But I want to snoop...

Snoop snoop sha’whoops

Our home secretary has failed to get her snoop’s charter on the political agenda. Anyone able to look at the history, the ethos, and to understand how the world wide web actually works knows the whole idea is stupid, unworkable, and a nonsense. But she’s a politician, a tory, and she’s another in a line of tory women with bees in their bonnets, and she wants access to our emails, messages, twitter accounts, all that sort of stuff. Where the army of staff needed to monitor such activity (I reckon about one-to-one is the minimum ratio needed to monitor traffic effectively) is coming from and what she wants to do with the information baffles me[1].

Anyway, she’s like the overall boss of the police. The police have been give the option to use things like financial compensation, sincere apologies, rebuilding vandalised stuff, to deal with minor wrong-doing. There’s a chief officers’ memo setting out the circumstances under which these measures should and should not be used. There’s 10,000 plus instances of them being used in cases of serious violent crimes. Crimes resulting in broken bones, stays in hospital, and the like. Not as intended. This has been happening on her watch.

While she’s messing about with her snooping and trying to export the bloke with no hands out of the Lion King.

Karen Brady. Liam Brady’s daughter, right?

I’ve never watched The Apprentice. I would rather pluck out my own eyeballs and deposit them in a bucket of sulphuric badgers’ urine before putting the whole foul mess through a liquidiser. There. Colours firmly nailed. Apparently she’s part of the show, and wants to get involved in politics. That figures. She must do politics very well indeed. Here’s a story about her days at Birmingham.

Someone played bit of a trick on her. Aston Villa, big local rivals, were managed by bling-encrusted Ron Atkinson (white), and they had a star player who happened to be called Dalian Atkinson (black, no relation). The trick was to make out that Dalian was Ron’s boy. Chief executive Karen fell for it.

To explain just why this level of ignorance for someone supposedly doing a job in the industry, it must be realised that if, for example, you went to a Glasgow pub and picked two random footy fans, they would laugh you out of the door if you suggested Dalian was Ron’s boy. London, Southampton, Manchester, Dundee. Anywhere, in fact. Football folk knew. The chief executive of the neighbouring club didn’t. It’s like an engineer not knowing a nut from a bolt or a steel from a concrete beam. It’s like a mechanic not knowing what those round things in the corners are called. It’s like an education secretary who’s never taken a lesson in his life. Oh. Yeah. Politics. Of course. She’ll be perfect.

---

[1] In his Inconvenient Truth book, Al Gore suggests the concept of ex-formation. As opposed to information. He cites the data being beamed down from all the surveillance satellites. If all the world’s computers and population did nothing else but monitor this data, we’d still be falling behind in processing it. Literally, too much information, man.

The Tempest

The Tempest

Big thanks to BLISS (who didn't get to go). I knew nothing about The Tempest before yesterday. It's full of magic, humour and wonder, and The Globe production had actors popping up all over the place. Particularly an athletic Aeriel.

Ding Dong Bitch-Witch is Dead

Charles Moore. Tory journalist. The authorised biography. Part one. Quite why we need any more dewy-eyed nonsensical and absolutely wrong outpourings of adoration is beyond me. There's almost an industry sprung up telling people like me that I can't think what I think: among other thoughts, that you can't call the unions Luddite dinosaurs and then worship an evil, spiteful, acid-tongued woman who was in bed with Pol Pot, Pinochet, and supported apartheid and was against Nelson Mandela. That's proper progressive, isn't it, you buffoons.

Even the Guardian published this:

With the tag: a glamorous looking...

If I might take issue with that. What do you call bingo wings when they start hanging down between wrist and elbow? Secateur wings? Natural part of the female ageing process. Unless you're an evil, spiteful bitch ready to send anyone slipping below 100% to the lame duck knacker's yard. Whereupon you become fair game.

Oy! Missus. Is your arm up the arse of the last chicken in Sainsburys, or are you growing the old man a spare scrotum by your wristwatch there?

Glamorous? As attractive as a just-shat-himself tramps piles.

Thatcher was notorious for not getting culture. Not seeing the need for sport. Work, work, work, die. My family in her eyes? Cannon fodder for the capitalist ideal. Well, frankly, I don't get the need for spiteful-gobbed old grannies. Put us out of the misery, kill 'em, chop 'em up and feed them to hungry animals. Apart from those lower-arm bingo wings. Even a starving dingo 'aint gonna want those.

A perfect storm

The Tempest

Our first outing to the Globe of the season, earlier than ever, I think. All thanks to BLISS who organises everything for us, and is staying home with newboy dog, and, hopefully, getting some rest. It's a shame that she's done all the work behind the scenes (geddit?) and can't come and enjoy the day.

I'm frantically Sparknoting (verb: cramming before the play) trying to get up to Tempest speed.

Run Lola Run

I watched Run Lola Run last night. What a great film. Saying anything much would be a spoiler, other than it's German, the soundtrack's great, too, and why have I not seen it before?

Hairy-arsed blokes – how to get the best out of them

We're a dying species, and there's a lack of skills out there in dealing with us. Observing some simple rules and principles can avoid issues arising:

1. Two's a crowd. Take scaffold for example. Main contractor gets fixed costs per his tender return. Appointing him is up to me. How that cost's split (erection, hire, strike) is entirely between him and his subby. He can flood it with labour or it can stand idle. Twitching your curtains and moaning on a bout it, and claiming it's costing you money just shows you up for the ignorant, meddling, no-life fool you are. Like driving. Either sit back and accept the fact that someone else is bearing all the stress and worry for you, or here's the keys, you do it. We can't both get behind the wheel at once.

2. Better than it was is better than it was. Fire Brigade training school. The promise: clean your billets and you'll be off early on Friday afternoon. First Friday inspection: top of lampshades, behind lockers, depths of the kitchen cupboards. The next Friday? We did nothing. Read the papers, chilled, drank tea, got roasted at the first inspection (as we would no matter how we tried), did a bit of derisory hoovering, chilled a bit more, left at five the same as the week before. Accept that some effort and improvement has been made. Or you'll be getting less than zero.

3. The job and knock imperative. A favourite story. New officer sent into Battersea, a traing school mate of mine. His theory: keep everyone ticking over, and they'll stay out of mischief. Nope. They soon got the hang of that, and played him at his own game. This is how it went:

New Officer (NO): Can you go and count the cylinders in the breathing apparatus room, please, I need to let staff know how many we're holding.

Old Hand (OH): Okay.

An hour passes.

OH: (Enter OH). Do you have a pen, please. Thanks. (Exit OH).

Another hour passes.

OH: (Enter OH). Do you have any paper, please. Thanks. (Exit OH).

Another hour later.

OH: (Enter OH). One.

Wind the spring, let us know what you want done. When it's done? Treat us like you would a bear with a sore head and a pot of his favourite honey.

Something the management of a gas appliance servicing company never learn about getting the most from their guys.

4. Draw a line and move on. Having decided on a colour, a method of repair, whatever, having invested the time (the mind-numbingly slow-ticking, boring, will-sapping time) to discuss things up hill, down dale, up several more hills and down any number of dales, that's that. The last thing anyone wants to hear is that you've thought about it and want to re-open discussions. There's new things to sort out. We've shook hands on that deal, it's done.

Moles with periscopes

There's some clever little moles around...

...at least there are on the golf course we played today, as cricket was called off (pitch declared too sodden for marking out by the local authority, sometime, presumably, on Thursday or Friday, a decision they didn't feel obliged to communicate, we found out when the vice-captain went along for a gander and found no pitch prepared for the home fixture – they're great, those customer service charters, thanks to you lot in Westminster for coming up with them, they've made all the difference).

They're using copper pipe and ninety degree bends as little mole-sized periscopes, watching out for the anti-mole green keeper.

Or, they're just part of the irrigation system.

I prefer the mole theory.

The new dog went into the sea...

...for the first time, at a rate of knots (note the nautical speed reference there – this don't write itself, y'know) before realising just what he'd done, and racing back to shore just as quickly. Perhaps the temperature isn't to his liking, with his Mediterranean background and everything.

Speaking of which, I'm still awaiting the first opportunity to use the Peloponnesian Mountain Dog bull on some unsuspecting pro-kennel club wonk.

BLISS...

...has a great future as a carpet fitter. God knows what she'd achieve with some proper kit, she's done brilliantly armed with the paper-hanging scissors and a fish-slice. Actually, it was a spatula but fish-slice sounds so much better (this thing really does not write itself, y'know – that there was imagination).

New golf rhyming slang:

Ladies (ladies tee), as in: sorry guys, had a couple of pints before kicking off, just nipping into the bushes for a quick ladies.

Seventh (seventh green), as in: isn't that a gimme? That's a bit seventh.

Broom handle (broom handle putter), as in: that much in 'The King's English', he had a right bad broom handle.

Metal (metal wood), as in: I like that Rory McIlroy, he's right metal, he is.

Fairway to Heaven

Golf isn't uncool. Famous golfers include Alice Cooper, The Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, and Johny Depp. Actually I made the last two up. They probably hate the game.

Off the cuff beats off the autocue

Improvisation

The best baked beans you’ll ever taste are those heated up over a little gas stove, and eaten straight from the tin, with the fork you used to stir them. Some of the best nights out are those that just happen, without any planning. Some of the best nights in are when the power cut has you around the kitchen table, playing candle-lit poker.

I love the complete…sessions jazz collections. Not because any of the alternative takes are better than those finally issued on the original album, but because it’s fascinating to hear those other versions, and imagine the processes that have resulted in the final album. Thanks to whoever did or does the archiving at Capitol or Blue Note or wherever, there’s so much lovingly preserved material.

That bit in the first Indiana Jones film was improvised. Body builder super-swordsman bloke approaches Harrison Ford twirling his blades like a blender connected directly to the national grid. Apparently a long fight sequence was scripted, but Ford wasn’t feeling very well, so he did that “yeah, whatever, got one of these?” look and shot twirly-features. Same end result, much less effort.

Think Tanks and why we don’t need them

Reform (an independent think) have published The Case for Private Prisons. Their business partners include G4S, Serco and Sodexo.

Policy Exchange is part funded by Deliotte, who bang on about the Police reforms and the need for a (yep) right-wing think tank to do just that. For loads of wonga.

Policy Exchange is founded by Nick Boyles, Michael Nice-But-Dim Gove, and Francis Maude and Gove wrote: “Policy Exchange were a tiny band of guerrillas, partisans in the hillside fighting a lonely campaign, but now, that tiny guerrilla band has turned into the most formidable regular army on the thinktank battlefield.”

What an idiot. If ‘the thinktank [sic] battlefield’ isn’t enough to have you rubbing you chin and reaching for the ammunition, there’s that ‘partisans in the hillside’ garbage. These are not people who would, like Orwell, go off to fight in the Spanish civil war on principle, but career politicians who would sell their family members for wealth and power.

Centre for Social Justice. Ian Duncan Smith and some fellow god-bothers, they get paid for assisting with social policy. Which, as a taxpayer, I already pay Smith for. Sponsored by Manpower, a shareholder in Working Links, involved in the DWP’s shenanigans, and accused of systematic fraud.

The Centre of Crime Prevention. Do you know what? I’ve lost the will. Isn’t that the local nick?

Fox watch

D the Dog has taken up residence in the sentry box that is our back step, with occasional chases to the bottom of the garden should an intrusion occur.

Dem bones dem bones...

The knee bone’s connected to…

…just about everything, really.

K told me to watch Dexter, and dutiful Dad as I am, I did. It’s a police procedural, at heart, with added examinations of nature, nurture, the influences of biological and adoptive parents, and how even someone who is emotionally detached lives in a tangled and complex web of relationships.

Set in Miami, there’s plenty of sea and boats and sunshine and seafood (junk and haute cuisine), and, actually, they’re always eating. An easy sell, as far as I’m concerned. Try the magical Tinneswood Brandon family books. That man could write food and eating like an angel.

So, there was something in the soundtrack of series one that reminded me to check out Courtney Pine, which I duly did. There was something in the Courtney Pine stuff…

…that had me checking out Abdullah Ibrahim’s Water from an Ancient Well…

…one of those albums that has you certain that you’ve heard most of the songs before, even though you know you haven’t…then there was Mr BO’S at nets who triggered…

…bit of a tidal wave, actually…

…almost an entire weekend of the Bob Dylan catalogue, watching the Hurricane Carter film, and picking up the autobiography (I’m just over halfway through) and the journalist’s version (1p + p&p)…which somehow had me playing the Miles Davis Jack Johnson album, and the Jack Johnson album sessions collection…

…which led, in a convoluted way, to digging out The Joe Herriot Amancio d’Silva Quartet’s Hum Dono…

…a humdinger, without any doubt, of east meets west in a jazz environment, beautiful…

…and somewhere along the way…

…the dead Thatcher supporter’s club communal sense of humour failure reminded me that I’d not checked out Half Man Half Biscuit for too long, so I did that, and somewhere along that line the words ‘post punk’ came up, leading to a revisit of some The Fall albums…

…along the way this month we’ve lost…

…a wicked witch, the genius designer behind the Dark Side of the Moon and other album sleeves, Richard Griffiths (who had Harry Potter living in the cupboard under his stairs), there’s others too, and the sad news that Iain Banks has months, a year at most to live. Anyone who asks their long-term lover if she’d do him the honour of being his soon-to-be-widow by way of proposal deserves to live longer.

If…

…your ear-bone’s connected to anything else, beg steal or borrow a copy of Hum Dono. Give it a few listens (it’s not anything immediate) and immerse yourself in musical bliss. Always loath to say things like this, but this is a good headphones album.

Sprouts

The Sprouts

The insane workings of the brain, one attached to an adult, male, overweight, lazy, forgetful and unfocused (that’d be me). Unexpected people and places, unpredictable directions of travel.

So. Half Man Half Biscuit, and the song ‘Joyce’ from the CSI: Ambleside album. Before hearing it, scanning the track listing, as you do, things flashed through the mind: Joyce? James Joyce? Coincidence: I just read an online Guardian article about a Bloomsday publication planned for this year.[1] MM is loving Dubliners, a work of true, diamond-sharp, unmistakeable genius. Actually the song just celebrates the name Joyce, one that has rather gone out of fashion.[2]

It’s important to realise that I knew these guys for at least ten years, without ever knowing their family name. Cast (in order of appearance):

Sprout. for some reason I think his given name was Craig, but I can’t be sure. Tall, an inch, maybe two taller than me, about 6’4”, long, curly hair, shirt always open almost to the navel, gold chain and chest fur. Frank Zappa ‘tache and nose, permanent fag in one hand, a big, tall, thin bundle of fun and laughter. He was always in the process of laughing, or any of the variations: sniggering, chortling, guffawing, or just about to. There were many theories about the Sprout name[3] none of which were definitive.

Paul Sprout. younger brother. Slightly shorter, quite small for a Sprout, about my height, 6’2”. Thicker set, not so good-natured or even-tempered, but a perfect gentleman until upset, when he was given to extreme and bloody violence. I think he worked in a butchers, but again memory isn’t perfect. He was the footballer of the family, a better than decent defensive centre half.[4]

Peter Sprout: older brother. Rumours of high intelligence, going off to university, some sort of breakdown. There’s a line in Apocalypse Now, “The machinist, the one they called Chef, was from New Orleans. He was wrapped too tight for Vietnam, probably wrapped too tight for New Orleans.”[5] Peter was wrapped way too tight for anything much, really. Painful to talk to. Many of the overly earnest guys I deal with today (including my doctor) might benefit from having to deal with Peter Sprout and revise their position.

Frank Sprout: where to start? Outward appearances: huge frame. Huge head. Definite and unchanging choice of clothes (work, weekend, weddings, funerals, whatever)[6] comprising suit jacket over t-shirt, suit trousers, and Dunlop Green Flash tennis shoes.[7] Frank Sprout spent his working life pushing a barrow, with shovel and broom attached, smoking a roll-up and chatting. However much the council paid him, he was worth a hundred times that in cheering up wherever he went. His view of the world was surreal, and should have been documented.[8]

Joyce: where the whole recollection started. Sprout. Frank Sprout, his Dad, Peter and Paul Sprout, his brothers, and…Joyce. Never qualified by the Sprout tag. No-one, but no-one, ever referred to her as Joyce Sprout, as we routinely did the rest of the family.

So there they are. One song. About ten seconds. A tangential, uncontrollable brain, and the Sprouts. Legends, one and all.

---

[1] All the events in Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses happen during one day, the 16^th of June, ‘Bloomsday’, named for Leopold Bloom. Affectionately known as ‘Poldy, Bloom, I think, is one of those characters we all, or we all should, recognise parts of ourselves represented within.

[2] If, like me, you tend to be wordy, initially, then trim things back to be more punchy, there’s a ‘nowadays’ here, redundant, but bunged in for comic effect. I thought about it, then left it out.

[3] My favourite was down to his height: the tallest of a tall family, all of them over six foot.

[4] See comments about the violence. There’s a huge correlation there, in the 1980’s, between the evil temper and success at centre half. I met these guys week in, week out playing centre forward. Nasty.

[5] See what I mean about the fat, lazy bloke’s brain and stuff? All this took seconds to think. Seconds.

[6] You just don’t get these characters these days.

[7] As favoured by Status Quo.

[8] It was Frank, managing our Sunday football team, who said, while I was looking at my foot after breaking an ankle, turned the wrong way (as in backwards from the shin) “can you run it off? Only our subs ‘aint up to much this week?” I swore at him, but what a man-manager he was. No knowledge of football, never played the game, no tactical sense, nothing, but he knew who to listen to, who to ignore, and how to make as club achieve more than the talent within entitled it to.

Men at work? Where, exactly?

Timesaving tips #1

Radio Five, and anyone else giving out traffic news in the mornings:

Only make an announcement when the M25, anticlockwise, through the roadworks between junctions five and six (with the M26 / A21 and Godstone) isn’t tailing back due to a broken down vehicle / broken down lorry.

I took a detour to avoid that section last Friday morning. Fortunately, Radio Five had yet to have the benefit of my timesaving tip, or they may not have bothered saying anything, as it was situation normal. Unfortunately, the world, his wife and their dog also took the detour.

Then, on the way back, clockwise, there were two broken down vehicles slowing everything down through the roadworks. I’m starting to wonder whether the recovery and highways blokes don’t plant them to justify their existence or cream off a bit of overtime. Not only that, but the ‘works’ in roadworks is open to question. Over the first few slow, stop-start miles, I passed just two blokes in the middle bit where the so-called works are supposed to be happening. Both were sat in small diggers. Neither digger was moving. One bloke appeared to be asleep (he may have died on the job, or been an inflatable put there to make it look as if something is being done, but if they’re using inflatables, then they need to get some skinny-bloke models, this one would have taken some serious inflating), the other was eating a sandwich with one hand, and demonstrating the manual dexterity required to work such earth-moving equipment, scratching his belly with the other. Eventually, after a long slow frustrating lack of progress, there’s a middle bit where all the high-viz hardhats hang out, measuring, taking datum levels, smoking and chatting. It’s like a Village People fancy dress party at which everyone’s turned up in the same costume. Like those population maps showing vast wastelands then huge dense urban sprawls near seas and rivers, maybe the central section is naturally where road builders congregate. Maybe it’s the portaloos. Maybe it’s safety in n umbers as a defence against road-raging homicidal drivers seeing the same broken down vehicles day after day. Maybe only one of them has a lighter. Then there’s another long slow section with nothing happening. Long slow entry and exit stretches, short frantic bit in the middle. Like all those songs on those prog-rock albums in the 70’s. See ‘Selling England by the Pound’ and similar.

The Fall

One good thing about being an old git. You sometimes get to revisit some magnificent music you’ve all but forgotten about. I’ve been listening to The Fall’s Shift Work. Among their albums, this is relatively laid back easy listening. It still has more teeth than several day’s listening on a popular local radio station.

Disgrace…

…for D the Dog, who has destroyed some books. There’s a saying, something about do what you like to the ageing non-politicals, but brace yourself for outcry if you close a library. I love books. Ripping them up is the canine equivalent of those fundamentalist nutters burning them. A stiff talking-to is needed. A more secure lock for the kitchen door, too. More the lock than the talking-to, actually.

Did they know something back then?

I left my heart in Papworth General

Half Man Half Biscuit. Should that be Half Man, Half Biscuit? Imagine the world outlook of Karl Pilkington set to music. Imagine a Birkenhead Ian Dury, without his art school background, steeped in Tranmere Rovers, and 1970’s and 1980’s Jobcentre queues, collaborating with Pilkington to turn that world view into lyrics. Add a deep and profound knowledge of rubbish television and high street retail outlets, spoonfuls of scepticism and a large pinch of surrealism.

Down at Stoke Mandeville I bumped into Mr IQ

I said

“Hey albino this is not 1972 so stub out your King

Edward and get that small boy off your knee

And melt down your rings and things and get

Yourself off the TV”

Jim could you fix it for me to come down and

Suck out your kidneys?...

1985 that was recorded. D’you think they knew something?

There’s a song on their CSI Ambleside album called…

…National Shite Day

We should have one of those. Celebrating years of useless, lazy, shiny-arsed clockwatchers and jobsworths making millions of lives miserable.

Actually, we need to have one of those a week, or we’ll fall behind. Can I nominate the student loan retards as this week’s star performers, please?

K and MM have seven or eight years at university between them. Guess how many times the student loan monkey performance has been dreadful, shambolic, and well on the woeful side of even-if-I-were-carrying-out-deliberate-sabotage-I’d-be-doing-better-than-you-are. Yep. Theirs is a 100% record.

Southeastern Trains Travelsick Blues

Closed the road off to play about with the level crossing. Again. Privatised railway companies. Taking the ‘F’ out of shift work on a mainline near you.

I was lost for words…

…honest, I was, when a workmate (born, raised, schooled, lived all his life in a sleepy seaside town) described a nearby market town as ‘backward’.

I guess it’s like the hillbillies who know someone who can read and write looking down on those that don’t.

Happy retire...oh, er...our sincere condolences

Welcome to my world…

…actually, really, you’re welcome to it.

1. The do you like your job test: you win the lottery. You now have sufficient funds for the rest of your natural. Do you:

1. Do a Mrs Mop the school cleaner from Cleethorpes (aged 68) and carry on working.

2. Work out your notice period, clear up all loose ends, ride off into the sunset with your leaving card and clock for the mantelpiece (to tick away your remaining hours).

3. Send a text effecting your immediate resignation, from somewhere you’ve always wanted to visit.

2. Are you a potterer:

1. Do you get in at starting time and go home at going home time, watching the clock in between for tea times and lunch time.

2. Is your preferred working pattern do a bit, stop, chat, tea, do a bit more, fill the day.

3. Is your preferred working pattern job and knock. Coffee and sandwiches bolted down at the desk, petrol station sandwiches, or, more likely, nothing at all to eat or drink, just a relentless start, work, work, work, stop working schedule.

If you even looked at the (c)’s, then, probably, your idea of retirement isn’t slowing down a bit, doing three days a week, or taking on less responsibility, but actual, proper retirement: stopping work and doing the things you want to do with your time. The c-camp go to work for one (and only one) reason: the money.

Not so long ago the politicians and the financial world told us in the c-camp to invest in property and retirement funds, to fund our retirements. They were walking around in pairs of shoes that cost more than our cars, so we heeded their advice and tried to sort out comfortable futures, making sacrifices in the present.

Well, what are those investments worth now: approximately nothing. The advice? It was worth about the same. The politicians and the finanacials handing it out? Yep. Worthless scum unable to see past looking after number one. Their shoes? Now each one of the pair is worth more than my car. They’re immune. We are not.

Here’s the typical retirement for the generation left no time for things to be put right before life expectancies start being cashed in: after life-shortening, horrible, stressful years working in a spite-filled, aggressive, demanding ever more for less environment, we’ll have two weeks respite, in a hospital bed (if they can find one) or on a trolley in a corridor somewhere, ignored by nurses with degrees, before the machine that goes ‘ping’ flatlines.

Thanks to Gordon, Tony, Alistair, David, George and all their mates, the light at the end of our tunnel is the torch the medics are shining in our eyes to make sure we’ve actually come to the end of our serviceable lifespans.

A free magazine from Wing Yip

Oriental Food Digest

The superb Wing Yip supermarket popped a free magazine into my shopping yesterday: The Oriental Food Digest (do you think the pun's intended?). On he front page there's an article about the Young Chef competition winners. The top prize was for: lobster spring rolls, and Asian quail with foie gras and asparagus with a rhubarb and plum wine reduction. That does sound a bit unnecessarily complicated, doesn't it?

Inside the back page are the photos. The lobster spring rolls make more sense visually, cut on the diagonal, there's a little bit of lobster and the flash of red that gives looks very good. There's plenty of green (I'd guess that's spring onion, coriander, maybe some chilli) and the bean shoots. I do tend to see spring rolls, of whatever variety (and they do vary from the big, robust and generally pretty oil-rich takeaway versions, to the tiny, see-through, lightweight Vietnamese-style ones full of crisp vegetables and flavoured with mint) as edible mops for soaking up various dipping sauces (these vary too: from the polystyrene pot of takeaway curry sauce, through any number of chilli sauces, to that fish sauce and lime juice mix). But as edible mops go, these didn't look half bad.

Asian quail with all the other stuff photos confirm that it's an overwrought chicken curry. I have a recipe book with a vegetable curry that includes rhubarb, which I imagine would give a nice bit of tart acid to the dish. I haven't tried it, so can't really comment on how well it works in practice.

There's some stunning photos of celebrations for the Thai and Tibetan and Iranian, New Years, and the Holi Spring festival in India. There's also a recipe reminding me to make that Tom Yum soup BLISS likes.

Why I don't chip in

At my last place it was almost a weekly event. “Have you signed the circulating birthday / wedding / newborn sprog / moved house / successfully renewed your season ticket or topped up your Oyster card card for so-and-so?”

Followed up by an email, inevitably saying: there's cakes in the kitchen.

I signed the cards, but I refuse to participate in the general excitement and to fork out for two reasons:

One: I did less than three months short of twenty years in one job, and left without any fuss whatsoever, just slipped quietly away and got on with moving on, not even a good luck card. Last day of service Sunday, first day in the new job Monday morning. There's no chrome-plated, ash-handled mounted axe on my wall.

Two: the whole cakes thing. Where do blokes get off on buying cakes? There's something deeply wrong there. Bacon sandwich (morning). Danish pastry? Definitely suspect. Get over there with Savile and Rolf, mate. Cakes? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Mini onion bhajes, prawn toasts, those little papadums? There's no end of possibilities that don't involve mutating into a member of the Women's Institute.

Actually, three: your birthday affects me how? Vic at Norbury always summed it up when senior officers tried to get all pally: “you 'aint any sort of mate of mine, you're just a LCC workmate”. I don't care if it is or isn't your birthday, or whether or not your wife's given birth to a smaller, even stupider version of you. Do your job. Don't try to stitch me up, make mine hard work, or interfere. Keep the cakes. I've signed the card.

The wonderful Courtney Pine

Courtney Pine – Modern Day Jazz Stories

I’ve been listening to this recently. It’s a dazzlingly good album, strong and varied. Pine plays just about every saxophone on the rack and the flute, too. Even the liner notes describe how the mixing and recording kit used was chosen because it’s so good at catching the warmth and richness of acoustic instruments.

It’s strange to think that about sixty or seventy years ago, a liking for jazz was not something to hide. Now, in the days of Simon, Louis, and Olly Murrs, (and all those others who have, thankfully, passed me by) it’s a bit like admitting that you’d rather not read anything at all than read the Daily Mail, that, no, actually you don’t find Jeremy Clarkson remotely amusing, or that you eat worms.

When did challenging become a taboo and immediacy the overarching requirement for music, the theatre, and television?

I know I’m droning on here, but if the Pythons or Denis Potter pitched up at Broadcasting House today, they wouldn’t get past security.

The question is…

…which football league is going to supply this season’s Aguerooooo! moment. That’s how the Guardian phrase it, anyway. Actually, it’s a “Up for grabs now!” moment, and with all due respect to Citeh (and remember how they broke United hearts – respect is due): we were first to have an Up for grabs now moment on our CV; we’ve got the book, by a proper author, not some journalist on summer leave or ghostwritten player’s rubbish; and we’ve got the film (and a mighty good film it is, too).

It’s not going to be the prem, that’s for sure. Let alone going to the wire, that was settled well before the final furlong. It’s the same in Spain (Barca), Germany (Bayern), France (noveau riche PSG), Scotland (Celtic gifted the title by dumping ‘Gers into the bottom division), and Italy (Juve).

It’s tight in Belgium, but MS Word puts a red squiggle under any sentence with ‘Belgium’ and ‘exciting’ in it.

In Portugal Porto and Benfica are having a monumental tussle, in the Czech Republic it’s close between Viktoria Plzen and Sparta Prague (but I’ve only ever heard of Sparta), and Bulgaria has a climax to the season, but I’ve not heard of either of those.

No. Forget this year. Think back to 1989.

It’s up for grabs now...

Nutty Boy Winterburn’s coaching manual, page 2.

Yep. There it is.

That’s right, Steve, not long. Just long enough. Never in doubt.

Not a bad day

It wasn’t a bad day 1

After seven days without heating and four without hot water, and after not shaving for four days and starting to resemble a dishevelled, stressed-out Father Christmas), we’ve got both back on.

We’ve now got an emersion for emergencies.

The system now runs almost silently, so I’ll have to start setting an alarm if I need to be up at 5:30. I used to depend on the noisy old pump waking me up.

It wasn’t a bad day 2

There’s that thing about the devil having all the best lines (see Old Harry’s Game for evidence), but the anti-Thatcher camp have all the jokes and laughter. Her lot are so busy scrambling for the moral high ground that they’ve left their sense of humour somewhere along the way. Twitter’s been a barrel of laughs, Frankie Boyle’s been magic, and that vicar bloke doing the sermon and Cameron’s speechwriter, well, they’re a right pair of cards, aren’t they?

It wasn’t a bad day 3

D the Dog was clean through the night. Only the second time. His Dad’s touch.

It wasn’t a bad day 4

MM was interviewed on the news. Protesting. Good for him. They were giving it “what a waste of money” which is clever, because it was a waste of money, and that lot don’t get football, chanting, or the reference.

It wasn’t a bad day 5

I think…

…Osborne’s saying:

“It’s alright for you’se two, I’m copping the bill for this shindig in the morning.”

It wasn’t a bad day 6

This made me laugh.

Without a doubt, you have to be a special kind of arse to turn a whole country against you. The last Queen of Scotland?

A rare breed

The Peloponnesian Mountain Dog

Size: large. Bigger standing up on their hind legs. A skill they like to demonstrate whenever possible. Or whenever impossibly awkward to do so, and whenever totally impractical. Just whenever, really. Think best suit, shirt and tie, and muddy paws on the chest.

Natural habitat: in the way. Fridge, freezer, cupboard, whichever one you want to open, there he is, blocking the swing of the door. Finished? You’ll have to move him before closing it.

Character: friendly, good disposition. Good with dogs and people. Enjoys a stroke and a cuddle.

Likes: the smell of different foods, the smell much more so than the actual food. Opening doors, and drawers (yes, drawers) that he’s not supposed to. Popping upstairs for unspecified and mysterious reasons. Cricket, particularly Sussex and England, football, Arsenal, naturally, and rugby (Harlequins and England). Me (his favourite, of course), BLISS, K, MM, and DLL. White dog. The garden. The woods.

Dislikes: pesky foxes in his garden, sneaky uppy fly-out-of-nowhere pheasants, large bodies of water with waves in.

Coat: fur. Various colours of fur.

In a Jim Bowen moment…

…let’s have a look at what you could’ve won:

• 322 nurses, 272 teachers, 320 firemen, 269 paramedics, and (shockingly, there should be many more) just 152 MPs, and 6,079 of their duck houses;
• Electricity and gas: 7,042 households, water bills: 25,733 households;
• 44 libraries;
• 16,949,152 pints of milk;
• Flights to and from London, and a trip up and down the Shard for every Falkland Islander. Three times each.

Instead, we’re spunking £10m on a thoroughly undeserved state funeral.

Also, in arriving at the costs, they’ve not included the costs of the police, military and other personnel that “would be getting paid anyway”. I’m sure that will be welcome news for the football clubs that pay out, without any choice, for the for policing of their games.

The Reinhart Rogoff situation

A cornerstone of austerity policy, the Reinhart Rogoff study is arguably flawed (it excludes certain data) in any case, but, remarkably, it includes an Excel formula error. The error concerns an average for GPD growth that should be for all nations, but actually excludes Canada, Australia, Belgium, Austria, and Denmark.

Apparently it isn’t a fatal error, but I doubt that our economic masters will be rushing to openly admit basing policy on such flawed research, a typical example of the saying about politicians using statistics how drunks use lampposts: for support rather than illumination.

Pssst. Wanna buy a nationalised industry?

#JustAsking

Just a quick question. In the style of Alf Garnet (YouTube “your darlin’ Harold”).

Ver Blessed Maggie, right? An’ ‘er bunch of yes-men, right? Tell me, ‘ow does this work? Vey’re the party of sound business finkin’, savin’ us all from the nasty unions an’ va free day week, right?

An’ vey’re the government, right? Representin’ an’ workin’ on behalf of the state, right?

So. Bearin’ all vat in mind:

Why sell off the profitable, earnin’ parts of va state-owned, vats us-owned, by va way, nationalised industries, an’ keep va bits wot ‘aint doin’ so good? Unless it’s helpin’ vere already rich mates get richer?

Prime example ‘ere. Va Post Office. Letters, posties, deliverin’ to all remote corners? Nevah gonna make a penny. But we keep ‘old of that. Telecomms? Va profitable arm of va Post Office? Payin’ for the loss leadin’ Royal Mail? Sell vat off. Our mates can make a killin’there.

#Just Tellin’

The whole selling off the family silver under Thatcher stinks. I know I’m inclined to look back with red mist rather than red tinted glasses, have a hatred of missed opportunities, and I realise that rather than growing old gracefully and heading towards the small ‘c’ right, I’m becoming more and more radical as the realisation bites that there’s no peaceful retirement for (talkin’ about) my (g-g-gen-gen-) generation, we’re going to have to work until we fall down dead paying for the (continued) errors of politicians and bankers (continued) greed.

How can a capitalist party sell off profitable state owned stuff and keep hold of the rubbish and then hold up the rubbish and say “see, state ownership don’t work”.

More to the point (and this is why I don’t vote): how stupid, gullible, dropped on your head at a young age, window-licking, slobbering, brain-damaged retard do you have to be to fall for that rubbish and re-elect people who are bending you over (forwards) and attacking your behind with a high-powered, petrol-engine, razor-edged dildo?

The business equivalent would be:

A business with seven offices. Five doing very well, thanks. Two failing. Which do you look to sell off? Yep. Keep the five, get rid of the two.

Look up the history. Kept the two. Sold off the five. Madness.

We’re still paying the price now, the big sell-off, the closure of the industry needed for a real recovery. Germany has a faster, more robust recovery than anyone else. They invested in modernising and making their heavy industry work.

Some irony

How to make yourself look stupid and alienate people…

…well, Rich anyway. I fully understand. He had some sympathy for Carole Thatcher. Until she referred to her mother as The Iron Lady. Instantly, compassion disappeared down the plughole of contempt. So I did a bit of research. Clearly, whoever came up with the ‘Iron’ thing, her equivalent of Tony’s odious Campbell, was out of their tiny mind, didn’t realise just how hilarious it was, or had a wicked sense of iron-y (sorry).

Here’s some deserved Irons:

The Duke of Wellington. Went to war. Himself. Not from the safety of a bunker miles from the front line. No sinking of a retreating ship of civilians on his CV.

Iron Mike Tyson. If he can’t batter you (and there’s a better than 99.99% probability that he can) he’ll bite your ear off.

By the way, why do Mike Tyson’s eyes water after sex?

It’s the pepper spray.

World Cup winning Irons, (left to right) Moore, Peters, Hurst.

 

Another legendary Iron, Billy Bonds. That's enough of the West Ham.

Marvel Comics Iron Man.

Now, in you-couldn’t-make-it-up nonsense-ville:

Iron your arms, neck and face love, they’re all wrinkly.

“Mrs Thatcher”

“What”

“What does ‘iron hoof’ mean? The rough boys, they keep calling me an iron hoof”

Is that Barbara Cartland? Do me a favour love, iron me a shirt, there’s a dear.

Without pretend power, without physical presence, without control of bladder or brain, without police or armed forces back-up. Iron? Formidable? Do me a favour. Philosan, Horlicks and empty the bag last thing, if you remember.

So what can you judge a book by?

Can you judge an album...

...by it's cover?

The jazz labels Blue Note and more recently, ECM, have had their cover art raved over, and published.

The ECM covers are simple, sparse, often great photos of natural beauty:

Just the name of the artist, the album title, and the sea.

I've always loved winter photos of bare trees, the angle of view, and the tall slenderness of the trees makes this.

Sea again.

The Blue Note label was the first to pay the composers and artists what they deserved, rather than cynically exploiting them.

They are very much of their time, 50's onwards.

This, when you flick through the racks today, still grabs your attention.

A personal favourite, a great album, strong, melodic, funky jazz. Steely Dan quoted the opening of Song for My Father in Ricky Don't Lose That Number.

Another that grabs the attention, this is one of those you can bung on to lift the mood.

Talking of lifting the mood, Primal Scream's contribution.

Not just a great cover, but an opportunity to use the words 'holy trinity' (as in the Stone's holy trinity of Exile, Let it Bleed, and Sticky Fingers), and photo montage.

Then, there's the “what were you thinking about” category:

For what, exactly? My guess is this didn't need a 'parental advisory' warning about the lyrics.

Mate, we all know you're gloriously barking mad, but why didn't anyone yell “Kevin, no, stop, don't do that!”

Not just a bad cover. Richard Clayderman and ABBA. Torture.

Would you send your boy to these blokes' barbershop? Me neither. A MC Hammer (U can't touch this) tribute?

Quite apart from anything else, how does a ventriloquist translate his act into a recorded medium?

Zip Zap Rap, by Devastatin' Dave the Turntable Rave? Shurley shome joke here?