on health food), I was still surprised to have them entirely to myself. MM presented a reasoned argument as to why he'd rather not partake. Other reactions were more on the “you're not actually going to eat those things, are you?” line. Half the packaging is the warning. They contain milk, soya, wheat, gluten, and maybe nuts. There's stuff about recommended daily amounts and taking exercise, and a list of ingredients that almost exclusively comprises artificial colours and flavours. Luckily, I'd already eaten all those healthy Twiglets. There's more jokes, too: what do you sing at a snowman's birthday party? Freeze a jolly good fellow.

Zombie Virus

How I came by this DVD is a long story. The full title is Zombie Virus on Mulberry Street (The Neighbourhood is Changing). Described as “the best zombie flick since Romeo's Diary of the Dead!” (no, I've not heard of it either) by Billy Chainsaw in Bizarre magazine, and as “a tense and terrifying claustrophobic heart attack” by Dread Central, and featuring homicidal, cannibal rat-mutants, and, most importantly, not too much of a time-stealer at just eighty-one minutes, this is a must-see DVD.

Naturally I Googled Dread Central (an online horror magazine). I hit the link to the best and worst of 2012 (Cabin in the Woods and Piranha 3D respectively). I can see the horror potential of the cabin in the woods. A classic horror film setting, your lonely woodland cabin, long deserted, complete with cellar, locked rooms, mysterious tape with garbled warning left by the last known inhabitants, that sort of thing. Rather less potential for tension with small hungry fish. Stay in the boat and you'll be okay. Fall in and you're toast.

'Twas the night before the Sun needed a new columnist

A dream and a nightmare

I flicked through The Sun yesterday. Twisted, I know, but two headlines made me laugh. The first was 22 STONE SCISSOR WEILDING MANIAC NIGHTMARE, with the sub-headline Why was she given a job in a hairdressers? I didn't read the article, but I predict a short novel and west end musical based on the true story. The second was about Jordan and her new bloke spending his nights accessing gay chatrooms.

Then there was Clarkson's page, guess what his take was about the RSPCA spending £300,000 prosecuting the Prime Minister's hunt? Whatever Clarkson's abilities and attractions are (and I'm jiggered if I can identify them), the ability to express an unexpected opinion isn't among them.

I think the questions should be to the filth and the CPS rather than to the RSPCA: 'either you're in the pocket of the rich and the hunts, or...' can't think of an 'or'. The question should be: 'you refused, repeatedly, to prosecute on similar grounds and with similar evidence. The very first time the RSPCA bypassed you and went it alone they succeeded in the courts. Does this not at least suggest and possibly prove that you are the lackeys of the rich and powerful that ride out hunting?'

Then the images started:

A knock at the door. A 'policeman's knock'. Loud, confident, persistent. A knock that, clearly, wasn't going away. Jeremy opened the door, dressed in pyjamas, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

“Uh. Yes. What do you want? It's three in the morning...”

“Mr Clarkson?”

“Yes”

“Mr Jeremy Clarkson?”

“Yes”

“I'm from the ministry.”

“The ministry”

“We're undertaking the cull”

“Cull”

“Cull. You know. You wrote about the foxes making it difficult to run your farm and the need to keep numbers down...”

“...so?”

“That's a cull”

“I know what a cull is...”

“Right Mr Clarkson. Well. You see. The country's overrun with aggressive, middle-aged, middle class,  opinions...much of it in the House of Commons, but there you go...”

“You what?”

“We are, Mr Clarkson, in common terms, clichéd up to our eyeballs. We're one or two hackneyed banalities away from drowning in our own triteness...”

“And?”

“And. Well. I'm sorry Mr Clarkson. This is more humane than it may appear, so I'm told. You may want to run away...”

“Run away?”

“Not much point, but most of them do...”

The pack of huge, genetically modified foxes (yes foxes, I'm not immune to cliché myself, okay, you could even put it down to satire or something clever if you were feeling kind) marshalled by eco-warriors driving 2CVs, and riding bicycles (look, there's Swampy) came racing around the corner. They immediately picked up the scent: stale cigarette smoke, BO, halitosis, and...

“Oh dear, Mr Clarkson. You appear to have let yourself down...”

Top Gear fans should look away now. A lifetime of distain for any sport that does not require an internal combustion engine had not prepared Jeremy for evading his perusers, and in no time at all he was torn to shreds.

“Right” said the man from the ministry to his deputy “where does Littlejohn live again?”

It's a wrap

Christmas music advent calendar

How'd I get so behind with this?

• 13^th: Wynton Marsalis – Blue Christmas Jam (because it's a great song)
• 14^th: The Ramones – Merry Christmas (I don't want to fight tonight) (because I can't see anything at all not to love about the Ramones. One, two, three, four...Christmas)
• 15^th: Bob Dylan – I'll be home for Christmas (because Dylan issuing a Christmas album is one of the most gloriously mad music industry events, ever)
• 16^th: Andy Williams – It's the most wonderful time of the year (opening song on the so syrupy-sweet it's indigestible Christmas sampler E sent over from the States years ago for us. By 'for us' I mean 'for me to torment BLISS with')
• 17^th: The Beach Boys – Frosty the Snowman (Hawaiian shirts, shorts, surfboards, and snow, great mental image)
• 18^th: Bob B Soxx and the Blue Jeans – Here comes Santa Claus (because there has to be one from the Phil Spector album, and isn't that the first one reached for every year?)
• 19^th: New Birth Brass Band – Santa's Second Line (because New Orleans, with the local obsessions and attitudes, must do Christmas really well. I read that as much as New York looks dazzling at this time of year, many New Yorkers go back to work on Boxing Day, lobbing their trees into the rubbish skips as they pass by. New Orleans is good at food, bright and gaudy costumes and trinkets, and celebration)
• 20^th: Kevin Bloody Wilson – Hey Santa (because it makes me laugh. Every year. The way Mr Hankie makes me laugh. Every year)
• 21^st: The Mighty Mighty Bosstones – This time of year (because they're double mighty, because there's a great sax break followed by an interjection from the horns, followed by the rest of the sax break, because it starts at 100 miles and hour and accelerates without lifting the lead boot from the throttle all the way, and, did I say they're double mighty (and strangely unheard of))
• 22^nd: The Rap All Stars – Last Christmas (because they've taken the unpalatable and made it quite tasty)
• 23^rd: Ingrid Lucia – 'Zat You, Santa Claus? (because this has a sense of humour, and without one, Christmas must be right miserable)
• 24^th: Snoop Dogg – Twas the night before Christmas (because it's a great song “all year, this what I've been good fo', Santa don't fail me now...all through the house, there were a whole lot of roaches, and a pet mouse...)

Wrapping...

...all done, apart from one or two items that (hopefully) will arrive today (and if they don't, well, we'll dispense with the need for wrapping after the 25^th) with immense thanks to DLL, who assisted me no end. By assisted, I mean did everything apart from tearing off pieces of sticky tape, which was the one role I had in the whole business (and if I say so myself, one I carried out almost faultlessly, even if the procedure is rendered a-monkey-could-do-it easy by the little plastic dispenser thingy).

My wrapping, if pressed into doing it, has improved. It evolved from the plastic bag from the shop to the piece of wrapping paper per item, no matter how small, with enough sticky tape to sink several fleets, to between passable (square-cornered, book-shaped presents) and ragged but a good try (anything of any other shape); but it just takes me so long. DLL was at least ten times as fast as me at my fastest.

On a mission...from God

I don't have to queue, god's on my side

I collected the turkey today. As usual, the queue was out of the door. Then the full length of the butcher's shopfront. As usual, there was plenty of gallows humour and abuse flying about. Most of the abuse was directed at Adrian, who owns the butchers. It centred on (a) his slow service, especially when compared to his faster, more efficient, younger, better looking (etc etc) staff; and (b) his legendary tightfistedness:

“I've got my car park ticket here”

“and?”

“and it says here I get a pound refund on parking”

“a pound? I'm feeling a bit giddy. I may have to lie down for a while”

“it says 'participating retailers'”

“don't give him any room to wriggle out of it”

“that till's a one-way machine. You'll not see a penny coming back out once it's gone in there”

“oy, is that a film crew outside? Adrian, the national news' here in case you give a pound back”

“over my dead body...”

And so on.

I was in the doorway when an late middle-aged lady appeared. “Is this the queue?” “I hope so, or I'm wasting my time.” “Do you think I could, er, only I'm late for mass.” “Is there not a later one?” “I really need to get in there...” The bloke in front of me joined in “they're open until nine this evening, why don't you come back later?” “or become an atheist?” that was wrong of me, but her persistence was starting to get on my nerves. “What do the commandments say about queue-jumping?” “I don't know, isn't this a pagan festival in any case?”. She decided to come back later.

Telepathy

BLISS: Oh, you've bought tomato juice. I was going to text you and ask you to pick some up.

ME: Must be telepathic. Do you want some now?

BLISS: Yes please.

ME: Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco sauce.

BLISS: Just Worcestershire, and just a tiny drop please.

ME: (with the Worcestershire sauce bottle in hand) say 'when'.

BLISS: (not looking) woah. That's enough.

ME: (even though I accept I can be a bit heavy handed at times, somewhat hurt) but I haven't put any in yet.

BLISS: (unsaid, by the powers of telepathy) I know what you're like.

Christmas cooking...

...started today with a parsnip, celeriac and apple soup, spicy with dashes of curry powder, cayenne, and black pepper.

That's the tide out?

We took the dog to the beach today. The website that described the 2 pm tide as 'low' can expect interrogation from the fair trading people. Nice walk though.

BS Johnson, book in a box

BS Johnson and the randomness of thoughts

I picked up The Unfortunates by BS Johnson from the library. A Christmas break book. I keep reading about him being the great forgotten British author of the sixties. Great is good and forgotten is a shame but not surprising. Culture has been sabotaged by a succession of administrations that see anything other than vocational training and acquisition aspirations as subversion that needs stamping out. A book in a box. A beautiful object. Open the book-shaped box and there's opening and closing chapters, titled 'First' and 'Last' and twenty five intermediate chapters to be read in random order in between. Signifying the random nature of thoughts, memories, the inability of the human will to tame the human mind. The unbound volume is presented in a paper slip, similar to those used to hold large bundles of banknotes. The printing I've come away with has quotes from Johnson's favoured authors on the inner faces of the box. The e-book people would struggle with this, wouldn't they?

Aim

Listened to Cold Water Music, Hinterland, and Means of Production driving back. Great albums. Good for in the car, too.

A rare night out

Out with BLISS last night. Long drive, good meal, decent company and a nice time. Room sorted so we didn't have to worry about driving back in the small hours. Just as well, because a fair proportion of the roads seem to be at least partly under water.

Nice relaxed start to the day. Cooked breakfast. Tomato juice with Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco. Just in time, though, as the A27 was closed later.

Wigan 0 v 1 Arsenal

Funny how bipolar the Arsenal forums are. A win's a win. The book only ever says how many, never just 'how'. Yet the performance is criticised for being unconvincing. It was that, undeniably. But the same folk talk about the team's inability to win ugly when necessary.

Fantastic international T20...

...yesterday. Morgan holding his nerve, and needing three runs to win from the last ball, despatched it back over the bowler's head and away for six. Great game of cricket.

Clifton Chenie

Louisiana Blues and Zydeco. Listening to this and Trombone Shorty's For True this evening. Great albums, full of that New Orleans joy and celebration. I bet they do Christmas well there.

The revolving door spins ever faster...

...or the dementia's getting worse, as I keep trying to get my head around who's where and when over the Christmas break. Maybe if I started writing it all down...

Waste in the kitchen and at the BBC

What a waste...

...two articles caught my eye yesterday. One was about the huge amount of food we waste every Christmas. We shop. We cook and serve. We eat (some). We bin the rest. Thrown away are:

• the equivalent of two million turkeys (it didn't say what size turkeys, but even small turkeys are big birds and two million of them is rather a lot);
• five million Christmas puddings (have you tasted those things? little wonder they end up in the bin. We probably only buy them because we think we have to, because they have the word Christmas in their name;
• 74 million mince pies. See above, really, they're not very nice either, are they?

That was in the Guardian, online edition.

They signed off with the fact that we will also throw away (and into the sewers, mostly, where it forms a solid, soap-like material that has removal costs of about £50 million a year) enough turkey fat to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

I think we should all make an effort. Estimate more accurately. Buy less, think about it more, waste less.

I also think that we should all take the turkey fat to this Olympic-sized swimming pool and fill it full. It would be an interesting art installation, and, it'd be a right laugh watching the early Boxing Day morning fitness fanatics go diving into that fat.

The second article was in the Big Issue, and recorded the expansion in numbers of, and the tonnage handled by, food banks.

So, before lobbing anything out, and particularly if you're working on the 27^th or 28^th, when it's likely to be wet and cold, wouldn't it make sense to wrap and bag some leftovers you're never going to eat and hand them straight to someone who needs them more than the local landfill? Or to find the nearest food bank or soup kitchen and drop it off there?

BBC on the defencive...

...after criticism of their payoffs for failing management. Don't see how is defensible.

George Entwistle (failed to manage the Jimmy Saville stuff, at all) left with a £450,000 payoff.

Deputy Director General Mark Byford trousered a cool £949,000.

Caroline Thomson copped £670,000. Severance pay. She had to leave because she was passed over in favour of Entwisle.

That's two million quid in licence payers' money paid to three people in one-off, brown envelope, golden handshake payments.

The report criticising this (according to Patten) is 'shabby' and 'unfair'. How fair is paying money for something I don't, and never will want? How shabby is rewarding failure with other people's money?

The Hobbit

The Hobbit

Among some fantastic birthday presents was this one:

Not just anywhere tickets. BFI IMAX tickets. From DLL. We went today. If you liked the Lord of the Rings films (and I did) there's nothing not to like. It is subtly different. The humour is more robust but less frequent, the story unfolds more slowly, and there's more of a dark edge. That's the opposite way around to the books, if I remember rightly. I've not re-read The Hobbit since childhood.

The Hitchhikers' Guide bloke (Martin Freeman) is a great Bilbo. He does a really good job. I don't know whether it was Elijah Wood or the character of Frodo, but I was starting to get real compassion fatigue with all the neuroses on display in Lord of the Rings at times, and this bloke is much better. Ian Holm's in there as his older self, at the very beginning, too.

I should explain that I hit compassion fatigue early. My compassion stamina is very, very low. In athletic terms, imagine a sprinter. A sprinter that hits the marathon runner's wall. After ten yards. That's where my compassion fatigue turns to compassion exhaustion. Before the third there in there, there, there. So it could be just me.

James Nesbitt, who deserves eternal damnation and universal loathing (he's a United fan) is a dwarf. There's a fat, ginger dwarf whose beard splits in two then joins together again just above his navel. I don't think he has a line of dialogue. He just stuffs himself. He must specialise in non-speaking / plenty of eating roles. Ian McKellen's Gandalf again, hidden behind masses of beard and hair, as is Christopher Lee as Saruman. I wondered whether the casting people had thought about their advanced ages, but as DLL said, with all that hair and beards, they could be anyone, really.

Barry Humphries is the Great Goblin, and the CGI character looks much like Humphries might on a very, very bad morning.

The cinema is superb. Built on a 'sunken traffic island', which I think is architect-speak for a big roundabout, on some of the busiest routes in London, and just four metres above the Waterloo and City tube line (the 'drain' that shuttles between Waterloo and Bank); and built on some anti-vibration bearings that render traffic and a train every two minutes inaudible, the cinema has the biggest screen in the country. The biggest 3D glasses, too. 500 Mr Magoos entranced.

Excellent late lunch afterwards, too. Ping Pong dim sum. Google them. They do all you can eat Sundays. Delicious.

Thanks DLL.

New Orleans, music, food

Buckwheat Zydeco

New Orleans. The yanks have guns, sure, but they also have New Orleans, Cajun Zydeco music and bands like these.

We have Simon Cowell and a prime minister who gallops about the place killing small animals with horses and packs of dogs, dressed like some sort of retarded clown while looking down at you and me.

I nicked that last bit from John Cale. Paris 1919 (if you don't have a copy, get one, HMV's due a closing down sale soon if the gloom-mongers are to be believed): 'So shocking to see, the old C of E, looking down, on you and me' (from Graham Greene). Don't get the deluxe augmented version. It's inferior to the original. If that's all they have listen to the first ten tracks and stop there. It's a true masterpiece, and a joined up album. Try to pick a single favourite track to My Jam. See? Impossible. Works as a whole.

This is great music. Electric and amplified, but full of the violins, accordions and whatever else authenticity takes.

Any culture based on food and music deserves better than to be abandoned by Washington and the insurance companies after a hurricane. Or maybe that's exactly what it deserves: freedom from interference. If you don't / won't help, then shove your tax bill and, that nose you keep poking in? Next time it'll cease attachment to your face.

'Sport' they call foxhunting in Cameron's circles. No wonder he was so excited about the Olympics. There's all that dressage and horseback volleyball for him to cream his jodhpurs over. I mean, really, huge packs of dogs and loads of toffs on horses chasing one fox, because, if they didn't, the poor farmers would drop below the subsistence line. You English, you kill me. All that forelock tugging. It must have an adverse effect on the brain or something.

In how many oblique ways did the RSPCA spokesman have to say “the filth and the CPS? Don't make me laugh. Two blind eyes there, buddy-boy” to the aggressive interviewer? Whatever it cost, bringing the case was worth the money.

Just a pity the punishment isn't being run down by a pack of hoodies on scooters before being torn limb from limb.

Talking about music, food and cultures, the kitchen boombox is now playing Dr John and the Donald Harrison Band. It's due a bit of TLC, I think. For an electronic item, it's food value must be quite high. Locked in a room with it, you'd not starve for a long while.

I bet Cameron's kitchen CD player's pristine. Playing his copy of “Tally Ho! The Greatest Hits of the Hunting Bugle” including “Out they way, pleb”; “I've gort a ho-arse, don't'cha know”; Hound Dog, and Foxy Lady.

Tabasco Sauce. There's genius from the deep south. Can't imagine the Cameron's get through too much of that.

Heard Miliband on the radio. He could do a job if there's ever a radio remake of The Elephant Man couldn't he? John Merrick voiceovers? Found your man. Is this some sort of special needs thing? Filling the talking shop with people with speech defects? Some sick joke? “I'm going to tell you, nay, lecture you at great, lose-the-will-to-live length on how thy shalt live your life”...

...not until you learn to speak properly you're not...

The unspeakable and the uneatable

House of...who?

The House of Commons. Isn't that supposed to imply anyone can get in there? Isn't it more like The House of the Privileged Few?

The top monkey in the House of the Runaway Gravy Train rides out with his local hunt. There's an everyman pursuit. Cricket whites? Rugby boots? Not on your nelly. I'm a man of the people. Just an ordinary Joe. Hasn't everyone got access to a few thousand quid's worth of horse and a stupid red coat and top hat.

The unspeakable chasing the uneatable, Oscar Wilde called them. I've promised no swearing, so I can't say what I call them.

The PM's hunt is the first prosecuted by the RSPCA. The PM's hunt has broken the law. Law is what the House of Expenses Fiddlers is supposed to specialise in. The Heythrop Hunt was described as 'believing that they were above the law – they were wrong'.

So, head honcho at the House of the Self-Righteous Who Tell Us Plebs How to Live Our Lives, belongs to a hunt that believes it's above the law. Symptomatic of the prevalent attitudes in government. Maybe this sort of thing explains the low turn outs at polling (from the Latin polluxus, to totally waste one's time) stations.

Oy! HMRC! Where's my interest?

Got a tax return? Did you get interest? Bet you didn't. Do you know why? You're not already mega-wealthy and one of the ruling elite. One rule for the rich? You bet'cha.

The Barclay brothers own the Telegraph and the Ritz. How much tax do you think the Ritz has paid in the last seventeen years?

None. Nada. Zip. Ziltch.

These guys got a £204m tax rebate, and £268m in interest.

That's not enough, apparently. They're after £1bn in interest.

No wonder the petty, small-minded ejits at HMRC are busy chasing normal folk. They need to subsidise the lifestyles and huge demands of guys like the Barclay brothers.

Gazidis email hacked

To: arsenew@arsemail.com

From: ivang@arsemail.com

16 Dec 2012 10:02

Subject: Bradford

Dear ARSEne (heh),

Just saw the results from Saturday. Well, Mrs Ivan pointed this one out to me. Her finger's more on the football pulse than mine. As you know, I'm more Formula 1 myself. The (un)mighty Bradford (that lot that dumped us out of that cup you thought we might win?) drew. Two-all (see? I'm learning the “lingo”), with the equally mighty(NOT) Southend. The great unwashed (the fans) will read the sports pages (and nothing else) and will be giving us more of the “not good enough” on twitter etc. Sort it out before they start questioning our (immense, heh!) wages.

Kind regards,

Ivan

Flying phones

Feed the birds, ring if you're still hungry

In the process of lobbing some stale bagels out for the birds, BLISS threw her phone, too. Not smart enough to fly, it landed on the wet grass. Unfortunately, I was there to witness it. Often the way with these things. There was, however, a perfectly logical explanation:

“I don't have any pockets”, then, “look, now it's all muddy.”

Inherent Vice...

..was an emergency book, stranded trying to get back from London Bridge a couple of week ago. Pynchon is a great writer, and this is a wonderful book. So full. Every page weighs a ton.

Miles Davis, Cellar Door Sessions

Like a lot of Miles-heads, I suppose, every so often you find something new has turned up. Either it's been long lost or newly remastered or you missed it first time around. Or whatever. The Cellar Door Sessions (I'm halfway through the third of six albums) records a set of live gigs, played with a fantastic band, at the stage where Bitches Brew experimental jazz was starting to evolve into the electric jazz / rock / fusion phase of Davis' output.

Today's listening taken care of. Along with the first season Treme soundtrack. Combat the Sunday blues with New Orleans music.

Intercepted texts

Gazidis to Wenger: “messi? messi? y u say messi? r u totally insane? lol, ivan”

Wenger to Gazidis: “can u stp kicking me under the table pls”

Gazidis: “when u regain some composure”

My New Jam...

...is Ooh Poo Pah Doo by Trombone Shorty and James Andrews, it's fabulous, worth a listen:

http://www.thisismyjam.com/IstvanFallok

Found a turkey recipe...

...that'll work for me: don't go mental, don't cook so long that it's all dry and crumbly. Coat with butter laced with salt, pepper and garlic, slam in the oven. Halfway through lob in some aromatics: bay, rosemary, whatever. Towards the end add some onions to caramelise. Make sure the butcher (for that's where you buy a turkey, not a plastic shrink-wrapped battery farmed monstrosity from the supermarket, boned and rolled is right out, dark meat and bones = good, anything else is (1) lazy and (2) childish) includes the giblets, neck etc. because that's where proper, tasty gravy comes from.

OK, that's my recipe.

Gazidis email hacked

The Gazidis emails (1)

Sent using: ivang@arsemail.com

To: 'Arsene W'

11 Dec 2012 23:30

Hi Arsene,

First of all a big “well done” (NOT) to you and the window lickers on the coach home. How are we going to explain this one?

Your lack of ability to pick up one of those cup things is becoming an issue with the 'fans'. If you're not careful you're going to derail our gravy train. I can only bullshit Stan so far. All those $130m ranches he keeps buying, his nose will be increasingly attuned to the smell. I know he knows nothing about soccer, but that's where we're supposed to come in, and, you know, like, add value?

I'll keep telling everyone that the 'fans' are happy because we're in good financial shape (at least you and me are, eh?) and going to win everything when the FFP regulations come in (heh, as if!!!), but it's increasingly difficult to be even moderately convincing when we're getting turned over by part-time northern monkeys used to playing in the Rymans with a bundle of rags for a ball in front of two men and one dog.

And no more storming off and self-satire. Next presser I'm either going to have to sit next to you or it's the manacles again.

Last thing, all future player acquisitions are to be screened by Bouldie, the doctor and me. We don't want any more oversized heads on pencil bodies that can't stay upright even in the absence of opponents, fat Russians, lazy Moroccans, fat, lazy and mad Brazilians, missing Germans or slant-eyes that cost us £1m per ten seconds of game time. How can I give it all that financial prudence blah blah when we've spunked millions on someone not remotely likely to play for us? Ever?

Try to come across a bit less mad or you'll ruin it for all of us.

Kind regards,

Ivan

Ivan Gazidis

Chief Executive Officer, Arsenal Football Club

Sent using: arsenew@arsemail.com

To: 'Ivan'

12 Dec 2012 09:37

Hi Ivan,

Can I have some money, please. Also, when you see Stan tell him these coats are ridiculous.

Apparently, you can't say what you think

I mistakenly thought political correctness was sufficiently discredited as a guide to living that we'd left it behind. That does not seem to be the case. There are opinions you just can't voice, it seems. In a free speech (supposedly) country, you should be able to say what you think. I think programmes like Strictly Come Dancing are the worst form of televisual slime designed to keep retards quietly licking their windows. No, I've never seen so much as a single second. I hope I never do. I hope Ant and Dec's car crashes into Robbie Williams and they are all incinerated in a huge ball of fire. I would rather attack my private parts with a cheesegrater than suffer sitting in front of that sort of bland, pointless tripe.

Guns + the wrong people = kill people

Guns don't kill people?

I've never owned a gun or lived anywhere with a gun culture or general gun ownership. I fully understand the lobby for making guns illegal.

The problem I have is that here, for example, there actually isn't a ban on owning guns. Earlier this year a local farmer shot a sweet-natured family pet that had merely strayed onto his land. The police aided and abetted the farmer and displayed no more knowledge of the legalities than the general public, who all seem to fall for the farmers' long-perpetuated myths. They had the accomplice dog, a small and equally sweet-natured mongrel on dog death row for 48 hours.

So, when we say no guns, what we mean is that the police can have them (despite a track record of shooting the innocent and each other, Google 'Keystone silent movie' for their training videos), and their mates the bully-boy farmers can have them, and anyone they see fit to give the okay to can have them. That's why I prefer the American way. I don't like hybrid systems. If there's a ban, make it a blanket ban. Outside of the military, and properly trained police screened for the capacity to actually shoot the villains and avoid blasting the innocent and each other (this may go against the “but you're discriminating against me just because I have zilch ability in that area” people, but, hey, how many shortarses do you see in the NBA?), make owning firearms illegal. Anything short of that is not equitable.

ID cards and the DNA register

I have refused to have my fingerprints taken in the past. On the basis that they were not strictly needed in an elimination process, and I don't want them on the record. The same goes for ID cards, DNA registers and everything else. When, and only when, every off-the-radar new age caravan dweller, when everyone but everyone is on the register, then I'll join the happy throng. Otherwise, if I should ever do something I need to get away with (and anyone who thinks they could never be in that situation belong in the insane asylum along with the people who think they could never end up homeless clutching a bottle of sherry, or in an insane asylum) I want to have as much chance of getting away with it as I can. I see the question simply as why should I move my goalposts out wider making it easier for the opposition to score?

We gotta get a set of those...

…Big Bash stumps. The Aussie T20 tournament, their version of the IPL, does not feature all the world's best twenty twenty cricketers, but it has got stumps, and bails, that light up when they're hit. That's a fantastic idea. We need some of those.

Miles Davis...

...and the complete In A Silent Way Sessions. Listening to these cds now. Not content with the paradigm shifting, biggest jazz album ever in Kind of Blue, no pipe, slippers and recycling the same old same old for fun and profit (see Williams, Madonna, et al, recycling what wasn't original when they started for profit alone), next up was stripped bare modal jazz. The line up on these albums says all there is to say: Miles, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, Dave Holland, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Joe Chambers, and the mighty Wayne Shorter, oh, and John McLaughlin. That's a real who's who right there. That's Weather Report, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, that's the Headhunters every house had a copy album, that's Return to Forever, that's the future of jazz and jazz fusion assembled in one studio, by one rare genius.

Thanks guys...

Thanks...

...guys for a great birthday. You know who you are. Despite advanced years I found out so much. Including that elephant yams are not just yams but bigger. No, their either (a) elephant-shaped, or (b) harvested by elephants, according to which of the mickey-takers you believe. That it's bad manners to blow out candles directly in line with the face of the person holding the cake. That lemon in a lassi is a bad idea, because bits break off and clog up the straw. That BLISS has (a) a liking for spinach and lentil curry, and (b) no concept of what constitutes 50% of a portion of spinach and lentil curry. That there's huge benefit and comfort in our nation belatedly embracing the American concept of the doggy bag.

It seems that Kiz and I are able to eat, and having eaten, leave. BLISS, having eaten, needs to sleep after a large meal and given the chance would nod off. DLL, while awake, has difficulty moving, and given the chance would be carried out in the chair she's occupying.

Oh, and earlier, having slightly drifted while driving and fiddling with the cd player? Best not to do that. Drifting is classed as 'veering' and I should not question their thirst for adventure when they criticise my capabilities behind the wheel.

Debunking the multi-blade myth

I'm getting used to the old-fashioned double-edged safety razor. The shave is as close as the one I was getting with a five-blade vibrating razor. Three passes with one blade = three blades over the skin, a decent shave and much less irritation. Before, three passes meant fifteen blades going over the skin, huge irritation, and poor environmental performance, as the bonded plastic and metal of the disposable systems is one of the hardest compound materials to recycle.

How to revitalise housebuilding

Younger architects. That's the answer. The Christmas Lego advert is a speeded up film of father and son building a model house. Dad produces the car, garage, and half of a bog-standard suburban dwelling.

The son's half of the construction has a multi-coloured windmill, a drop-down launching pad for a flying saucer, an anti-aircraft raygun installation on the ground floor, and all manner of similar innovations. Imagine having a remote-control raygun jobbie by the front door. That would redefine the risk levels associated with being designated an unwanted visitor.

Second day of the test...

...went well. Runs for Root and Prior who both played very well, and then wickets for Anderson.

There was one of those lessons about high principles, too. Swann dismissed Gambhir, given out, wrongly, off the elbow then the pad and caught by Bell. Big appeal. Not up to the players to administer fair play or look for reasons why not, all they're doing is asking the umpire the question. If his answer happens to be wrong, well, win some / lose some, relax. Lessons from sport for life.

Hi-ho

The restaurant had prawn bamalam or something like that on the menu. According to Rich and AD, Black Betty had a chile, darn thing run wild. Also according to them, there's a recent dearth of similar songs everyone knows the words to. Admittedly, I don't get out much nowadays, but in't'olden days every house party ended with The Jeff Beck Group and Hi Ho Silver Lining. A sort of everyone dance singalong. The universally known words are:

Hi ho silver lining

And away you go, now baby,

I see your sun is shining

But I won't make a fuss

Though it's obvious

The obvious is pronounced ob-vee-us to rhyme with fuss.

The reverse block, a favourite

Back on Indian time...

...and a real shock at 04:00. Cook's won a toss. Sky commentary during the last test, and after suggesting how tempting it must be, I was laughing when David Lloyd caved in and came out with the useless tosser line. Anyway, he won his first toss in living memory, elected to bat, and was out (wrongly given out by the umpire) for one run from twenty eight balls. This isn't a calypso cricket pitch. Boycott will be licking his lips. He'd love a surface that allowed him to show off his full range of shots:

• the block
• the reverse block
• the paddle block
• the slog block
• the straight block
• and the check block.

Boycott did make me laugh describing a bowler's 'mystery' ball: it's a mystery all right, confuses the batter who don't know whether to hit it for four or six.

Sport and principles

I copped a pasting on the Arsenal forums. Those guys seem to think you can afford to have principles when playing sport. I think winners leave their principle on the changing room peg, along with their shirt and jeans. For a number of reasons.

Don't tell me having no scruples on the pitch make you less of a good person. Anyone playing decent rugby would be mortified if they so much as bumped into an old lady, yet would happily run through opponents to get to the ball on a Saturday afternoon, and if that leaves them unable to continue / bandaged on the touchline / off to casualty, then so be it.

Let the referee or the umpire decide. I've seen one of our ex-players signalling four runs when our fielder has dived to stop the ball and just maybe come in contact with the rope in doing so. Would he do the same when the benefit would go to us? Probably not. Would an opponent, in diving to stop the ball, notice that he'd touched the rope? If he did notice would he say so? Magnificent effort, let the umpires decide. You get some let-offs, and you get some stinkers. Noise? Catch? Ask the question. Some batters are affronted. “I hit the ground”. Get over yourself boy. Noise + catch = appeal.

Principles are expensive on the field. After you Claude leads to losing out in the personal battles and that leads to losing the game. Arsenal are paying the price for the manager's lofty principles in how he thinks the game should be played, and for the people running the club insisting that the financial side of things is in order.

Golf cards deal in numbers. Play the perfect hole or scramble a par, both cards say four shots, both players are in the same position. The scorebook says you got a fifty, not that it was streaky, that you were dropped twice or that half the runs came off the edge. Dive, convert the penalty, the records show you won one-nil.

Sport is for pragmatists, do whatever it takes, play the referee, play at the edge of what's allowed. Never been booked or sent off? I don't want you playing alongside me. Bad tempered? Nasty? Foul mouthed? Aggressive? Not ideal, but welcome to the team.

BLISS TV Review

Yes, and yes

Glimpsed Come Dine with Me looking in to warn BLISS that the football was starting last night. There was a woman. Wearing a hat. Indoors. With a feather stuck in it.

“Is it fancy dress, or is she stupid.” I said.

“It's fancy dress. And they're all stupid.” Heh.

Advent calendar music

8^th December: James Brown – Soulful Christmas

9^th December: Lou Baxter – Merry Christmas Baby

10^th December: Clarence Carter – Back Door Santa, with the “I carry a mean sack” line

11^th December: Chuck Berry – Run Run Rudolph

12^th December: Louis Armstrong – Is that you, Santa Claus?

Come and See

A disturbing, fascinatingly graphic film about the Russian resistance during WWII. Seen from the point of view of a young boy who volunteers, and is recruited because he happens to find a rifle that's in working order.

To say he has a time of it is a huge understatement. Apparently the German forces raised 626 Belarussian villages, and almost all of their inhabitants, too.

About last night...

...apparently, that wasn't embarrassing for Arsenal.

Here's the thing:

Their goal can from a free kick. Conceded near the corner flag, when Hill 'megged the Verminator and got body-checked. The ball to Hill came from their 'keeper, kicking from his hands. That ball had to travel about 80 yards, without anyone in an Arsenal shirt doing anything about it. Either their 'keeper is a passing genius wasted between the sticks in the bottom division, or the defending was naive and lazy.

The miss from Gervinho is unbelievable. There's links to it all over the place today, and there's a frame from it showing him, the ball in easy reach, and an absolutely open goal about four yards away. You'd back a centre half trying to clear to score from there.

Our manager:

Chamakh (about one o'clock): am I starting boss? I usually start the CoC games.

Arsene: nope. We're going with the fall-overy bloke with the large, misshapen head. I know he's a wide player really, but you're so rubbish even he's better than you.

Arsene (about nine thirty): on you go Marouane, get us a goal, we rate you as a player, honest.

Arsene (about ten fifteen): second penno Marouane, cheers, good lad. Look, I know you got twenty minutes plus extra time, had a 'mare, copped a massive ticking off from a teenage player after your millionth misplaced pass, but, hey, you still got it, eh champ?

Arsene (about ten thirty): oh, hi Sir Alex. Theo? How much? (Examines the spreadsheet, which takes absolute priority over the teamsheet). Yeah, you're on. No probs. Cheers.

Arsene (thinks): £7.5m / year for winning ziltch. Money for old bus tickets. Why would I consider leaving?

The CEO (Ivor Gazumper) and the board: (in chorous) football? Whadda we know?

Wow, a freshly painted kitchen

BLISS – and a fantastic surprise

Got home yesterday. Eventually. To find BLISS had decorated the hall and the kitchen. Not as in tinsel and fairy lights. As in paintbrush and emulsion. Brilliant (well, matt, actually). She's also lost patience (I promised to do it seven years ago, apparently – she's always been impatient) and trimmed the messy window board around the newel post and baluster. Better still. The dodgy picture has gone from the kitchen, too.

The first mince pie...

...of this Christmas yesterday. Lunch time. Networking do. I was hoping for some festive onion bhajees, spicy turkey samosas, turkey skewers with sambal, yoghurt and satay sauce. Maybe a winter veg biriani.

None of that. Mulled wine (heated up red with orange juice and stuff floating in it) and mince pies. Other cake stuff, too. Didn't fancy any of it, really. Went for the mince pie on the devil you know basis.

What would be nice for a Christmas buffet would be dim sum in brightly coloured won tun skins. There's still plenty of lotus leaves in the garage. I might make some steamed rice parcels, rich with sesame and soy and oyster sauces, with leftover Christmas lunch veg and others with leftover turkey. Tofu sheet wraps would be nice, too, with bright carrots, cabbage and baby corn giving bright yellow, red and green colours when steamed.

Anyway, it was a bought-in, mid-range, mediocre mince pie, way too sweet. Felt obliged to eat something, and that was it. The wine-mulling thing's lost on me as well. Seems a bit like sticking a flake into a pint of Guinness. Extra stuff making things worse than they were before the effort.

Mississippi Burning

Great film. AD's recommendation, Rich's endorsement. Gene Hackman seems to have forged a career in Hollywood wearing slightly-too-small suits. Strong performances but it's the (based on a true) story that's so good. Some crackerjack scenes, too. My favourite was Hackman's character leaving the dodgy deputy spinning in the barber's chair, having cut him with the razor he took over and used him to smash the premises up a bit.

The censors are at it again

Tightening up classifications. Why? Due to public concerns about the effect of some scenes on young men. What rubbish. There's ten year olds mature enough to watch anything you can throw at them and remain stable and sane, and thirty and forty year olds who might go on a rampage after ten minutes of Snow White. What a basis for a decision, too. Public concern and perception. On that basis we'll be deporting every eastern European (bye) and acting on what white van man says. If you can hear what he's saying over the noise from the kidnaped child in the back of the Transit.

Even if the actual driver for an initiative is public perception, at least have the decency to do what every other QUANGO and ministry does. Invent some statistics and pretend they underpin reasoning for you doing what you want, and what you are going to do in any case. They're just traffic wardens and clipboard men higher up the jobsworth foodchain.

Email. The gift that keeps on giving.

Gosh! Another stroke of luck on a Monday morning

An email. From the accident advice helpline.

I'd like a job answering that:

“Hello. Don't have one. Goodbye.”

“Hello again. At least not unless it's absolutely unavoidable. Even then, try to minimise the damage. That reduces the contributory negligence thing. Anyway, be safe. Goodbye.”

“Hello. Oh, you've had an accident. Poor old you. Still. Never mind. There, there, there. 'Bye.”

Anyway, what luck. It seems I'm due untold riches and wealth due to that loose paving slab / defective stair tread / missing hazard sign in the past. Wow. I've had all of those. Not just the once each, either. Must be worth a compensation mint, me.

More Christmas good fortune...

...this time from Wickes, another email, subject:

Yule love this.

Red pencil prices, and a festive pun. What could be better. David Lloyd always jests about buying his wife a wheelbarrow and shovel for Christmas (it was ladders and a cordless last year, I think) but he's unfollowable on twitter unless you're a cricket nut. Imagine. Pre-Christmas sale at the DIY warehouse. Romance and magic lives on, and yule love the drill bit and holecutter set.

Fulham v Newcastle

Monday night football. Perfect for that couple of hours after work, started 07:30, finished 19:30, home 20:00, and going to bed before doing it again tomorrow. It sort of allows me to have that vegetating down time that suits me. If I try the more standard vegging formats, I become more agitated because I feel I'm wasting precious time on absolute tripe. Monday night football is ideal. Interesting enough, but not too engrossing (it is Fulham and Newcastle after all, not a very colourful affair) so I can make something to eat, do some more electronic filing, in the background.

Bet with Ray

Every half time, there's London Ray Winstone, encouraging gambling:

“Gert'cha larptops an phanes aht. Time ta bet da inplay mahrkets. An ave ya tried live streamin'? Ya'll lharv it.”

The problem is I'm never going to think “my god Ray, you're right, I'll have a couple of quid on the next yellow card”. I'm always going to remember the advert coming on when it would've been half time in the rain-abandoned Poland v England match.