Who let those two go off together...

A great moment on Test Match Special…

…today. Or maybe not, if you’re the sort of anal retard who dislikes boys’ club humour:

“There’s a search party out for Vaughan and Tufnell. They went off to lunch. Together. A dangerous combination.”

Has anyone got any Veras? Lurrverrly.

That’s apropos of nothing, I’m just listening to the Shamen, Boss Drum, is all. BLISS describes us as book-bound. In the same way, I suppose, as someone built-up to enormous proportions is described as muscle-bound. The allusion is that of too much bursting out of the skin containing it. Over-stuffed, in upholstery analogy. So I’m in trouble. An online penny-book five minutes has seen the delivery of the Tinneswood Brigadier books (four of them, anyway, all not much more than pamphlets, really). An Oxfam penny copy of Cloud Atlas arrived today, too. Pristine, lovingly wrapped in tissue paper and stuffed into a plastic heat-sealed envelope. A penny? How can they feed the world going on like that?

The Mind charity shop also coughed up a copy of Heston Blumenthal’s Perfection. Two quid. We’re in turf-war territory on the kitchen bookshelves, BLISS and I. When I’m not looking, they fill up with all these health-food books. 100 Superfood Recipies. Healing Foods. That sort of stuff. Sitting next to my Floyd on Fire, Street Food and Ramsey’s Indian Adventure. I like to read recipe books while eating, and while I seldom cook with anything as formal as a schedule of weights, measures, ingredients and oven temperatures open if front of me, the ideas they provide are useful and I like flicking through them and thinking “I’ll have to give that a go, looks nice…”

So, Blumenthal offers eight recipes (two of them puddings, so six really) in over 300 pages. That’s the way I like things. Plenty to get stuck into before the boring old weights and measures strike. The introduction is promising. On page one it refers to Anthony Bourdain’s A Cook’s Tour[1], essential reading. The recipes are, considering the name Blumenthal conjures up a Damien Hirst-style idea of a kitchen churning out bacon and egg ice cream and black pudding with blackberries, real feet of clay stuff. Death row food (last meals are generally bacon, eggs, burgers and fries) and chef’s grub (they tend to like offal, cheaper cuts, ribs and wings). They are: Roast chicken and roast potatoes (I’ll not be brining chickens and going to the ends of the earth, poultry-wise, but the roast spuds…interesting), pizza (we have that a lot and I like experimenting to try to get the best results possible), bangers and mash (I’ll photograph the stovetop hubcap thing I picked up (also from the charity shop) for the sausages, and getting mash just right is important), spaghetti Bolognese, and fish and chips (I’ve tried the Blumenthal chips before: blanch in boiling water, refrigerate, low temperature oil, refrigerate again, high temperature oil, serve, and they were superb, albeit troublesome, and I’m sure the end result depends more on the spuds you begin with than anything else).[2]

Flicking through the book, the chicken and spuds look okay, once cooked, but the photo of Blumenthal in goggles and gauntlets lowering his chicken into an industrial-sized pot connected to enough propane to fuel an asphalting team for a few weeks screams “too much trouble”.

The pizza looks superb, but I’ll not be pressure-cooking then oven-drying the tomatoes, no matter how much umami that promises to introduce. I have, however, recently used the slow cooker to good effect making tomato sauce from scratch, using fresh tomatoes.

Bangers and mash (as it always does) looks inviting. I don’t know whether BLISS would wait for the three-hour mash extravaganza, or the pressure cookered onion gravy. The steak, as you would expect, depends entirely on the quality of the meat you buy.

There’s a heading. “A load of bologs” it says. The finished photo shows the spaghetti neatly folded to make a long oblong, turned under itself, topped with the sauce and then parmesan shavings (I presume). It looks spectacular, but I know BLISS would question the sanity of going to such lengths when it’s going to be destroyed and devoured.

The fish and chips is the most inviting. The batter looks light and airy and crisp, and the chips have those ragged, crunchy edges you only get after a lot of messing about. I’ve used sparkling water to make batter in the past, and there a photo of a soda siphon being shot into a bowl of flour. Last time I saw one of those was probably the last time I was at a boot fair, ten or so years ago.

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[1] Two things stick in the mind (naturally, I’ve read it): (1) Don’t, ever, order a well-done steak. Cooks have meat lockers, where they keep the cuts, chops, steaks and fish that they’ll be cooking. At the back of these mini-fridges are what will be thrown away at the end of the shift, due to old age and inedibility. Unless some idiot comes in and asks for a well done steak, which rescues the item from the rubbish bin and puts it back on the positive side of the balance sheet. (2) Don’t, ever, go for the ‘blackboard specials’ or the sheet of paper clipped to the menu, headed ‘today’s specials’. That’s how they get shot of produce on the turn that the well-done guys won’t get rid of.

[2] Chips are a subjective thing, too. I like either monster crunchy, otherwise I like soggy. I don’t like those freshly cooked chippie chips that burn your tongue. I’m happier with some that’ve sat around for a while. BLISS and I differ about chips. I like mine, and hers. She’s often not too keen on mine.

A fantastic tattoo

A big pet and the holy trinity of cuteness

Never one for blowing my own trumpet[1], by chance I came across an article about large pets, mostly outsized dogs. One of them looked a bit like D the Dog (albeit a golden fleeced version, in typical jumping-up and being a nuisance pose). The caption (okay, obviously composed by his besotted owner) said that he embodied “the holy trinity of cuteness”, i.e.:

• Hugeness (me? that's a tick – in spades, a huge (oops, sorry) tick);

• Fluffiness (me? another tick – as long as hairiness = fluffiness, or is a next best thing);

• Stupidity (me? definite tick, see hugeness above).

A fantastic tattoo

MM has had a tattoo of Shadow, our beautiful old girl, a long haired GS who absolutely doted on MM in full-on dewy-eyed teenager mode (imagine a twelve year old girl in the 1970’s, imagine David Cassidy walking in the door, factor that up by the power of about a hundred – that should give an approximation of the excitement MM’s arrival home elicited from Shadow). She absolutely adored him. Now she’s there on his arm. Not just any GS, but recognisably her. Absolutely fantastic.

Now. I’m still more than a little hurt by BLISS’ attitude to my suggestion that, as the likeness is so good, she should have me tattooed on her.

Initially the response was: “where, there’s not enough of me?”.

Okay, not life-size, just my face. Not enough room for that, apparently (see the hugeness thing about ‘cuteness’ above).

Okay, what about the old, slim me, like when we got married and that?

“How would anyone know that was you?” Is there no end to the hurtfulness? Granted, I was about eight stones lighter, a bit pencil-necked with bodyweight loaded into the legs and arse areas. There must still be some recognisable link to the old me (even if I’m now cuter (see bullet points one (hugeness) and two (hairiness) above) than before – I’ve maintained unbroken stupidity).

Then she suggested I review the results returned by Googling ‘epic fail’. Well, that’s it. In full-on tit-for-tat style I will now only consider Indian Chiefs. In epic fail I guess someone somewhere has a tattoo of an Indian Chef:

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[1] The bus. It was my idea. You know who I’m talking to, BLISS.

A couple of good books help the medicine go down

It’s an ill drill, and all that

I had a broken tooth fixed yesterday. I don’t like going to the dentist. I don’t like the pain.

Dentists have as many words for pain as Eskimos have for snow. The sort of words that play things down. Their word for pain is generally discomfort. As modified by adjectives like slight, minor, or quantifiers like a bit of, a degree of, some.

For the rest of us, or for me at least, where the dentist says discomfort, replace with ‘agony’, and whatever type of discomfort is promised, that should be ‘excruciating’.

Add in the waiting room factor, and there’s not a lot to like about dentists. They call waiting rooms reception areas or lobbies now. I call them purgatory. Start the whole experience the way it’s likely to unfold: an uncomfortable plastic laundrette chair, some of those special waiting room magazines no-one buys, because they’re not on sale anywhere, because there’s no demand for them, other than for waiting room table stacks of untouched glossies.

Now, luckily, the library is opposite the dentists. More or less. The other side of the road and along a bit. If we’re getting picky. So I went early (the excuse? returning How I Killed Margaret Thatcher) in order to see what was on the shelves. Sweetening the bitter pill of the drills, those pointy metal things, the cold air spray, the cold water spray, the mouthful cotton wads, the whole torture chamber horror to come. I went in with one book, handed it back, and came out with two. No money changed hands. Beautiful places, libraries.

I came away with Narcopolis, by Jeet Thayil, and Michael Frayn’s Skios. I started Skios in the waiting room reception area. So far, an unwitting exchange of identical luggage has been teed up, and some of the players in the farce to come introduced.

Meanwhile: dental treatment. The tooth’s been rebuilt with a different composite material, and the pain discomfort should settle down. There was no timescale for this settling down process, no programmed date by when I should find everything thoroughly settled. My fault, really, I didn’t ask. I just saw that window of opportunity and bolted for freedom as soon as possible. If it breaks again, the threat is root canal torture, or the torture of extraction. I have a vested interest in making this new repair work. Asked about how it’s working out, I’ll be unable to give any sort of subjective answer.

“Yes” I would say “everything’s fine”, torture-dodger that I am.

The tax laws…

…are labyrinthine, over-complicated, and written by accounting firm personnel temporarily seconded to the revenue. The same accounting firm bods that then advise their clients on how to work the system they themselves have designed.

Now the top tax-dog has joined the top tax-dodging advice company. A move sanctioned by the prime minister.

There’s one law for the poor, and another for HMRC, it seems.

Don't judge a book by it's...title.

How I Killed Margaret Thatcher

Can re-opening old wounds actually be cathartic, make you think again about what’s going on now, be a good thing?

Anthony Cartwright’s book has a jokey title, but is an exploration of the damage done to families in the midlands by the Thatcher regime. Politicians tend to be self-important, tend to see themselves as God’s instrument on earth, tend to want everything their own way. The blessed Tone (son of Mags) sent plenty of young men and women to their deaths, guided by the God he imagines exists and informs his every move. The chapters start with quotes from the evil bitch, that reveal just what she and her sycophantic gang of brown-nose yes-men were all about.

The narrator tells his story as a boy (in italics) and as a man, in roughly equal parts. The man says:

“If you ask me now, I’d say there are lots of ways of making people poor. It’s not only about money. Thinking life is only about money is another way of being poor, a way of thinking you might arrive at by counting your coppers in your mean and draughty grocer’s shop, looking across the flat Lincolnshire land towards the hills and hating us.”

Thatcher said this:

“My policies are based not on some economics theory, but on things I and millions like me were brought up with: an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay; live within your means; put by a nest egg for a rainy day; pay your bills on time; support the police.”

A couple of things here:

1. That totally random ‘support the police’ at the end of list of financial items. She was the first to use the police as a private army, a sequence that is unbroken. See kettling and dead newspaper sellers.

2. That honest day’s pay: actually that’s a dishonest huge payday for bankers and others sitting in city offices, with a huge annual bonus, too; and a personal hatred for the physically strong and powerful, shutting down heavy industry and mining. She was like the people who mistakenly think their homes are more valuable because others are sleeping in cardboard boxes. Hungry for power, she had to see big strong blokes denied their right to earning a decent wage.

“From France to the Philippines, from Jamaica to Japan, from Malaysia to Mexico, from Sri Lanka to Singapore, privatisation is on the move…The policies we have pioneered are catching on in country after country.”

Another couple of things:

1. Three alliterative examples = elegant. Four = overkill. Signs of someone who’ll bang on too long. Bang on too long and, even if you had won the point, you go on to lose it.

2. Those policies have knackered the world, financially, and led to the global meltdown. Thanks. Bitch.

After she died (and I poured a glass of celebratory beer, to celebrate both her death, and that it came at a time when she’d seen everything she’d done discredited) a lot of the apologists and brown-tongues denied the ‘no such thing as society’ statement. This is what she said:

“And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.”

There it is. 25^th October, 1984, Birmingham Post interview. “There is no such thing as society”, preceded with that grating, irritating “and, you know”. Actually, you lunatic, I know no such thing. Robert Wyatt said:

You’re anti-social, and

you are too bloody lonely

for the likes of us

Her son Tone adopted a similar tic, his equally grating “look” at the start of every condescending point.

“I am very anxious about the West Midlands because I recognise that the people there think they have suffered.”

Not “have suffered” because the factories closed and there was no work to be had, they only think they have suffered. This next one says it all:

“Without order fear becomes master and the strong and the violent become a power in the land.”

Not the strong and violent. “…the strong and the violent…”. It’s a bad thing, in her eyes, the strong being powerful. Corrupted, utterly besotted by power, her solitary nature made sharing it unthinkable, drove her insane. The Belgrano and the Sheffield were casualties of a war fought to win votes and retain power. Lives lost to secure another term in office.

“We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty.”

That is, anyone in disagreement is an enemy to be fought, not someone to reason with, listen to, someone who may, actually, have a valid point. That’s the whole point of “the lady’s not for turning” being a joke. The only job politicians have is to debate the issues and decide according to the arguments. Not start and finish with fixed ideas according to their party’s instructions. A huge talking-shop, where no-one listens and nothing changes.

Anthony Cartwright was born in Dudley, and I suspect he lived there during Thatcher’s reign of terror.

Walkin'

Walkin’ the dog…

…I’m just walkin’ the dog

If you don’t know how to do it

I’ll show you how to walk the dog

Bank Holiday Monday. The bad news is getting up at 06:00. The good news is that:

1. D the Dog has been good for a whole twenty four hours now. Just some minor misdemeanours and routine naughtiness. He’s gone a day without a major incident.
2. The sun’s out.
3. The woods are beautiful.
4. We’re back by 07:30, long walk done, all before it gets too hot for them. Bless.
5. The woods are almost deserted.
6. The Pharcyde, Labcabincalifornia, are on the iPod.

 

The cellphone mast. Not the most scenic of starts, is it? The users of the M23 have one disguised as a tree. Us dog-walkers don’t qualify for that sort of expenditure. This is why we have the absurd situation where I can make a phone call while walking the dogs in the middle of nowhere, yet can’t get a signal sitting at the kitchen table.

A local guy described our mobile network coverage thus:

“I can get a signal. Intermittently. If I’m hangin’ out me bedroom window. With a coathanger up me arse.”

Sun. Trees. Green stuff. To put things in context, I’m not much of a lover of green stuff. It brings me out in a rash, and gardening hurts my back and ruins my temper. So this has got to break through some degree of initial resistance.

Just after six in the morning, and the sun is low, and bright.

If I was better with Photoshop, there would be a miniature Loch Ness monster, some periscopes, and all sorts on the pond.

Sunlight and shadows.

The camera never lies. That’s actually the murkiest black gunge known to mankind. It doesn’t wash off your clothes. I think it’s about two days away from being useable solid fuel.

Orbs, those blobs of lights are called. I had to look it up. I’m not a camera-techie.

The Forestry Commission send their mates specially chosen contractors in every so often to churn the place up, earn loads of taxpayers wonga, and cut down trees that they can sell undertake essential works.

These woods were here before us and will outlast us, unless we interfere and kill them off. Strike ‘essential’. Replace with unnecessary, meddlesome, disruptive.

I like those rays of light coming through the trees. We did an extra bit this morning, about an hour and a half. The new kid’s knackered, the old girl’s probably going to sleep most of the rest of the day (until we go out again later), and me knees, dem’s killin’ me.

Heaven help you, here she comes!

Good luck to North London…

…BLISS is at the Emirates for Muse tonight. I think you’re supposed to say “have a nice time” or something like that as you drop Mrs Fallok off at the station. From the heart, what I said was “try to say out of trouble”.

Worrying things include:

She’s wearing DLL’s Converse trainers (on loan). These, apparently, make you jump up and down uncontrollably.

The pulling shapes thing she did when discussing the pros and cons of Dizzy Rascal.

Her natural, beautiful, lack of inhibition.

Her denial. About any limitations whatsoever about her sense of direction.

A first visit to the Emirates…

…get there early, have a good look around. It’s a truly magnificent stadium. Up to the Arsenal management and board to start building a bit of history now. In terms of winning things. Eh? Guys? No more excuses?

Gotta love the game

Test match, England playing New Zealand, Southee batting, Finn bowling. Joe Root, at short leg (helmet, fielding pads, in the line of fire good and proper – the position is nicknamed ‘boot camp’), and Root gives it a bit too much gob, but, obviously whatever he says it’s funny, because Southee pulls away, but is plainly laughing his head off.

In the context of two international teams going at each other hell for leather, the ability to play with a smile, let alone laugh out loud, is remarkable.

How’d you describe that shot Nas?...

…Asked Sir Ian.

“A good old-fashioned mow.”

“I think you’re spot on...”

After a pause:

“…and a good one, too.”

That’s the beauty of a moving ball game (snooker, golf, darts, they’re all down to just you, and you’ve a long time to think, no-one’s rushing you) like cricket, football, rugby, there’s always the natural hand-eye thing. Always an element of bat-hit-ball as well as the more technical aspects.

Not a game for the logical, the anal, or, actually, the sensible

Actually, it is a funny old game

I was run out. Marky Shep was supposed to look after me, he had the view of what was going on. He gave a bad call, and I was, albeit narrowly, run out. Deserving sympathy, there was none, just laughter.

Apparently, what’s fat, round and has trouble running fifty yards? Me.

What has a turning circle approximately equivalent to that of the Queen Elizabeth II, the raw pace of a slow snail[1], bats with a railway sleeper (which slows him down even more), excels only at eating crisp-enhanced sandwiches and talking non-stop rubbish all afternoon (with the occasional outrageously optimistic appeal thrown in)?

That’d be me too, it seems.

The afternoon started with Rich’s modelling what could be the most redundant sports kit ever: a pair of fielding pads, that made him look like he was wandering about with callipers on his legs. We gave them an over. They didn’t last that long, back in his bag before the start of play.

There was a lot of hilarity in between.

It ended with absolute proof that Gaelic flair either is a myth or hasn’t been transmitted to the genes of B O’S and AD, as the Welsh – Irish pair blocked out for the draw. You could cut the tedium with a blunt spoon. If you retained sufficient will to live, to live long enough to do so, and as long as the boredom had not resulted in numbness and immobility in the limbs to match that of the scoreboard.

The Sunday morning damage test revealed aching knees (responded well to walking the dogs for just over an hour – got things moving), bit of sun-dried skin, and grinning and rib muscles tired from over-use.

A great game at any level

Sky asked the England cricket team a series of questions, like:

What inspired you to play sport? Generally? “My Dad.”

Who are your inspirational ex-players?

Graeme Swann (who answered “a sense of humour” to the most essential attribute) kept a straight face and reeled off Ian Botham, Nasser Houssain, Mike Atherton, David Lloyd, Mike Holding, David Gower, all in the Sky commentary team.

Bumble Lloyd then summed it up: these are all just ordinary blokes who happen to be among the best in the world at what they do, and they enjoy doing it.

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[1] An AD joke here: I took the shell off my racing snail to see if he went faster, but now he’s become a bit sluggish.

Spring has yet to, er, spring

There’s nothing like some rubbish weather for making you feel your age

I was alright for the first three scaffold ladders yesterday, despite the wind, rain and low temperature. For the next five I pulled the sleeves of my fleece down over my hands. Scaffolders haven’t come up with heated ladder rungs, yet. After the roof I went back to the top floor, did some undignified and inelegant clambering, and took the lift down.

The climate change deniers…

…who should be banged up in jail with the holocaust deniers, should monitor the weather reports for the number of times they hear the words:

“…since records began…

And:

“…since (insert year, in the distant past)…”

We’re in the coldest Spring (I remember that bit) since the stone age (actually I think it was in the seventies but I wasn’t really paying attention, so rather than guess, I made something up).

A vicious spiral

The cold means taking more stuff to cricket. Taking the definition of cricket as not a sport, more organised loafing, we should by now be loafing about in shirts and whites. Instead, I’m taking a couple of undershirts (swapping to a dry one at half time tea), shirt, sleeveless jumper, and jumper. This extra load, on top of the other stuff, means more carbon footprint due to the increased weight in the cars, exacerbating the problem that is the root cause.

That other stuff in the kit bag

My baggage has increased with age. Not so long ago, it seems, it was a pair of boots, laces tied, hanging over the handlebars of my pushbike. Then shinpads became compulsory, then…then…and then…

…now I’m at the age where when the annual tidy up takes place (tip bag upside down, carefully replace half the stuff in a sensible, rational, neat and tidy fashion, have a “life’s too short for this” (actually a FTS[1]) moment, stuff the rest in any old how) it becomes clear just how much ‘sports kit’ actually is ‘medical supplies’.

I’m not yet as bad as a veteran football player we nicknamed Robocop.

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[1] I’ve promised BLISS no swearing. Well, no swearing on here, obviously. Google. Urban Dictionary. Answer number two.

Nice, er, lunch

Nice lunch today…

…with BLISS. Just as well the company was so stellar, because the food…

…well, have you heard the one about…

…the bloke who goes into a café and says:

“Can I have some routine fish fingers, rubbish chips, and bullet frozen peas, with a mug of tea too weak to defend itself. Oh and two slices of bread and butter, only don’t bring them over until it’s too late to even think about chip butties. And a baked potato with some of those horrible black bits, a bit of tired salad, a tight-fisted portion of grated tasteless cheddar and way too many beans, to make the plate look full up. And another mug to tea so weak it’ll have to be taken back to undergo strengthening measures. Oh, charge me over a tenner for the garbage while you’re at it.”

The café proprietor says:

“Certainly not, sir. We wouldn’t treat a customer that way.”

The bloke says:

“That’s funny. You did yesterday.”

Well, if I went in there tomorrow, I could be that bloke.

We have the ultimate dog owners’ utility belt…

…well, not a belt, as such. It’s more one of those round-the-neck ID card holder ribbon things, (deep booming Brian Blessed type voice, drum-roll) which shall be known as: “The Ribbon of Responsibility”.

Dangling from the end of this are:

The Whistle of Recall. Blow this when you want a scruffy, furry, slightly bemused-looking four-legged companion by your side. When wouldn’t you?

And:

The Red Dot of Control. A presentation pointer thingy, which is already (after no time at all) on its second set of batteries, because:

1)      It’s so effective; and:

2)      It’s just so much fun watching the silly little beggar charging around after a red dot.

All we need do is incorporate a dispenser (try to imagine the Brian Blessed voice again) for the Livercake of Reward, and a packet of pellets for the Kong of Frustration.

Woolwich

Woolwich

A young soldier has been killed in a crazed, unimaginably brutal and hideous attack. His two attackers tried to behead and disembowel his body. One of them was filmed. He said:

"We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day. This British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

"We must fight them. I apologise that women had to witness this today.

"But in our land our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don't care about you."

He gestured with a bloody left hand. In his right were a cleaver and a large knife.

Twenty years old. Unarmed. It is impossible to imagine what and how his family must feeling. The reports, photos and film have left numbness and incomprehension.

David Cameron has said that we will never buckle in the face of such attacks. Easy to say from behind the bullet-proof glass and armed guards. Easy to say on the assumption that this is an isolated attack. A couple of fanatics, operating on their own initiative, a random killing, a one-off.

The unthinkable is that this might be a new way of terrorists operating. Impossible to track, unpredictable, off the radar, absolutely unpredictable. Impossible to secure against. A nightmare where individual people will either suspect no-one, or everyone.

It was impossible not to think, before the film of the attacker was posted, that some sort of religious motivation was likely. Any sort of professional hit, or gang or drug-related violence wouldn’t see the attackers waiting at the scene twenty minutes for the armed police to arrive, then charging at them in order to get shot. The red mist of religion inspired hate has ruined three young lives, although it is difficult to feel any compassion for the attackers, who are unlikely to see freedom for the remainder of their days.

"You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don't care about you."

I don’t think we’ve ever been entirely safe. We’re not as safe now as we sometimes have been.

We can’t remove our government, not without replacing them with replicas, we now have just the one flavour. They’ve not cared about us for a long time now, only about themselves. We’re grown ups, we should all recognise that.

Perhaps, instead of killing defenceless twenty year olds, if your gripe is with our government, you should attack them. Whatever the goal, the motive, the thinking (if any) – nothing good can ever come out of acts like this. Nothing is better now than it was before committing this atrocity.

It may ok for Houdini, it isn't ok for you

Through a hedge. Twice.

Things always find a way through the hedges. The mice, rats, and such don’t leave holes behind them, but the foxes and badgers do, so we’re always going to be playing catch up making things D the Dog proof, because D the Dog has a bit of the Steve M^cQueen about him.

He got through a fox or badger hole and into next door the other night. Late. Past my bedtime. I heard him re-arranging the clay flowerpots to the side of the neighbouring house. BLISS went through a large gap in that hedge. I know it’s a large gap, because I followed her through it. We nabbed him by the gate, but was padlocked. We weren’t quiet, but we didn’t disturb anyone, so they probably had headphones on, or were absolutely sound asleep. Anyway, no way to open the gate, so it was down to us to get him back on the right side.

This meant BLISS crawling through the hole in the hedge to grab him, and then crawling back to our side, shoving him through first.

It may have been relief at finding him. It may have been that ‘through a hedge backwards’ thing playing on my mind. It may have been the stream of profanity BLISS was churning out, but I got a bout of those inappropriately timed giggles.

D the Dog was sort of veering between “look, I’m really sorry” and “what’s all the fuss about – these are communal gardens, right?” expressions. White Dog, unhappy when there’s any fuss, had taken herself off to her basket for a lie down.

Anyway, if he understands, he should now be aware of the following:

• Going next door is undesirable;

• So undesirable, in fact, that any further going next door will result in him being “on the next boat back to Greece”;

• That his parents were not Mr and Mrs D the Dog senior;

• That whatever he is, he’s a small one: a little b****r, and little s*d, and a little b*****d;

• That he’s a bad dog, a bad boy, a bad little whatever, and, well, just bad, really;

• He and his testicles will shortly be parting company in any case, he’d probably rather the painless approach over the one proposed by BLISS;

• That doggie charm and charisma, and laying belly up with your legs in the air, will not get you out of trouble if you push things too far.

By now he should also realise that boldly going where no dog has gone before results in the swift and irreversible installation of more chicken wire and chainlink, and may, if that does not work, result in the swift installation of a chain limiting his movements.

To boldly go...

She’s a Trekkie now…

…well, almost. Not that DLL’s signed up to attend the next convention in full Federation regalia and give the keynote speech in fluent Klingon or anything. I’ve yet to receive a split-fingers live long and prosper Vulcan salute. I’ve yet to hear the following:

(Looking at MM) “It’s life, Dad, but not as we know it.”

(When driving, quickly) “Slow down, the dilithium crystals cannae take it.”

(When about to receive a ticking off, into the mobile phone) “Beam us up, Scotty, we’re in trouble down here.”

“That, father, would be illogical.”

(When driving, slowly) “Give me warp seven, Sulu.”

(At any show of emotion or passion by others, with one eyebrow raised) “Fascinating.”

(When any household gadget stops working) “It’s dead, Jim.”

(When asked to do the impossible, or, actually, when asked to do anything you don’t want to do) “I cannae change the laws of physics, captain.”

But, on the strong recommendation from Rich, we went to the pictures yesterday to see Into the Darkness. What a great film it is. If you had to do one of those category by category rating things, there’s absolutely nothing that isn’t very good indeed. Effects, 3D, all the technical stuff? All so good that you don’t notice, just take them for granted, which is all you can ask. It moves on quickly, has some twists and turns, some side-splittingly funny lines. So good, in fact, that I forgot to eat the Matchmakers ™ (original mint flavour).

This meant using the Sky tapey thingy (which I don’t altogether trust) to record the mighty Arsenal away at Newcastle…

…a last day to which there was a nice symmetry…

…at the Arsenal and Spuds matches.

We won 1-0, and so did they.

We won away, and celebrated. Forget 4^th and champions league football, the celebrations were about finishing above them, and a late, late St Totteringham’s Day.[1]

They got misinformation that Newcastle had equalised, so not only was there the unbridled joy of watching their fans have a good old blub, there was the pleasure of watching them celebrating without reason.

So, Spuds fans, it’ll be ITV 4 on Thursday nights for you. Mongs.

---

[1] St Totteringham’s day is a moveable feast, and should be a national bank holiday. It is the day on which it becomes mathematically impossible for Spuds to finish above us in the league. Obviously, from an Arsenal point of view, the earlier in the year St Totteringham’s falls the better. When they’re in a lower division than us, there’s no St Totteringham’s those years. Also known as Mind The Gap Day.

From the outside

An outsider’s point of view

I’ve not a got a scrap of UK DNA. As far as I can tell. I’m no pedigree or thoroughbred, that’s for sure. Me Dad’s lot lived on a farm a day’s horse ride from their nearest neighbours, and me mum’s lot (despite looking down on me Dad’s lot) were the ones with the olive skin-colour and the dark crinkly hair, one generation back.

So, I find the forelock-tugging, back-of-the-hand-roll-up-smoking, we don’t need a revolution, we’ll play them at their own game, an unending source of amusement. Hilarious. If we were in a football situation, you’d be on the receiving end of:

“Where’s your guillotine,

Where’s your guillotine?

You’ve still got a Queen,

My god, where’ve you been?

The one almost-revolution you’ve had just saw an anal-retentive, god-bothering fire / frying pan alternative set up what we have now. (The lady) and actually, no-one at all’s for turning, so what’s the point of a large, expensive, unwieldy debating chamber that pays no attention to the arguments and just sees everyone toe the party line and do what they’re told to progress their career? How many decisions in the past twenty or thirty years have even been tight, let alone gone against the party in power? What’s the point of all the blah when nothing changes?

The Prince of Darkness, ‘Lord’ Mandelson (‘Lord’, after mortgage fiddles, passport fiddles for Brazilian friends, self-proclaimed ‘comebacks’ amounting to being let off, again and again – what does ‘Lord’ count for, now?) had this to say about Cameron and Europe:

“We all know what’s going on inside the Conservative party. The UK isolation party and their fellow travellers in the Conservatives are sort of operating a Soprano-style protection racket inside the Conservative party. They are saying: ‘Do what we want, give us what we are demanding, or we are going to burn your home down’.

“Just because one wing – the provisional wing – of the Conservative party want to bring down their leader and change their party’s policy and are using this as an issue to do so is not a good reason to hold a referendum.”

So.

Read the above again. The ramblings of a lunatic.

Someone with absolutely zero concept of respect is citing The Sopranos. Rich. Too rich to contemplate. Peter Mandelson and Tony Soprano are so removed they may as well inhabit different planets. Let me live upon planet Soprano rather than Mandelson.

Revisit what Mandelson had to say, and little makes sense. Actually, none of it makes sense. In a democracy, what constitutes a reason not to have a free vote of all the people on any given question? Voted in, they claim a mandate from the electorate to run things. Asked to obtain a mandate from those people on a specific question, and they run for the hills.

Personally? I think we should stay in Europe. Without any doubt.

But personally I think we should summarily execute Clarkson, Mandelson, and Cowell, maybe with a little bit of torture first. For Cowell, at least, and a lot of torture first, for Clarkson.

The cost of clothes

Many of my friends and co-workers are dead

Tucked away at the end of one dissection of the garment industry's unwillingness to adopt any real standards to protect their production workers, there's a piece about a twenty-three year old who was in the Dhaka factory when it collapsed. The story is as you would expect, rice crops failed, father and daughter relocated to earn enough to support the family left behind. Low pay, physical and emotional abuse, unreasonably long hours, unpaid additional hours to fulfil large rush orders.

The last few paragraphs are chilling in their simplicity:

“...suddenly the whole building started to shake. Plaster fell from the ceiling. People started screaming.

“We ran for the exit. But before I could reach the stairs, the floor collapsed under me. I fell and fell. I lost consciousness.

“When I came to, I was in hospital. I heard that fire service rescue workers had pulled me out after eight hours. My right leg is broken.

“Most of my friends and co-workers are dead.”

That last line sends shivers down the spine. There are two ethical concerns: safe, working conditions, and a fair, living wage. This should shame those that recently celebrated the life and legacy of a dead prime minister whose intention was to devastate trade unions. The unions that fought for, and achieved just those ends, decent conditions, and reasonable pay.

Twenty-three years old, and “Most of my friends and co-workers are dead”. 1,127 workers died at Rana Plaza.

Satantango

That was something. After seven hours there's an enigmatic ending, not so much some loose ends, as a total lack of any tied up ends whatsoever. In one of the final scenes, two government clerks concoct a report from one character's handwritten notes. They smoke, snack, type, review, rewrite, for ten or fifteen minutes. Only after they turn off the lights, leave their office and shut the door realisation dawns: they've performed the scene as they would have in the theatre – straight through, albeit with cameras tracking them as they move around. A beautiful, edgy film.

Illmatic

I've been listening to this a lot recently. Talking to MM recently he reminded me that this was Nas' debut album. It has to be one of the best ever first albums.

Big day today...

...starting with a test match so finely balanced it really can go either way, and is likely to be decided, if not concluded, today.

Later we'll find out whether it'll be us or S***s playing in a qualifying round of the Champions' League next year. Nails will be bitten, and there'll be tears before bedtime. Let's hope it's the white and blue replica shirts soaking up the woe.

Mad, swivel-eyed loons, soon to depart for UKIP

He may well be a ….

...but he's our...

It's a sport thing. It goes (something like) this:

“He may be a [INSERT FROM THE FOLLOWING], but he's our [REPEAT WHAT WAS INSERTED FROM THE FOLLOWING].”

• Fat
• Slow
• Useless
• Overpaid
• Over-rated
• Clueless
• Bone-idle
• Ugly
• Etc.

For example:

“He may be an overpaid, overweight, big girl's blouse who couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo, but he's our overpaid, overweight, big girl's blouse who couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo.”¹

The point is, stop your whining, and get behind your team, however imperfect, as individuals, they may be.

In spectacularly taking exactly the opposite approach, and spelling out in six feet high neon letters Westminster's contempt for the electorate they're supposed to represent, a senior tory and Cameron aide said that MPs had had to vote how they did on the referendum motion because...

“...the associations tell them to, and the associations are all mad, swivel-eyed loons.”

Way to win the hearts of your (already wobbling, UKIP-eroded) grass roots support, dude.

Somehow, I don't think Cameron will have his arm around this guy's shoulders, giving him the words of wisdom:

“They may, old chum, all be mad, swivel-eyed loons, but they're tories, of course they're all mad, swivel-eyed loons, and they happen to be our mad, swivel-eyed loons.”

The bloke that called his grassroots supporters mad, swivel-eyed loons (a description of tory voters that I think should catch on, shortened to M-SELS or emsels, “what do you know about anything, you're a proper emsel, you”) has, naturally, denied doing so. The fact that it was said in hearing range of a number of journalists won't diminish the vehemence of the denial, but remember these are legals we're dealing with, so he may well not have said what is claimed, but rather called them mad, swivel-eyed drooling nutters, or mad home county swivel eyed loons, or something similar.

1“Couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo” is poetry, it is joyfully off-the-wall use of language and imagery, it is nothing short of genius. In fact, from now on, my answer to that “you can sit next to anyone from history you like at a dinner party, who's it going to be?” question is: “whoever came up with 'he couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo' thing”.

Food? We need gold, and bigger Pope's hats

Junisa

There’s a Christian Aid Week advert running in the Le Grove website. Junisa lives in one of the hungriest places on earth, his family live on one meal a day, and the church want us to chip in to bail him out.

That’s the church that owns enough gold and riches to bail out all the world’s starving and hungry, with enough money in the Vatican bank alone to provide the clean water and infrastructure needed to change all those lives, yet they’re still shoving the Internet begging bowl under our noses.

I know I’m playing bit of a cheap card here, but I’m an atheist and an uninterested, fairly aggressive atheist, so ‘Christian’ to me is an undifferentiated concept. All churches seem to have blokes in £5,000 suits or £5,000 robes at the helm. Or adverts on the telly. Or someone living in luxury, or stashes of silver and gold. There’s money there to feed the starving they claim to love. But not the will.

Remember, the church played its part in the £10m funeral, with (undue) pomp and ceremony, granted to Thatcher, who was responsible for murdering 323 young, conscripted Argentine sailors on a ship that was running away. A woman who thrived on violence and bullying, who loved letting her booted boys in blue off the leash against striking miners, while smearing the good names of the football fans her top coppers killed through their buying into her ideas and lacking the balls to tell the truth. Some top church bloke stood and addressed the specially invited to sing the praises of an evil bitch, and if those specially invited had worn their existing clothes rather than bought new for the occasion, and handed over the money, than Junisa and his family and many others might be better fed, for years in the future.

Is it too cynical to think that giving to another agency, providing direct, secular aid, without any risk of any skimming off the top for the pope’s new clothes, might be money better donated?

One bit of sunshine…

…and that’s that. I got back to the office at about ten past five yesterday. The car park was empty. I’d left my keys in the office. Luckily, the last one out was in the process of locking up, and he let me in.

Kevin the financial advisor had been in earlier, and usually it’s between him, Dave the accountant, and me for who’s last out, setting the alarm and locking the doors. In any case, it’s typically after seven o’clock when the place empties out.

The sun was out yesterday afternoon. I think the exodus must have been an indication of how little of it we’ve seen recently.

Windows…

…is like one of those interfering busybodies:

Mouse button: the close programme cross.

Not responding.

Do you want a solution / to wait / to close it down.

Answer: I want to close it down. That’s why I hit the ‘close it down’ button. About half an hour ago. You moron.

Shall I look for a solution to the problem?

Answer: no, you thick git, you shan’t. You shall be closed down as well. Now leave me alone and go pester someone else.

Beaver bottoms? Silicon boobs? Just have McNuggets and a McFlurry

So apart from the obvious…

…stuff like hooves, scraps of nosebag, saddle and bridle, what other unsavoury things are in processed grub?

Well. There’s loads, apparently, and certain suspects keep coming up:

• Arsenic: in filtered drinks. All drinks, beer, juice, wine. Rice too, apparently. Poisonous and carcinogenic.

• Human hair: there’s this stuff in human hair that makes food last longer before going off. So, naturally, the barbershop floor sweepings are fair game for the fast food industry. How this gets past the anti-cannibal league, apart from the healthy-eating police, I don’t know. The names in the frame are M^cDonalds, Burger King and Dunkin’ Donuts.

• Antifreeze: some soft drinks, it seems, have antifreeze in. Brings WC Field’s advice to mind. About not drinking water because of what fish get up to in it.

• Beaver anal glands: yep. Beaver…anal…glands. In ice-cream. Somewhere there’s someone pulling faces at Heston Blumenthal’s bacon and egg flavour ice cream, having a good faceful of traditional vanilla, without realising that it is beaver’s bum flavour, really.

• Fish bladder: in Guinness. The adverts don’t lie. Made of more. Made of more fish bits than you might expect for a beer.

• Coal tar: that’s tartrazine, the stuff that gets the blame when little oiks misbehave. Comes from coal.

• Breast implants: just when I was hitting bizarre-fatigue, good old M^cDonalds again. When ^McNuggets are only about 50% chicken, you have to make up the shortfall somehow. What could be more obvious filler than some gear with a zillion syllable name that’s used in false boobs and silly putty?

• Boiled beetle shells: that red food colouring? Yep, still beetles.

• Rodent hair: not an ingredient. But they get everywhere don’t they, and so does their fur. Worst in sticky stuff. Peanut butter. Chocolate.

• Borax: sounds ghastly. It’s fire-retardant (so you’d be less liable to spontaneously combust); and anti-fungal (so you’d be less likely to erupt in mushrooms); and in enamel (so you’d be shiny, and hard). Apparently it’s banned in food in America and Canada, but not in Europe where we know and love it as E285 (acidity control and preservative agent).

So. Salt’s bad, sugar’s bad, almost everything’s bad, and when the food police and the eating trolls are out to remove the joy from mealtimes how come they’re not jumping up and down on burger chains flogging human hair and breast implants before wetting themselves over a fried slice?

Lovely cricket

What playing cricket is all about…

…supporting you team-mates…

…making them feel better, no matter what:

RICH: I’ve just got to pop back home on the way. I’ve forgotten the raffle stuff.

ME: So, this is your first game as raffle bloke, and you’ve got a 100% record of cocking it up.

RICH: (Proudly) Yeah, that’s right…

…respecting the opposition…

…you have to work within your limits, though:

I walked out to bat, at the nosebleed-inducing giddy height in the order of number three.

GARY: Right boys. We’re through to the tail-enders.

Later, after edging one that dropped just short of slip:

MICK (Keeping wicket, muttering) Jammy beggar (Or words to that effect).

ME: Soft hands, Mick, I played that with nice, soft, hands.

MICK: (No longer muttering) No. You’re a jammy beggar…

…playing hard, but fair…

We were fielding, and Ed let a beamer go that hit their batter straight in the cobblers, no bounce. My first thought was:

“Was that going on to hit the stumps?” Considering an appeal…

…technical ability…

…I played and missed so often that Mick asked me if the bat had instructions on the back for me to read…

…flair…

…big cheer when I hit the first four of our innings. In the ninth over…

…and it’s the national summer game…

…despite my nose running and hands freezing fielding, then my ears freezing batting, and wearing everything white that I had with me.

May Prince of Darkness Special

Peter Mandelson, Prince of Darkness, is sitting in front of one of those actor’s dressing room mirrors, with the bare lightbulbs around it. He’s examining his face in detail. He looks unhappy with what he sees. From his body language, his level of agitation is increasing.

MANDELSON: Terry. Terry, where are you. Terry! TERRY! TERRY!!!

Terry enters the room. He has a can of Fosters in one brawny hand, and some tickets in the other. From his lips dangles a huge dovetail joint, so big even Bob Marley may have baulked.

TERRY: (Singing) When it’s spring again, we’ll win again, against Benfica, in Amsterdam, oh, when…

MANDELSON: Terry, what’ve you got there?

TERRY: Tickets, boss. Europa League final tickets, flight tickets. (Singing again) Will it be Torres, Will it Frank, Will it be David Luiz? I hope it’s Frank, it’s Frank, I hope…

MANDELSON: (Through gritted teeth). No. Terry. What’s. That. In. Your. Mouth?

TERRY: (Puts down the can, drags on the joint, removes it and looks at it, as if for the first time). Trainin’ boss.

MANDELSON: Training?

TERRY: Trainin’. For Amsterdam, the pot centre of the universe. Don’t want to get there and then have any adverse reactions, do I?

MANDELSON: Terry, you never fail to surprise me.

TERRY: Thanks, boss.

MANDELSON: Not a good thing, Terry. Anyway, have you seen these, Terry? Have you seen these?

TERRY: Seen what, boss?

MANDELSON: These Terry. (Points to his eyes). These!

TERRY: Your eyes boss?

MANDELSON: Under the eyes, Terry. The bags. The bags have bags. I’m looking old, Terry. No wonder I don’t get on the telly any more. I’m developing a face for radio.

TERRY: But you don’t get on there much any more, either, boss.

MANDELSON: You’re not helping, Terry.

TERRY: (Takes an extravagant pull on the joint, puts the tickets down and takes an almighty swig of lager) sorry, boss. What can I do for you, anyway?

MANDELSON: In the absence of any confidence-boosting words, empty two sacks of leeches into the bath, liquidise three sheep placentas, and get me a bucket of those goldleaf skinflake things.

TERRY: Boss…

MANDELSON: And order more snake venom (picks up magazine).

TERRY: But boss…

MANDELSON: Get me some Preparation H, now! It says here Sandra Bullock uses it to reduce dark rings under her eyes…

TERRY: Boss, you ‘aint serious? You want to nick my Chalfont cream and rub it uner your eyes?

MANDELSON: Of course I do. Just look at Sandra and how wonderful, how glowing…

TERRY: And you want to jump into a bath of leeches?

MANDELSON: It’s the best detox for the skin there is.

TERRY: Really. And where’s the money coming from?

MANDELSON: Lets get me telly-ready, then the fees will start rolling in again. I’ll write another book about my comebackability, how I bounce back up from the canvas of the political boxing ring, time and time again, how I…

TERRY: Boss, boss. Have a toke on this (he hands Mandy the oversize joint).

MANDELSON: But Terry, smoking’s bad for the…

TERRY: Boss. Just one drag won’t hurt.

The Prince of Darkness drags, inhales and visibly relaxes.

MANDELSON: Terry, Terry, Terry. Why didn’t you give me this to try ages ago? I think we’ve found the answer. Liquidise some in with the placenta, and add some to the leeches. This stuff is the bee’s knees. How many tickets to the soccer do you have? I’ve not been to Amsterdam in ages.

TERRY: Soccer?

MANDELSON: Soccer.

TERRY: Sorry Boss, no spares, all spoken for. (Terry beats a hasty retreat, returning briefly to snatch back the joint).