Proper free speech, or don't bother

Press regulation

Leveson thinks ultimate power should rest with the courts. He's a judge. Milliband and Clegg agree. Well, politicians make the law, run the courts and tend to have a legal background. I think you need to approach things like press regulation from first principles, not from a sprawling overlong report and the emotion of the genuine victims of phone hacking.

These are my first principles:

• We've got laws, slander, libel, phone hacking, use them.
• State interference with the press and free speech are mutually exclusive (viz the politically correct's favourite cliché: “you can't say that” (I just did)).
• The best reads, like Private Eye, come with plenty of humour, loads of mischief and a dash of spite. They're always up in front of the beaks defending themselves against some pompous humourless oaf or other,
• There are genuine victims of phone hacking, and there are mildly inconvenienced celebs having a right moan.
• There should be liberty, and non-interference. Free speech means exactly that ( and not some watered-down, ends-serving version), and we deeply need some robust 'sticks and stones' thinking.
• Whatever party they are in (at the moment) politicians are among the best-paid, best-off people in society. As such, they are bound to be small 'c' conservatives because they want to preserve the status quo under which they're doing rather well, and hence the reluctance, even if something is patently broken beyond repair and not working, to scrap it and start again.

The radio playlist theory applies...

The radio playlist theory

Radio playlists are based on the charts, and on past success in the charts. Chart success depends on radio plays (among other things). A closed loop, stagnation. People tend to buy what they hear on the radio. A bad feedback loop. Radio depends on charts, charts depend on radio, so nothing changes. The shops discount chart music, people buy what's discounted, and the inertia is huge.

With the internet, because the stagnant cycle is easier to break out of now. There's all those radio stations, there's access to a huge range of music, the charts are becoming increasingly irrelevant (unless you're a big Kylie or Madonna fan, or otherwise unevolved).

This philosophy works in many fields. The chicken tikka massala effect. What's the most popular? What shall I have? What's the most popular? I'll have what he's having. The spiral takes hold. Indian restaurants start referring to the dish simply as CTM.

Waterstones discount bulk best selling paperbacks, they're more likely to sell, because they're discounted, and remain on the best seller list, and attract the discount.

Stale, stagnant, and boring.

Much beloved by the conservatives, big and small 'C's.

Deadly Danish Blue, Lethal Limberger

Cheese kills

If you're still reeling from the news that, contrary to the adverts and hoardings, Guinness isn't good for you and neither are cigarettes (Melvins), then you'd better look away now. If you're eagerly awaiting the news that bacon, actually, is saturated in 'good' fat, just like rock 'n' chips and kebabs have health benefits directly proportionate to the lateness of the hour and the amount of lager they soak up, then this isn't the news you've been waiting for.

The new killer is cheese.

Yes. Obviously. Were a dirty great lump fall from a very tall building and land on your head, etc. Nope, this is a salt and fat thing. The guardian even had an online interactive cheese quiz. Horizontal axis: salt. Vertical axis: fat. Scattered around are wedges of cheese. The winner (top in both salt and fat) is Co-op Roqufort. Well. They are good with food. If you crave fat then Cathedral City mature cheddar is what you need. Mature Edam and Sainsbury's feta win the salt rankings.

See? No matter what you do, it's never enough. There you are, home from a hard day's graft. No alcohol (here be monsters) and no Henrys (Wragg, betting shop slang). No red meat (heart) no white meat (hormones). Just a nice cheese toasty. Not so fast. That's spoilt now too.

When the doctors and health gestapo finally have their way we'll all be coming home to a one-egg (white only) omlette served on a bed of steamed boredom and accompanied by a small portion of losing the will to live.

Bondi Beach (and other beaches) are closed because ocean warming and high humidity have caused a red algae explosion, choking the waters, killing fish and causing skin problems for anyone who come into contact with it. The geniuses running our little gaff have decided that nuclear energy is the way forward, despite disposal still comprising bunging waste in a deep hole, chucking in mass concrete and keeping everything crossed. The genius lady interviewed said wind and solar power were all well and good but there's not always sun and not always wind. Usually, if there's none of one there's the other? We're all inches from drowning / running out of fresh water / starving / freak storming to death, and even while we're busy killing the planet that sustains us, these happy chappies can't wait to cross another food item off the 'no-guilt' list. Thanks buddy. Next time, keep it to yourself, and pass the cheddar.

Phone ear

After another day on the mobile phone (at least that's how it seems), arousing Basil Fawlty feelings:

“Yes, I was hanging the moose's head. But you rang and I answered. So, yes I was hanging the moose's head, and no, now I'm not hanging the moose's head, because I'm answering the phone to you, asking whether I'm hanging the moose's head...”

Also, the feeling that there's a golfball sized tumour in my ear, glowing red hot. Careless of my health (not one person today asked me how I was doing at cheese anonymous or warned me of the dangers of Wensleydale and Gorgonzola) no-one likes being on speakerphone, either. “Am I on speakerphone?” they ask “I can hear myself in the background.”

Double-win, then. Easing the overheating ear and providing an incentive to get to the point and keep it brief.

What luck

What a stroke of luck

A great start to the day. Unbelievable, really. By email at ten past eleven yesterday, Mr Bari Gandoki informed me that he's the manager, auditing and account department, at Coris Bank International Burkina Faso, and, he needs my assistant (sic) because he has the opportunity of transferring $11 million into my bank account. All I have to do is reply for more details, if I'm interested. How's that for a stroke of luck. $11,000,000 is £6,868,400.00. That's not to be sniffed at. Mr Gandoki, who I've never met or heard from before today, has chosen me out of everyone to receive the money. Into my bank account. I imagine all he needs is the account details, numbers, names, pin codes, that sort of thing and by this afternoon I'll be almost seven very large better off.

It is unbelievable, really unbelievable. What a poor attempt. You must do better Mr Gandoki (I doubt that's your real name) if you want to fool anyone. Mr Bandoki with the inheritance from a distant relative (try Mr Bandoski, that might sound more feasible) and Mr Fandoki with the chance to buy shares he had to dispose of quickly were (marginally) more believable.

Amazon HP Lovecraft collections

Got another email (05:03, does no-one email during sensible hours?) from Amazon. This was offering ebooks for my Kindle. There's pictures of the book covers on the left, price and learn more / order buttons to the right. From the top:

HP Lovecraft, the complete collection [Kindle edition] at £1.92 (a bargain).

The Complete Works of HP Lovecraft [Kindle edition] at £0.77 (at £1.15 less than the bargain above, even more of a bargain, and it raises the obvious question, who would buy...etc).

Necronomicon: The Best Weird Fiction of HP Lovecraft (GOLLANCZ S.F.) [kindle edition] at £10.99 (how much?).

The definitive Lovecraft, 67 Tale of Horror in one Volume (Halcyon Classics) [kindle edition] at £0.77 (there's a price comparison theme here, and the 77p is competitive, but the billing is 67 tales, not the complete works, second place award to Halcyon).

The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack: 40 modern and classic Lovecraftian stories [kindle edition]. At 49p, were firmly in 'what's to lose' territory now.

Now, despite the email subject header, we leave Lovecraft for others.

The complete works of Edgar Allan Poe (illustrated) at £1.31. Less than the (unillustrated) complete Lovecraft at £1.92. More than the 77p Lovecrafts, but, at under the price of a Sunday paper, great value, I think.

The complete works of Edgar Allan Poe (no, wait, honestly) [with active TOC], at £1.02. Took a while to work it out. TOC is Table of Contents. So, lose the illustrations, gain the active TOC, save 29p...a chin scratcher this one.

Complete Jules Verne (two quid) and William Hope Hodgson (75p) are next.

Then there's a Lovecraft omnibus with some of the complete works at £2.99, followed by other non-starters, like a single Lovecraft (The Call of Cthulhu) at 77p, and £4.64, and £7.20 (duh?).

Finally Bram Stoker weighs in with his complete works at £1.99. No bargain as you can get Dracula from project Gutenburg for free, and I'm not sure there's much more to the Stoker opus (I'm ready to stand corrected).

Thanks Amazon. Love the random pricing as much as the Kindle and the wi-fi delivery service.

Formula 1's loss, my gain

Carlos Who?

Me knuckles. Them's white and me nerves they's in tatters. The upside is that BLISS (my harshest driving critic (apart from those people in front, behind, and coming the other way doing that funny thing with their thumb and middle finger)) might cut me a bit of slack. For a little while, at least.

We went to the hospital for an appointment. Which hospital? First, the wrong hospital. Arrived: five minutes before the appointment time. Left the wrong hospital and set off for the right hospital.

The right hospital was fifteen to twenty minutes away, and we just about got there in time for the appointment. Hence the white knuckles, grey hair, shortness of breath and shredded composure.

We proved a number of things along the way:

1. BLISS can handle a car, at speed. Any speed you like.

2. She can swear, without too much potty-mouth but with splendid inventiveness.

3. She does not like people who drive slowly.

4. Neither does she like people who drive Audis, BMWs, Fords or VWs. Of any gender, age, whatever.

5. She relies on sheer road presence, without recourse to the horn or flashing the main beams at people.

6. By hook or by crook, she gets to appointments on time.

7. For someone without a huge stride, she can get a right wiggle on when she wants to. I was almost jogging to keep up.

8. In areas with an ageing population, there's a high proportion of people driving very slowly.

9. Finally a scientific theory: the likelihood of you encountering a slow moving and obstructive drive is directly proportional to how much of a rush you're in.

The cure

My first and only (phobic) reaction to entering a hospital (or any medical establishment, including the dentists, chemists, and gatherings of old folk) is “how soon can I get out of here”. Even before going through the doors I'm thinking only of escape. However, I was so flustered that although I was probably in the usual tiz, it seemed like absolute relaxation compared to getting there, and I almost forgot to be in a bad mood.

The cure to the cure

Loud, boring old dude. Loud, double boring old dear in the waiting room. Music player moaning about low battery level. Ahhh! Back to normal. The “get me the hell out of here” panic I'm used to in waiting rooms.

Clean and dirty dirt

Clean and dirty dirt

I had a work and football mate, who made a strict distinction. “There's clean dirt, and there's dirty dirt”. Now, I know the first is an oxymoron, and there seems no end of redundancy in the second. But he was right, absolutely spot on. Asbestos does not go to landfill with the shrinkwrap and crisp bags. Clinical waste goes into those special clinical waste incineration only containers. Data, too. I've been on a few runs taking away shredded documents that someone might just think worthwhile to do a de-shred jigsaw exercise on, and returning with a certificate of assured total destruction.

Examples. Clean dirt lives in the grate after an open fire, and is what you jet wash from the car or patio when you can be bothered with the faffing about. Dirty dirt is harder to define, and is dirty for various reasons:

Persistence. When you move kitchen appliances there's that layer of grease binding the normal dust, debris and pet hair into a sticky mass that, when you get it on your skin, isn't going away with soap and water, acid or anything less than amputation.

Pong. Rod blocked drains. Just once. Even if it doesn't take very long. That gets into your skin and the smell lingers. Forever. After that long, hot bath in 50% water, 25% Dettol and 25% bleach, continued scrubbing with sponge, loofah, flannel, soft brush, stiff brush, nail brush and wire brush, you tentatively raise the back of one hand to your nose. No. How can this be? Still there. Hence the song, Shine Up Your Buttons (known as My Father's a Lavatory Cleaner): “Some say that he died of a fever, some say that he died of a fit, but I know what my old man died of, he died of the smell of the...”.

Provenance. Rule of thumb. If it comes from a living thing and isn't the sweat of someone you love dearly, it's dirty dirt.

The high road and the low road

That reminded me of a fire in a small flat, belonging to an old lady who was suffering with dementia. We didn't know that she wasn't in there, so were assuming the worst. Luckily she'd gone out. The cavalry had yet to arrive so there were two of us, and despite the rulebook saying otherwise, we did what anyone would do and split up. You can't see anything in thick black smoke. Forget the films and TV series giving false impressions. You have a torch and an air gauge on your breathing set, and you shine the torch onto the gauge at point blank range right in front of your visor and if you're lucky you can make out how much air you have left. Two taps on the shoulder and some hand signals, and he went right (bedroom and bathroom as it turned out) and I went left with the hosereel (it was hotter and noisier that way, kitchen and sitting room).

Heat goes upwards and while you can crawl, stand and your ears start to crisp up and that hurts, so we were both crawling.

I checked the sitting room and the kitchen, empty. Checked again more slowly, still crawling, opened some windows and put out the fire in the kitchen.

Slowly the smoke cleared and things became visible. The old lady was a smoker and the sitting room and kitchen were awash with empty cigarette packets and fagash, takeaway empties and drained cans of stout. I was covered in ash and leftover food, some fag packets were stuck to my tunic and leggings. This was comparatively clean dirt, though, because my partner had gone right to the bedroom via the overflowing (for a long, long time overflowing) blocked toilet, and then into the toilet itself. Breathing clean, medical-quality air, there's no smell-clue as to what you're crawling through. I'd been lucky. He was properly smothered in rank dirty dirt. Naturally, while insisting that we were only concerned for his health and wellbeing, while actually only concerned for ourselves, we made sure he went off in an ambulance for hospital decontamination. Well, you don't want that dirty dirt next to you all the way back to the station, do you?

If you're so clever, Jones Minor, you take the lesson...

OK, if you're so clever

The last desperate threat of the bad teacher. “OK, Jones, why don't you come up here and take the lesson?”. Hopefully, from the bad teacher's point of view, met with a mumbled “I'd rather not, sir / miss” by the embarrassed pupil. Ever been on the end of one of those? I never had the nerve to take them up on the offer.

The missing point is that they should be inspiring so much wonder and awe, they should have their audience right where they want them, they should be exuding so much contagious enthusiasm, that there'd never be any need for the “OK, up you come” nuclear deterrent.

I had an English teacher given such great material: Shakespeare, Dickens, the modern poets, Oscar Wilde. Somehow (she had a rare talent) she managed to remove every last ounce of enjoyment and interest and produced a dry, desiccated, unpalatable and indigestible product that was designed so that only the most dedicated and diligent pupils would succeed. K and MM have had a history teacher who transformed their A-level curriculum (based on what should be a fascinating period of recent history) into an exercise in distributing telephone directory think bundles of photocopied notes that the fastest speedreader would not have time to get through if they did nothing else.

After the sad 0-0 with a struggling Villa, the press had the temerity to mention the “don't know what you're doing” chants directed at Wenger. He saw this the way a bad teacher would see the passing of notes along the back row and went for the stock response: “why don't you manage the team and I'll chant from the stands”. Desperate, poor, arrogant. Typical of the club's management at the moment.

The fact is that Wenger's never been a master tactician. Look at the record. Losing? Bring on more attacking players. Holding on? Bring on more defenders. The KISS principle applied in spades. Cost us the chance of getting back into the cup final we lost 2-1 to Liverpool. He's a great operator in the transfer market, if the financial analysis is the measure of success. He was ahead of the pack with training techniques, diet, the accumulation of small things that make a difference in elite sport, but being the first doesn't mean staying ahead, and he's been caught up with. When your players are eating boiled chicken and broccoli and opponents are on kebabs and burgers, the advantage only lasts until they join you at the healthy food table.

The England cricket team lost the first test match in India. I don't imagine, having struggled against spin, that they went into the nets to face endless seam bowling?

“Kevin, it's left arm spin you've problems with.”

“Leave me alone Graham, this is what I'm good at so that's what I'm going to face.”

Work on weaknesses has huge rewards, work on honing strengths has that diminishing returns problem. They just won the second test by ten wickets. Management and players addressed issues and turned things around.

Year after year, season after season we have one-footed players, we've had strikers who can't head the ball and won't work on it and improve. We repeatedly have a squad effectively reduced in numbers by the inclusion of perma-crocks (Diably and Ro-sicky at the moment) and players yet to earn the tag 'robust' (Gibbs for one). Our manager has a degree in economics and that suits a board with both eyes constantly on the bottom line. They need some lessons in history (and learning from it), geography (finding the way to the safe and the chequebook), and in how not to treat the club's fans with total disrespect, and the superb away fans arrogant disregard. “I've been doing this a long time” does not mean you've been doing it well, or even adequately.

A good breakfast

The cafe

Is very small. Few tables, crowded into the little space there is. Raining and cold outside, there was steam on the windows and just a handful of Saturday morning punters in for a late breakfast. The tables had blue check plastic tablecloths, red pillar box cruets, squeezy plastic red and brown sauce bottles, and the chairs were bit of a random mix. There were black and white London landmark photos on the walls and one of Wrighty and Thierry at Highbury. Just to prove the owner's heart is in the right place. I have, somewhere where you'd never imagine it, nipped starving into a chippie with a signed photo of Phil Tuffnel endorsing their grub. That gave me great confidence. I imagine Tuffers to be a good judge of a chippie.

The food was fine. A good cafe barometer is the standard and presentation of a vegetarian breakfast, and the presence or absence of large plates three quarters covered in a single-bean deep layer of baked beans.

Nice way to start the day.

The buchers

Gordon Ramsey's favourite sausages, and some chicken wings. Quick chat about the weather, and the popularity of the sausages (there were only three left). Real, large wings. Complete wings, with tips for making stock. I've heard complaints about them chopping and cutting all sorts of meat on the same block. Yeah, guys. Just because the supermarket does it all behind the scenes and presents sterile product clingfilmed into polystyrene trays, does anyone believe they do anything different? I bet sales of Imodium and Gaviscon and days lost to stomach bugs would fall drastically were people to go back to shopping at real buchers.

The grocers

I was short on cash after breakfast, the cricket club AGM last night and the buchers, and had to negotiate the bag down by one head of broccoli and four vine tomatoes.

The Arsenal

Again fantastic news at the bank. Rubbish on the pitch. Enough's enough. Look at the boss. We've got the Michelin Man in charge.

What time is it?

Body clock ticking to a different beat

My body clock is now set to India: test match time. So well that I sat bolt upright at 03:45, plugged in the laptop, hit Sky Go and got the news that Cook lost the toss again and India had elected to bat.

I did get some kip between half four and half five, but only because I needed some rest before heading over to Ashford for first light.

Sometimes, when questioning your own sanity (an exercise worth undertaking regularly) there's comfort to be had in knowing that although difficult to defend in terms of having all your cups in the cupboard, there's others with similar gaps in their crockery stock...

...what else would you do with your weekend?

BLISS has a similarly afflicted workmate, who described his Saturday:

Got up, breakfast, watched the cricket, watched the lunchtime North London derby. Went down the pob for the rugby. Came back home with mates (about fifteen of them). Watched more football, cooked huge chilli, watched some dating show with mates.

The blip of the dating show was explained away. With the sound off, it forms the basis of a drinking game. Now, there's no doubting his sports nut status, but there is the question of commitment in not taking in the boxing last thing on Saturday.

Not for S***s fans

An old Tommy Cooper (look him up on You Tube – genius, absolutely hilarious) joke:

I walked into a bar.

Ouch!

It was an iron bar.

Just came to mind in the lead-up to the Lazio game, can't think why.

What is it about trains...

That brings out the worst in people. Travelling back from London Bridge, I changed and got onto a moderately crowded train. The first empty seat had a bloke's bag on it, so I asked him to move it, politely. I also offered to put his back on the overhead shelf, as I was standing, to save him the trouble.

I didn't want to ask nicely. I wanted to say “this is a crowded train, unless you've bought a ticket for your bag, it don't get a seat now shift it you selfish...” or something along those lines. He didn't take it well and went all teenage and huffy and slammed the bag on his lap and made sure he took up his seat and part of mine. After a few minutes he said:

“Excuse me, can you not lean on me, please.”

Not in such a good mood by now, I said:

“I don't want to lean on you. There's the line between you seat and my seat. Stay your side, and there'll be no leaning. Insist on taking up part of mine and there'll be leaning.”

After a few minutes he moved off elsewhere. Last seen on the middle of three seats, crushed between two right bruisers.

Wet

Wet, wet, wet

What's almost inevitable after the wettest summer ever? Sustained heavy rainfall in November. With the water tables already high, there's more people going to be flooded.

In the past two years I've worked on my first water-damage recovery projects. The rule of thumb is that an inch of saturated masonry takes a month to dry. Nine inch wall, nine months to dry. Actually, nine dry months to dry. Both were firefighting water damage, so drying was only hampered by previously unexposed unweathered walls soaking up rainfall, and the plumbing faults unoccupied, unheated buildings are prone to.

The biggest shame is that inherent in the problem is that unless there are massive works undertaken between flood events, the worst hit places are always the worst hit. The same folks suffering the same fate.

Gove's Bible

Tim Nice But Dim strikes again – I missed this first time around. Thanks Dave.

The priceless bit isn't spending £375,000 sending Bibles to schools described as awash with Bibles already. It's Tim writing a forward. Yep. The gospel according to St Michael.

The t-shirt and shoes question

The t-shirt and shoes philosophy

The idea isn't mine. It was first proposed by a guy I was working with. At an in principle stage, anyway. We sort of developed it from there together. Until recently, I'd forgotten all about it. Memorable, it isn't. Sensible? It works for me. It explained some unspecific begrudging feelings of dissatisfaction. Those vague and nagging feelings you can't actually pin down sometimes.

This is it:

Imagine (see? a thought experiment already – weren't expecting that, were you?) that in the near future the clothes and footwear manufacturers and retailers all suddenly disappeared. It's okay. No insider knowledge of a sudden crash affecting Primark and Clarkes. Just an experiment, no more than that.

So, there we are in the future. No shops selling clothes, and none selling shoes, either.

Where do the problems lie? Assume that there's raw materials available, but you have to be self-reliant.

Well, we decided as follows:

Clothes. Take as an example a t-shirt. You could take off the one you're wearing, lay it on some folded over material and draw around the edges. Cut out and there's two pieces of cloth: t-shirt (front) and t-shirt (back). Sew (crudely) or in my case staple or glue. Fip it the right side out (didn't we say that at the beginning, oh well, start again) and there you go. T-shirt. Job done.

Shoes. Where to start? How do you shape, or cut, or do whatever it is to leather, then attach that to the soles? How long would it take to make a pair of decent shoes, from scratch, knowing nothing.

The conclusion: bit of a long-winded thought process, I know, but when someone wants £45 for a t-shirt and you think “hold on a minute”; and when someone wants £45 for a pair of shoes and you think “okay, I can see that”; that's why. That's our theory why, in any case.

That's why, when you can make decent pizza and pasta at home, £5 - £7 a pop is fine, and £11 and £12 upwards gives you that unspecific dissatisfaction (unless it's a super-pizza or uber-pasta). That's why a decent curry and rice at a decent price is all well and good, why a good curry for a little more is also okay, and why a high-cost curry had better provide a high differential in quality over the decent.

That's why, for all the starched white table wear and heavy plates and fine glasses, when a curry house charges too much for sweet and mild and non-descript rubbish you walk out scratching your head. At the points where you are feeling the donkey ears start to emerge.

The t-shirt and shoes theory.

That feeling you get when you see and hear the Prime Minister or the Pope? Overpriced t-shirt side of the equation. Centuries of politics and religion, and still most of the world population is starving, stoning each other to death, or working for 2p a month, while they ride around wearing five grand suits and hugely expensive silly hats, encouraging the stonings for drawing cartoons or selling the nation's assets to their mates for a laugh and a few bob in director's fees, or whatever it is they do. Fire brigade? Well, they put fires out (shoes). The police? We're on what must the twentieth or thirtieth stop crime initiative of my lifetime without anything changing (t-shirt).

Congratulations K

Has it come to this, one

Is having your head hoovered normal?

Haircut night last night. The girls find it amusing that I can sit there and let them get on with it. The hardest part was not repeatedly facing the wrong way (towards the computer and Sky Go coverage of West Ham v Stoke).

Clippered, scissored, newly shorn, I was trying to hear the match over the noise of the hoover as BLISS got the fur off the floor.

“When you move it always drops all over the place” she said, hoovering my trousers, then my back and chest and finally my head. This isn't normal, is it? It isn't dignified having your head hoovered.

Not when the other half of the double-act is snapping away with her phone camera.

Has it come to this, two

A cunning plan. We'll split up. Never works in horror films, that idea. The beginning of a right sticky end, usually. So we split up. They went one way to save some minutes collecting tickets. “Here, take this”. I was handed Non-LPL's phone. In case of emergency. I went outside to watch and wait.

Soon, I realised two things.

Outside a large London venue, where large numbers of people are meeting up, they tend to wait outside the main entrance, and there's a lot of mobile phone traffic.

I had no idea what the ringtone on the emergency phone in my pocket sounded like.

Nice one Kiz

A lot of hard work rewarded with a first class Bsc(Hons) and a good graduate job and well done. Congratulations.

When things hang together, but only just, when you arrive by the skin of your teeth, when rat poo turns to gold dust, when all's well that ends well; that's when you have great memories and fantastic days to look back on, and that's when in years to come there's stories and anecdotes to tell.

You can't belly up to the bar and hold an audience with “I got there in good time and it all went smoothly” can you?

Now, what do you need to graduate?

A degree? Check. A presentation ceremony? Check. Not much else to it, is there? Oh, yeah. A gown and a silly hat (not as silly as the Pope's, marginally less silly than a ten gallon but probably less practical, sillier than a baseball hat (but not when you're driving a car)). Ordered and paid for, but the gown people didn't process the order properly, so there wasn't a Batman cape and a hat.

Keep calm, and graduate.

No. No. Hell NO!

Some stuff that makes me cringe

“Didn't you get my text / email?”

Er...probably. Possibly I thought “it's from that boring / moaning / needy / whining / miserable git”, and therefore didn't open it, or opened it and saw it's just the usual rubbish and ignored it. Maybe I got it and opened it and read it and have since forgot about it. I get about sixty of the things a day, not including the ones pretending to be from Barclays and the Halifax and Lloyds and other banks where I don't have an account to give details of to a Nigerian fraudster, not including the ones that start “Hello, my friend, you stand to inherit a fortune...” from a Nigerian fraudster, and not including the ones from Amazon, Machine Mart, Sports Direct or Ikea. Of those sixty, just perhaps yours wasn't that urgent or memorable. Are you the bard of text? The James Joyce of email? Or, actually are you more of an Archer? Do you get there and their mixed up? Do you mangle the English language? Perhaps I read your email and since that trauma have been in a self-induced amnesia trying to forget?

“Can you just fill in these forms?”

Can I force-feed you your own forms until you die, you dreary waste of space?

“Did you come up the 365?”

Oh God. Here we go. This is what I did. We now have these SatNav things. I'm not particularly proud of this, but I put in your postcode, and zoned out. I don't know if I've been via Ashford, the A91/2, or the planet Zog. I've zoned out to the cd or the radio and now I'm here and alive again. Yes, driving an automatic is fine. Yes, I do feel in control of the car. Funny how blokes who have to have the latest Carlos Fandango drill (no, I'm not spinning a handle to drill a hole in the wall, I've got the Makita Hokey Cokey 2000 with the built in laser, plumb-level and automatic chuck-selection); the biggest and best barbecue (gas bottle, check; six rings, check; motorised trolley, check; just the kitchen cooker, but outside, check) and a huge widescreen telly (with voice-activated channel change and self-destruct facility) don't think an automatic constitutes 'proper driving'. Horse and cart enthusiasts probably said the same thing. Well, I properly get in at one end and properly get out at the other, so what's not proper? The sooner they introduce cars that drive themselves while you watch the test match, read a book or do the crossword the better. I might even feel less tired all the time if I could sleep in transit.

“Where are you?”

Bit like the above. In the driver's seat, facing forwards. Third carriage from the back, next to a little runt with terminal BO who wants his seat and a fair portion of mine. If you want an ETA, ask for one. Next town along tells you nothing if the traffic is at a standstill and it's going to be hours.

“Did you see...”

No. I. Didn't. I studiously avoided. Please. Don't. Tell. Me. About. The telly.

“...you'd really enjoy (insert name of mindless rubbish programme here).”

Nope. I'd really enjoy beating you to death with your severed arm, or giving you a rolled-up Radio Times enema. I'd really enjoy clubbing you senseless with Ant and Dec before burning them at the stake in the Celeb Executions Season Finale Joan of Arc Challenge. So they could know how she felt, as the flames rose, to her Roman nose, and her Walkman started to melt.

Question time hip hop

If only...

...the party leaders listened to Gangsa Rap. Then question time would really be lively, and worth a listen.

Marcus Brigstock pointed out that the recently published Cameron's favourite music list was made up by his PR people. No-one likes The Smiths and gary barlow. The Smiths are a genius band, with Marr's unique, sweet guitar sound, Morrissey's mournful vocals and clever lyrics. gary barlow is for the terminally bland. For people who want to like music but actually don't.

I don't think, if all however many of them appeared one by one on Desert Island Discs, any would have any hardcore hip hop on their lists. Shame...

“Yo, Cameron, ya mutha f***a, you run things lika baitch”

“Shudaf**kup, befo I pop a cap in yo ass”

“Nigga, you'd aim fo me an' hit one o'yo'own dudes, mutha”

“At least ma' gun's gotta clip, yo' firin' blanks, mutha”

“Man, yo' gotta nerve. Look at yo' homeys. Baitches, mo like, dude, they some ugly muthaf***ers”

“Least I don't got da speech defect, ya lispin' baitch”

Bang, bang, bang...

After the civilian police chief vote...

...it don't look like it's worth wearing one of these to hang about outside the polling station...

5-2, we only win 5-2...only win 5-2, only win 5-2

Early start

It's been bit of a long day. I've been expecting to doze off for hours. Started at about three this morning. I woke up and knew that if I went back to sleep I'd miss the cricket, or some of it, so I watched the rest of the first half of Chinatown. Why have I not seen this before? Films don't come more highly recommended, and it's a great film.

The Sky coverage started at 03:55, and it wasn't a great day. There was resistance from Cook, and from Prior, spirit from the tail, and not much else. Compton, Trott and nightwatchman Anderson had already gone. KP was independently described as 'frenetic' by just about every pundit with a microphone and a pulse. He looked unable to settle and went for seventeen. Bell played a stupid shot, Cook edged to slip, Patel got a stinker of a decision (after getting the benefit of an equally bad decision). Prior made 48 marshalling the tail.

India imposed the follow on and Cook and Compton saw things through to the close of play, finishing on 111 for 0.

Which reminds me: I've been meaning to Google “why is 111 'Nelson' and unlucky” for ages.

Apparently, 'Nelson' as in one eye, one arm, one leg. Should be 112, for there remained two legs. The unlucky thing is a purely cricket thing.

So that was the cricket. Moving on. Sausages, tomatoes and scrambled egg. Walk the dog. Buy the veg. Then the North London derby.

The buzz from beating S***s probably accounts for the sleeplessness. One nil down, Adebayor melt down, down to ten men, down and out by half time, fans streaming down the stairs, down the road, down the tube and their club sliding down the table. Wilshire must be great to play with and awful to play against. Apart from the ability at the game, he don't stop gobbing off. Great. He almost managed to spark a brawl after the tackle that led to the sending off, but it wouldn't quite ignite.

It went 1-1, 2-1, 3-1 before half time.

They gave it a go in the second half. 4-1, 4-2, then 5-2, same as last year. We only win 5-2. Against that lot at home, anyway.

I missed the post-game interviews, because England v Australia at Twickenham had kicked off by then. After that the rest of the results, apart from Liverpoo and Citch winning were well funny. The Chavs lost to West Brom. Reading beat Everton. Best of all Norwich beat the Madscum. Swansea beat Newcastle, and QPR lost to Southampton, sending the perma-rage Mr Punch into apoplexy.

Then Movembered MM arrived, ate, and disappeared for a kip.

The second half of Chinatown didn't disappoint. What a superb film.

Now the quandary is whether to stay up for the Froch Mack fight or tape it for tomorrow. I think it starts soon so the decision may be out of my hands, it may become one of those 'rude not to' things.

There's been a couple of hours catching up with work stuff in there too, and some seriously strong coffee.

Cutthroat prices

A cutthroat business

I hate shaving. It takes too long. You can't read while you're doing it (not with a wet shave, anyway). The results are increasingly disappointing. Not great immediately and stubbly by midday. I've taken to using a battery shaver. The upside is I can shave and drive, getting somewhere while getting rid of the growth. The downside is even poorer results than with wet shaving.

The all-singing, buzzing, multiple bladed hi-tech razor has now run out of replacement blades, and they're painfully expensive (they have security tags in supermarkets with shoplifting problems), and there's a bewildering array to chose from. So I thought I might try a new challenge. Gillette, according to Gillette, is the best a man can get. A bit more research revealed that, actually, a cutthroat razor gives the best, closest, shave. After a little practise, and, I imagine, no little loss of blood. Next stop, Amazon.

A few mouse clicks later, and the nice surprise is that you can get a cutthroat razor for about a tenner. They come with a hundred replacement blades, the box of blades alone is just under a fiver. On a per-shave basis, that's great value. Worth a go, even if it takes a long time to shave and is a weekend only luxury.

Then the waters became muddy. How can a shaving implement you can get for a tenner cost upwards of £150? Gold plated? Made of some rare metal that hones to a supersharp edge? So finely balanced and light that a barber can shave a regiment without fatigue?

Nope.

Brand name badging up an identical bit of kit and a presentation box?

That'll be the difference.

The additional £140 gets you a box. A pot of shaving soap. A shaving brush (real badger hair, because badger hair is best). A little bag to keep the razor in, either waterproof (risking rust to the razor) or not (which will rot). There's the proper executive version, too, and for closer to £200 you get a shaving mug (whatever purpose that serves – a Gazidis as items with no obvious purpose are called) and a little stand to stand the razor in when it's not in use.

I think the £10 version looks perfectly adequate and fit for purpose.

Chinatown

My (already erratic) sleep patterns are being further disrupted by the time difference and the test match starting at 03:45 (our time, they're not experimenting with cruel and unusual kick off times in India) necessitating waking up to listen to Test Match Special from four in the morning. So I woke after falling asleep early, before the cricket, and watched the first half of Chinatown. I've been meaning to get around to watching this for ages, and so far it's been a brilliant film. Looking forward to the second half.

Who ate all the pies?

Big heh at Fatty Prescott failing to be elected as the two Jags police commissioner for Humberside. He spouted evil filth during the Fire Brigade strike and now wants to ruin a police force. Bye.

Boring Boring Corporation

EU order us to allow migrants to take our jobs...

...is a joke headline, even the Sport or Star would shy away from rubbish like that, wouldn't they? Alf Garnet becomes headline writer in a satirical comedy or something?

Nope.

Daily Mail, front page, today.


You're all the same, run along now

There's a test match. India are going very well. Always very strong at home, India. There's the north London derby. We've got more episodes of The Walking Dead and The Sopranos to watch. The autumn rugby internationals continue over Friday evening to Sunday afternoon.

Oh, and it's voting day. For top plod. I think. On the day a labour MP gets done for claiming £50,000 expenses. False expenses. Fifty. Large. Record low turnout predicted. That'll probably be the case. Pity Tone's advisers didn't predict a hostile reception and stop him popping into a university expecting the students to welcome him warmly and hang on every word.

Post-Olympics feel-good trickledown to grass roots? Myth. Local indoor cricket. A few years ago we had three divisions and teams played twelve games each season, across three sports halls.

Prices have increased. There's houses on what was one sports hall. Another can't afford to re-lamp light fittings and is too dark to see the ball safely. Now? Two divisions. Eight games and teams play each other twice. Teams and players falling by the wayside and a 'same old faces' feeling. Per player per game costs escalating.

Back to turnout. As low as 5% to 7% before postal votes are counted. That's a big meh to the political classes from over 90% of the population.


How much?

The BBC are handing the already wealthy McAlpine £185,000. One hundred and eighty five large. An awful lot of license fees. Good job boys. You've given us drivel over the years, radio music playlists that have stifled creativity and experimentation. You've given us creeps and self-promoting egoists from Saville through to Moyles. Dave Lee-Travers has just been arrested.

Test Match Special. One thing you do well. Some of the six thirty radio four comedy programmes. Apart from those? Kack. A big steaming pile of reality-AntandDec-Strictly-jungle-x-factor rubbish.

Should Denis Potter or the Pythons come along today, brand new, we all know they'd be put in the 'too edgy' wastepaper basket while they phone their mates Bruce and Ant and Graeme and book them in for some highly paid, dull, dreary, boring dross.

Contrast The Walking Dead. Not HBO (for once), an American production, a post-zombie apocalypse series based on a graphic novel. Contrast Hit and Miss, transgender hired killer, set here, filmed here, American produced. How can such a safety-first risk-adverse (at least artistically) organisation get in so much trouble?

You're gonna make me do what?

Compulsory voting?

The mild mannered, reasoned approach: I'm against that. Strongly against that.

The actual response: if forced to vote, I would spoil my ballot paper. The usual method is putting x's against every option. My preferred method would be to:

Scrawl obscenities all over the ballot paper, wipe my arse with it, screw it up and force it into the ballot box, anoint the cubicle with whatever animal excreta I can smuggle in there, and run out shouting challenges to all civil liberties legislation that forces me to vote while I could be doing something so much better (there are works of genius I have yet to read / see / hear, or I could be washing my hair, either is more productive than voting for politicians in a world where nothing has improved since the stone age and people are still starving / stoning each other to death / watching the great and the good nest-feather and mate-favour). Political people fail to register that a failure to vote (such as my choice to do so) does not necessarily represent a failure to engage or be bothered. They (as a species) dislike the Frank Zappa approach: “don't vote, it only encourages them”.

My lack of turnout for over thirty years does not suggest any lack of interest on my part, just a lack of finding anyone worth a light over that period. They're all the same. Really. Force me to vote and I can only imagine that I'll be more trouble than it's worth. Find me someone to side with, and it'll be a different story, but I don't trust, respect or have time for any of them...

...for example:

This bloke thinks learning by rote is the way forward. He's been elected somehow. You expect me to bother to vote? All together now...

Never take sweets from a bloke who looks like this and wants to inflict the mistery of learning stuff for the sake of it like education is one big memory test. Who needs problem-solvers in this day and age, eh, Mr Gove.

If you need to remember minsters by rote, try Mr Gove, education, was a very odd cove...

Liver's off mate

New names

Mr Milton marries Miss Jackson and they become Mr and Mrs Milson, or Mr and Mrs Jacton.

Called melding or something like that.

So. Watch out for the Farquar / Hewitt wedding.

Mr Dickson, meet Miss Woodhead.

Mr Leggitt, have you met Miss Bollsover?

Probably best to keep Mr Bellton and Miss Overend apart.

New words

After the lorry shed it's load of vegetable extract, such incidents are known as Marmageddon.

Similarly difficult cleanup operations result from a pooh-nami.

There's a raft of them relating to that reluctant volunteer at someone else's suggestion thing. Volunteer / nominate becomes Volinate. The victim has been volinated by the volinator, and is the volinee. You will end up undertaking actions known as voluneering.

Lamb's liver...

...has to be cooked at 70 degrees for at least two minutes. Them's the rules, apparently. I wounder if there's others for other dishes? Anyway, two people fell ill after eating at Raymond Blanc's restaurant and he's taken liver off the menu rather than serve up the dried out atrocity that two minutes at 70 degrees would make it.

That is a very prescriptive approach, isn't it? Does it not depend on the thickness of the liver? Does it not also depend on the robustness of the diner and their ability to eat out without a spell in the hospital for tropical diseases? Digestive tracts are highly personal things and their operation depends on the conditioning their owners' give them.

I'm not the least bit medical. Not in the slightest. Hospitals and surgeries make me feel ill. After the mechanism of contagion was explained to me at a young age, I wrongly assumed that you could catch anything. A hangover from those days makes anywhere crowded with people somewhat scary. I hate packed trains full of coughing, sniffing, spluttering people. That's another probably entirely wrong medical thesis I resist giving up on:

If you expose yourself to the cold, at least for a little bit, and get some fresh air in your lungs, you will be less of a coughing, spluttering, sniffing wretch than if you sit in your car, engine running, heater on, then sprint for the overheated, unventilated train, and sit there with your coat on and your hat pulled over your ears. Yes, you're toasty warm, and yes, you're always ill and yes, you feel the cold. Give yourself a chance to toughen up a bit.

Same with the digestion. If you follow the use-by guidance to the letter, only eat pre-packed supermarket food cooked according to the 70 degrees for two minutes regulations, you guts never get a chance to deal with anything and you never build up resistance, so when you get some properly cooked, pink, perfect liver, well, everything rebels and the rest of us don't get to eat anything that isn't incinerated to bug-free charcoal. Thanks. Wimps.

Good on you Raymond. If you can't do it your way, take it off the menu.

The great BBC

BBC shakeup – reasons to be cheerful

On the train or in similar circumstances, I've always got headphones on and a book. The reason? There's loads of music and writing out there that I've yet to read or listen to, and I need to tap into that and shut out the rubbish. The music and writing can be genius. The chatter? Does anyone need to listen to two old ladies discussing “Strictly” or “X-Brit-jungle-brother”? I need to lock it out.

It is the sort of rubbish that Radio 5 (BBC) gave me within five minutes of tuning in this morning. All I heard was “bushtucker...in the jungle”. I switched immediately.

I avoid this sort of rubbish, I avoid listening to people talking about this sort of rubbish. I don't want a so-called BBC news radio station giving me exactly what I work hard to avoid at seven in the morning.

Switch.

Radio Four on the longwave button.

A couple of minutes (at most) before the news item mentioned some celeb in some jungle.

Hit the CD button. Bye bye BBC. Please let the latest scandal help sort things out.

Aim. Hinterland CD. Glorious.

Starbucks, Google, Amazon – are you one of our mates? No? Right – come here then

This lot are being called in for questioning. By MPs. About tax evasion. They've done nothing illegal, just used the loopholes provided by the law. Who makes the rules of law? That'd be the MPs.

If I were the sacrificial staff member strapped to the sackbarrow and wheeled in front of the great and the good in full Hannibal Lecter fancy dress, my response, before flipping them the bird, sticking on my headphones and resuming reading Gravity's Rainbow on the Kindle (Amazon device, tax paid to Luxemburg or somewhere) would be lot like their own every time they do something thoroughly dodgy but just about within the law:

“First: we've not broken the law. Second: you can change the law but it suits your mates not to. You think this is all well and good when it applies to your mates, but not when it applies to us. Third: you're a load of over-privileged under-regulated weirdos and if you want a punch-up bring it on. Forth: So long. In the meantime I'm going to resume my music and book.

Then there's the odious Ed Balls with the oversized head chipping in about tax avoidance thing before hitting the high-profile political targets. Ed. I realise that you are the worst sort of moron to ever walk the earth, but we're truly into 'really?' territory here. These are loopholes you lot had twenty years to close, had they not benefitted your mates or yourselves. You can't drip on about them now. Too late. You and your buddies had the chance to do something about the problem and chose to do nothing. You can't criticise a subsequent failure to do so after years of not bothering.

Remember, this horror-film zombie oversize-headed horror is the man who suggested spreading the problem kids around all schools, in order to bring them all into a single, mediocre, morass, and the education minister who based standards on the minimum required to keep young adults off the dole and out of jail. Those were our educational aims under Balls.

Ultimately, they're all the same, all there for themselves and their mates.

Mid-table, mediocre, meh!

Arsenal 3 v 3 Fulham

That motto on the crest. Is that Latin for “2-0, and you messed (or something like that) it up...”?

Worst start on 30 years.

A quarter of the season gone, and we're a mid-table, mediocre, mockery.

We have lots of money and a CEO (whatever it is he does) on £2.5m / year after awarding himself a 25% payrise. When the supporters are feeling the recession.

A prediction:

Either:

Something has to give and there have to be real, significant changes.

Or:

There's endless years of mid-table mediocrity to come.

Oh, and that “look at Liverpool after replacing Benitez” thing? He won cups managing them, including the Champions' League.

Marcus Brigstock...

...was very funny indeed.

Even funnier than Arsene's duvet coat.

The BBC in turmoil

Chris Patten, who heads the board, said that the BBC was a superb broadcaster and we'd all be so much worse off without it.

Chris, I'd be better off without the license fee. I don't watch any of the rubbish you broadcast. Would I miss things like this if the BBC didn't exist?

No. I wouldn't miss it. I never watch it, so I can't miss it.

The Vatican odds

The new Archbish...

...has come out in support of women bishops. I don't know what that means religion-wise, but in gambling terms, if you're considering a wager on promotion for the Vicar of Dibley, get on quick before they close the book.

Wouldn't it be great if instead of all the crap reasons that motivate the pope and the (who? what? ayotollah? rabbae? what do buddists and jeddi knights and rastas have?) others, if they just played the odds at BetFair?

I've imagined the scene:

The pope's home cinema in the vatican. He's watching American Football (the Cardinals, his favourite team). Two nuns kneel at his feet, one supporting each foot, in sock and sandal. One nun holds his ashtray, he's smoking a huge, fat, foot-long cigar. The other holds the saucer for his cup of espresso. He's eating popcorn from his upturned hat. Enter an under-pope.

Heeeyyyyyy! Is'da Papa, ma pontif, dude!

They high five.

'Ello. Zis iz goot. Ow iz it goink? (Think 'Ello 'Ello German accent).

Izza okay, we havva da new idea...

...vot iz diz new idea? Iz it gud for za benk bellence?

Hey. Ma'papa. Da best ever. Alla you gotta do is mekka da proclamations we talla ya. We putta on da bets. We collect'a da lira.

Vot iz ze proclamations?

We giv'a da free condoms out in Africa.

Vot? Vot madness iz ziss?

20/1. Coral.

Tventy to von? Yah?

Si. Anna you allowa da abortion.

Nein! I vill never...

100 / 1?

Ve vill support da vomen viz da abortion needs from diz point onvards! Tony?

Si.

Put ze euros on for ze papa, danke.

Us and Them

They...

...is becoming my most hated and feared word.

Yesterday, Bradley Wiggins was knocked off his bike and banged up. The national cycling team coach suffered a similar accident. I'm not generally a radio phone in listener, but I caught enough of the debate. The drivers' lobby (we pay road tax (actually, you pay car tax, everyone pays road tax and most cyclists also have cars); we all pass tests and cyclists don't and therefore we're all brilliant and they're all rubbish; there's miles of cycle lanes we've had to pay for that remain unused; so on (they were the most boring, boorish people imaginable) repeatedly referred to cyclists as 'they'. The 'they' as in “they're all tarred with the same brush”.

I realised my dislike of the word “they” in the wrong hands. It never gets qualified. There's never the “a small minority” or “while the majority...”; there's just the “they”.

On the post-Hillsborough 'can you trust the police' debate there was an idiot ex-cop who served in Dover, who actually made the effort to pick the phone up and make an absolute arse of himself:

“...they all would turn up for the ferry, no tickets, no money, drunk...”

Maybe one in a hundred would arrive ticketless, potless, nothing better to do, hoping for the best. Maybe fewer than that. We can all dredge up nutters who would do that. For every one of those there's groups of mates, fathers and sons, decent football fans travelling to an away European game with tickets, sufficient money and some sort of plan about getting there and back. They may be holding tins of beer and having a sing-song.

The “they” suggests “all of them” - absolutely untrue.

So the drivers ignored the facts:

“they won't use the cycle lanes we pay for...”

Rubbish.

Everyone would happily use cycle lanes, if they were maintained, free of glass, potholes and parked cars, and, most importantly, continuous. There's no point providing so many miles of cycle lane when every hundred yards the cyclists have to stop, join the traffic for a bit, then re-join the cycle lane. I would always rather sit in the road than use that sort of half-hearted death-trap. That's not bloody-mindedness, that's self-preservation.

Test or no test, cyclists tend to understand the laws of physics. As a downhill run bottoms out, try for maximum speed and momentum, that helps overcome your natural inertia and makes the climb less painful. Same in a car, but how many drivers hit their brakes then have to drive their engines hard to make the climb?

Some drivers, not cyclists, give me unwanted eye surgery because they can't or won't operate their main beams according to the law. Some drivers, not cyclists, hit their brakes when an oncoming car drives on the other side of the road in the dark. Many have recently started swinging left to turn right (and vice versa) against the Highway Code advice apparently part of that test thing.

To the ranting muslim cleric I'm one of the 'they' who deserve to die for the wickedness of...where to start?

There are, however, some cases of 'them' or 'they' that are, unfortunately, set in stone:

Politicians.

Careerists.

S***s supporters.

Manscum supporters.

Phil Collins fans.

People who refer to [that rubbish] as 'Strictly' or similar and look bemused when, no, I don't know what the hell you're on about.

Why Princess 'Royal'?

Just another thing I don't understand

On the radio news: a memorial was unveiled by the Princess Royal.

Why does the 'princess' have to be qualified by that 'royal'? Is there a non-royal princess? Apart, that is, from those identified by those rear window stickers? Isn't a unroyal princess just not a princess? Wouldn't that just mean the memorial was unveiled by Anne? (It is Anne, isn't it?).

Assuming that there isn't an unroyal, non-royal, anti-royal, ex-royal variety, or a princess without-royalness, then that 'royal' after the 'princess' is absolutely redundant.

Bet in play...nah (now)

“Ray Winston' 'ere. Bet 365 'as over a fashand in-play markets. Whaz da latest? Dey're comin' up nah, in da nex' five seconds.

Dere: nah more bettin' on da archbishop fing.

Nah, get onna ya laptops an' phones. Dere's a new archbishop app ya can dahn-load.”

The new archbishop of Canterbury is...

...drumroll...

The old bish of Durham.

I knew that. If you want religious insider information, try Ladbrokes.

Disappointing photo of the day...

...is under the headline Woolly Mammoth Found Near Paris. The photo shows the guys digging up the remains of the mammoth.

Wouldn't it have been much more exciting to see the beast strolling down the Champs-Elysees, swinging it's trunk into tables of Gauloises in ashtrays, espresso in tiny cups and absinthe, sending people rushing for the cameras and phone video applications? Surely a photo editor on his last week before retirement and with some photoshop ability...

Obama's back in...

...and that has to be good, but I suspect that nothing much is going to change.

The tory paedo list...

...Google was worse than useless. Apparently it's not trending on twitter. No clues. Just Google Leon Brittan.

Gravity's Rainbow

On Ernest Pudding:

“His greatest triumph on the battlefield came in 1917, in the gassy, Armageddonite filth of the Ypres salient, where he conquered a bight of no man's land some 40 yards at is deepest, with wastage of only 70% of his unit.”

It's difficult to read - it's in Russian

An experiment in reading

The Guardian published a list of the ten most difficult reads. Naturally, I opened the link (in a new tab), and naturally I was hoping to have maybe three or four on the I've read those list. None, not one. So, naturally I decided to read my way through the list, or at least part of the list (I'm not going to attempt the economic theories of Karl Marx).

My last literary excursion of a similar nature was when I was commuting and had hours on the train to read. I read Ulysses (I'm sure because I bought a new copy to replace the oft-started and abandoned one), dos Passos' USA (the three volumes in one), the translation of Don Quixote that won all the plaudits, the big three Beckett novels (Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnameable), Crime and Punishment, and all of In Search of Lost Time. That was a good few months. I raced through that list.

The Guardian bills this as the ten most difficult books to finish:

Umbrella by Will Self (I think this should have won this year's Booker Prize).

Alphabetical Africa by Walter Abish – I've been unable to source this (at least not without spending more than I'm prepared to)

Ethics by Baruch Spinoza – giving this one a miss, too philosophical all that ethics and morals malarky.

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro – is sitting on the Kindle ready to go.

The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil – in three volumes, the library has surprised me, all three are available for collection. I hope no-one else reserves them while I get through those.

Das Kapital by Karl Marx – I would find a book like this difficult to finish, because I would find it impossible to start in the first place. Politically and economically, the world's screwed. Apparently we can't afford to make sure the planet still exists in twenty or thirty years time. I'll stick with the novels, thanks. Post-modernist? Politically and religiously we're still cave-painting.

Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry – on order from the library e-service.

Finnegans Wake by James Joyce – on the Kindle, part of the bargain of the century at Amazon, the complete works for under two quid (they do the same for other authors, too, great value).

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon – I've started this, picked up the e-book yesterday.

The Unfortunates by BS Johnson – reserved. I love the library.

Gravity's Rainbow is a delight so far, but needs careful attention. In any case, you have to love a book that has a character ask a bloke with a wc (accidentally) stuck on his foot, even while he's trying to get it off:

“doesn't that make getting around difficult?”.

If I nail Gravity's Rainbow then Pynchon presents The Crying of Lot 49, Mason and Dixon, Vineland, V and etc. for future reading.