Dog sitting, mugged off

Dog sitting, and getting mugged off

I’ve been proper mugged off. I was going to do the first shift on the settee. That means being freezing cold, waking up every hour with a progressively stiffening neck, and listening to the new boy clanking around in the kitchen.

His nocturnal activities include barking at his reflection (oven door), barking at his reflection (other oven door) and, by way of variety, barking at back door (foxes, or, in the absence of foxes, at his reflection). Then there’s the whining, and the medallion-clanking on the metal drinking bowl, and the medallion clanking and moving the food bowl all around the kitchen.

She’s just not navy material, BLISS. On questioning about her failure to pitch up and take her watch, apparently she ‘forgot’.

“Well, I was asleep, wasn’t I?”

I’m going to take this up with my representative bodies. There must be one for mugged off husbands.

We also had the longest ever short walk. I appreciate he’s had a bad start in life, six months living in cages on concrete bases can’t be the most interesting or stimulating early years environment. But did he have to sniff every blade of grass along the way? Some more than once. Well, it seems that not all grass is created equal, some blades of grass are worthy of more attention than others. Other have more attention-worthy features thrust upon them.

Why I don’t buy forest management works

Every so often the walks in the local woods become impassable for the older and less able-bodied walkers, because these machines with huge tyres move in. Normally during a rainy period. They leave the paths rutted, full of ponding rainwater, slippery and turn the minor paths into mudbaths. If questioned, apparently these are ‘essential’ works.

As ever, government and ministries are working to a different dictionary than the rest of us.

Essential?

So, before we had these big felling, cutting, ripping-out, ground-churning machines, forests and woods were unknown, or struggled to survive? Or, have they actually been around long enough to pre-date the internal combustion engine, the chainsaw, and, actually, the evolution of humans, the most meddlesome species on the planet.

Humans poke and pry, stick their ugly bony fingers and dripping, snotty noses where they don’t belong. Wherever there’s no misery, humans will dig and delve around until they find some, or invent a way of creating it.

Look, Mr Minister for trees or whatever your stupid made-up title for a non-existent job is:

There were woods and forests before man evolved, and they will be around after we’re gone, unless we ‘manage’ them out of existence. That’s the facts. You need to review that ‘essential’.

Dog days

A crack of dawn start…

…in the snow, to get to the motorway services to meet the horsebox transporting D-the-Dog, and some other lucky winners being collected to be taken to their new homes. Some less fortunate dogs were going to the rescue centre, hoping for someone to come forward and offer them a home. They were in decent spirits and condition, considering their five day overland trek, but understandably not in peak nick.

White dog, in terms of welcome, has been her usual self: grumpy and unwelcoming. He may ingratiate himself yet, joining her in the anti-fox gang. We’re getting duet “oy, get orf our land” barking.

Avoiding those ‘loveable’ and ‘scamp’ clichés isn’t going to be easy.

The collective noun for women picking up rescue dogs en masse is a ‘squeak’. Or a ‘coo’. Or an ‘adoration’.

Moneyball

A great true story about an Oakland Athletics baseball team that bucked the mega-bucks = mega-success trend. Not much baseball in the film, and plenty of Brad Pitt lobbing stuff around in a bad temper (the TV into the corridor was funny).

Obviously, at a baseball club, there’s no shortage of baseball bats to smash stuff up with when the mood takes you. So, naturally there’s a fair bit of that, too.

Favourite scene: after a loss the players have the stereo in the changing room cracked up, and are too chilled, one of them dancing on a table. The stereo gets the baseball bat treatment, and there’s a few harsh words followed by total silence.

“Hear that?...that’s the sound of losing”.

Even in advanced years playing pretty laid-back, far from ultra-competitive sport, that’s still the sound of losing. I doesn’t have to last long, but you need a bit of it, or why bother turning out?

Never much of one for coffee table books

I tend to ignore them. Coffee tables are for coffee, and delicious, healthy and nutritious savoury snacks. Like monster munch. But I’ve just noticed we’ve a copy of How to Train a Superdog. The subtitle says: unleash [sic] your dog’s potential.

Look, we’ve almost always had dogs. I’m a bit sceptical about this unleashing of potential thing. If they come back when called and you come home to the furniture you had on going out, what more do you want?

I think the poor little feller may have to endure training classes too. Some Barbara Woodehouse clone blowing up your nose, that’s all you need, mate.

Regan, Carter, and now...

Welcome to The Sweeny

Have you seen that vigilante man?

Have you seen that vigilante man?

Have you seen that vigilante man?

I been hearin’ his name all over the land.

BLISS is the neighbourhood watch co-ordinator. So, if you pull over down our road for a phone call, glug of coffee (tiredness kills, take a break – so say the signs on the M25, the London Orbital, responsible for more frustration and tiredness per mile than any other road), or to check your map, you’d better have your papers in order and be ready for questioning.

“What is the purpose of your journey today, and why’re you hanging about in laybys, you slag?”

“I, er, was just looking for Abode-a-We, do you know where it is?”

“Can’t help you. Now. Move along, and don’t let me see you in these here parts again.”

I’ve more faith in us lot than in the police. They’ve offered visits from a PCSO. Clever that, the first PC initials suggesting some sort of police constable. The C stands for community. Community support officer. Great. If I want advice on how to secure my home, I’ll not be wasting my time with a retired accountant who likes dressing up.

Not that proper old Bill are all that proper any more. More likely to cart away the householder with the cricket bat than the burglar with the hooped jumper, mask and swag bag. But honestly, don’t offer us up a CSO. A grass with a uniform. That’s an insult.

Well, why does a vigilante man?

Tell me why does a vigilante man?

Carry that sawed-off shotgun in his hand?

Would he shoot his brother and sister down?

D-day tomorrow

In two ways. Jack Dee in the evening, although we can’t all go, because it’s also D the Dog day. The new rescue dog arrives tomorrow, and no doubt he will turn BLISS and DDL’s well-ordered lives, and my rather more chaotic one upside down.

I mistakenly thought that it was only football managers and agents that had clandestine meetings at motorway service stations. That’s where we’re going to pick DtD up from tomorrow morning. He’s come over from Greece, where there’s bit of a homeless dog crisis. I urgently need to formulate some old rubbish for when people do that boring “he’s lovely, what is he?” thing down the woods (I like to walk with the dogs, camera, and earphones if I’m on my own, but people still like to stop and talk nonetheless. A Greek waterhound, Aegean Shepherd, Athenian Wonderdog, Rhodes Ridgeback (nope, that’ll never fly).

Harsh. Just re-read this, and it's harsh.

Is weakness a weakness, and the missing robust bonus

There are, without question, some serious questions to answer. Most of the answers, I think, come down to money and political will.

Medically, fantastic advances, heart transplants commonplace for example, run parallel with less interesting, less sexy, less funded, and rather less glowing examples of progress. Caveman bones show recovery from a broken leg. Six weeks. Back to normal or near normal, bit of a lottery. Unless you are a top-level professional athlete, guess how long and what outcome you face now? No change since the prehistoric. Cancer, cosmetic surgery, antidepressants? There’s gold in them there hills. Broken wrist love? Join that queue over there and we’ll see what we can do, no money, love, no…no juice, as they say, no machines that go ‘ping’, no glory, no bucks.

There is no doubt that people suffer post traumatic stress disorder. There’s no doubt in my mind that it can be cumulative, too. Person A can see one event, scale of distress 10%, and fall apart. Person B can see twenty, thirty, fifty events, scale of distress 75%+, and then see that one too many, that one too close to home, that pushes them over the burn-out edge.

These guys need all the help society can give them. Unless and until we come up with some predictive diagnostic measures that determine predisposition to falling apart and advise people that certain jobs just are not suitable for their mental make-up, when they fall apart we need to offer maximum support.

Then…

…here’s my problem: I’m not insensitive or callous, but I’ve proved robust enough, over just short of twenty years, in being able to deal with all sorts of those traumatic situations…

Examples:

[Radio message: “Can I send an ‘apparently dead’ to control?” “Reckon you can, me and Gibbo’ve got most of what’s left of him in three buckets.”]

[“Can you get me some spare firegear? Size tall and extra large? Yes, done that. Mine are covered in soot and debris, the other set in claret, one set of Andy Mac’s (borrowed) up to the elbows in claret, and one of Monster’s (oh, yeah, sorry, one green watch, one red watch sets of kit emergency borrowed and likewise contaminated). Blood. Mainly blood.”]

[“Either we’re dragging her out, or they’re moving the train, but something’s going to have to happen soon, because she’s just about alive and isn’t going to last long while you lot debate what’s the best thing to do.”]

…so: the weak and the needy get the support they deserve. They’re weak and needy after all, and have pitched up, through no fault of their own (the problem’s with the selection procedure) and that’s all fair enough. The cheats get the big stick, the weak and the needy get the there, there, there. What do the robust, the success stories, those that manage themselves, the job, the demands, pick up in the way of bonuses? Nada, ziltch, sweet FA. When failing bankers and NHS chief executives are getting huge failure payments, that sticks in the throat.

No more coverup covering up...

The NHS candour question

It’s one of the quirks of the legal and political mind, I think. Unless something is actually outlawed, then it’s okay. So, unless you actually legislate so that hospitals (they’re trusts or something now, rebranded by someone, but still hospitals really) can’t cover up their mistakes, apparently it’s fair game for them to do so. That’s an awful way of looking at things, with lives and medical outcomes at stake.

Old rhyming slang, Jeremy Hunt, has suggested introducing a candour requirement, so that mistakes will not be denied, rather hands will be held up and lessons taken forwards to avoid making the same mistakes again.

I did understand the argument put forward that we need to address a national culture of negativity, blame, and litigation, not just take on the NHS in isolation. That’s absolutely right. Instead of celebrating and learning from successes, there’s a tendency to hold long and adversarial stewards’ inquiries looking to apportion blame. There’s too much focus on “how’d we get here?” and not enough on “where do we go now, and how do we avoid pitching up here again?”

That’s a bigger picture, though, and there’s no reason to resist on those grounds: it comes across like the small child seeing other kids given greater freedom or more relaxed boundaries, “I know it’s wrong, but how come they’re getting away with it and I ‘aint?” Just because other departments, enterprises, companies are covering up like mad (the railways having twenty-seven definitions of ‘late’, twenty-six of which are absolute rubbish designed to avoid criticism, duck making compensation payments, and skew any statistical performance analysis comes to mind) does not mean you should be free to continue doing so.

It’s just occurred to me that should there be the proposal of an absolute candour requirement for Hunt to open up about his dealings with BSkyB when he was Culture Minister, he might not greet that with quite the same enthusiasm he seems to have for the Health Service.

Will the candour model be applied elsewhere? Hillsborough? The police luring striking miners into violent ambushes and misreporting, politicising the industrial action? The expenses claims made by MPs? Their latest practice of cross-paying each other inflated rents using taxpayers’ money?

The thing about a litigious, blame-driven culture, is that it leads to hugely expensive back-covering exercises, which saps time, haemorrhages money, and absolutely kills momentum. I think it’s the basic physics the legal and political mind struggles with. They don’t understand momentum, that every time they grind things to a halt, there’s another massive overhead to pay in terms of overcoming the inertia and getting things moving again. Isn’t the man who knows the letter of the law just another version of the man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing?

Maybe it’s time to hand control to the scientists, the doctors, the soldiers, the teachers and the engineers. The legals and politicals have been running (ruining?) the gaff for thousands of years now, and we still have starvation, poverty, war and misery on a similar scale to when they started.

Me tiny 'ands, dems frozen

I've been outside most of the day...

...not the best call I've ever made, weather-wise. I've got some feeling back in my hands, and the curry helped warm me up some.

The economic climate and the climate climate

With the excess typical of our times, apparently a double-dip recession isn't enough and we need a triple-dip to teach us all a lesson. That lesson being that bankers are immune to lessons. How many more dips are there before they call it roller-coaster recession, or a Loch Ness Monster recession. How many dips before it qualifies as a multi-dip recession, or a poly-dip recession?

We're teetering on the brink of going treble- from double-, and it seems the snow might be the thing to drive us over the edge, as the retailers struggle to get punters into the shops spending money, and as the punters struggle to get their cars out of their drives and down to the shops.

The large plastic shovel market is doing well, as are small plastic sledges and salt. Where there's grit, son, there's money right now. Get in soon, because there's a mini-heatwave on the way, if the bloke on the radio is to be believed.

The climate back then

It's ninety years since the first ever UK weather forecast was broadcast. It wasn't much brighter in 1923, but it was delivered in true Mr Chommenley-Warner tones. I liked the bit about:

“...and we welcome bac k an old friend, the large depression, sitting immobile over the Irish Sea...”

Who is the greatest living Englishman?

Can't see past Matt Prior right now. Even better that he's South African.

Anne Widdecombe

She should be chained up in an attic somewhere, like Sloth in The Goonies. Like Sloth in The Goonies before he breaks free. She lacks his charm, and his good looks. She should be gagged because even her voice is ugly.

According to St Anne, patron saint of mingers, every right-thinking human being ought to be appalled by the 'appalling' crucifixion scene at the end of The Life of Brian.

She's made a telly documentary, about Christianity and comedy. This is why I hate telly so much. Instead of being gagged and chained up in an attic somewhere, this appalling woman, who's been x-rayed and found to be without any vestige of a sense of humour, is given air-time to bang on about one of the pet bees in her bonnet.

Make that chained and gagged in a remote attic in the middle of nowhere, where no-one goes, without food or water. With a loop tape of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life playing.

“Crucifixion?”

“Nah. Freedom.”

“Oh. Oh, well, jolly good then...”

“Only pullin' your leg, crucifixion it is...”

I've just had a very pleasant thought, involving Ms Widdecombe and a cross.

Illumination, not support

Damn lies and statistics

Guided by BLISS, I've been putting together a business case today. I've filtered, and analysed three years of figures. Used, unlike politicians, for illumination rather than support. It's been a very interesting exercise. I should have done something along the same lines a long time ago.

Apart from the personnel, the geographical, the actual and the potential, one thing is very clear: we're increasingly having to do more and more, for less. To the point where, for any new client, we're competing for work at cost, and not always winning it. It isn't getting any easier. There's a whole lot more long hours and scant rewards for a few years ahead. Thanks, bankers.

Fear and loathing: the M25

I can't put off the M4 corridor day any longer. Tomorrow sees me hit the M25 roadworks section. The bit that's a daily feature on the radio. It's a bit like the train running late announcements. Twenty seven words for 'snow'.

Accident: investigation.

Accident: spillage.

Accident: debris blocking one lane.

Accident: on the anticlockwise, slow because of rubberneckers.

Slow: after clearing an accident.

Slow: broken down car / lorry / horse and cart.

Delays, tailbacks, queuing traffic.

It's going to be rubbish every morning from now to kingdom come, because it's always pretty rubbish even without the roadworks.

Infrastructure

A recession buzzword. Spending on infrastructure (iSpending) is going to kickstart the economy. Now the roads between my house and place of work are one big pothole, with the occasional bit of road surface, when is the spending going to start? Do we need a critical mass of buzzwords before work is catalysed?

iRoads: throwing down some temporary surfacing, to last until the next snow.

iTrain: our line right now? About 90 minutes to town, at an average of 37 mph. Prehistoric.

iBus: we get two a day. One going one way...

iFibre: we're on twinned copper wire from the 1950s.

See also: iDrain, iWater, iPower (in case of light snow, iCandle), iLandfill (was iRecycle), and iSpy (CCTV everywhere, crime ditto).

Take one of these, twice a day, and I'll have my new golf clubs in no time at all...

A huge level of dependency

I've got one. A huge level of dependency on BLISS for everything medical. She would claim for everything, period. She may have a point. A typical exchange was:

BLISS: You had a blood test?

ME: [chest puffed out, all proud of myself because I'd actually managed to book and fulfil a doctors appointment all by myself] yes.

BLISS: What for?

ME: [getting too cocky for my own good] well, they take blood out of my arm and send it to the lab, and...

BLISS: You're not funny. For what purpose. Or just draining your arm for the sake of it?

ME: [sheepish now, knew it was too good to be true] ...er...I don't know.

I didn't know. I hadn't even thought about asking. I was just pleased to be another step closer to getting out of there. Blood pressure, blood test, no weights and measures, no poking and prodding, happy days. Blood comes out, blood goes off, results come back, tested for, well, whatever it is they test for. Cholesterol. Protein. Sugar. Loads of other stuff.

She knows about these sort of things, and I don't know my arse from my elbow. Although that's a lack of anatomical knowledge, rather than medical.

We were talking about her friend who's very unwell at the moment, the problems including feeling too anxious to leave their house. They're on antidepressants, a side effect of which can be anxiety attacks. BLISS told me this with a straight face, I had to do bit of a double take. That has to be the most ineffective medicine known to man.

Headache? Take one of these. Possible side effects include headaches. Asthma inhaler – may cause breathlessness. Sleeping pills, side effect insomnia. I know the politics and the big business is impossibly corrupt, but Jesus, I didn't know the pharmaceutical companies were so powerful that they no longer have to produce products with any benefits whatsoever. Apparently one of the most popular antidepressants increases risk of suicide.

I know it's not popular wellbeing advice, and I know there's side effects to everything, but I can't help wondering whether a majority might be better off with a prescription for a chicken vindaloo, with large amounts of papadums and lime pickle, or tickets to a B52's gig, or the latest feelgood comedy at the multiscreen complex. Walking the dog on the beach on a right good old windy day normally has a positive effect. As does that first Clash album. Perhaps before the Prozac, we should have copies of The Life of Brian on the Chemists' shelves.

Tightly packed prose...

...takes more reading. Like muscle as opposed to fat, a spoonful can weigh a ton. It takes concentration and much longer to get through, with frequent re-reading of phrases and paragraphs to make sure I've got the meaning. Pynchon. Sinclair. More ideas on a page than most manage in a chapter. I've just finished Inherent Vice and my head is still full of Pynchon's cast of thousands.

If the fat don't getcha than the sugar will...

It’s the sugar’s to blame

An American doctor has shifted the blame for obesity from fat to sugar. He’s done the research / maths / guesswork / lab rat studies / whatever it is they do. Fat is out of the frying pan, and sugar’s in the firing line.

Unfortunately, this:

“It’s sugar rather than fat…”

[Brief ‘yay’ moment. Not so bothered about sugar. Do like breakfasts, chips, curries, crisps, and the like. Dipping bread into olive oil and a drop of Balsamic? Irresistible.]

All to soon was followed up with:

“that does not mean that you don’t need to cut down on the fat intake, too…”

Another Dr No (fun) then.

Bits made me laugh, though. He said sugar is addictive, and the food companies sneak it into everything processed and pre-prepared to keep the punters coming back for more. “It seems okay for them to do that with sugar” he said, “there’d ba a huge outcry if they were doing the same thing with morphine.” He went on to say “it’s not just the mountains of burgers consumed that have led to the crisis, it’s the rivers of fizzy drinks.”

Mountains of flesh and rivers of blood, eh? There’s fire and brimstone in them there hills.

The man who wasn’t there

A Coen brothers film I’d missed until yesterday. Billy Bob Thornton plays a laid back, chainsmoking barber, married to Frances McDormand (who’s the lady cop in Fargo and Brad Pitt’s co-gym instructor in Burn After Reading). Before things become hopelessly tangled, he blackmails her boss (James Gandolfini – Tony Soprano) to invest in a dry cleaning business.

It looks beautiful in black and white, I loved the dry, laconic voiceover. True Grit tomorrow. It the international Coen brothers catchup weekend.

The Godfather, I, II, and III

I’ve recently re-watched these, too. They’re such brilliant films. I wondered if they might be creaking with age, but not at all.

It’s now clear that every culture has a mafia. Triads. Yardies. There’s always someone screwing everyone else over. Here it’s the licensed activity of the upper classes to pass the wealth and power among themselves, trousering huge amounts at the expense of the working classes.

A web of computer cables

Headphone and computer cables

If I knew how to, this would be one of those vote now things. But then, if I knew how there'd be adverts on here paying me money, and links to other blogs down the right-hand side (a 'blog-roll' I've seen it called recently), and all sorts of singing, dancing, slow-down-the-loading stuff.

So. What should the collective noun for computer and headphone cables be?

• A tangle 17%

• A weave 6%

• A knot 35%

• A spaghetti 42%

A confusion? An irritation? A timewaste?

A niche shop

Some suburb on the outskirts of Bromley has a 'World of Sewing' shop. That's definitelt not operating in the mainstream market.

“If I had a sewing shop...” I thought (slow news day on Radios Four and Five, I suppose), “...I'd call it Pricks with Needles.”

We must hate Cyprus

We've sent people to help Cyprus with their financial crisis. We've sent them civil servants. Civil servants. The poor people of Cyprus must be thinking “what've we done to make them hate us like this?”

These are the guys that cost the taxpayer millions by mismanaging the West Coast rail line sell off. Not a great track record.

These are the guys who've bankrupt the NHS. They're not capable of maintaining a healthy budget.

These are the guys who buy expensive helicopters that crash, rifles that jam, and send our military personnel into the dessert. Wearing jungle camouflage kit. They should get the bullet for that.

These are the guys who got the G4 income forecast wrong by a billion quid. That's £1,000,000,000. They can't get the right numbers.

If you were on the receiving end of help like that, wouldn't you bundle them back on the first plane home? No-one's ever been in that much trouble that a bunch of Tim Nice but Dims on huge salaries for overseeing and endless series of shambles and waste is going to make things better.

Who's next?

Savile. Jim Davidson. The bloke out of Coronation Street. Stuart Hall.

Who's next out of the Operation Yew Tree closet?

• Jeremy Clarkson Even money

• Chris Moyles 2 / 1

• Ant 6 / 4

• Dec 6 /4

• Simon Cowell betting suspended

The Placebo Shop (on eBay now)

The placebo effect

97% of doctors have used placebo treatments for certain patients. There are, apparently, true placebo treatments. Pills that consist of nothing but coated sugar, that sort of thing. Tonics that are nothing but coloured water or cold tea. There are also, apparently, secondary placebos. They include unnecessary blood tests followed by an 'all clear' message that the doctor knew was coming before the lab results arrived. An examination and a 'everything in order' where it isn't really called for, to reassure a worried patient.

According to the doctors' representative, the shock isn't the 97%, but that as many as 3% have not used a placebo.

Doesn't that, however, suggest that 97% of doctors have, at some time, deceived their patients? Led them, for their own good, but still led them up the garden path?

Doesn't that also suggest that it works? Were that not the case, and with so many using them, wouldn't there have been a patients' rebellion by now. Some sort of outcry, at least.

Can I invent a syndrome here, and also invent a niche product?

Place-know (pla-see-no) syndrome: this is where the person knows full well that they're taking a sugar pill or spoonfuls of coloured water, but notice an improvement in their condition or symptoms in any case. Where, despite knowing they've been administered a placebo, they're cured.

The niche product may one day sit beside the aspirin, paracetamol, cough medicine and other off the shelf remedies on the chemist and supermarket shelves. Simply known as Placebo (TM) pills or potions, these inert and medically neutral substances would be available directly to the public, at a fraction of the cost of a NHS prescription. All we need is some fancy packaging and production can begin.

The (even more) essential Miles Davis

I've been listening to this a lot. It has trumped my Essential Miles Davis double cd. It's four cds. Maybe it should be called more of the essential Miles Davis.

There's been a budget

That used to mean something. Radios were tuned into the speech and the commentary. Whether or not it mattered, there was a little bit of sitting up and taking notice. Even if it was only lip service to join in the conversation. That does not seem to be the case any more. Outside the more politicised broadcasters, there's little media or public interest I've come across.

Serious foul play

Typical Football Association, and typical officiating. A potentially career-ending challenge, the player goes unpunished and a protesting assistant manager is sent off to the stands. Swearing and handbags, having an opinion equates to bringing the game into disrepute, unless it agrees with the FA's opinion, they're all swiftly dealt with in draconian fashion.

However, the FA, the players' union, the clubs, the referees, uncle Tom Cobblers, all signed up to the deal at the start of the season. Unless anyone dissented then, they're on rocky ground squeaking too loudly now.

This is your mission impossible...you can't choose not to accept it...

Your tax, your responsibility

Set up to fail. That's what we are. Despite the world's most complex tax system, we're responsible for ensuring we pay the right amount of tax to the thieves at HMRC.

Taking that apart a bit:

Ours isn't among the most complicated, or more complicated than most, or more complicated than it needs to be, it's the most complicated in the world. Number one. Top of the pops. The bottom line we're working to (that's us, you and me, not HMRC's responsibility, oh no) is equivalent to several times the complete works of Shakespeare in length. I can't see how it's reasonable to expect the population to take responsibility for their taxes when doing so would take all their time, so they can't earn any money and so that the whole exercise becomes irrelevant. Several times the complete works. All about tax rules. That's dry and dreary enough to make you want to escape to warmer places with lower costs of living and a more sensible, straightforward approach.

We're responsible. Not HMRC. They have offices, staff, and, no doubt, some pretty extravagantly paid (extravagantly overpaid? I think so) civil servants supposedly heading the whole thing up. They've got the data handling capacity, the software, everything at their fingertips, but still want to treat the population as their unpaid skivvies, doing their donkey work for them, at their beck and call. Not the employers, their payroll, their HR departments, their resources, their software.

Say we're taxed at 25% of income. That income tax thing. Then say we're taxed at 20% VAT on everything. That's generous, I think, because although some things are zero-rated, some things, like petrol, booze, fags, etc, attract outrageous and punitive levels of taxation. Tack on a bit of NI and we're stopped around 48% of what we earn. The thieves at HMRC are stealing (at a conservative estimate) almost half of our hard-earned, and somehow, if anyone, our employers or HMRC makes a mistake, it's down to us.

One last question:

The prime minister, the chancellor, and the taxman are drowning.

You can save only one of them.

Would you carry on with the crossword or head off for some lunch?

Goodbye to a free press

There's a long rant here. One I need to avoid. Some short points:

Lawrence Wright has written a detailed, researched, expose of Scientology. Published in America. Accurate and properly underpinned. The Scientologists would make UK publication too expensive to defend in our courts.

It's all about phone hacking. A crime our anti-crime forces failed to deal with. It affected a small minority of the rich and famous and loud. They've driven knee-jerk responses.

News, apparently, is what someone, somewhere, wants to suppress. The rest is advertising. That figures.

Goodbye Private Eye.

Thank god for the Internet, hello a world of guerilla online publications tugging the tiger's tail.

Hugh Grant? You're a selfish, spoilt, odious little man. Pity they hacked your phone, and not your body.

No-one's emerged with a scrap of dignity. None of the major political parties. None of the pressure groups. Not the popular press. Not the phone-hacked blubbering celebs.

Anyone who genuinely wants investigative, critical, risk-taking journalism to live on will be dismayed.

The Leveson Report has been described as 'tedious' and 'unreadable'. A tedious and unreadable report on journalism?

But he plays for Stoke?

Michael Owen has announced his retirement form football today

That's odd, that is, because he already announced his retirement from football, when he announced that he was joining Stoke.

First day at the new job

First mass for the new pope today. I wonder if he's got pre-mass nerves? Does he have a pre-mass checklist? Do you think he has a lucky silly hat? A warm up routine, with a few gentle genuflections before risking injury (he is seventy eight years old or something) waving his blessings to the gathered throng?

Do you think, under the dress, there's some functional lycra cycle shorts? Primark jogging bottoms? Jimmy Savile speedos? Eric Morecambe sock suspenders? A replica River Plate football kit?

There has to be a Madonna / Maradona; Deus / Diego; hand of God gag in there, but I lack the imagination to bring it to life.

I do find it absurd that, when not so far away scientists are on the way to observing and understanding the Higg's Boson, there's all this dressing up, burning incense, rite and ritual still being bought into. It's the ceremony, as much as anything else, that I just can't fathom. It costs a fortune, ceremony. Money that could be better spent. Like on fireworks...

...or Cyprus...

...where they've had the brilliant idea of raiding 10% of everyone's bank account to pay for more bailing out. I know we've done something similar, just through taxes, but somehow

“That tax you pay? We're going to give some of it to RBS so they can continue paying huge salaries and bonuses for (a) failure, and (b) failure that has adversely affected everyone”

while galling, is less painful than

“Oy. Empty your pockets. Very good. You've saved 10,000 euros for your retirement, well done. Here's 9,000 of them back”.

What trickles down pours down

A couple of questions:

If we need to pay huge salaries and bonuses, because otherwise all the star bankers will depart our shores (wipe away those tears) and somewhere else will reap their brilliance and the benefits therefrom (the trickle down effect), then how come:

We're not experiencing those trickle down benefits now?

We're still buying into this myth hundreds of years after it was mocked, ridiculed, broken into tiny pieces and trampled into the ground (The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, George Orwell, among others)?

The only thing evident, trickling down from those on mega-money, is utter contempt for everone who isn't?

Public holiday saint? I'll take that one.

St Patrick v St George

A couple of people have pointed out that we, the English, are happy to find Guinness, recipes for colcannon, Irish stew, and wander around in huge, garish green foam hats on St Paddies, while St George's passes us by.

I think it's the same with the Jocks. Burns night and we're reaching for the haggis, tatties and neeps and a dram. We don't celebrate Shakespeare day / night / evening, do we? North of the border they also get an additional new years bank holiday. Sensible.

I don't know (or care) who the patron saint of Poland is, or even if we have one (we probably do). If I had to adopt one, it wouldn't be St George (get to work and tug those forelocks, bow, curtsey, and throw yourselves to the ground in front of your royals and aristocracy, you plebs). It'd be St Pat (take a day off, bejesus, and enjoy the crac).

I wasn't on the phone officer...

...I was looking something up on the Internet.

A Surrey Police press release records some great excuses from drivers nabbed on their phones.

One said: “it's the ex-wife. She's having a right rant. Would you mind talking to her?”

Apparently there was a “I wasn't on the phone, I was reading a text” and a “I was answering an email.”

There were over zealous bosses checking whereabouts and all sorts of things to blame.

I hope someone cited roadworks, congestion, and rubbish, slow-moving traffic. Doing the speed limit, there's no temptation to use the phone. It sits there, unwanted and ignored. When I join the M25 (speed limit 70 mph) from the A-road I use to get to the M25 (speed limit 70 mph, average speed typically 70 mph) and slow down to between 5 mph and 10 mph for a few miles (pre roadworks) and now between 0 mph and 3 mph (roadworks), well, come here phone, lets make some calls, and see who's emailed chasing for what.

The guy using the Internet was probably looking for an alternative route that would allow him to make decent, reasonable progress. Expecting drivers to abide by the law is a very one-sided bargain when the roads don't come up to scratch and meet their obligations. Last Monday, apparently (I know there was snow, if you can't drive in snow don't drive in it, don't block the road, and why don't the council have bulldozers to clear the stuck vehicles away so the roads remain passable?), it was taking the poor people who had to go that way almost two hours to progress the distance of less than a mile along the High Street. Many of them would've been there, at between nine and ten o'clock, because they'd had a long, slow, arduous drive back home, stuck in jams caused by the lack of preparation and will to keep things moving (lack of will: see “miles of tailbacks due to ongoing accident investigation”), and then had 'almost home' become 'stuck still for hours' at the final stretch.

We enter into a contract for the roads, in good faith. There's offer: “buy a car, pay road and excessive fuel tax, and you can use it”. There's acceptance: buy car, pay taxes, and there's consideration (contractually) when the money changes hands. Then there's a contract frustrated out of existence by the other parties lack of performance of their obligations. One third of drivers have had to have their cars fixed due to pothole damage. One third.

Do your bit, first, then expect better behaviour. Maybe.

Nets, old and new

Cricket nets then...

Summer in a huge school, already large grammar and secondary moderns combined to form one massive comprehensive (that's what they were called back then). Arrive early. Cricket nets. Outdoor, artificial tracks, well worn and none too reliable in terms of bounce, and just short enough to let the bowlers dig a short one in and catch the lip between grass and artificial, with unpredictable and dangerous consequences.

We had two lads with real kit. It cost fortunes then, and you had to be a real player to spend out on it. Until they arrived with pads and gloves the batters had nothing in the way of protection, other than their eyes and their reflexes. We only had real cricket balls, in various stages of wear and tear, but again, none were new enough to have any sort of reliable behaviour, through the air or off the deck.

Bowling consisted of trying to terrify the poor kids in the batting cages, and actually trying to cause the maximum physical harm if they refused to get out, cry and want their mum, or, worse still, actually have the temerity to put bat through ball and look for scoring shots. My favourite was the skip down the wicket, the big swing, and watching the ball disappear long and high over the bowler's head. At least he'd have to go fetch. Temporary reprieve. Too often it was a skip down the wicket, expansive waft, and painful crack on the unprotected shin form the little cannonball skidding off the worn-out matting.

Were the bowlers fighter pilots, they would have had little bandaged head batter logos on their kitbags for every one they sent off to A&E for running repair. I don't think helmets were compulsory for motorbikes in those days, let alone invented for the summer sport.

...and now

Everyone batting has gloves, box, pads, and (optionally, over sixteen, and compulsory, under sixteen (it may even be eighteen)) a helmet. That's not enough, though. We now have to use pretend cricket balls.

This does not render the exercise useless. Not by a long chalk. The pretend balls have extravagant swing and bounce: a challenge to the bowlers in terms of control and to the batters in terms of dealing with bounce and swing. We all get an hour of cardio we'd otherwise not get. However, we're all ageing, and much of the bowling (although still challenging) isn't exactly the quickest, and most teams we'll be playing soon have at least one or two bowlers with some pace.

The health and safety thing, apparently, is not so much to do with the batters, padded and protected as we now are, but with everyone else at risk of being hit by us clobbering a ball back where it came from.

Two things here:

1. Peer pressure. If the batter is regularly smashing you back putting everyone at risk, then you get told (or should get told, jokingly, at first) to sort yourself out and start giving him something to think about.

2. Keep your eye on the ball. All ball sports. All the time. Concentration. Harder when you're tired. A critical, crucial, core ability if you're going to succeed. If you get hit on the head in nets (controlled channels, relatively straightforward) what chance do you stand in the longer, much more concentration sapping and random-event outdoor season?

Let me hear your balalikas ringing out, come and keep your comrade warm

The Total Balalika Show

A totally, blissfully batty, magically mental, absurd and absurdly good joint venture. Between the Leningrad Cowboys, the Alexandrov Red Army Ensemble, and a European folk dance company.

The Leningrad Cowboys.

The Alexandrov Red Army Ensemble

Dancers.

70,000 people in Senate Square, Helsinki, having a good time.

There's a film of the gig. Watching it will make you at least smile and probably laugh out loud, and in any case will leave you much cheerier than you started. It's insanely glorious and gloriously insane.

Catalogues and what to do with them

The Coopers catalogue and Peter Tinneswood

Beautiful man, Peter Tinneswood. Loved his cricket. Can you be a beautiful man without a love of cricket? Without a doubt. Plenty of cultures just don't have the game in their national agenda. Otherwise, well, you're on dodgy ground.

Among many hilarious books, Tinneswood left behind the Brigadier series. Transparently based on a watered down version of our own lamented (only because he's not dead yet) Grennie. The Brigadier is an ultra old fashioned, chauvinistic, dinosaur of a bloke. Our Grennie is much, much worse.

Tinneswood wrote the Brandon Family books. The BBC, in more ballsy days, filmed these as the “I didn't know you cared” series. The dad, a council groundsman, reads seed catalogues for leisure. They're old-fashioned, a reminder or bygone days, a promise of flowering glory to come from small packets of dry seeds. The books celebrate family, love, food, nature and the countryside of the north of England. I remembered the beauty and comedy of catalogues looking at the Coopers (of Stortford) version. Don't throw it away if you've got one. Find the humour and joy. I uncovered:

P2: Dave is looking forward to Spring, as he has decorating to do and needs to 'spring' into action...

P6: the 'hands free vegetable peeler' sits above a cooking pot equivalent of those anti-chew lampshades dogs have to wear: no more hob spills!!! (Why not just turn the heat to an appropriate setting?)

P6: good page, 6, there's a recurring theme starting. An adopted George Foreman grill, with four holes: the Healthy Home Made Burger Maker.

P7: ceramic knives. Supersharp, just don't crush, prise, bend them or drop, or abuse them (won't work in these parts)...

P9: more recurring theme: the Perfect Pie Maker. George Foreman with pie-shaped holes.

P10: the low fat, high heat griddle pan. Ask BLISS about griddle pans. She isn't a fan.

P16 onwards: now we're cookin' (sorry). There's an anti-fatigue comfort mat, a self-drying mop (see the perpetual motion machine), flip flop things with rejuvenating bristles (clean, exfoliate and massage your feet while you shower), a three-way, multi-function hole punch (so useful! I'm forever punching holes in belts!), a personal internet and password logbook (there's security, write it all down), say goodbye to the menace of moles (or live and let live, maybe?), meerkat garden wobblers (garden wobblers?), there's relief from: stiff and painful knees (no surgery required), dodgy hips (no surgery required), incontinence (well, not the incontinence, but pants with extra absorption 'in the right place', which begs the question: why not just build the pants from the absorbent material?), ladies incontinence (labelled 'only when I laugh...' it goes on, 'or sneeze, or cough, or walk, or wake up'. Guess that covers just about everything right there...like the men's but frilly).

What a catalogue. Kitchenware, homeware, food, growing old, safe burgers and pies without adulterated DNA, a home made mincing machine to eliminate all traces of horse, unwanted pig or cow, a George Foreman grill for every occasion, pie, pasty, pattie, waffle, and any other purpose imaginable, joint saving contraptions (knees and elbows, not lamb and pork), and how to be incontinent but go undetected. All life played out in less than a hundred glossy A5 pages.

Have a punt. Ladbrokes? No! Santander? Yes! Game on...

Ringfencing the high street from the casino bank

That's the plan. Taking the fence metaphor further, there was talk about electrified, high ringfencing. Then there's Santander, advertising their ISA, that pays an additional 0.1% if Rory McIlroy wins a major golf tournament this year. Get some interest on your savings, and have a punt at the same time. Why not just go straight to William Hill?

My eyes did that cartoon thing...

...where they pop out on stalks. Klaxons blare out in the background. When they're back in their sockets, they get a good rub before being opened again. One by one. Slowly. Just to see if the horror was real...

...yes, there he is...

...on the cover of 'Writer' magazine. Nope, not a nightmare. I didn't go on to look at Jimmy Savile on the cover of 'Childcare'; Jeremy Clarkson on the cover of 'Greenpeace'; Aled Jones between Slipknot and Motorhead on the cover of 'Kerrang'; Charles Hawtree on the cover of 'Bodybuilder'. The front pages didn't say “First Woman Pope – Mama Mia!” and the back pages were not full of news of Arsenal spending serious money on proper players.

I can only think it must be a: ...before...and way before...thing. Nailing my colours to the mast here, Archer is an odious, obnoxious, horrid little ball of Thatcherite slime. His neck is what the guillotine was invented for.

Motorhead tribute band

There was a blackboard outside a pub advertising a Motorhead tribute band: Motorheadache.

Tiffin tins and eating lunch

I've tried a variety of ways to take some lunch into work. The various plastic containers left in the fridge invariably remain there, forgotten. Sandwiches suffer the same fate. I bought a plastic, swing opening multi-compartment job hoping that it would inspire me to make some food to take to work, and that I might remember something larger and more obvious. Unfortunately, it had to be kept level and the right way up, or it leaked all over the place. My car (and my world) isn't a level, right way up all the time place, so it leaked all over the place and became abandoned in the cupboard black hole zone.

Then the Chinese supermarket had one of these (the last one of these on the shelf) in a tatty box, labelled 'slight dent £5.00'.

I didn't use it straight away, in fact it rolled around in the back of the car for a bit, as it seemed to have Harvest Apple Pie syndrome (big box, small item inside). I'll never get enough in there, I thought, no wonder they're selling them off reduced.

Then I gave it a go. Simple, robust, easy to wash up, the clamps hold it all together watertight. Rice, curry, potato curry, salad. Chapati, curry, salad, yoghurt raitha. Bhajis, tikka, yoghurt, onion and tomato salad and lemon wedges.

Good Queen Sicknote

Queenie's off Tom Dick

I know she's eighty-four. I know she's got gastroenteritis. I know she misses about one royal engagement every ten years. That's all taken on board.

I also know she's mad keen on the horses. The Cheltenham festival meeting started yesterday. Just a bit too convenient? Telly on, corgi on lap, mobile phone hotline to Paddy Power.

Someone should make a You Tube video, a mock advert:

“Hey. Liz. Open the new hospital? No! Racing? Yes! Labrokes. Game on.”

Onion bhaji by Alfred Prasad

I'm going to try these today. It seems an elegant and sensible recipe. There's fresh garlic and ginger and chilli added to the onions, as well as the spices and then it all gets a dusting of gram flour and just enough water to bind the ingredients into balls for frying. That makes much more sense than: make batter, add onions, try feverishly to adjust the consistency, end with with all batter and no onion.

Today we've been shooting clays

Sounds simple, doesn't it? Pop out (well, just over an hour (according to Google Maps directions service), more like and hour and twenty according to experience). I tidied up the car. That should read: I even tidied up the car. It's bit of an annual event, and it was overdue. By tidy, I mean empty some stuff out of the back and into the garage, freeing up space in the back to empty other stuff off of the back seat and into the back. The sacrifices I make, eh?

BLISS and DLL safely on board, we set off, just the regulation ten minutes late. We arrived at the farm just about in time. Clays this way, the signs said, so we followed them. The road deteriorated pretty quickly, to become just a rough track. Time was ticking by and the signs continued to say Clays, straight on. Straight on it was.

“This is ridiculous” said BLISS, and it was. About two feet of drifting snow, and some icy tractor tyre tracks the only guide. The thing was, if we stopped, that would've been it. No starting again. There was nowhere to turn around. Eventually the inevitable happened and that was that. Left front wheel spinning in mid air, the other one doing nothing at all.

BLISS made some phone calls.

“I'll come and tow you out with the Landrover” said the shooting instructor...”just as soon as the tractor tows me out...”

We tried a few things to pass the time while we waited for the cavalry. Nothing worked. Eventually the Landrover arrived and got me moving. Just reversing back half a mile through snow and deep puddles of melting snow, and we were in the Landrover and away.

We learned that BLISS is a natural shot as much as I'm not a natural off-roader. DLL nailed a few, too, and she's a rarity (we knew that), a left-eye dominant right-hander. When they started making it difficult and firing them from left to right, my percentage hits improved. Oh, and the girls are photogenic. Equally photogenic, with and without guns.

Just taking the car out for a slide

Still snow...

...bit of an adventure this morning. I don't like driving. Best of times. This isn't the best of times. Last night some people spent ten hours trying to get home. The news says some have died. That's dedication to getting home at all costs, right there.

So. Exit horse-gate parking bay, turn right. Oh dear. Those yellow flashing lights I'd seen? Assumed they were gritters? They were something else with yellow lights. Recovery or something. No grit. Our road remains grit free. No lights, no pavements, no mains drainage. Poll tax's forgotten road, that's us. The least they could do, you'd imagine, would be to ensure we're at the top of the gritting list. “Those poor sods? They fork out so much, get so little in return, how about we make sure they can drive up and down their (unlit, unsewage-disposaled) road?”

Wheels spinning. Rubber burning smell. Time for the three-point slide. No question of driving the car. Neutral, steer as best as possible, try to get it facing the other way. All luck, no judgement. Off we go. Downhill now, past the logger's yard, and, nope, the brakes are not doing anything. Nothing at all. The car's turning, bit more, now fully sideways on, and sliding away. No control available. Steer into, out of, into-and-out-of, frantically steer anywhichway. Look for soft landing. Ah. Soft landing. Six-point turn, facing the right way again. Start the run-up to the main road.

A curate's egg, our main roads. Clearly, some gritting crews are more dedicated and focused than others. Exposed areas have had those windswept buildups, too. Lorries don't seem to register oncoming cars in their need for forward progress. Snow in my lane? I'll drive in that other one. On the right. Works in France, why not here? Comin' through!

The abandoned cars littered about seemed to feature sports models. Maybe the lack of a proper roof makes drivers extra-nervous about turning them over?

There's an appa fa'da new papa

The Guardian have launched an online application, the Pontifficator, to assist with new pope frenzy. Which isn't much evident in these parts. Apparently all the cardinals gather (much to relief of choirboys around the globe) and get locked in the Sistine Chapel until they agree on the next episode. I wonder if any of them are humming “Won't Get Fooled Again”?

Here'a comma da new pope,

Same-a as da old pope

Place your bets at sillyhat.com

One rule for them...

...it seems that it isn't okay for a wife to take her husband's driving penalty points. What do points make? Prison sentences, apparently. Obviously, it goes against the spirit and the obvious meaning of the law to even contemplate transferring penalty points to someone else. That would be like a big, rich, polluting nation 'buying' a smaller, less rich nation's right to discharge carbon dioxide and other pollutants just because they don't have the stuff to pollute with. Absolutely against the spirit, the meaning, the intentions...

...oh. They are, are they?

Leningrad Cowboys

Snow

It's been quite nice and warm. Naturally that's been followed by the coldest March weather on record, high winds and snow. The AA roadwatch online map for the area was obliterated by little red triangles.

The roads didn't get gritted. Note to the council: it's too late when there's a queue of traffic going nowhere. By then you are not actually gritting the road. Just pebbledashing the stationary cars. The driving was spectacularly bad:

Too fast: the very first right turn of the morning. The road went round to the left and down a short and fairly steep incline. I tried the brakes. Nothing. The oncoming red car was going fast, but was miles away. With the obstructions his side, surely he'd stop? He didn't. I slid to a halt opposite a space he could bail out into. He baled out at speed, then hit his brakes too hard, too late, and slid on into the roadsign. I saw he was unhurt and carried on.

Too slow: they either have 4x4's and utter contempt for the rest of us, or they don't and are too dim to understand the physics. Maintain momentum to survive. Like sharks swimming. Stop and you've had it. You'll not get going again.

Not moving at all: what you need is information: is the small occasional forward progress genuine or merely because another car up ahead has turned around and gone back the way it came? There is none. Left frustrated and floundering, no-one knows what to do for the best. The Internet information is rubbish, too little, too late, too inaccurate.

The High Street was blocked, so it was the reverse trip up the road where the postie came to grief, and I nearly didn't make it up the incline at the end, wheels spinning and rear end fishtailing. The traffic was queuing back for miles, all because no-one had the sense to turn right at the roundabout (road clear) but insisted on waiting to turn left (okay, you may want to go left, but what's the point when, clearly, nothing's moving?). How many of those poor people had travelled miles just to get stuck going nowhere near to home? Frustrated at the home stretch?

It does look nice, though. Photo opportunities abound.

Leningrad Cowboys go America

No typo. The 'to' is missing, the title is grammatically wrong.

A gloriously mad film. The Cowboys are a band, with outrageous quiffs (about two feet long, Google images) and long pointy shoes (they buy a car, kick the tyres, punctures result).

I think it's from Finland. There's not a lot of subtitles, because there's not much dialogue. What there is is hilarious.

It is absolutely, wonderfully barking berserk. I don't know why I've not heard about these movies before (there's three: Go America, Meet Moses, and the balalika diaries (or something like that)). Find them and watch them, an insane visual treat.

The film starts off, appropriately enough, with the bass player frozen stiff laying on the tundra. He goes to America too, albeit in a ramshackle coffin knocked up from scraps of wood and secured to the roof of their car.

A big tidy up (ongoing)

Tidying up electronic photo files

Huge external drives beget headaches. The first thing I do is copy all the data I could ever possibly need to doubling up here and there. The promise, of course, is that: “there'll be plenty of time to sort it all out later, most important right now to back it all up and not miss anything”. There's never enough time, let alone plenty. That 'enough is as good as a feast', I'll accept that can apply to food; never to time. Imagine the luxury a feast of time would provide. So what happens is that the data only ever gets added to, sometimes in the watertight anal fashion computer storage requires as a minimum, and more often in a more haphazard way, with fingers crossed and a repeat promise to “sort it out later”.

I've found folders within folders doubling up the contents of the parent folders. I've found duplication and redundancy all over the place. Thankfully, there's no gaps. Just so much belt, braces, second belt and braces, trousers tattooed onto lower body, under-trousers, trousers, over-trousers and over-over-trousers, that massive drives are telling me they're almost full when actually, with a bit shuffling, time and review, there's space to spare.

At least with prints and negatives and physical things, there's a natural check: do you really want to throw those away? On the computer screen: bin? click, yes, you sure? yes, too easy to say goodbye to too much too easily.

Comeback Sunday

Not enough for Italy (but enough to give England a shakeup before facing Wales). Enough for the bad blood between Ferguson and Benitez to cause another lack of handshake press meltdown.

Business: I'll smile, I'll pretend, I'll shake hand with the devil.

Sport: however dire things on the pitch become, pitch is war, final whistle means war's over, shake and make it up, unless someone's gone so far beyond the pale that he'll never be seen again, in which case it's fair enough to do whatever you like, on or off the pitch, to get your team what your team deserves.

For someone unwilling to work with anyone full of their own press importance (Beckham, Rooney, Keane) and willing to ask him some hard questions, Don Fergusoni expects everyone to kiss his hand, bow down and accept his club's dominance. Whoever challenges this cops his displeasure. Which, unfortunately for Demento, means very little to anyone with a brain. Therefore he loves Steve Bruce, Sam Alerdyce, and all the others unwilling or unable to amount to a challenge, and can't cope with any other approach.

Eyeball yucca plant

We have a large Yucca plant. A leaf stabbed me in the face as I was playing about at the back of the telly. Apparently, this was hilarious. Particularly as I'd protested long and loud about being the worst -trained person to take on the connecting computer to telly duties. Duties much better suited to smaller people. Those less likely to suffer yukka-leaf-eyeball injuries.

Not that I'm bitter or anything. Just await revenge, mockers, I shall return, armed with a sharp-edged yucca-leaf, and put to the sword houseplants that attack their owners.

Fishcakes

BLISS' fishcakes...

...came out a bit hotter than anticipated. They were nice (I tried a few scraps left in the baking tray). Just, well, very, very hot. They were meant to pack bit of a punch, smoked haddock, roughly crushed potato and swede should be able to take some robust seasoning, I thought, and so I seasoned. Robustly.

That turned out to be robust as in 'mouth-searingly almost frighteningly hot'. Nice, just pushing the envelope of BLISS' chilli scale a bit.

In sympathy, I slathered my home made pizza with that chilli oil. 'That' chilli oil being the one that, rather than making things merely oily with a hint of chilli, actually makes things fiercely hot. Unfortunately, it's also the one I always forget is the fiercely hot...etc. It already had three finely chopped small red chillies among the mushrooms and cheese (we're all out of anchovies, unless there's one of those stupidly small and easily hidden tins at the back of a shelf in the fridge – there's only so much turning the place upside down in search of small, oily, salty, fishy kicks I'm prepared to do) so it wasn't exactly crying out for more heat. It was more an act of solidarity than anything else.

There's a set of three of these oils, in bobbly, curvy bottles. Hot, hotter, and very hot. They were labelled something like that. Instantly, the devils on either shoulder came up with a cunning plan: use the very hot one first (about half oil / half dried chillies), then decant hotter into very hot, adding those chillies to the already very hot, and finally...you get the picture. It'll be interesting to try the final topping up.

Watching the rugby...

...R and I hatched a cunning plan. It was during the Welsh and Scottish national anthems. The Scots changed theirs in the seventies to Scotland the Brave, so there's no need for us to stick with the rubbish one we have.

Our idea was this:

Start the world's smallest nation (Google 'Sea World') for a model example.

Invest loads of your own currency (we didn't think this through too deeply, but, hey, your nation, your currency, your printing presses / mint, off you go) in training one athlete to be the world's best at something obscure where there's not too much competition. The Olympics is ideal for this. They love a dumb sport. Solo synchronised swimming? Real tennis? Something like that.

Compose the longest, ever, national anthem.

Not only the longest, but one with several stop / starts, so people repeatedly go: “thank god that's over” and start to sit back down, only for “oh, Jesus, it's only started up again. Who are these people?”.

Then, just to add insult to injury, and noticing that other nations now have their own versions of the Kiwi's Hakka, have one of those, too. A very long, very funny and pretty camp version would be ideal. All that's left to do is settle down in the royal box next to whatever minor dignitaries have been exhumed to sit through said minority sport, and enjoy taking the mickey out of the whole malarkey.

Soundtrack by Ry Cooder (1)

A busy day for white dog

It's a non-stop whirl in white-dog-land. A visit to the doggy training facility. Then the vets for a MOT and beauty treatment (well, nail trim). Walk. Brush. Coat looking shiny and healthy. That's just the fun parts. There's the serious issues, too. Like barking at the postman. Like keeping the garden as free as possible from the menaces that lurk out there: the foxes, squirrels, rats, and the larger birds.

Throw in a couple of light meals and some power-naps, well, where has the day gone?

Southern Comfort

I read a (wrongly dismissive, I think) review of Alien that described it as ten little Indians, in outer space. Then there was one.

Southern Comfort might equally be dismissed as ten little Indians in the Bayou. But the swamps are a key part of the film, and so is Ry Cooder's soundtrack. Beautifully photographed. Cautionary: lack of respect for nature and people can have some nasty consequences.

A favourite line was, two national guardsmen discussing a third who's unpredictable behaviour had caused them no end of grief:

“So? He's mad? What'd'ya want me to do? Cage him or kill him?”

“Either works for me.”

LA Confidential

The bad thing about insomnia is the sleeplessness. Or is it that it leads to a tendency towards flippancy? Probably the tiredness, low-level and nagging.

The upside is cultural. Book, music, films, the arts don't care whether it's three in the afternoon or three in the morning. So while I re-watched Southern Comfort this morning, I also watched LA Confidential for the first time. In DVD jacket blurb-speak, a stellar cast (this is meaningless to BLISS so there's some clues in brackets): Russell Crowe (the gladiator in Gladiator); James Cromwell (Babe's Dad in Babe); Kevin Spacey (with then without the limp in The Usual Suspects, the serial killer in Seven (help me out here) multiple parts in the airline adverts); Danny DeVito (the shorter of the two in Twins?); Guy Pearce (Memento, was in 'Neighbours' for Gods sake); Kim Bassinger, and a great James Ellroy story, and period cars, clothes and music.

The waiting room and that looking at your watch thing

I had a Dr's appointment this morning. 08:50. I arrived between 08:45 and 08:50, did a touchscreen book-in and took a seat, determined beyond belief to just read The Yellow Birds on the Kindle and wait patiently (heh! no pun intended) to be called through. “Specifically” I lectured myself “no looking at the watch in that exaggerated 'how much longer?' gesture”. By 08:52 that resolution was broken. They used to play classical music, and that was fine because there's no words to interfere with reading, and I like most of what they played. Due (no doubt) to populist dumbing-down pressure, they now play pop, with stupid, inane words interfering with trying to read, and you can't drown it out with the mp3 player as you would elsewhere, as you're waiting to be called.

They should either do silent waiting areas (no talking, no music, no televisions, no nothing) or accept the fact that some of us (or me, anyway) want our own agenda in our ears and replace being called with a visual alert. I'm sure, away from medical establishments and the dreaded waiting areas, my blood pressure's much lower.