William Gibson, Brian Eno, Boxpark

Hail William Gibson

Nine books. More if you include short story collections and collaborations. Nine on his own. They tend to live on the science fiction shelves, but everyone should read them. The nine break down into three sets of three.

The Sprawl: set in a future Tokyo where the city and suburbs have expanded beyond belief, these feature computer hackers breaking corporations security ice in cyberspace, while chemically and surgically minders look after them in the real world. I think it was in one of these that Gibson coined 'cyberspace'. The idea that people would hook up to their machines and drive them around their own vast interconnected universe dates back to when most computers sat and worked in isolation, before anyone would dream of sticking the phone line into them.

The Bridge: containers and large wooden crates form a ramshackle and anarchic pueblo hanging onto (I think) Golden Gate Bridge. These books predicted the global crash, and rather than a post-apocalyptic setting they have a post-high-income world where a new poverty means people have to relearn initiative and recycle for survival. There are now Mexican container cities, I have picked up work at a children's centre in Brent constructed from them, and there's a container shopping centre here: http://mallsecrets.co.uk/boxpark-shopping-centre-shoreditch-london-index/

Boxpark, it's called, in Shoreditch.

The Recent Past books: these are here and now: guerilla art installations, moving hologram projections, tablet computers, smartphones, underground fashion sales. Less science fiction than the previous books and probably the best three for a new reader to start with.

They are all intelligent, full of wit and ideas, they all move at a furious pace, and, a very rare thing, they all stand reading again every so often. It's two years since Zero History and I'm getting withdrawal. Why they haven't been filmed mystifies me.

And Brian Eno

For the Ambient Albums 1 to 4. Soothing.

More about Boxpark

The first retailers on the list are: Abuze (?) The Amnesty Shop and Art Against Knives (that's the A's the B's are: Boxfresh and Bukowski.

A shop called Bukowski. This is him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bukowski

I want to have a look at this place.

Full list here: http://mallsecrets.co.uk/boxpark-shops-and-stores-list-shoreditch-london/

The restaurant is Vietnamese. Gets better.

Governed by philistines

The benefits of proofreading

This is from an online cricket coaching resource:

...if there are distractions floating around your mind, you are sure not to be focussing to your optimum level and are more likely to male a mistake.

So. You need to clear your mind of distractions. Otherwise you are at more risk of maling a mistake. Oops. While tiping, male sure you right the write words, and concentrate.

Kensal Rise library

If you want to know why I don't vote and why they're all the same:

"The cowardice of Brent's Labour council in stripping Kensal Rise library, and the philistinism of unscrewing the brass plaque remembering Mark Twain from its wall, in the middle of the night, would horrify anyone who still recalls Labour's founding mission to share education, knowledge and hope with the people. We will continue to fight for our library," said the author Maggie Gee, vice-president of the Royal Society of Literature.

The playwright Michael Frayn also condemned the move. "They took the books out and the plaque down? So the library is now an unlibrary, in the way that people became unpersons in the darkest days of the Soviet Union. I hope they took the titles of the books off as well. Removing unbooks from an unlibrary – who could possibly object?"

The biographer Sir Michael Holroyd said: "The wanton destruction of the Kensal Rise Library – its books removed, its history erased – is a gross act of philistinism which will bring lasting shame to all involved."

For Parliament, read: hall of philistines, all parties. Remember Ed Balls (now financial guru, then education guru) setting the bar for our kids' education at the point where they statistically avoided jail.

Shove your apprentice dancing dragons up your...

There's just things I will not countenance

So Levi Roots' cookbook will be available in a charity shop soon. Two reasons. The first is that when too many recipes refer to ready made stuff, and where too many of those references are to tomato sauce, I start to suspect this is not really a cookbook and more a manual for those who can't cook. Secondly, too many references to the Dragons' Den (whatever that is). I hate the assumption that everyone knows this stuff. I've never seen even an accidental glimpse of Dragons' Den, The Apprentice, or Strictly Come Dancing. By design. Studiously avoided, but at all costs. The book has been on the shelf for a year or two, unused, so it's time to say (Google Dudley Moore, Time to Say Goodbye or go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0u3NM8rd1U).

There used to be an entry in the Norbury fire station log book whenever anyone moved on. Their name, followed by “gone, goney gone, gone”.

The occasional sense of humour amputee who gave it (put on that back of the throat health and safety bloke voice) “that's a legal document, you know” was greeted with:

A) Well, he's legally gone, goney-gone, gone, 'aint he?

and:

B) If it's a legal document, how come the brigade let us lot loose on it? (A more than fair question).

Levi Roots, and your all too frequent references to some telly garbage for sad people, you are Gone. Goney gone gone. Mate.

Recipe book giveaways

On my kitchen bookshelves there's: a pizza-dough recipe half-hidden on a page that is plastered in pizza-dough rubbed off fingers after kneading and now flicking to the toppings pages; a very small (and at many levels very odd – written by an old-time actor, in a unique style and with brilliant enthusiasm) fish recipe book that falls open on the plaice meuniere pages; a thoroughly battered Floyd on Fire, with a harrisa stained ox heart brochette page; and any number of books that have been looked through for occasional inspiration without ever taking too much account of the detail therein. Then there's a few that are as new.

One favourite (and one that I've tried a number of dishes from) is a vintage Tabasco book Kiz got me as a present a year or two ago. Probably published in the late 60's / early 70's the photos are sometimes hilarious, the history of the sauce and the area fascinating, and all the recipes, laced with the fiery hot pepper sauce as they are, spot on.

I love buying dirt cheap ingredients, like chicken wings (about two quid a bucket full from the butcher's, twice that but still cheap from the supermarket (if absolutely necessary)) and making something special from them. Hot spicy wings, crisp skin, hit of chilli and spices, salad and rice. That's a Tabasco book fall-open page.

Chickpea curry with nan bread. Cheap as chips and twice as tasty. Hot potato and pea curry with the blissful aroma of basmati rice. BLISS made a magic sausage 'n' mash with broccoli, carrots and cabbage tonight. That really hit the spot.  

Bunker

Small, bijou

Horrific news story about a couple keeping their child in a coal bunker.

The radio newsreader described it as a converted coal bunker. Even as the better part of my brain was doing the 'poor kid...', 'how can anyone...', 'WTF...' things that come straight to mind, the other part was on semantics patrol, sniffing out that “converted”.

How do you convert a coal bunker? How small do your builders have to be? Are we all now so sucked into estate-agent speak that the slightest modification constitutes a conversion. It seems the bunker was just big enough to accommodate a single mattress and a potty. That's palatial if our old coal bunkers are anything to go by. You'd have to fold the mattress in half to stuff it into one of ours. Then they said that the parents (who can't be named) said, in their defence, that the child was only ever made to live in the bunker for a while after being naughty. Supernanny has made a career out of this sort of tripe. Naughty step becomes naughty room becomes naughty bunker. Try to sell the idea to social services and the crown prosecution service, and you're looking at porridge, go for the telly retards, and you've got a show, a series, a career and untold riches. Same theory, different degrees of bunker.

England have won another test match

Much as the politicians are excited by the Olympics, there's a lot of football and cricket going on this summer. Where will the drama be? The final test against South Africa as the top two nations in the game meet head-to-head? The European football championships? Or where people dive into a pool, swim up and down a bit, or where skinny folk run round in endless circles?

What is and isn't sport...

...purely my point of view. Take offence if you want to.

Not sport: if you need an expensive car, motorbike, or horse, it isn't sport. It's a rich-kid playground, it's all to do with gambling, or both. So-called motor-sport is just competitive commuting. If people hold up scorecards to decide the result, that's dancing or a variant thereof and not sport, either. See the Eurovison Song Contest. Or, like me, don't.

Pastimes: snooker, fishing, darts.

Borderline: golf.

Sport: football, cricket, rugby. Some other stuff.

Way too hot tonight...

...sweltering, the predicted rainstorms haven't arrived, yet.

Together for a birthday lunch

Lookalike spotting

We had a quick beer after cricket yesterday. In the Athletic Club with us were Kenny Dagleish and Irvine Welsh. Or their stunt doubles, anyway. Neither had a Scoash accent. Kenny Dogleash, strangely for the hottest day of the year, was sporting a biker black leather jacket, and Mervin Welsh looked able to prove that, actually, not everyone has a novel in them. I got some praise for my abilities with spotting these and other lookalikes. Qualified by the caveat that it was about time I showed some ability at something, and that cricket isn't in any way something I can claim to have any ability at. At all. Whatsoever.

Good food and scary pandas

Birf'day lunch for TBG today. Good Chinese food and fantastic to see K and J after too long. I was laughing from sitting down to paying the bill, the company was really fantastic, and for an HR bod, BLISS truly lives on the planet 'PC what's that?' MM pointed out the pandas on the mirror, that were freaking him out. The artist's intent probably was to depict two jolly black and white bears having a friendly roll in the bamboo, but badly misjudged the alignment of one paw...

Haircut day

BLISS, aided and abetted by TBG cut my hair today. There was a fair amount of giggling and laughter going on, and I've not yet looked at the outcome, so this could be interesting.

Animal Collective restored my sanity...

We have some neighbours. They either think that it's perfectly OK to inflict their abominable music on their neighbours, or that the hedge has huge acoustic attenuation properties, or that, rather than being too well mannered to have music on the house, loud, so that we and everyone else can hear it in their gardens, we don't have the will or the equipment to do so. Added to this the woman neighbour thinks she can sing. She's had lessons. She warbles in that old-lady clenched cats-arse mouth way making a noise like a large number of large and angry cats meeting up with Clarence the Cat-Strangler.

This afternoon it was a bootleg Pogues band. Why listen to the Pretend Pogues or the Shane Mock-Gowans or The Rogues or whatever they call themselves when you can listen to the real thing? We were even treated to a surreal trip to Val Doonigan land with Molly Malone. “It'll be Paddy McGinty's ****ing goat in a minute” I said.

Anyway, I'm now safely indoors (manacled to the computer for my own good) playing Merriweather Post Pavilion and back to sonic sanity.

Your patience will be rewarded...

...so said my fortune cookie. Five other people said, as one, “what patience” as I read that out. Apparently, I'm perceived as impatient by my family. Now, if I could only slip out of these chains and take the large hammer to next door's music collection and audio equipment.

A time-saving Saturday?

The lack of ritual, what's the time saved for?

Somewhere we came to love the non-organic. Stuff made by blokes in white coats in labs was deemed superior to primitive stuff. Grown in the ground stuff. Little seems to have changed. There's no ceremony to tea bags. Instant coffee does not fill the house with that 'wake up, it's morning' aroma. An annoying radio advert tells me politicians decide the amount of salt in my pizza. Not if I make my own they don't, plus I get the satisfaction of seeing tuppence worth of flour and water become something, the yeast activated by me working it and the heat of my hands. Despite all the slow cooking initiatives, hours spent watching Jamie Oliver on the telly, organic stuff on the supermarket shelves, branches of Iceland remain open and thriving, sales of microwaves are as high as ever, and our nation dish will soon be chicken ding.

There's plenty of disparagement handed out to us old-fashioned types who will make stock from leftovers and bones, and who will cook dishes from scratch. Tea leaves and tea pots, coffee grinders and percolators, who has time for those when there's teabags, instant granules (try saying granules and make it sound appetising), and freezer to domestic radiation device to table (for table read tray on lap) ready-made Vesta-style sweet and sour (delete sour, replace with a second sweet for an accurate description) chicken?

So. Where does all that time saved go? What's it used for? If saving it is so essential, what is it freed up for exactly? My theory is that it is wasted watching X-Factor, Britain’s Got Talent, Strictly Come and Watch Big Brother in the Jungle featuring Vanessa Feltz. Oh, and Jamie Oliver. Telling folk to make stock, and cook properly, from scratch.

Pizza

We had a batch of home made pizza today. Following on from one of those Guardian 'the perfect...' articles. It seems the important bits are the flour, getting the oven and the pizzza baking tray sizzling, and not over-complicating the topping. 0-0 flour, McDougalls' packs don't actually class this stuff as the dogs testicles, but near as dammit say so. Yeast and water and a pinch of salt. Less is more. Ten minutes (and more) kneading then leave it alone. After a couple of hours it was light, full of air and occupied much more volume. I got four pizzas from the two cups of flour, and with a little tomato and cheese, these were good eating. Worth the effort.

Cricket

In the test match England are in a healthy position but still have much to do. This should be an interesting game, even if the draw seems the best bet at the moment.

We lost again, to a very good team that put our bowling to the sword for six or seven overs that conceded a lot of runs, and who then produced some very tight and accurate bowling that gave them a deserved win. None of our bats gave their wickets away, played stupid, inappropriate expansive shots to get themselves out, which is massive plus. Unfortunately, no-one got going enough to challenge their total, we all got bogged down trying to stay alive. They helped themselves by holding onto every chance that came their way, too.

It's been sunny, all day

Why we were late...

Assumptions. I once got that in the office game of presentation roulette. I had to work in something like “never assume, assumptions have a way of making an ass out of u and me”. Unfair, really. The three Beatles song titles and ten hidden sport references were far easier to work in. Anyway, we were late for our 6:30 table tonight.

I assumed AD had also texted Rich on Wednesday saying “was 8:30 too late, they don't have anything earlier”, and because I'd not heard anything since that, and because I'd answered “no, 8:30 OK”, I'd not exactly raced out of the office and home, and even when I did get back I was stood around chatting to Rich and BLISS without a thought about the time until I got bit of a hurry up.

AD had texted Rich yesterday to say “they can do 6:30, is that too early?” and Rich had replied “no, 6:30 fine”, and they had both assumed that I would still be working to meeting up at mine at six o'clock as originally planned. The day had whizzed by a little bit, and I hadn't picked up the phone to check.

So, I was late and then didn't rush until we eventually arrived almost half an hour late. We got told off on arrival, and promised to order and eat quickly to get back on programme. Thank god, waiters with a sense of humour.

Successful demolition of the lime pickle

Dark red, smoky, hot and sour, and laced with green chillies. The lime pickle didn't last long.

Standards maintained and cricket curry club tradition upheld, the lime pickle pot was returned, empty. It occurs that it would be funny to cry off at the last minute one evening, and get the restaurant to present the remaining members with a huge bowl with a catering-size quantity of lime pickle along with their papadums, then jump out with the camera.

Absent friends

My work-life balance tends to be skewed: work-work Monday morning to Friday evening, life-life at the weekend, but BOS is at it like mad at the moment, long days and weekends. I know the dosh is always handy but I hope it eases up for him soon, because we've not met up for too long.

Sun and a test match

A blazing hot day. Cricket. The West Indies on the ropes at lunch at Trent Bridge, back in it after a great fight-back at close of play. I'm going to watch the highlights in a minute. The test match special team had a Somerset reunion during one of the intervals: Viv Richards, Ian Botham, Vic Marks. As Botham left to return to the Sky commentary box, someone said that, as he'd behaved himself and missed his lunch, they should give him a pork pie to go away with. “Just the one?” he said.

Rich had a good Phil Tuffnel anecdote tonight. Apparently, for club or country he was sent off (along with the rest of the squad) for a three mile run, and was told: no, you can't take your fags with you. When asked, afterwards, if he felt better and fitter for the exercise, he said, “yeah. Next time someone hits the ball three miles, I'm your man.”

Seagull poo and paintwork

Seagull survivors

Inevitable, really. During a long day visiting multiple sites in Kent seaside towns the car got peppered with seagull poo. Luckily most hit the rear window. This has two big advantages (neither as big as not being peppered by the gulls, but still): first, there's no rush to clean it off and preserve the paintwork; and second it will clean off eventually with the washers and wipers, so does not require any direct input from me.

When Noah handed out the invitations for the ark, I doubt whether the seagulls ticked the 'special dietary needs' box. If what comes out the other end strips paint, you can't be too fussy about what goes in at the beak. Their digestive systems must be a feat of engineering. They feed at the landfill or even less salubrious outlets (like the bins at McDonald's), extract sufficient nutrition to survive, and even to fly, then pass Nitromors. That's so robust. After all that evolution, humans need milk of magnesia and inflatable cushions after a Friday night vindaloo, while gulls eat rotting waste and dump paintstripper.

After the nuclear Armageddon, they'll be among the survivors along with the cockroaches. And Joan Collins.

Dodgy words and a book and a film

Only words

There's words MM don't like, including:

• Supper;
• Poorly;
• Cross.

I'm with him on the second two: poorly has a built-in sarcasm, a malingerer inference. It sits below rough, and even slightly ill in the sickness stakes. It screams: yeah, off you go, that wouldn't stop me working. Cross: I don't get cross. I go from normal to incandescent in an instant. Why? Because you're going to end up there anyway. Saves doing it in easy stages.

I like 'supper'. Particularly preceded by 'fish'.

Skagboys and Trainspotting

Trainspotting first: apologies to well-hard skinny-looking wimps, but casting Robert Carlyle as Begbie don't work. He's too slight. I've known a bundle of south London Begbie equivalents. Read the books before approaching the wrong big name. Skagboys went back to the library today and onto the next lucky winner of the 60p reservation scheme. I'm now 1 of 1 (apparently) in the queue for Timothy Mo's self-published Pure. Can't wait.

Stuck!

Locked out

I went to a large building today, recording external areas and other data. I drove up and down the road looking for a parking space, without any joy. Three sweeps, each time the automatic gates were open. “Handy” I thought, “they must be left open” so I swung through the gates and into the rear car park. It was sunny and very warm and that means no jacket and therefore no pockets. Camera, disto, tape, clipboard, no I don't need the phone as well. I left that in the car. It wasn't going to take more than an hour to an hour and a half.

I was back out through the gates and measuring up the front when Mr and Mrs High-Security drove out, ensuring the gate was locked shut behind them. “Never mind, there's two pedestrian gates” I thought. Both locked. “Never mind”, I thought, “there's bound to be someone going out soon, it's rush-hour.” I carried on. Better still, two cars pulled out of their parking bays in the road, so as soon as someone went out, I'd get the car and stick it in one of the free bays. No-one went anywhere. All ways back to the car were locked shut. I could get over the wall with the telescopic ladder, but that was in the back of the car. I could phone up for the entry code, but the phone was in the car, too.

Finished to the front I had to get out to the rear to get that data, and retrieve my car. I spotted someone moving and buzzed the door. She was extremely deaf, due to her age, so we had one of those shouted conversations. I explained about the car, and that I needed to get out to the rear of the building.

“You can't get out there dear,” she said, “not unless you pay for a parking space.”

I re-explained.

“Only the people that pay for a parking space can get out there” she said, “you don't live here do you?”

“No” I said and explained again.

“The gates only open for the people that pay for parking spaces. It's an extra charge, you know.”

I tried a different track.

“Can I get out the back? I need to measure up.”

She didn't exactly say “why didn't you say so” but it was there in the shrug and the palms-up.

“Can you hop over the railings?”

“I'm sure I can manage.”

“Follow me.”

Obviously she didn't see me as a security threat of any kind, and I clambered over her balcony guardrail into the car park.

“Could you...” she was starting to close the door, I was now shouting and waving (that's almost multitasking) “can you pass me the clipboard and...”

I'd got her just in time, or it would've been a much more difficult climb back to retrieve the equipment. At least the gates opened automatically to let me back out.

Cricket, sport

Cricket, village idiot and the real thing

This was the text exchange with AD this morning:

AD: Met Phil he said u got some runs

ME: yeah, 20, all in singles. Knee's giving me gyp + knackered

AD: don't try to nick my king of the boring bats crown

ME: t'wasn't excitin', not exactly calypso!

AD: I heard, more like collaps-o

We didn't do very well with the bat on Saturday. I seldom ever do what I'm told to. It's like a sort of default setting. React with mild to extreme rebellion (my default braincells tells me, so they do) and whatever you do, don't do what you're told. The vice captain, acting as umpire, told me I had to stick around for us to have a chance. For some reason I did what I was told and scored agonisingly slowly, while the wickets went down at the other end in any case. In the end Mario got me, again. So called because he has a thick black 'tache (he may be a plumber, he may even embark on weird adventures and do things on hidden levels, and do cart-racing, for all I know) he's got me on too many occasions now, and I need to shape up before it becomes too much of a habit. One of the great things about cricket, though. There's bowlers that must think: 'Jesus, not this mush again. No matter what I do he gets away with it against me' just as I'm thinking 'no, no, stick with the quick bloke with all the variations, just don't give Mario a bowl'.

We (England) won the first test against the Windies. That's good. Also good things are that they gave it a fair go with both bat and ball and made us work for the victory, so the next match at Nottingham should be interesting. These are two sides that are easy to like. Few sporting people have never overstepped the mark. Ever. Just thought: that's probably one of the sport / non-sport types communication brick walls. The non-sports don't understand how we can be so horizontally laid back (“I've got a better car / earn more / private schools / second home(s) / bore / drone / losing the will...) then suddenly spark into aggressive, passionate, and, if necessary, violent life. Sadly, while sport's fashionable they try and fail to come along for the ride. Both teams have spiky characters and both will do (almost) anything to win, but there's both respect and some very humorous characters in both changing rooms. Note to the non-sporting types. Give-away. Call a changing room a dressing room and we call you very bad name, which you deserve. For pretending.

Look guys, I know this hurts, but you know Jack, so just get back to your world (and leave us alone). Please. Or else.

An advert for the game.

Champions’ League Cornball Stuff

An advert for the game. Rollercoaster excitement. Competitive but not much for the referee to do. Little rolling around, few histrionics. Late goal for the side playing more attacking football but expending far more energy. Later equaliser for the team able to change their approach when needed. Extra time, penalty, saved, still one-all after two hours. Penalties.

The Gimp had a good night in goal. Some bloke De Matteo met down the Job Centre on Thursday did okay at right back. Much as it hurts to say it, Ca$hley Cole had a good game, as did Fat Frank and Predator. It’s also nice to see John McEnroe having a second career in football under the new name of Arjen Robben.

Skagboys is going back to the library

Cheerio (again) to the boys from Leith. Towards the end of the book Sick Boy asks: “Did they change the motto ay Leith fae ‘persevere’ tae ‘shite it’ when ah wisnae looking?”. I had a second bout of rhyming slang blindness with ‘Zorba’ until realising that ‘sick’ becomes ‘seek’, rhyming with ‘the Greek’.

Apparently it speaks volumes about a person when the one political issue they get motivated by is the threat to our libraries. That’ll be me, then. I’ve lived under them all, they all tax me to the hilt, make sure I can’t ever get ahead, they all fill the bloated, bureaucratic civil service with incompetent, overpaid buffoons, they all look after themselves, not just first and foremost, but exclusively and aggressively, because that’s the nature of politicians. So I’ve not voted for thirty years or so, why would I waste that time? But give me a petition about the libraries...

Hackney Marshes, heartwarming

Sky test match coverage has a grass roots club cricket slot broadcast during the lunch interval. Stoke Newington CC have a home now, as cricket comes to Hackney Marshes. While Westminster crows about the Olympics, the Stoke Newington CC story is one of a cricket club, local level support, and Middlesex cricket development working in isolation with no central support to get going. Sport isn’t optional, nor of secondary importance, it is a foundation of community, there’s nothing like it, there’s nothing more important.

Inevitable Champions' League ramblings...

Football heaven...

Is a place,

Where nothin’

Nothin’ really matters.

So. This is what being neutral is like. Being neutral anticipating a huge game, big clubs, big players, great setting, great stories. Being neutral can rapidly evaporate. One team decides to park the bus, one official makes a nightmare call, one player decides to get right up your nose, one old sore rises and resurfaces, and that’s it, you’re suddenly back into your natural habitat: rabidly rooting for one or the other team.

For me, as a Gooner, obviously Chelsea are on the hit-list, but way below United and Liverpool, and below Stoke (Pubis, Breakleg and Blub Ltd) and Brimingham (he’s not that sort of player) and (obviously, unless you’re some sort of pervert) S***s. I’ve never liked Fulham since some of their ‘fans’ gave me a kicking at Gillingham (I was twelve, they were grown men (sort of)). So if Bayern win, that’s fine. If Chelsea win then S***s kiss Champions’ League football goodbye (how funny is that). Yep. A rare win-win-win scenario.

Three hours later, extra time (I said to MM “I know Bayern deserve this, but I’m greedy for more football, hope there’s an equaliser”) and penalties with all the drama they provide, and Chelsea have won the Champions’ League final, and S***s are consigned to that Thursday night stuff.

No gloating, just amusement. Chelsea’s win means that we have to play the qualifying round games, effectively dropping us down from third to fourth, so there’s every chance tonight’s result will bite us in the bum. But great penalties from Lampard (blasted), and Cole and Drogba (perfect, hitting the side netting nice and hard) decided the final.

France at the Stoop

Rugby at the Stoop

Toulon v Biarritz at the Stoop, Harlequins ground tonight. Like a French invasion. Full brass band in regional costume. Face-paint. What a wonderful atmosphere the packed stands must be generating for the teams to play in. The first half has been a kicking contest between the teams, accumulating points three at a time. Vachvily and Wilkinson slugging it out. It’s drizzling and handling is becoming more difficult, and the second half’s going to be interesting. What a wonderful bonus on a Friday night.

Test match

Strauss waits an age for a ton then gets one when the anticipation and emotion has reached fever-pitch. Great. He’s impossible to dislike. Absolutely honest, no mind games and no media manipulation, he’s captained the side with quiet dignity and more importantly to great success. We are now (very narrowly) the top cricket nation. Every player in that squad seems able to provide articulate interviews laced with humour. Our rugby and cricket teams are much easier to get behind than our footballers are.

Thinkin en Scoach, likesay

Here the joke that keeps coming to mind:

“Whaes tha difference between Walt ‘n Bing?”

“Bing sings, an’ Walt dis’nae”.

I’ve ended up thinking in the accent after 300 to 350 Irvine Welsh pages. I’m now around 450 of 550, and I’m sure a scan would show my brain rewiring synapses from English to Scoach schemie likesay, but.

An odd day, Thursday. Sometimes.

Skagboys

I'm hitting the final few chapters. There's been multiple deaths and plenty of violence. Begbie's inside. Rents, Sick Boy and Keezbo are in rhab as an alternative to jail. There has been a puppy rescue and a talked-down suicide, but that's about all. Everyone's out of work in Thatcher's nightmare...

...why is this book so funny?

van Persie

We're told “It'll all be resolved before he goes away to the European Championships with Holland”. It isn't. Deafening silence. Another long summer looms.

I'm sure he'll wait and see who comes and goes, then commit, or not. Jesus, we have a track record of sandboxes for management heads.

Chilli-con-carne

Easy to get wrong. Fantastic version served up by MM tonight. With perfect potatoes, sugar snaps and rice, and with just the right amount of built-in kidney beans and mushrooms. Veggie mince too, so less of that mouth-coating fat you can get, and healthier. OK for BLISS and LtK, so we all ate the same thing. I was ready as I walked in just after seven. Which was just as well because I'd not eaten all day and was somewhere between dipping blood-sugar-level and starting to hallucinate.

Multi-storey story

I pulled into the multi-storey car park with about fifteen minutes to spare between meetings, thinking: “thank god I didn't pull over for those phone calls, I'll run down and get a sandwich”. Then I saw the structural engineer pulling into a bay diagonally opposite. Then the clients (who have yet, in eighteen months to arrive on time, yet alone early) pulled into the bay next to mine. Windows down “all here early then!”, they said “let's get started.”

Buses come in groups...

...as do those jobs where you sleepwalk for a number of months, and there's acres and acres of fitted-out office at the end of it, and, unfortunately, so do the jobs where achieving progress is like shovelling vinegar uphill, with a fork. In the residential field, there's a lot more vinegar-shovelling. The non-commercial psyche seems much more prone to sticking points and the molehill = mountain syndrome yet to be put up there with autism and the like.

Yuck

Their album cheers me up. As (somehow) does Irvine Welsh, and that's where we came in. (Google that, if you're too young to remember continuous performance cinemas).

What's left guys?

Bigger better big stick

Coming soon: bad food and drink tax. Apparently. There's a big, big stick lobby that wants to tax what's bad for us. Cod 'n' chips tax, kebab tax. That sort of thing. Will there be a sliding scale? Organic cos lettuce tax < non-organic iceberg < mixed non-organic leaves with dressing? What about those things with the sachets that make them go from very good (health-wise (very bad taste-wise)) to very bad (health-wise (very good, taste-wise)) in an instant? Could we save up unused sachets of monosodium glutimate and gloop of various varieties and return them to HMRC for a rebate? What about those little blue bags of salt in plain crisps (I never use those). What about stuff that's good in small doses (we're told) like red wine and coffee; but bad in larger ones? Will there be rationing cards and an increasing tax curve?

Really guys, time to butt out. You've sold off the sports pitches, you've killed pubs. Now you're going for the cafe and the full English breakfast. Please. Leave us alone.

King Kenny becomes 'king Kenny

Oh my god, they've sacked Kenny. Carling Cup good. FA Cup finalists good. Lose bad. League bad. Get new manager.

Divs. Can I make a suggestion? Villa want a new bloke, quick. You lot want someone asap. No matter what you lot do, it won't make any difference in the short-, medium- or long term. So do a straight swap. Dag to Villa, scrotum-face to Liverpool. Job done, sorted. Whatever else Villa and Pool do, it'll not be significantly different. Bold prediction time: next season, no matter what, 'pool will slip further and Villa will finish bottom half.

Goodbye Fergie

RIP Demento

City paraded the trophy today, the traditional open-top bus drive-by gloating. A supporter threw on a placard. RIP Fergie, it said, with a headstone. It inevitably was Tevez who held it aloft. City issued an immediate apology. Rod Marsh said it was ill-advised and embarrassing and that Tevez was a liability.

Let in on the debate on the apology, I'd've had to add something saying “equally ill-advised as your manager's (Fergie's) public statement that there would be no swing of power between United and City 'in my lifetime'”. My point of view would be this: play the game to the rules, don't bully officials, don't do that watch-checking thing both ways (one-all and winning: how come only five minutes?; two-one up and under pressure: where did you get five minutes from?); don't send your horse-faced git of a striker out to drop-kick our right-back when we have a better side than you; stop the made-to-measure myopia and the mind games, then we might consider issuing an apology for the RIP Fergie thing. Unless and until you change your ways, we absolutely echo our supporters' sentiments.

The ill-advised, embarrassing and liability stuff is rich from the bloke sacked by Sky for the Toon-Army / Tsunami “joke”.

Cameron's musical tastes

Here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/may/15/david-cameron-pink-floyd-favourite

No great surprises. The comments say it all, picked by advisers, bland, and plenty of the abuse he deserves. Whenever they try this sort of thing, they always fail. Since the sixties politics and culture have been enemies, one attacking, the other cutting funding and slowly revealing their true colours. Now, as with all three parties selling off playing fields, they have all cut budgets for libraries.

A perfect end

I bunged a thing onto the Arsenal website a while ago. My perfect end for Demento was for United to get hammered at home, all the goals coming in a thoroughly unjustifiable ten added minutes, leading to red-nose having a fatal heart attack and shedding his mortal coil pitchside. Then, going uphill, the hearse would break down and the coffin slide out and the lid fall off on impact, revealing that the undertaker, a Gooner, had dressed the git in a replica of the kit we wore winning the title at their place and with 'Wiltord' on the back of the jersey, clutching a photo of Wenger. Too much for one placard, I fear.

Sort your computer out!

My keyboard's a disgrace

You wouldn't think a netbook the size of a hardback book could attract and retain so much debris. On the bright side, if I was ever starving and had it handy, there'd be no need to try and order some food online, there's enough in the thing to feed an army. For weeks. Granted, much of it would be well past the sell-by date, and little uncontaminated by dog fur and other accumulations, but there's plenty of nutritional value for the undiscerning with a robust dietary tract.

Greece

The bubbles are boracic. They've gone to the polls and voted showing their disdain for this austerity approach beloved by the Germans, and anyone on a fair screw and not adversely affected. This has displeased the pro-austerity alliance and they're getting heavy with Greece, a brilliant country and one that could once have mobilised the Spartans. So back off and cut people a bit of slack here. Not everyone is insulated enough from the short-term cuts and belt-tightening to really care about your long-term goals.

Glasshouse dwelling stone-throwers

A lot of sour grapes today, City accused of buying the league title. Many of those doing the accusing were United fans (their team's success and domination based on the purchasing power derived from aggressively marketing the club as a brand before others even got to thinking that way, mortgaged to the hilt); Chelsea fans (success bankrolled by Russian oil money, a squad with a £50m striker with fewer league goals this season than our centre-half, a club that has paid enough compensation to sacked managers in the last few years to re-float Greece, Spain and rescue Italy); Liverpool fans (they spent £100m or so last year, and for what, finishing below Everton); S***s fans (Harry's continued his career-long aerosol spending, with his usual unpredictable results, just with a bigger cheque-book); and I'm sorry to say, Arsenal fans, who should know better. If I supported a bank I'd be pleased as punch about our sound financial circumstances and prudent management. I don't. I support a club that's in a long drought in terms of success, but that won't invest enough to succeed. Too much emphasis on the long-term financial security makes for an empty trophy cabinet and empty seats at the ground and in the changing room. Changing room seats that were once occupied by our best players.

Good things this evening

• William Orbit: Strange Cargo III (listening now)
• Sausage and mash with onion gravy (comforting)
• Strange and beautiful light in the late evening, and a rainbow
• Irvine Welsh, more of Skagboys to read (yet to come)

A big football day...

Before

There’s anticipation aplenty. We need to win. Away. At the Hawthorns against a good West Brom team that are going to finish in the top half of the table. We’ve had more than our fair share of luck and both S***s and Newcastle are not going to slip up today.

The week has been building to this three o’clock crescendo. There’s hardly a meaningless game (if such a thing exists in any case) to be found among the fixtures. Foremost is us away to West Brom, where a win would make S***s and Newcastle results inconsequential. Then there’s the small matter of Citeh and *** battling it out for the title. I know all that about the Middle-Eastlands stadium and the money changing everything, but while they may have parked the bus, Citeh have never sent a centre forward out to cripple our fullback from the kick-off. They have never behaved with total disrespect, their manager has been Mark Hughes but has never been Demento. They don’t have hair-transplant Shrek upfront. The list goes on.

After

The main thing, were third.

Happy St Totteringham’s Day!

Let alone a moveable feast, St Totteringham’s is one that (heaven forbid) isn’t guaranteed to happen in any given year. The day (which should, in the opinion of anyone worth talking to, and all dissenters should be lined up and shot, no loss to humanity or the gene pool, be a national holiday) falls on the day when it becomes mathematically impossible for S***s to finish above Arsenal in the league table. I would like to see it fall on the first day of the season, when we start in the top division and they’ve gone down. Failing that ideal scenario, the sooner the better. Final whistle of the last game is way too late in the year for my liking.

We were third after more huge slices of luck. We’re lacking. We finished way off being contenders. Third is fine, at some stage we looked like competing, but we never did and were dead lucky to get third. We have a squad with too many long term sick-notes (Diaby’s played about twenty minutes in twenty years and limped off every time – and he keeps trying and he picked up the original horrendous injury during what was a decent run of games for us, but how much longer?). I think we need to go back to 4-4-2. We need to stop being the only team in the world who’s management and fans talk about ‘wingers’. They went out around the mid 1960’s. They’re fine as one-offs but wide players who bang in fifteen goals a season and add plenty of assists don’t come along every day and you can’t manufacture them. We’ve been blessed with Overmars, then Pires and Ljungberg, but those guys and their likes don’t come along every day.

We either need to retrain the likes of Walcott and Gervinho to understand that they have to patrol their touchline, hitting the opponents goaline as often as they do ours acting as additional fullbacks when we defend. They need to understand that by the time they jog back before running, or even think about running back, it is already too late and that they need to work so hard up and down their flank, and get back as soon as we lose possession, with no thinking to do. Or we need to get some proper wide midfielders in. It’s an easy game. If your leftback and left-mid, and you rightback and right-mid decide to work in tandem on each side, and attack the opposition while making it between impossible and uncomfortable for them to attack us down the flanks, then a great part of your set-up and tactics are already sorted.

I don’t think they will, but I would like to see whole loads of media, ‘Sir’ Alex Ferguson brown-nosing media, publish apologies for all the rubbish they’ve published, all the “squeaky bum time” and “football, bloody hell” quotes they’ve trotted out as if this dreadful bully-boy were some sort of genius. All those creaming themselves at every Scholes touch of the ball (or of an opponent’s Achilles tendon), all those using the words ‘evergreen’ and ‘Giggs’ in the same breath, all those willing to do their marketing for them and to refer to their sad, cobbled-together stadium as the theatre of dreams, all of you owe all of us an apology.

Most of all, heh! In your faces. Done down by your noisy neighbours. Won: nothing. Weep away, glory-hunters. Snatched in the dying seconds, better still. We had the Citeh QPR game on the telly and whatever else we could get (focused on us at WBA on a couple of laptops). Later there’ll be a chance to watch again, to think things through, but for now what an end to the season, and: Utd, S***s, Newcastle, here a big friendly wave (kiss goodbye to the title (1) and Champions’ League football (3) and (conditionally) to Champions’ League football (2)).

I suggested the Demento "football, bloody hell" line to MM before Alan Davis tweeted the same.

Curry, and Irvine Welsh

Thinkin in tha Scoatish wa, y'ken?

I always get this reading Irvine Welsh novels with first person narratives. I end up thinking in Trainspotting-speak from the first twenty or thirty pages until a couple of weeks after finishing the book. Last night, for example, should be:

• Went out with S&J for a fantastic evening and a very good curry.

But this becomes:

• Wen oot wi S&K las ni, fo'a Ruby, likesay. To yin Curry Hoose. Barry wee bit ae scran, but.

Skagboys wouldn't be an Irvine Welsh novel without those episodes that might upset the prudish reader, that might get called over the top. There's a Monday morning fabrication works tea-break toilet competition, Sick Boy gets more strap-on action than he wanted, Begbie's back beating the world senseless. Then there's the drug- and booze-fuelled day-to-day background stuff. There's some chilling reminders of the excesses Thatcher's regime brought to rich and poor alike.

There's plenty of music references, including one to Einsturzende Neubauten, obscure German avant-garde band, that comes as a surprise.

Hard labour.

It had to happen sooner or later. Enough rain to get cricket called off yesterday morning. Then a fine dry day today. The hedges all overgrown. Overgrown hedges to the left, right and the back. Still BLISS bought me a present. New hedge cutters. These have sharp blades and actually cut the hedge, whereas the old ones sort of wore it away, in an altogether slower more laborious process. They were more like hedge sanders. Progress speeded up no end after they came out of the box. Unlike the old ones the lead also goes directly from the plug to the cutters and not via three or four tape repairs where we've cut through the cable. Anyway, hours later the hedges are cut. The back one, which started the roughest, is even flat on top and straight up the sides, a first in our garden. BLISS has mowed the grass, front and rear, so we're both going to be creaking and moaning tomorrow. Or greetin an bawin thae morrow, y'ken.

All that remain now is for my system to clear itself of the green stuff, leaf dust and pollen so that I can stop coughing and sneezing and get back to normal levels of pollution again after all that fresh air and gardening.

Solo effort on the lime pickle.

There's a tradition among the cricket club curry-boys. All the lime pickle shall be consumed, no matter how strong, no matter how hot, no matter how limey. So, last night there's the papadums, and there's generous and very nice servings of relish. There's three decent-sized bowls of onion salad, mango chutney, and lime pickle, and a small gravy boat thing with yoghurt and mint sauce. The mango chutney looks too much like jam, and I can't go near that. The salad's good and the yoghurt and mint is excellent with some added spicy and garlic depth to what can be a pretty bland accompaniment. The lime pickle, though, that's clearly a house special and there's two or three very conspicuous green chillies in there.

BLISS + lime pickle demolition = no help at all. This is a long established mathematical fact. Rapidly I realise that BLISS + S + J = no help at all and that lime pickle (existing) to lime pickle (zero remaining) is going to be down to me and me alone. Including those two or three small, green and no doubt very hot chillies. The CCCB can relax. I got through it all, and even scooped up the last remnants with a sliver of papadum.

There. R, B, AD, (and the occasionals, FL, ON, MS, CS, JS et al), you can all sleep soundly, the highest standards have been preserved, as has the consumption of the lime preserve.

Some of our money's missing

We've lost some money, boss

Ooooppps! JP Morgan Chase have unexpectedly lost $2bn. With another $1bn to follow. Ah well. Troubled global economic times and all that. The 'unexpected' is a bit worrying though. Like, two billion gone, out of the blue. Like that fiver dropped on the kebab shop floor after a few beers. It's also two billion gone in six weeks. That's $166,666,667 a week. That seems a lot. Didn't anyone notice the dollar fuel-gauge thingy dropping alarmingly? Didn't anyone notice the hole in the bank's pocket? The further $1bn loss is at least un-unexpected. Apparently the losses were made in the chief investment office, a department charged with managing risk. Lucky it wasn't one of those risk-friendly departments, I suppose. Imagine how much they could've lost.

25 lashes for what, exactly

An Iranian cartoonist has been sent down for 25 lashes for a caricature of a politician that has been deemed insulting. To an MP. I have some questions:

1. If their MPs are anything like ours, how far must you have to go to be insulting?
2. What real harm does an insulting drawing do, actually?
3. What century are we living in?

Computers, can't live without 'em...

I had to reinstall Ubuntu 12.04 last night, and lost a lot of stored emails and stuff in the process. The system hung, because it didn't (couldn't?) recognise any input devices and was in low-quality graphics mode. It asked me what I wanted to do via some radio buttons and a next button. But it didn't recognise the input devices so I couldn't operate the buttons to move out of the loop I was stuck in. Bit frustrating that, typical computer stuff. To be honest, my first 12.04 install didn't wipe the system or the existing software, and things are now flying again, speed-wise, so it was all for the bet in the end.

Abu Qatada

We're deporting Abu Qatada. Shame. One of my favourites in the Lion King.

Police protest march.

Off duty police are marching in protest about something they care about. Hopefully their on-duty colleagues will use the same aggressive, nasty, needless kettling tactics they would employ at any other demonstration. Yeah. Probably not.

Play-off football.

No consolation to anyone biting their nails as a supporter, but frankly the play-offs provide some fantastic football for the neutral into May. Last night's Birmingham Blackpool game was a great example, decent football, drama, tension to the final whistle.

Best headline today:

Above the tag-line How London landlords are cashing in on [the] housing crisis, “We found people paying rent for a walk-in freezer.” Hope it was off, or rented by a butcher or grocer. The article quotes a local authority bloke, with magnificent understatement, who describes a landlord letting a shed in a Newham garden as “tending to operate at the lower end of the market”. The council planning enforcement team leader said of a shed-dweller that she “didn't know where her toilet effluent is going to.” Must've had too good shoes on to properly investigate. There are signs of human inhabitation throughout Newham's brick and block-built sheds (as opposed to the timber potting shed) that include 'extractor fans and satellite dishes'.

With a shocking lack of political correctness or humanity, the Newham council lady said that while such conditions were of little concern where the tenants were eastern European builders, she was much more willing to get on the landlords' cases where families were living under similarly poor conditions.

Tax.

I don't know how accurate this is, but apparently Stephen King's take on the majority approach to paying tax is this:

“The majority would rather douse their dicks with lighter fluid, strike a match, and dance around singing Disco Inferno than pay one more cent in taxes to Uncle Sugar.”

He's probably about right there. You get nothing tangible for the missing loot, that's the problem. Unless you have a daily need for the armed forces it can seem that an awful lot of money just disappears without trace or explanation. It's not like you come away with a bag of food or some self-assembly furniture or even an invoice explaining why you've had your pocket picked. There's just the feeling that for every pound that goes on something useful and worthy, there's another going to massively overpaid civil servants or still being used to fund MP's moat cleaning and mars bars. For all that I begrudge those £100,000 per year civil servants, claiming that's what they need to be paid because that's the going rate, when most of them seem to struggle with expressing themselves in their first language, let alone making a real and effective contribution, more than someone wasting taxpayers' money on a duck island. At least that required imagination.

There's also the feeling that I'm forking out my fair share, arguably more than my fair share, while others are getting away with paying less than theirs. Red Ken Livingstone (now Blue Ken, or Pretty Green Ken?) has set up a company (Silveta). This allows him to pay 20% corporation tax on his earnings, rather less than the 50% he should be paying. If the ultra-leftie newt-fancier is dodging HMRC bullets, then who isn't at it? Am I the only one chipping into the country's coffers at the prescribed rate? Jeremy Hunt, Radio 4's favourite spoonerism (Secretary for Hulture, Jeremy ….) has transferred his company's office buildings to knock a cool £100,000 off his tax bill. I once received a Poll Tax bill with a statement on the rear allocating my payments against the local authority's heads of expense: police, fire service, bin men, street lighting, etc. The last item was non-payment by others (or something like that). Now if others don't pay, that's between the local authority and them. It can't fall to me to make up the shortfall. What if no-one else paid? I pay a fortune in taxes, but enough to run a borough council? I refused to pay that bit, for a while at least, as bit of a protest before caving in and forking out, yet again, with absolutely nothing to show for it.

Cameron's suit v my car.

“Tough it out” messages from the PM and his vestigial twin yesterday. A hard sell this austerity stuff. I'm not buying it. I'm with the Greeks and the French. They voted out the austere, in with the spendthrifts. Let someone else sort it out after I'm gone, I say. We're up the creek without a canoe never mind the paddle, so making everyone dead skint and miserable isn't going to solve anything. The PM tells us he wants a country where the hard working can get on and earn rewards. I've worked like a madman for approaching thirty five years now, under administrations of various hues and with various political ideals, and they've all just bled me dry with all manner of taxes, never allowed me to get ahead, as it seems I'm charged with supporting the rich who dodge and the underclass who won't pay. Making proclamations wearing a suit that cost more than my car, and in shoes that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe does not cut it, really. That goes for all parties now. The last properly dressed politician was Michael Foot, sponsor of International Year of the Dishevelled.

Six Feet Under.

The last Six Feet Under. Ever. We saved it as long as we could. But we've watched it now, so it's really the end. Five seasons, sixty-three episodes. I don't think there was a single episode where the quality dropped. BLISS called it 'perfect', and even the very end of the last episode tied up all those loose ends she hates. We've watched two series arising from the (I think) 2010 Booker Prize shortlist. Six Feet Under came from 'Skippy Dies', in which, before he dies (about halfway through – look, it's hardly a plot spoiler, given the title of the book) Skippy asserts that Six Feet Under is the best television series ever made. There's a lot of critics who agree. 'The Slap' was broadcast as a short series, it wasn't bad, either. We need something to take the place of SFU, as it was the only thing on television we could both stand to watch at the same time. As a replacement I can't see past 'The Sopranos' or 'Treme'. Of the two, I prefer the New Orleans-set 'Treme', where the city itself is one of the stars, with its love of music and food.

The 6' Under idea, a dysfunctional family running an undertakers, seems to have little promise, but bookended by the two Nate's deaths (father and son, first and third- or fourth-last episodes) there's so much going on that there's never a dull moment. The writers and directors were not afraid to broach taboos, throw in dream and fantasy sequences, or have the dead sit up and have their say. I thought it was like a television equivalent of the dense, tightly-packed prose writers like Iain Sinclair produce, more ideas and information on one page than many manage in twenty or thirty. It's something we may have produced in times when there was a market for, and the will to produce darker, edgier, braver television here, when Denis Potter plays were filmed and broadcast. There's nothing like it been made here for years, with the TV companies focused on karaoke, The Vicar's Fools, Horses and Family, period costume dramas, and endless quiz and panel shows, none of which rival Shooting Stars, which they've ditched.

Last year's Booker shortlist would make good watching:

• The Sense of an Ending would be a good six part series.
• The Sisters Brothers would make a good 'No Country for Old Men' type film, fast-paced and with great dialogue.
• Pigeon English, written almost as a Damilola Taylor docu-drama.
• Snow Drops would make another film, lovingly photographed in Moscow.
• Half Blood Blues, another six-part series, with those brown, grey and sepia wartime colours in Berlin and Paris, and plenty of jazz.
• The only one I think might be difficult to get a screenplay from would be Jamragh's Menagerie. What with the cannibalism and long days in boats drifting and so on.

Just what we need.

West Ham are through to the play off final. Just what we need (if they go on to win), another London derby.

It’s a bank holiday

So there’s time for breakfast. Eggs, naturally. Then there’s the optional items: sausages, bacon, there’s a little remaining black pudding. Tomatoes (fresh or tinned (or both?)), mushrooms, beans. There’s no leftover mash and cabbage, so there’ll be no bubble. Bread: fried, toast, or simply spread with real butter. Tea, coffee, orange juice? Any two from- or all three? BLISS, having walked the dogs early, is ‘treating’ herself to an extra Weetabix. Weird as that is, it isn’t as weird as some breakfast habits. I don’t understand having sweet stuff at breakfast. Given the option of croissants (stuffed with chocolate or otherwise), Danish pastries and the like, or nothing, I’ll take the nothing option. I wonder how many of the lifestyle police working their righteous indignation up towards banning the full English on artery-clogging grounds are happy to get stuck into a cake in the morning, the oddballs.

There’s just some trimmings to top things off. A book, ‘Skagboys’; music: Lee Konitz Live at Birdland; Arseblog, and Le Grove (of course, along with all other things right and proper, we’re Arsenal in these parts). Salt on the eggs, sparingly applied. Brown sauce (I’m not anal about it, but I’m glad it’s HP). The sausages preferably butchers’, the bacon preferably English but certainly not Danish, the eggs free range (from all of two doors away, how’s that for reducing food miles). There’s an anti-Danish thing here: don’t like their pastries (as sweet stuff for breakfast is unnatural and very, very wrong); won’t have the bacon on animal welfare grounds.

You get the smells, the cooking time provides some tension and anticipation, the timing has to be spot on, then there's the first burst of brilliant yellow yolk smeared over a slice of sausage speared along with a mushroom on the fork, bread in the other hand, steam rising from the coffee cup. Don't get that with cornflakes, or petit pain au chocolat, ya great nance.

Arsenal throw it away, Liverpool turn up an hour late, Scottish reading...

First, we drew 3 - 3 with Norwich, at home.

Arseblogger had this to say: “We then lost Bacary Sagna to a broken leg (he went down with nobody anywhere near him)...”

The Telegraph reported: “Sagna collapsed in the first half of Arsenal's 3-3 Premier League draw with Norwich shortly after Johnson trod on his leg, the same one he broke earlier in the season.

 "I think he did it on purpose," the 29-year-old told sports daily L'Equipe. "He stepped on my leg. Play continues, I get back on my feet. And when I tried to control the ball, I felt a crack, just like the first time at Tottenham.” ”

I saw it that way, Sagna's way, on an Internet feed occupying about ¼ of my laptop screen. How can someone at the game and reporting on it not see it?

Arseblogger again: “quite how the penalty wasn’t given when van Persie was pushed over as he was about to tap-in was a mystery to everyone...”

Then Chelsea win the cup, 2 - 1.

Liverpool did nothing for an hour, other than a very short response after conceding the first goal. Kenny changed things after 60 minutes when, after twenty or thirty it was obvious that things needed changing. There are similarities between him and Wenger. Too slow to respond, too late with the changes, seemingly too little input from other coaching staff, managers too revered to get criticism and unable or unwilling to take any adverse feedback on board.

But then there's always books.

Just finished 'Stonemouth'. Iain Banks does not produce duds, but this is his best for a while. A great book with a great, mature ending. Just started 'Skagboys'. I love the library. That's £30-worth of spanking new hardbacks to read for the £1.20 reservation fees, and they won't be clogging up the place when I've finished them, which should please BLISS no end.

Irvine Welsh kicks off with a description of Thatcher's private army, the polis, trapping and attacking miners that had the hairs on the back of my neck prickling, and that shows how little if any progress has been made since, with their kettling tactics and innocent people suffering and in extreme cases losing their lives at their hands. Later there's a Welsh classic, a character describing himself as "sweating like a blind dyke in a fishmongers". Heh.