Bit of a game...

Reading 5 v 7 Arsenal (AET)

According to the luvvies, sport is entertainment.

According to the suits, it's business.

According to the politicians, it's an unnecessary evil (Thatcher and Hillsborough, Blair recalling the minister for sport for a tight vote, on the eve of England winning the rugby world cup, mother and son the new generation of cup final absentee Pms); or something to exploit (all of them since we were awarded the Olympics, hardly a mention now, all of a couple of months later).

Well, it's not any of those things. Sport is unique, something totally out on it's own, capable of the brilliance, beauty, bewilderment and wonder that only the arts can rival.

Who would stick with watching a team 0-4 down and being torn a new one? None of the above. No-one with a statistician’s mind, for sure. Some Arsenal fans left early, heading home from Reading before the first half was over. The vast majority stayed, singing their heads off. The usual gallows humour, anger and outrageous optimism at first (gonna win 5-4 at 0-4, that sort of thing) then increasing belief, disbelief, and unbridled jubilation. When they've travelled and are out in the cold singing their hearts out, it would be churlish not to stick with it on the Sky computer feed in the warmth of the kitchen.

I think that I can see every doping scandal and gambling investigation and raise another moment of incredible, improbable, brilliance. That's without including all the people taking part at grass roots.

I've said this before, but I think it's worth saying again. People draw, and they paint. They write poems and plays and novels and short stories. They learn to play musical instruments. They go out on a Saturday in the summer and have a very hard ball fired at them by athletes over thirty years younger than they are (that'd be me). They pay for doing these things. Yes, the occasional oddity (William Hague) exists, but people do not generally spend their free time in suits in front of spreadsheets, wishing they could be real full time bankers or Jeremies (both rhyming slang).

The Garlic Ballads

I'm on the last pages now, and it's now a courtroom drama. One of the (wrongly) accused answers all questions with “I despise you”. Not sure how that stands up as a defence, but as long as it's true then under oath and all that.

Everyone, by now is at least beaten, arrested and harshly treated, or dead. Some are all three.

Standing at the Sky's Edge

Richard Hawley played guitar in Pulp, and now makes great solo albums. Standing at the Sky's Edge is more unusual and edgy than Coles Corner, and I'm looking forward to second and third listenings.

New favourite pizza

Onion and leak, mushroom, chillies, anchovies and olives, tomato and cheese.

Health food

Clattenburg “shocked and angered”

The hairdresser's car driving and designer-label bitch is shocked and angered by Chelsea's accusations.

How many times have how many people sat down a long anticipated game and been shocked and angered by the referee ruining it? These are the Blair inheritance days of never ever saying sorry or reviewing and improving, and top of the no apologies league are our referees.

If they were more willing to say “yep, missed that, got that wrong, got a lot right though, and it's such a fast game” that'd be fine. As they hide behind technical details, as they get so much wrong, so many vital decisions wrong, the lack of humility means there's no sympathy when things go wrong for them.

Clatenburg didn't have to make the big, controversial decision. He could've taken a huge, deep breath, thought about it, and applied common sense. Instead he went out on a very insubstantial limb and invited the microscope he's now under.

Mercury Prize

There's twelve on the list. I've heard of five of them. I've actually heard three of them. I've even actually heard one of the contender albums.

That's not actually as hip as I'd like it to be, is it?

Even worse, what a blow. It seems the Mercury award is for hopelessly out of date and unhip dodderers in any case. I'm not even up with the downstroke.

Exit stage left, muttering, heading towards the potting shed in slippers, with pipe.

What a waste, what waste, what a...actually, I do mind...

...when it's a week like this, particularly, having hours wasted. By estate agents who can't organise providing keys. How hard would it be to make the phone call? Too hard, it seems.

Olives

Are olives good for you? I like to think that they are. They grow on trees and therefore are natural and meat-free, and those are good things. Maybe it's like that bananas and potassium thing. Sooner or later, someone will say “bananas. Good for you. High in potassium” and people will nod. Nod despite not knowing whether bananas are high, low or middlin' in potassium, or even potassium-free; and neither knowing whether potassium is actually in any way desirable in a piece of fruit. Or in the body. Potassium is one of the Group I metals, periodic table-wise. Top to bottom these become less stable. At the top, light them and they burn like billio. At the bottom, they spontaneously ignite in dry air. Halfway down, they only ignite spontaneously in damp air. Potassium isn't a calm, chilled-out element. It's right at the fiesty end of things. I suppose it depends on the dose. You don't see too many bananas bursting into flames. Though I did have a dodgy uncle who would stick matches into the bottom of bananas then strike them on sandpaper and pretend the bananas were flammable. Us kids thought it was a good trick, he'd light his fag with the flaming banana.

What I don't do for that car

The Saville Sweepstakes

Have any of the online betting services opened a book yet on who the next celebs having their collars felt might be? I don't suppose you'd've got much of a price on Gary Glitter.

Frankenstorm

Lots of freak weather, a hurricane, and high tides, and much of eastern America is in lockdown. According to the regularly-battered states, there's overreaction. According to the seldom-battered, it's alright for them, they're used to it. According to the airlines, they're not flying into that and everything's cancelled.

Clatten-berk

Look, he drives around in hairdressers' cars and likes his designer clothes. He was a fast-track referee. That's like being the youngest-ever member of the Hitler youth or William Hague or something. Like time and motion studying the dinner ladies when you should be playing tag.

Swimming, Lighthouse, Garlic

I'm back to the Garlic Ballads, a book so brutally bleak in it's description of living in poor, rural China that I had to have a break over the weekend. With Swimming Home and The Lighthouse, neither of which, were they people, would you describe as little rays of sunshine.

They are all brilliant novels.

The Lighthouse is the story of a good and decent man who just doesn't get it somehow.

Instant coffee

I don't know if this is true, but it sounds about right. Apparently the process that makes instant coffee granules involves steps that remove the aroma. So they have to add chemicals to make the coffee smell like coffee.

When 'fresh' meat contains injected water and milk solids, you can imagine the supermarket labs mixing the coffee-smell chemicals.

Needy car

I overheated sitting still in the roadworks for hours today. Well, I overheated because of the delay, and the car overheated in sympathy. I've given it oil (it had little, very little) and water (it was a bit low, I suppose) and filled the washer reservoir (it ran out on the long run this morning).

Ungrateful things that cars are, it will not extinguish the engine warning light, despite all that tender loving care it's just had. Oh, and it got itself covered in mud. It seems you can dump as mud on the highway as you like as long as you put out a plywood and hand-painted 'MUD ON ROAD' sign. If you own a farm. I think you have to own a farm, otherwise you need to wheel-wash or get fined by highways. Farm? Just the sign will do.

Gemini? Nah, Arsenal

Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered

I watched Hannah and Her Sisters. I have not caught back up with Woody Allen for too long. Funny, sympathetic and sharp.

Sunken Condos

Donald Fagen. Steely Dan produced increasingly perfectly-produced jazz / funk influenced music. The first three solo albums were the continuation of post-Aja Steely Dan. This is more of the same. You can't knock more of the same when it's more of such fantastic quality.

A bloke's horoscope part 1

West Brom: Likely to have a decent sense of humour. Generally has low expectations. You may find shelves of Frank Skinner DVDs near the television.

Norwich: Unlikely to have the right number of fingers, toes, limbs or even heads. Drives a tractor. You may find shelves of Delia cookbooks in the kitchen, all unread as there's too few recipes for roadkill.

Spurs: Likely to be dribbling down his shirt. You may find shelves of Chas and Dave cds near the cd player. Which he won't be able to work without assistance.

Chelsea: Chav.

Stoke City: Likely to be low on the evolutionary ladder. No skin on his knuckles, where they rub on the ground. Worships long throws. You may find human remains. In his cave.

Fulham: On the outside, nice and friendly. Underneath, prone to beat up eleven year old kids at Gillingham in the 1970. You may find Tommy Trinder DVDs, all in black and white.

Manchester United: Does not really like football, so supports the default club for plastic people. You may find lots of DVDs, cds, books and cameras on the shelves, all in Japanese.

Manchester City: Likely to be at the game, but jumping up and down while facing the wrong way. You may find shelves full of Oasis albums, despite the fact that after the first one you may as well listen to a bootleg Beatles band.

Swansea: Likely to be unsure what shape ball to play with. You may find shelves of Dylan Thomas books, and twenty seven words for 'rain'.

Liverpool: Fond of reminiscing, the Liverpool is often found in the Rose Tinted section of Specsavers. You may find shelves of Jerry and the Pacemakers and John Lennon solo albums.

Everton: See Liverpool. Less fond of the past. Equally dining out on the cheeky chappie reputation while actually being a maudlin wretch. You may find shelves of John Bishop DVDs and Beatles albums.

Arsenal: Likely to be a top bloke. You will find shelves full of books, DVDs, and CDs. You will find them because the shelves are not laden with cups and trophies. You may also find lots of mothballed posters of the club's star players, as they are sold every summer.

Heh! Hughes, you lose.

QPR at home today

Arseblog provided the lookalike:

Wilshire's back. We need a win. I need a good Internet steam to calm my nerves.

A win, albeit an indifferent one.

An Internet stream, albeit equally indifferent and needing the usual messing about with the stop / start and non-closeable adverts.

Late 1 – 0. Nerves shredded. Apparently, our goal may have been offside. Now, Mark Hughes wakes up in an apocalyptic, apoplectic rage at the injustice of being served up another morning. So tomorrow I'll be looking for footage of his post-match melt-down to laugh at.

That's the way to do it.

Swimming Home

Umbrella should have won the Booker. This short (160 pp) novel must have greater ambition and imagination squeezed into those pages than the winner. Two couples are on holiday in France, when a mysterious and odd stranger arrives. I sped through the book in hours. If, as the panel originally claimed, this year's idea was books that will be taken off the shelves again and re-read, this and Umbrella have to be higher up the rankings than Bringing Up The Dead.

The Lighthouse

BLISS regularly complains about my insomniac tendencies. I finished Swimming Home, picked up The Lighthouse, and, suddenly, am halfway through that. Another short, tense and intense novel, 2012 has been a strong year, Booker-wise.

Planet Terror

One of the Tarrantino Grindhouse double bill, Plant Terror was the absolute definition of 'hokum'. Starting with the 1960's cinema motifs, the built-in dust and hair on the 'film', the reel-changes, this was an absolute hoot. Splattered with blood and gore, blessed with no anal attention to detail, plot, continuity, this is to zombie shoot-em-ups what Carry On films are to comedies.

Ian Dury - cheerful

Morning Reg, meat and two veg? He done him with a ten-pound sledge

What's the difference between Ian Dury and an egg?

You can beat an egg.

Hello Brian. Wash and iron? Try it on. It's only nylon. Could've been watching Frankie Vaughn on the telly and giving herself a scratch. This is what we find, a sense of humour is required, among the bacon rind.

Do It Yourself. Cheering me up no end right now.

Hit me with your rhythm stick, it's nice to be a lunatic

Jeremy (rhyming slang - “he was right dirty old Jeremy”, referring to Jimmy Saville) is now running (ruining?) the NHS.

Can I suggest Gary Glitter (minister for children); The Dukes of Hazard (environment); Ned Kelly (law and order); Lord Sugar (anything).

Yes. They're all barking. In fact they're all Dagenham. Next there'll be a climate change denier on the climate change committee...oh. There you go then.

Luv a duck, we're as common as muck

It was the opening of a place I worked (hard) on yesterday. Wasn't invited. Didn't want the hoi polloi spoiling it for the great and good, did vey, eh? Got a sneak preview from the caterers though.

Also, it takes much longer to get up north...the slow way

The roads were clear all day today, apart from that bit of the M25 between J5 and J6. That was a slow (lucky to do 30 mph) crawl. Why? It's an orbital. Why does it slow down at that specific section? Why is the inside lane always the fastest-moving (there goes the secret)?

Pullin' strokes and takin' liberties

I had the misfortune to hear 'lord' Sugar on 'today in Parliament'. If Shakespeare loves the English language, and uses it to conjure magic, Sugar rapes it, inflicts some GBH, gives it a thorough kicking for good measure, and does it all in that health and safety clipboard back-of-the-throat voice.

Could someone, like, run him over, perhaps? A couple of times to make sure?

Shall I compare three to a dreary day in Dudley?

No. For thou art drearier than the most dreary thing imaginable

To the human mind

Which is what I'm equipped with.

We are rubbish. Arsene? Ivan? No sword to fall on?

Bouncebackinability

We're loaded with that at the Arsenal at the moment. The best-paid manager in the world. A £2.5m / year...what, exactly? Chief executive of executing chiefly spreadsheet success at the expense of teamsheet success. Brass in pocket, not silverware in trophy cabinet. As BLISS will attest (apparently they gather dust and are absolutely hideous) I've picked up more trophies in the last seven years than the cash-rich, win-poor club I support. They do include (among others, honest) the duck trophy, which is awarded for being rubbish, and is a brass umbrella-carrying duck, and is the only one that met with BLISS' approval: “can't you win that one again, I liked that one”. “No” (or words to that effect).

So at a nasty AGM it's doubly galling for Peter Hill-Wood to dismiss the shareholding fans with “thanks for showing so much interest in our club”, like it's some members only society run for the benefit of the great and the good.

Arsene has gone from the professor to the mad professor. The £2.5m / year what exactly Gazidis keeps on about how great we'll be in 2014 when the financial fair play rules come in. He sounds like that pay for two burgers tomorrow in return for a hamburger today character.

Meanwhile, on the grass where things matter, things are pretty bleak. Bank balance? Brilliant. Power balance? Falling behind. At an accelerating rate. League? Already gone, too far off the pace in October. CL? Forget it. FA ot League Cup? Here's hoping. Very faint hope though.

Lilley livered

Peter Lilley is one of three (that's one of 650-ish, and that less than 0.5%) of MPs who voted against the climate change act in 2008. He's been appointed to the climate change select committee.

He's a climate change sceptic (that is he's as mental as the holocaust deniers, the flat earth people and the creationists). He's vice-chair of Thetys Petroleum Ltd (no conflict of interest there then).

He was in Thatcher's cabinet. That's the Thatcher / Saville paedo cabinet soon to be revealed (my guess anyway). It's like appointing Simon Cowell to the good music committee, or Ghenkis Khan to the give peace a chance committee. It's like entering Charles Hawtree for Mr Universe.

One reason why I can't vote. Labour's record on climate change was equally poor, caving in to the money men. Another reason is this:

Dead whales

Killed by BP. Obama's government were, apparently “tightly controling information about whales and other wildlife caught up in the [BP] disaster”. I think that means “covering up”.

Politicians.

Slaughter the beautiful: whales, badgers, whatever. They'll sign on the dotted line to butcher them.

Support the devious, the nasty, the underhand. They look after their own. All parties. All the same.

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

Well done xLPL. Great news. Now. Having passed that pesky driving test thing – with just two minors (note the Jimmy Saville joke avoidance) – it's time to get on with learning the true art of driving:

Signals: two fingers; one finger (flipping the bird if you're in an American car); one finger with knobs on (sit on it – and swivel); hand in crook of arm, raise up fist (not recommended at high speeds).

Recognise your enemy (other drivers) 1: there's a hat on the back shelf, a Panama or a straw boater. This means the driver is an old bloke, in a short sleeved white shirt. He has large, silver-rimmed spectacles and liver spots. Liable to drive erratically. Albeit slowly erratic. Often accompanied by a small, rotund elderly female who could be a clone of him.

Signals: thanks: the raised palm (the Hitler); the raised finger (the mini-Hitler or too cool for school); the thumbs up (use this for white van men, builders, and lorry drivers).

Recognise your enemy (other drivers) 2: there's a suit on a hanger. Rep. Drives thousands of miles every year. Believes practise makes perfect. Mistakenly thinks he's god's gift to motoring. Liable to drive erratically. Drives most of those thousands of miles very badly. Does not realise that practise makes permanent. Often accompanied by a dazzling array of distracting gadgets.

Parking. Try to remember where you park. This avoids panic attacks and embarrassment (as well as fines for wasting police time).

Parking. Three types of people. The first time, straight in every time perfect parker. The million to-and-fros to get perfect parker. The that'll do, constitutional to the kerb merchant. If you happen to be type one you're lucky. Type two, boring. Type three, like me.

Recognise your enemy (other drivers) 3: Tottenham sticker. Liable to drive erratically. Due to having a very, very small brain. Smaller than a slug's.

Learn the meaning of “the novelty's worn off”, after just the one go: putting in petrol; multi-storey car parks; town centre one way systems; town centre car parks; putting air in the tyres (after finally finding a machine that's working; retail park car parks; drive throughs; the M25; refilling the washers / oil / anything. Road noise when the window's open. Learning about the controls / tyre pressures / finer points of the radio/cd player.

Someone fiddling with the radio so that you get unwanted traffic bulletins. About Scottish snarl-ups. When you're in Brighton.

Recognise your enemy (other drivers) 4: the driver's wearing a hat. Any hat. You don't need a hat in a car. Likely to be a middle aged midlife crisis man. Or a boy racer. Or an elderly woman. Liable to drive erratically. Look, you really don't need a hat in a car.

If your car's anything like mine it's a mobile rubbish bin and accumulates debris at an alarming rate (and minutes after being emptied of rubbish). It constantly demands petrol every five minutes. It's a magnet for dust, dirt, mud, and incontinent seagulls. It has two temperature settings: too hot and much too hot.

Signals: the resigned 'what'd'ya do?' shrug.

The DWP tea party

Pay monkeys, get peanuts

The latest in management training? A day observing the group behaviour of chimpanzees. I was going to say that you could substitute a day watching the DWP, HMRC, or Student Loans (new entry) offices. But the chimpanzees will be less dysfunctional and harder working. They will not wait until the second their allocated time starts ticking to begin their day. They won't scoot off back to their shelter at the stroke of five regardless of what remains to be done. They won't be off sick / off smoking / at lunch. Their phones won't be left ringing because it's out of hours / during peak hours (that covers all day every day, right?).

This illustrates the attitudes and the expense they cause:

Fire Brigade Workshops. Any day of the week. Fire crew (on full pay but not operationally available) arrive with a spare engine, to collect theirs. They need to drive both into the yard and pull all the gear off one and onto the other.

It's 12:55 and the mechanic working on their appliance is replacing the last wheel nuts before signing it over to them.

At 13:00 a hooter sounds.

Clang!

That's the sound of the mechanic's spanner hitting the garage floor as he goes off to lunch with all the others. Two nuts away from finishing the job.

Four qualified firemen play pool and do the Telegraph crossword for an hour, until the hooter sounds again at two o'clock. This time there's a slow traipse back to work, via the bogs.

For the record, I believe that imperfect as this is, that it is better than the outsourcing-mania that appears the only alternative politicians of any hue will consider. I'll also take blue-collar company over white collar shiny-arse clock-watchers any day. They bore me. Rigid. Chimpanzees are interesting.

Feel free to insult me

Reform Section 5: join the campaign. It is currently an offence to use insulting words. It seems banter is against the law.

We are living in the days of the perma-offended. Political correctness has a legacy of pantomime offendees hitching up their polkadot petticoats and running about the stage waving their arms and squealing about their sensitivities.

Personally I'd ramp it up a bit and make it an offence to take offence. I'd incorporate robustness in the national curriculum. I'd have a three strikes and you're out policy on over-sensitivity. I'd make Frankie Boyle the Minister for the Sensitive.

The problem I have with the over-sensitive (and, apparently I'm at the red end of the autistic spectrum) is their lack of ability to empathise with the counter-sensitive. Rabid Muslims cannot imagine how halal meat might offend animal rights. How many times have you heard someone say: “X? Fair game. Y? Fair game. Z? Beyond the pale, you can't joke about Z, mate. That's just not funny.”

The only equitable solution is for everything and everyone to be fair game. Take your turn. It don't last forever and it's only words.

Once upon a checkout, deary...

Boards of Canada

Are a Scottish duo making superb ambient / chilled music, actually using some proper instruments as well as the ubiquitous laptops and software. I really like these. So far I've listened to The Campfire Headphase and Music Has the Right to Children.

The Garlic Ballads

Is nothing like any Gabriel Garcia Marquez I've read. It is set in a poor region during lean times, but unless something changes suddenly it isn't that magical realism genre that has been suggested. So far it is gritty realism. Brutal and savage. Tough people in a tough place in tough times.

So far there's been police brutality (prisoners harshly treated, beaten, handcuffed to trees); family brutality (a daughter refusing an arranged marriage, beaten); her lover beaten by her family; government brutality (refusing to pay the promised rate for garlic during a glut); more that I've not remembered. About half the characters are disabled, blind or with various deformities, or just too old to go on living such a hard existence but too poor to die.

I wandered lonely with my basket, searching for the short-queue tills

Gillian Clarke's poem about the Cardiff John Lewis is on display there. Thought I might have a go.

A better sight there'll never be,

Than the sign pronouncing,

Buy one,

Get one free.

Joy is the emotion,

That greets the half price

Promotion,

On suntan lotion.

I often get my kicks,

On red pencil day,

At Wickes.

Pay little, at Lidl,

It has'ta be ASDA,

Lets go to Tesco,

Run to Morrison,

The clever bloke goes, to Waitrose.

I love the sandwich dispenser,

At Marks,

And Spencer.

It's great to see the prices drop,

They're good,

With food,

Are the Co-op.

For butter and lard,

I'm happy to pay,

With pricematch guarantee,

And my loyalty card.

Making mayo

Joyosa, by Stockhausen / Snetberger / Andersen / Heral

Trumpet, guitar, bass and percussion. Sunday music. Ten reflective, lyrical, beautiful pieces of jazz. Marcus, by the way, as opposed to Karlheinz.

Making mayo...

...seems too simple. All the horror stories and curdling and what to do with the white and how much to make and what oil and all that...it all felt like propaganda put about by Hellmans to keep their jars heading off the shelves and into people's trollies. I did a bit of research and tried this:

One egg, whole, beaten up with salt and pepper and mustard powder. Drizzle in some oil of your choice (not what came out of the sump at your last oil change, maybe, but otherwise don't get too hung up about it) and keep whisking like mad. If it starts to go wrong, stop with the oil and give it plenty with the whisk, it'll right itself in no time. When you have a nice mayo-looking product, stop adding oil, add some vinegar or lemon juice to taste, and put it in the fridge.

Not only can you be sure about the egg you've used (i.e. there's huge differences between what a supermarket is allowed to label 'organic' and what actually is organic, and when things get needlessly complicated – like free range, barn, fully free range, etc – it suggests obfuscation on the part of the evil empire) but you can adjust things to taste. It also looks yellow. Funny how supermarket stuff has to be played about with. Butter? Not yellow enough. Add some colouring. Butter has to be yellow. Mayo? Too yellow (even with whole eggs, let alone with yolks only like some recipes). Get rid of the yellow. Looks better white.

There was a Python film making sketch with a raving director, in jodhpurs and riding boots strutting around with a megaphone: “paint the grass green, paint the sky blue”. Supermarkets operate along similar lines. Take something good. Process, preserve and colour the bejesus out of it. Clingfilm it. Freeze it. Stick it in tons of packaging. Test it, make sure even Kerry Katona can microwave it. Properly. Eight times out of ten. Transport the ingredients to a central depot, then the finished article to another. Finally deliver to the shops. They'll buy it. They always do.

The Life of Brian

Hilarious. Uplifting. From “shut up bignose” and blessed are the cheesemakers to Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. One of those you need an annual dose of. I had Latin teachers just like Cleese's Centurion. What a needlessly complicated language.

Arsenal

After time to reflect, it don't get no better. Apart from rock-bottom QPR, we're the lowest London side in the league. Below Chelsea and Spurs, and also below West Ham and Fulham. This isn't some early-season freakish league position, this is after eight games and 21% of the season gone. For an intelligent man Wenger seems unable to tell the time, see the clock ticking, develop a sense of urgency. “We need to learn and come back from this” is okay once or twice. It's too late now, Arsene. The squad's still full of the same long-term crocks we've been saddled with for years. Diaby made a great start. He's broken now. Again. Rosicky (delete the Ro and there's an apt name). A slightly less technically gifted player who will give you robust reliability is better than these treatment-table-Tonys we seem unable to unload. Chelsea, 22 points from 24. Us? 12. Mid-table. Where our manager and Gazidis (our whateveritishedoes) have put us with their fantastic financial performances. Not so great on the Carrow Road grass, eh guys?

Kick it out

Kick it out shirts – the big issue?

There's no place for racism. Anywhere. But players have a right to choose whether or not to wear a slogan t-shirt or not. If you feel that not enough is being done by the authorities, then it can be hard to support a campaign. There's a right to support any given charity, or not. The guys without the shirts on, to a man said that the campaign wasn't enough. That sorting things out, for once and for all was a given. A for granted. They were just dismayed at the small fines imposed and pitiful action taken. If that's what they believe, then getting on their cases because they backed their convictions is just more of the same attitude prevailing. The t-shirt Gestapo goose stepping over anyone with the temerity to have a mind of their own.

Well done Norwich

Like those exaggerated reports of the death of the still-living wit, similarly reports of Arsenal's resurgence have been overblown. A lot has improved, but unless someone with bolt croppers and a grinder pops the locks on Wenger's wallet, it'll remain this way.

Gazidis (£2.5m / year) and Wenger (£7.5m / year) are among the best paid in the EPL and have brought nothing home for seven years. Apparently we're the next big thing just waiting for the financial fair play regulations to bite. These things have a knack of not happening.

Norwich deserved the win and the points. Lets have no deluded rubbish about players pitching up tired after international duty. Bless them. If ours can't cope with a couple of games and a bit of a bus-ride over two weeks and come back all tired and emotional, then let's ship 'em out and get some that don't. Chelsea won the stiffest test at Spurs. Citeh and United won too. We've lost ground losing to a club who got their first win of the season, against us.

The news, soon, may be of our resurrection rather than resurgence.

Volver

Watched Volver, again. A fantastic film. Serious subject-matter, funny lines, beautifully photographed.

Mo Yan

Has been operating under the radar here, for a Nobel prize winner. The library had just one of his books available. They had all Jeffery Archer's. He's about as likely to trouble the Nobel laureate decision-makers as Stephen Hawking is to top the hip hop charts.

Gary Barlow = delete

Both the Albert Hall what's on email and the Guardian Sleeve Notes alert arrived with Barlow in the subject line. Saved time, as that's a signal to hit 'delete' unread.

That's not picking on Barlow in particular, there's other similar triggers.

Takeaway favourites 2

Cauliflower bahji, pilau rice, half a chicken jalfreezi.

Hands up, who's thick

Hands up, who's thick?

That'd be me, Sir. Sorry. There's just too much I don't understand. Relativity. Spent two years on that (failed Physics degree, Kings College, London) – none the wiser, really. Apart from this memorable fact: intuitively, if you go really, really fast, your vehicle will become longer (elongated tail, picture it) and narrower (the additional length must come from somewhere, eh?). That's exactly what happens. Measurable too. Early particle accelerators that failed to account for the relativistic effects failed, and only operated when those effects were factored in. But the maths, and therefore the physics is beyond me. I'm not clever enough to follow the equations, even when explained in an idiot's step by step guide.

We had a professor at Kings. He took the first year undergraduates thermodynamics. He may as well have been taking the blue arsed baboons remedial Greek for all the good it did me. Let alone the idiot's step-by-step guide (too much for me, way too much for me) he wrote up equations that jumped from page to page, let alone line to line, then looked up, as if to say “going too fast for you, retards?”. He was part of the team that did the electro-spectrometry that revealed the structure of DNA for the first time. A brilliant man, a brilliant mind. About half the undergraduates were mumbling: “yes, actually, get on with it, we're right up to speed”. Another quarter would catch up later. Others would struggle, but eventually get to grips. I was one of two, maybe three, who were never going to get it.

But I don't understand so very, very much. The vast majority of observable phenomena, I don't understand. How are men with AIDS raping babies in the mistaken idea that that will cure them? BLISS has just finished a book reporting on the most hideous, unimaginable torture and mutilation of infants in the name of some religion or other. How does gang-raping the sister address the crimes of the brother? All the holy books are thousands of years old, yet nothing seems to have changed. The Inquisition in their current incarnation may be armed with iPads and iPhones and an iDuckingstool. Technology, science, they've moved on. Politics and religion? Attitudes seem so backward.

The head of a UK political party tweeted encouraging people to mass and protest outside the house of the gay couple turned away from a B&B. I thought this was bound to be fake. Sent from one of those false celebrity accounts. Apparently not.

On the same day that amateur observers, working with data available to the full-time astronomers, have discovered a new planet, Syria goes on the way Rwanda did, and our politicians spend their time braying at each other across a chamber over someone's comments to a policemen.

The new distant planet is in orbit, around four suns. Imagine a sky looking up at four suns. In simple terms, it shouldn't be there. The four-way gravitational pull should rue out matter coalescing to form a planet. But it has. Far from being cheesed that their model has proved inaccurate, the scientists are excited by the chance to review the planet formation theories.

Elsewhere there's no such willingness to tear up failed models and start again. Austerity isn't the way out of recession. But, once committed, there's too much political fallout from u-turns for governments to change course. There always seem to be too many distractions from the issues to tackle. I don't understand a chancelor who refers to climate change lobbyists as 'the environmental taliban' any more than I understand the resurgence of TB, whooping cough, polio, and other diseases we'd sorted out. I imagined there'd be others to take on, not old ones coming back from the dead. I don't understand how the Saville case ever got so out of hand. Over 200 victims and rising. Nope. Don't understand the world I live in.

.

Fridge roulette - raising the stakes

MP rent boys

Expenses. Non-disclosure. Transparency. Fixing things. Regaining the public's trust. All that stuff.

Now the speaker (you'd think they would all have the title 'speaker'. As opposed to 'doer') has said that for security reasons, the addresses MPs use can't be disclosed. That, John, and the fact that the latest money-making scam is renting flats to each other.

I don't know the details, but you can imagine how this might work:

The public purse (our taxes) pay the rent on London flats for the Westminster great and good to stay at.

MP A: buys flat. Mortgage (say) £900 / month.

MP B: buys similar flat. Mortgage (say) £900 / month.

MP C: buys another similar flat. Mortgage (say) £900 / month.

MP A rents his flat to MP B for £1,200 / month. MP B rents his flat to MP C for £1,200 / month.

MP C rents his flat to MP A for £1,200 / month.

MP's A, B, and C exit stage left, slapping back pockets ASDA-advert style, looking back over their shoulders, grinning.

However, the addresses are a matter of national security. Either that or the speaker is an MP a, B, or C and protecting his interests in the scam continuing.

Disturbingly backward

A Saudi Arabian film is out on general release early next year. Unusual, because the director's female. In a country where women are not allowed to work alongside men. She had to shoot scenes in hardline areas hiding in a van, directing by mobile phone and walkie talkie.

A B&B lady, christian (room at the inn and all that, missus?) turned away a gay couple, because she didn't approve of what they might get up to in the double bed they were paying her for, by the night. Her defence in court was paid for through the church. Presumably collection-plate money the people donating might have thought would be better spent. Her legal representatives argued that she would've been ok with the guys had they been in a civil partnership. Blown out of the water a bit by the fact that she never asked to see any proof that any hetero couple were in fact legally wed before taking their money.

The fridge challenge

I survived the olives. Now, at the bottom of the cheese box, there a pack of that Boursin type soft cheese. Use-by date: the 15^th. Not so bad, I was thinking, then looked again: the 15^th of September. Is this a BLISS challenge? More to the point, should I even open the packet and risk a neighbourhood-wide chemical incident and possible evacuation to a church hall for a couple of nights (what larks – t'was like the blitz) or leave it sealed and go for the immediate disposal (safe (or Mantel as it's now known after the bottle-Booker prize) and boring (Mantel again) but the most advisable course of action?  

Comforts

Familiar comforts

Long day, today. Sitting down at nine (still cooking something to eat) tired. What to turn to? What's soothing?

Robert Wyatt, and For The Ghosts Within. First things first, and that's a good start. There's pork in the fridge, hovering around the use-by date. I'm using the ageing Pole definition of 'use-by' (this seems to come to us all) which the rest of the world regards as 'at' or 'unsalvageably beyond' the use-by date. Well. Rules are made to be broken and I prefer to see these things as guidelines rather than dogma. So the pork's now in the oven in that Chinese cha sui treatment, and the five spice, soy and oyster, dash of sesame and garlic aroma is filling the kitchen. Nice.

Hungry. So there's the pork (that'll take an hour or so) for tomorrow's supper. There's chicken curry and rice for tonight. There's the immediate pangs of hunger to deal with, so I may eat BLISS' olives (use-by dated the 4^th and the 8^th – of this month) or the marmite crisps she treated me to.

Reading matter: on the computer there's Le Grove and Arseblog, daily doses of Arsenal goodness, and (sadly, the should've won the Booker Umbrella's finished) Mo Yan's The Garlic Ballads.

By the way (1): the olives are fine. I've gone for the sell-by the 8^th ones first. If they were radioactive or toxic or one of those spider's web hairy science projects things in fridges turn into eventually, naturally I'd abandon any idea of eating the four-day older tray.

By the way (2): Wyatting (verb) is to put obscure or difficult music on the pub jukebox in order to cause consternation in others. Apparently Wyatt, while honoured to be a verb as well as a proper noun, would never deliberately seek to cause discomfort or consternation in others. He said he was quite capable of doing that without trying, just by being himself.

Might watch the football later.

FIFA

FIFA BLOKE 1: what's the forecast?

FIFA BLOKE 2: teeming, sheeting, persistent rain, enough of it to waterlog the pitch.

FIFA BLOKE 1: has the stadium got a roof?

FIFA BLOKE 2: yeah, shall we close it and ensure the game can be played?

FIFA BLOKE 1: Nah, let's leave it open and see what happens.

Booker travesty

I think the panel withdrew their heads back into their shells. Once it became a two-horse race, Will Self says: willing to take risks, try something different. Hilary Mantel says: safe, safe, safe.

Also, don't bother when they publish part three. Just give her the cheque and call it a day, save all the hand-wringing and agonising.

Pussies.

Hell

Hell

Andy Hamilton has created one of the funniest series broadcast in recent times, Old Harry's Game it's called. In it he plays a reasonably relaxed Satan. One blessed with a sarcastic sense of humour. Hamilton's hell tries to match punishment (albeit the eternal torment end of the punishment spectrum) with the crime. So the popes, anti-abortion and anti-family planning as they are, live in a state of permanent eight months pregnancy.

SATAN: There's the pope-pit. See? Eight months pregnant, the lot of 'em.

NEWBOY: (Shocked) the popes are down here.

SATAN: (Equally shocked to be asked the question) naturally.

Now, the HMRC, armed with all sorts of software, computing power, and resources devoted to collecting taxes, somehow make Joe Public, armed with no time and no resources, responsible for ensuring his tax is paid to the penny. They have issued notice of proceedings to guys who, when they've asked “but, how much?” get the answer 50p. The DWP, and now the student loans are the same. They demand we supply information we can't easily find, when that information is what their brothers in laziness and ineptitude have issued in the first place.

You have to excuse me. I am a bit dim. This is my second language. This whole thing, apparently, isn't as bizarre as it seems to me as an outsider. Maybe it's one of those English peculiarities. Maybe it's how things are actually meant to be. Maybe, really, it's absolute rubbish and should not be tolerated.

So in my version of hell, the civil servants who do not serve will end up in the pit of sorting things out for yourself. After a working life of treating the public as an unpaid serf, and of depending on those that pay their wages to do their jobs for them because they can't be bothered, here they have to get their own tea, get their own files from the cabinets, and even go to a special supermarket where they have to stock their own shelves and there's only self-service checkouts and no-one carrying your shopping to your car.

In their pit are specially trained demons. American demons. Demanding American demons from New York, who will only accept the absolute tippest toppest most Rolls Royce of A1 customer service. If they get anything one degree less than that gold standard, then they do the usual things:

Nipple-snapping lobsters.

Hornets up the bottom.

Genital-eating alligators.

That sort of thing.

Austerity? What austerity?

To the MPs and all their apologists (who claim that without the pay increase people will be put off standing for Parliament): blah blah blah (that's you lot) blah austerity, cuts, belt tightening until 2018, blah blah (that's you – rubbish, aren't you, to tell the truth) payrise? 40%, £90,000 / year minimum plus benefits plus that as a pension. Cha-ching! No, you 'aint worth that. Not worth a rub.

Ossie Bin Landmine

Student loan government lackeys

Years ago I read a NME interview with Keith Moon. The journalist arrived as an accountant departed. Moon lobbed a flowerpot at the accountant's head. There's honest performance appraisal and feedback. “Get us paid in dollars. Sterling 'aint worth a rub.”

Here's some honest feedback to the civil service, generally: you 'aint worth a rub. Cut your pay by 90% and you'd still be bad value. How someone you've messed about, with days to live, hasn't gunned you all down or blown you all up heaven knows. I may start one of those training camps for terminally ill and terminally messed about people who want to suicide bomb HMRC offices. Osama Bin Liner. Disguised as cleaners. You'd have to plant the bombs in the restrooms / fag shelters / meeting rooms. Forget the phone answering desks. They're deserted 24/7.

Armstrong v Saville

The headline is 'can Jimmy Saville and Lance Armstrong charities survive?' Underneath that the article describes them both as disgraced.

No sensible, intelligent, human can consider the two under the same umbrella, under the same headline, in the same article. Step back. Analyse. Think.

Lance Armstrong survived cancer to win the most brutal, the most incomprehensibly difficult bike race seven times. He was injecting godknowswhat into himself. Frequently. In large doses. So were his opponents. In considering Armstrong, whatever your stance on doping, look at the race. A series of days riding a bike over huge distances, with massive climbs and descents along the way. Almost thirty days of this. For variety, time trials, nowhere to hide. Team time trials, with the last man home counting, nowhere to hide. A man talented, dedicated, strong enough to overcome the cancer, and yes, chemically enhanced enough to win the most brutal race in cycling. Seven times.

You don't ever win the Tour de France, that's the winner's mantra. You just don't lose touch long enough to compete on the final day. There's a truck, named in Frech as the 'mop up truck' or something similar, that picks up each day's non-survivors. Throws them in with their bikes. Too far off the pace or too damaged to be of any use from that point onwards. A properly brutal end to a brutal test.

Saville. What was his talent, exactly? Act brilliantly? Play an instrument? Write like an angel? What, exactly?

The cult of the celebrity. Why self-promoters like Moyles should be shot at dawn. What can they do? Paint? Draw? Take magnificent photos? Anything at all? Nope. Nothing whatsoever.

We have two sets of human parasites. These career celebs are one of them.

There's an insurmountable difference. Armstrong (by his own free will) injected himself; Saville injected those who couldn't resist, with himself.

One is a man (and lives). The other, well...

Another headline: Strictly beats X Factor in TV battle

First: don't assume. Your paper may distribute to retard TV suckers. I don't actually know what 'Strictly' refers to, having made a point of avoiding such wastes of time. A turd is a turd. A radioactive, toxic, splattered everywhere turd is just that. Please, at the very least, explain what the subject is. Any male referring to that show as just “Strictly” should be removed from the gene pool. By repeated hitting about the head with a heavy blunt object. I'll gladly volunteer. Can I shout “strictly what, you ----” down their ears between blows?

Second: there's 20.5 million view those shows. No wonder telly's aimed at retards.

Third: there's no third. There's your telly. Have it. Make sure you drop your children on their heads. Repeatedly. Just in case they may want something more, and be saddled with your genes, and so have to put up with the stuff beamed into your living room. Designed for adult-size nappy wearers by adult-size nappy wearers. Imagine if Cleese, Idle and Palin approached the Beeb today? “Very good, thanks guys, but we've got karaoke hairdressers from Essex, ice-skating division four footballers, and a tribute to a sex offender disc jockey to fit in. Sorry. Bye.”  

Armstrong v Saville

The headline is 'can Jimmy Saville and Lance Armstrong charities survive?' Underneath that the article describes them both as disgraced.

No sensible, intelligent, human can consider the two under the same umbrella, under the same headline, in the same article. Step back. Analyse. Think.

Lance Armstrong survived cancer to win the most brutal, the most incomprehensibly difficult bike race seven times. He was injecting godknowswhat into himself. Frequently. In large doses. So were his opponents. In considering Armstrong, whatever your stance on doping, look at the race. A series of days riding a bike over huge distances, with massive climbs and descents along the way. Almost thirty days of this. For variety, time trials, nowhere to hide. Team time trials, with the last man home counting, nowhere to hide. A man talented, dedicated, strong enough to overcome the cancer, and yes, chemically enhanced enough to win the most brutal race in cycling. Seven times.

You don't ever win the Tour de France, that's the winner's mantra. You just don't lose touch long enough to compete on the final day. There's a truck, named in Frech as the 'mop up truck' or something similar, that picks up each day's non-survivors. Throws them in with their bikes. Too fra off the pace or too damaged to be of any use from that point onwards. A properly brutal end to a brutal test.

Saville. What was his talent, exactly? Act brilliantly? Play an instrument? Write like an angel? What, exactly?

The cult of the celebrity. Why self-promoters like Moyles should be shot at dawn. What can they do? Paint? Draw? Take magnificent photos? Anything at all? Nope. Nothing whatsoever.

We have two sets of human parasites. These career celebs are one of them.

There's an insurmountable difference. Armstrong (by his own free will) injected himself; Saville injected those who couldn't resist, with himself.

One is a man (and lives). The other, well...

Another headline: Strictly beats X Factor in TV battle

First: don't assume. Your paper may distribute to retard TV suckers. I don't actually know what 'Strictly' refers to, having made a point of avoiding such wastes of time. A turd is a turd. A radioactive, toxic, splattered everywhere turd is just that. Please, at the very least, explain what the subject is. Any male referring to that show as just “Strictly” should be removed from the gene pool. By repeated hitting about the head with a heavy blunt object. I'll gladly volunteer. Can I shout “strictly what, you ----” down their ears between blows?

Second: there's 20.5 million view those shows. No wonder telly's aimed at retards.

Third: there's no third. There's your telly. Have it. Make sure you drop your children on their heads. Repeatedly. Just in case they may want something more, and be saddled with your genes, and so have to put up with the stuff beamed into your living room. Designed for adult-size nappy wearers by adult-size nappy wearers. Imagine if Cleese, Idle and Palin approached the Beeb today? “Very good, thanks guys, but we've got karaoke hairdressers from Essex, ice-skating division four footballers, and a tribute to a sex offender disc jockey to fit in. Sorry. Bye.”  

Another weekend, gone

Pedro Almodovar

The box set (thanks MM) blurb says he's: outstanding, controversial and influential. He makes brilliant films.

I'd been planning to work yesterday. I'd been looking forward to working, absurd as that must sound. I'd been looking forward to working at a sensible, even a serene pace. Concentrating on getting things right, rather than going at everything manically, struggling to get anything out of the door to programme. Instead, I did nothing of the sort. It started with the heavy rain and All About My Mother. Then there was male-form pastry: dough. Home made pizza and pasta. 50% success rate. The pizza went down a storm.

“One each? There's enough for one each.”

“That's alright. We'll share one.”

“You sure? There's enough.”

“No, one'll be fine. We can have some more later if we're still hungry.”

Five minutes later:

“Is that second pizza still on offer?”

The oversize, pasty-size, under-stuffed ravioli were somewhere between disaster and barely-edible, but I'm writing them down as 'need tweaking' because they'll be nice when I get them right and pasta made from just good flour and real free-range eggs has a certain body-as-temple appeal.

Then there was walking the dog, and drying out afterwards. Dropping FL down for the early season bonfire festivities. Watching the mighty 'Quins dismantle Biarritz in the second half.

Then we watched Talk to Her.

The themes of the films overlap: the nature of sexuality, and our need to pigeonhole when boundaries are manmade or blurred; accidents, hospitals, death, treatment. Both pose ethical and moral questions, and examine how these relate to friendship. Both look hard at the downside of overly sheltered upbringings. Both are great films.

Time Bandits

Not the film with the dwarves and John Cleese. These are real, although unseen. They steal portions of time from my personal hourglass for some dodgy purpose. They're most active at weekends, but they operate during the week, too.

Umbrella should win the Booker

Umbrella errors

To be read in one of those John Majoresque Health and Safety clipboard jobsworth voices:

Dear Mr Self,

I am reading your novel “Umbrella”. I seem to have a version that has slipped out without checking. I have noticed a number of, as our cousins across the Atlantic call them, 'bloopers'. Someone has forgotten to insert all the chapters, speechmarks, and has typeset sections in italics.

On page 176 it says “all three men divide the hole at three strokes apiece, 1 over par”. That would make the hole a par two, which does not exist!

On page 180 (still on the golf course!) “Mayhew, pushing away the brolly his cabby has taken from his bag and opened.” That should be 'caddy', unless he's got a taxi carting his clubs around for him!

Otherwise, I hope this finds you well, and good luck with the Booker Prize, even though I don't think you stand an earthly up against that Miss Mantel and her chapters, conventional punctuation, and choice of subject matter.

Yours sincerely,

Rob Ghertege (anag)

The student loans useless gits

The (yawn) student loan (predictably useless government organisation) useless gits have performed according to expectations. On a par with HMRC, the DWP, and no doubt with any others that will come along in the future.

Student loan gits: letter dated two weeks ago: send us loads of info we should have anyway, or the loan may me reduced. Or delayed. Or somesuch non-threat from a body that would have difficulty opening a can of beans for its supper.

BLISS: after a couple of days, sent the info.

Me, somewhat sceptical about their likely performance, something along the lines of: bit of an empty threat, they'll not get things right in any case.

Today, no loan, threat of eviction, no rent paid, more work now for BLISS and MM because the student loan gits are undeniably, either by accident or deliberately, utterly and completely useless.

Still raining

Me: It's absolutely (or something like that) sheeting (or something like that) down out there.

BLISS: Really? I wondered what all that rain-like noise was.

Later that same day, out in the rain, the dog was looking at me as if to say: “are you mad, lets go back to the car and get out of this.” #surroundedByFemales

Hands off Lance Armstrong

Witch hunts

The Jimmy Saville witch hunt for all the cronies and coverups, I'm all for. The Lance Armstrong one I don't see the point of. Cycling was dope-heavy at the time. Now, it's cleaning things up. Then, Armstrong seems to just have been pushing the envelope further than anyone else. Doing the same, just more or better.

Were it my sole responsibility, I would withhold my licence fee when it next becomes due. I have only one thing against the BBC, and that's funding a broadcaster that broadcasts nothing I want to watch. It feels like paying an empty cab to drive around the block a few times or buying a replica Tottenham shirt. With no intention of burning it. So, on the basis that I always hated Saville and never bought into that national treasure bull, on the basis that plenty at the corporation knew exactly what was going on and covered it up, on the basis that even though they knew they still produced and put out a tribute programme, and on the basis that I don't really want to fund an organisation that supports people like Saville, I would refuse to pay.

Takeaway heaven, part one

Fishcake, chips, and curry sauce. Open out wrapping. Plenty of salt and vinegar on the chips. Place fishcake on chips. Smother in chipshop curry sauce.

Boris...

...according to Max Hastings, is “brilliant, funny, warm and human, and can never be PM”. Hastings then goes on to a long character assassination. Apparently those are the reasons why, no matter how warm, funny and human he is, he should never be PM.

Don't warmth, humour, and humanity, in and of themselves, bar their owners from office? In my adult life we've had a succession of ice kings and a queen devoid of humour, humanity and humility.

Thatcher. Evil, bitter, twisted. A mad hag. Her and Ronnie and Reganomics have got us where we are now. It seems you shouldn't think that.

Blair. Son of Maggie. Equally mad. Convinced that he was doing God's work.

The two C's. Cameron is some sort of alien reptile shapeshifter. Clegg would sell his grannie to be made milk monitor.

Like Kiz said, there's not much to recommend either Ken or Boris, but at least with Boris you get a laugh. Politically, I just can't support him, but as a fellow member of the No-Matter-What-I'm-Wearing-I'm-Scruffy club perhaps I should.

Shocking, really shocking

A campaign promoting proper meat (from the butchers) and proper veg (from the greengrocers) is hitting the skids because people don't have the skills to cope with those ingredients and depend on highly processed, highly packaged, highly unhealthy, and highly unpalatable supermarket rubbish.

Wow, who'd've thought of that?

Genius

Operation Sapphire, cracking down on sex crimes. It's going to focus its resources on places where sex attacks happen. God bless the Met. Quiet please, genius at work.

I suppose with the death of Jimmy Saville there's one focal point of operations gone.

More shocks

Traffic police are to be more 'road focused'.

The fraud squad are going to intercept Nigerian emails.

With 40% of chief officers under some sort of cloud of suspicion, internal affairs are to have their manpower doubled.

The guns division is going to pilot a radical scheme where they shoot the bad guy. The right bad guy.

What did the Health Service do wrong...

...to get saddled with rhyming slang?

A proper Jeremy. A proper Hunt. He's opened his gob on abortion and other stuff. He's a male Sarah Palin.

Appy Birfday Kiz

Happy birfday!

Heh! You know who you are! Have a great day / evening / night / next morning / etc.

Bald men exude power...

...sexiness and all sorts of, like, powerful sexy stuff. According to...

...a bald bloke.

Somehow, this made the papers. The Guardian, no less. It did allow the photoshop department to post mock-ups of Cameron, Miliband and Cameron II (Clegg, I think his name is) baldified. So, here's to the series of articles to come:

Small men are powerful and sexy, by Adam Liddle (5' 2” in his stockinged feet).

Halitosis is powerful and sexy, by Doug Dogbreath.

Big fat men are sexy and powerful, by Lard O'Tubby (25 stones, in his stockinged feet).

Small, bald, fat men with halitosis are particularly powerful and sexy, by Lard O'Little-Smelly Slaphead.

They really are all the same

Miliband could not criticise the Government's line on education, the economy and welfare, as that would be to criticise them for finishing the job Blair's administration started. So say the political observers with more fingers on the pulse than I've got.

A glowing endorsement for my point of view that it's a waste of time going to vote when you could, say, be watching an online episode of The Comic Strip Presents, or one of the Ward v Gatti fights, or reading anything from the Booker Prize long or short lists, or catching up with a Greenaway film you haven't seen yet. Or anything likely to be much more interesting and fulfilling.

Cows arses and banjos

He couldn't hit...

...a cow's arse with a banjo.

That's football. Football for: he's having difficulty scoring. Or, for the statisticians, he's opportunity to conversion rate challenged. Actually, that's for the stattos and the politically correct.

The point is, that according to the average Daily Mail reader, all footballers are retarded and all football fans are retarded and violent. But there's a magnificent and beautiful off-the-wall madness to phrases like “couldn't bit a cow's arse with a banjo”, and football is littered with them.

Cricket is the same.

Rugby, maybe less so (with the off-the-wall stuff – proper hard men) but then again, when an after game soirée involves tipping beer over your own head and others as fast as you can buy it, you can't deny a certain twisted genius is at work there too.

Without dissecting it too much, he couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo says it all, without the slightest fragment of reason behind the cow's arse, or the banjo.

MPs and Newcastle and Wonga

Newcastle shirts. Black and white stripes. 'Wonga' sponsors logo.

MPs object.

Guys, look at your funding and do the kettle, black, pot thing. Then shut up and clear off. Please.

How to pass an interview

Soaking wet

I don't mind wet. Sooner or later, there's dry in the future. Same with cold. What I struggled with today was notepad turning to pulp, and pencil being washed off pulp, making progress impossible.

Also there was the three steps to disappointment:

Step 1: forgot jacket, no I didn't, there it is on the back seat.

Step 2: nope, it's not a jacket after all, still, it's a black fleece so it'll be warm and have pockets.

Step 3: oh, it's a sweatshirt.

Camera, wet, disto-meter, wet. Maybe the car will look clean, for once, when it dries off.

T'aint fair

According to Osborne, the welfare system is unfair.

According to common sense, neither is an administration running a country for the benefit of themselves and their mates.

New boss, meet the old boss. Old boss, new boss. Jesus, guys, you're identical.

Interview questions I'd ask candidates

Now, please, stand up and demonstrate playing a reverse sweep.

Finish this phrase: “The thriller in....”

Why is Dave Brubeck's 'Take Five' so called?

How many days is Joyces 'Ulysses' set over?

What novel is Apocalypse Now based on?

Who's giving you the last rites? The Pope? Or Yoda?

Now, please, stand up and demonstrate Thierry Henry's goal into Barthez's top corner.

Give me three rhyming slang terms for piles (not including Farmers, Chalfonts, or Nobbys).

Now, please, stand up and demonstrate driving off the downhill first tee.

Name something to eat that isn't better with added chilli sauce.

Name three Frank Zappa songs.

Now, please, stand up and demonstrate Paul Merson's goal celebration against Liverpool.