World War Zee

World War Z

We saw the 3D version. It’s a good film. The tension builds to an almost unbearable pitch at times. We jumped (twice in tandem, once me in isolation, DLL remembered the trailer, it was over ten minutes since I’d seen the trailer, therefore I’d forgotten it).

We didn’t know whether to ask for WW Zed or WW Zee at the ticket counter. I went for Zee. The people in front of us went for Zed. But they left before the end, the oddballs.

What a load of old-fashioned rubbish

We got rid of that absurd old money long ago. It was absolute tosh. Twelve pennies in a shilling. Twenty shillings in a pound. The guinea, a pound and a shilling. Crowns, half crowns, florins. Utter tripe. Garbage of the highest order.

Then we’ve almost got rid of imperial measurements. They made life easy, didn’t they? Twelve inches in a foot, three feet in a yard, the chain (twenty two yards), the furlong (ten chains, 660 feet) and the mile: 1,760 yards. Honestly, what is going on? Sixteen ounces in a pound, but twenty fluid ounces in a pint, fourteen pounds in a stone, the senselessness is endless and mind-boggling.

So. DLL and I (opposed by BLISS, the traditionalist) are proposing new weekdays (day 1, day 2, day 3, and so on) and months (month 1, month 2, and so on) and there’ll be no more of this Thirty days hath (I mean, ‘hath’? are you two million years old or impersonating Jonathan Woss?) September nonsense because they’re all jolly well having the same.

We Googled it. Tuesday’s named for a one-armed God. That’s hardly God-like. What’s he the god of? The disabled? The dextrously challenged? We no longer believe in Thor and Odin, why name days after them?

If we have to have names, let’s make them meaningful:

Bad mood back to work day.

Not much better than yesterday day.

At least there may be some Champions’ League football day.

Laugh at S***s in the European little-league day.

Almost the weekend day.

Football (winter) or cricket (summer) day.

Roast diner day (winter). Lawnmower day (summer).

Andy Dunn(ce)

I know I’m easily baffled, but why is it that when anyone other then sports writers do that rivers of blood, immigrants taking our jobs and houses thing they’re immediately seen as the fascist gits they are, yet when sports writers and pundits have a go they’re talking good old-fashioned common sense.

Let’s get rid of the urban myth. Once and for all. The facts:

• You don’t win at international level by having hundreds of decent players. They’re good but not good enough. You do that by having a squad of twenty or thirty that are head and shoulders above the rest. Importing the best of the best for them to play against on a regular basis can only help, not hinder developing that elite.

• The precedent 1: county cricket clubs are limited in the number of foreign players they can have on their books. This was the case when England were struggling and when England were the top test-playing nation and remains the case now when they’ve been knocked off that perch.

• The precedent 2: we’ve won one world cup*. We were nowhere near good enough for years before 1966, with only a smattering of foreign players in our league teams. We’ve been nowhere near good enough since, with and without the foreign players.

The pundits, journalists, media, should be full of experts dispelling the myths that proliferate at the drinking men’s club bar and works canteen; not sad and sorry hacks churning out populist rubbish. Very wrong, unsubstantiated rubbish.


*This may not be strictly true, but we've only won the one under anything like the current competition rules.

There are more questions than answers

BLISS has some questions…

…to which I have no answers:

1. How come the cupboard under the sink, which exclusively provides storage for cleaning products, gets dirty?

and, on the same theme:

2. How come the shower enclosure that only ever comes into contact with water and water mixed with detergents gets dirty?

I have to admit that I know nothing about (1) because the furthest I ever delve into that cupboard is the dishwasher tablets and washing up liquid, and by moaning long and hard (tall bloke, old bloke, bad back and knees, bending down – you know the drill) I’ve wangled those items being berthed at the front, and that I’m as baffled on (2) as she is. How can bombarding something with washing stuff leave it dirtier than when you started?

A national epidemic…

…is raging. The do-gooders at the helm of our nanny state are banging on about obesity. But I think there’s something more urgent and sinister to address.

There’s an Aussie joke:

“Where does an Englishman hide his wallet?”

“Dunno, where does an Englishman hide his wallet?” [I’ve omitted the “I say, I say, I say”].

“Under the soap”.

There’s an increasingly large number of whiffy folk about. Something needs doing about it. There’s a time and a place, people. After physical work, on the field of play, that sort of thing’s fine. We don’t all carry inflatable showers and shampoo around with us.

But in the supermarket? Isn’t there a food hygiene issue here? Can’t the tubes and trains have a commuter smell-o-meter at the gates, and stick the stinkies together in the pongy carriage? Shouldn’t there be some sort of test before you’re allowed near fresh fruit and veg?

There’s endless bing-bong announcements about feet on seats and eating burgers. I’d rather get a bit of dirt on the arse of my trousers occasionally, and have the aroma of a whopper with cheese and fish and chips, than endure sitting near a sufferer of the epidemic.

GPs are trained to recognise the signature smell of some common complaints, can’t they write a prescription for some shower-gel and armpit spray, and stop it before we’re back to the bad old days and the Aussie joke’s based on reality?

Look, our mates like nuclear, so there...

WWYT?

Choice. I don't know if it still is, but it was a political buzzword recently. “So,” DLL asked last night, “what do I do? Who's going to make it better?”

Today, a £10bn (let's look at that: £10,000,000,000.00, ten billion quid) spend on nuclear power was announced. There's one party dedicated to environmental issues, and the Green Party oppose nuclear power on three grounds: first, it only accounts for less than 4% of our energy, and contributes approximately nothing to heating and transport, the main carbon producing and climate changing uses; second, the risks: human error, design failure, and natural disaster. There have been 800 accidents and significant problems since Chernobyl in 1986, about thirty a year. Scary. Third, investment in nuclear power isn't investment in the genuine alternative, renewable energy.

I'd add a fourth, the lack a sensible waste disposal strategy, in that at the moment it's either chuck it down a big hole in the ground, pour in as much concrete as we can lay our hands on, and keep our fingers crossed (this has not proved successful); or put it in metal containers and ship it off somewhere, no longer our problem (this has not proved infallible either, and some short-cuts have contaminated the ocean floor).

Given the risks and problems and that the one environmental party are against it, and given that they all like to cite their green credentials, why haven't one of the major parties broken away and taken a brave stance and come out against nuclear power?

I would say, and this is why, while I won't waste my time voting, I'm not politically apathetic, that:

Tories: old-school, dominate rather than work with nature, badger-shooting, fox-hunting, Clarkson-school petrolhead types. Daddy drives a four-litre Bently, and I'm personally stomping a huge carbon footprint as part of my rightful legacy.

New Labour: Labour is no more, any commitment to socialism is no more. The most old school new labour minister was nicknamed “two Jags”. Millionaires from the same background and the same educational facilities as the tories, they don't represent choice, just more of the same. See the recently blogged photo of Blair lovingly gazing at Thatcher. He'd be aggressively glaring at Wilson, Kinnock or Foot.

The lib dems: will crawl into bed with whoever to have a sniff of power. Lacking backbone, blood-like-p**s nowhere men. Not always, but that's where they are now.

While popping out to vote for one of this lot, and, truly, the end results are interchangeable, you could watch a Denis Potter play or read some pages of Ulysses, or wash your hair.

For the avoidance of doubt, and to illustrate how lacking in humanity, compassion, learning from history, and caring about anything other than their and their mate's pockets, here's a few pictures:

The real alternative.

Turn a blind eye?

Can it never happen again?

The poor suffer, the wealthy hope to get out of Dodge in time.

Global warming, this, or clean, sustainable options (may intrude on Hyachith Bucket's view).

The best choice?

This affects us how? Er, actually it does.

Thirty years on. Rapid remedials impossible.

20 20 Vision

Twenty twenty vision

It's a Dreadlock Holiday thing. I don't like cricket, I love it. That's five day tests, four day county matches, fifty over one day internationals, forty over and twenty over short forms of the game. But I'd like to shake the hand of the man who came up with T20.

Neither side exactly exploded into big-hitting mayhem last night. We felt we kept their big guns in reasonable check, and they bowled well and didn't give us too much to hit, so we had to push it into the right areas and run singles. Even so, they got to 122 in their twenty overs, and we scored over the hundred in ours. That's an evening's cricket, after work for almost everyone, forty overs and two hundred and twenty-odd runs, starting just after six and all over at about nine o'clock.

Bumble Lloyd loves T20 cricket, and he makes me laugh.

Shane Warne: Did you get up to anything exciting?

Bumble: Yeah. I went to LA.

Warne: LA?

Bumble: Yeah. Lower Acrington. I'm going to USA next week, though, for two or three days.

Warne: USA?

Bumble: That's Uther Side of Acrington.

Then so do Rich and AD.

Rich: Have we got a First Aid kit.

AD: (scratching his head) what's one of those?

Rich: It's like a box, with some first aid stuff in it. I need some tape for my finger.

AD: We've got a coffin.

What is the other side of Brighton?

Quite a lot, apparently.

I've just this minute copped a whole shedload of pedantic geography from BLISS and DLL.

My “the other side of Brighton” (note, not “just the other side of Brighton”) got me:

“Yeah, so's Portsmouth and Southampton” from BLISS, and:

“And Somerset” from DLL.

BLISS' guide to swearing, an addendum

Can I say 'addendum'? Thumbs up from the censor.

Another category of swearing, one that is largely in the acceptable and frequently comic category, is the hybrid and combination profanity.

The Great Escape

Dah-dah

Dah dah de-dah-dah

Dah dah, dah-dah dah-dah, da-dah-da, da-dah da-dah-da, dah da-dah-da-dah

Dah-dah, da-dah-dah, da-da

Hear that?

That's D the Dog's theme tune.

Both neighbours' gardens in two days. Naughty boy.

Support Folly Wildlife Rescue and shoot the shooters

Folly Wildlife Rescue

BLISS is volunteering here:

http://www.follywildliferescue.org.uk/index.html

It looks like they deal with everything no-one else can, or will.

Cull the badger cullers

There’s stuff on this here:

http://www.badgergate.org/viewpoints/views/

and here:

http://www.talking-naturally.co.uk/badger-cull-be-trouble-ahead-stating-blinking-obvious/

But personally I think there’s only one way to deal with people who bully and hurt animals, and that’s to shoot them. We are the most hideously destructive species ever to have been forced upon a beautiful planet, all the evidence to support that view you could ask for is available, and we’re still saddled with politicians determined to prolong the carnage.

These are the arrogant gits at defra behind the cull. If you see any of them and happen to have a gun, blaze away. It’s humane and will stop the spread of the disease that affects the brains of folk convinced we’re some sort of higher, chosen, species.

Old age and infirmity

A neighbour of ours, into her nineties, used to say there’s only one alternative to old age, and she didn’t fancy that much, either. So limping around nursing a twanged hammy at fifty-something, a twanged hammy obtained running yet another single in a midweek twenty twenty at a lovely venue isn’t too much to moan about.

I’ve never let that stop me.

I’ve proper bollixed a hamstring, after getting to twenty runs and being retired out, sitting down for a couple of minutes, going back in to bat when we ran out of batsmen, and running some more singles. The typical hamstring problem is the result of playing a cold-weather game and the lack of a proper warm up. Not a balmy June evening after getting about as warmed up as I’m able to, these days. Something’s wrong here, and it’s hurting the back of me leg.

Nelson Mandela

I tried, yesterday, with a few photos and lines. Suzanne Moore does a proper job here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/26/remember-tories-nelson-mandela-apartheid

“Before the pygmy politicians line up to pay tribute to this giant…” she wants to remind us that the tories were pro-apartheid and regarded Mandela as a terrorist. All the “how can you celebrate Thatcher’s death?” wimps need reminding that she called the ANC a “typical terrorist organisation” and that Cameron felt he had to apologise for her policies visiting South Africa in 2006.

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela

A great man is critically ill. A great leader, and a human one.

In contrast, what have we had for thirty four years?

The wicked witch. No-one with an ounce of humanity in them wished her well. 

Her boy, Tone.

Tone gazes lovingly at his mentor, his muse, his mother. Cherie hopes her teeth are steradented firmly in place.

Yes, Gordon is a moron. He told us he'd broken the boom / bust cycle.

This is what we've got now.

None of our lot would be wearing a replica shirt. Tone didn't mind basking in the glory, while recalling the minister for sport from the rugby world cup because there was a tight vote that might embarrass him.

Thatcher hated sport, along with everything else decent and worthwhile.

The thing we've got now goes on about an olympic legacy while secretly wishing he could still ride out in a red jacket killing things.

Thirty-four years of shame and embarrassment instead of pride and leadership.

The Quarry, film inspiration

Quarrying films

One fink, dey say, leads ta anavver.

Kit narrates Iain Banks’ final novel, The Quarry. Kit’s a big lad, he lives with his dad in a house on the (creeping nearer) edge of a quarry. His dad’s dying of cancer. As the dust-jacket, and, on the early pages, Banks puts it, Kit’s “on the spectrum that stretches from ‘highly gifted’ at one end to ‘nutter’ at the other”.

I’m about halfway through the book, (hands up who thought: "and more than halfway to the 'nutter' end of that spectrum, too) and there’s a uni reunion going on. Kit talks the reader through the films Hol, now a film critic, has nagged him into watching. Some foreign, some black and white, some even black and white and foreign and silent. They include:

Citizen Kane, which I’ve not watched, and I should, and sooner rather than later.

The Wages of Fear, about which I know nothing, but will find out.

Seven Samurai, which I’ve watched and enjoyed, but that was a seriously long time ago.

Casablanca, same as the above.

The Thing, which I don’t rate, a rare thumbs down, I’m not usually one to have downers on films.

Point Blank, and Taxi Driver, and Chinatown, and Fargo, and Goodfellas, and The Godfather, all favourites.

Delicatessen, a film with –isms, including surrealism and cannibalism, a MM recommendation, one I’m glad I listened to, because it’s wonderful in many ways.

There’s more, then there’s:

“However –  to end on an upbeat, life-affirming note – we agree on the wonderfulness of Jaws, The Searchers, Leon, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Catch-22, Get Carter, The Untouchables, Pulp Fiction…”

There’s a list not to be argued with, although the shark in Jaws does look a bit dated now, but there’s compensation in the “I think we need a bigger boat” line that lends itself to misuse as much as the ‘walk this way’ gags.

So the book has provided a list of films to check out, or revisit.

Abdullah Ibrahim

Today I listened to Blues for a Hip King, from 1988. Mellow, soulful jazz, a great morning album to slowly crank up the day, a collection of original compositions and covers of classics like Blue Monk.

I swear, sometimes

The BLISS guide to profanity

There is, apparently, a strict hierarchy. She talked me through it. I can’t go into too much detail, because I’ve promised her not to swear, here at least. However, I now have a clearer picture of what, were I to try to push the envelope, I might just get away with.

Profanities are ranked first the way football leagues are. There’s the premiership. The stuff often referred to a “Effin’ and Jeffin’”. There’s the Championship, words that, while uttering them just once may not see you burning in the inner circles of hell for, like, eternity (and that’s a long time), will certainly raise the eyebrows, neckhair and hackles of the Mary Whitehouse Appreciation Society: the anal, the small-minded, the wafer, wine, guilt, spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch brigade, you know the type. Never worn an unironed shirt in their lives, won’t miss the Queen’s speech, have a white straw hat on the back shelf of their car, want to burn books, ban plays, censor films. Those guys. Words for things we all (have to) do, things almost everyone does, things a lot of people (but not everyone) do and bits that are, well, bit we all have.

The leagues dwindle down to the Rymans and Doctor Martens of profanity, where the impact is negligible.

There’s a table for each league, so you need to imagine what’s top of the premiership, the top four (Champions’ League places), down to the relegation battlers.

The Java updater fits right in

You don’t get this with Linux. Honest, you just don’t. The computer starts up, quickly, does what you want it to do, quickly and in a stable way, as long as you don’t want to play (certain) games, and, okay, use any remotely functional CAD software or Photoshop. It then shuts down quickly. I always saw java as easy enough to update [in Crunchbang Linux-world, you open a window, type: apt-get update and apt-get upgrade, hit return (either after each one or after the two) and off it goes, that’s enough to update everything you have, operating system, software, everything-wise, in one fell swoop, when it’s convenient for you to do so, ruthlessly, efficiently, and quickly, without needing to restart, melt-down, or do three laps of the recreation ground, widdershins]. For windows, nothing’s that easy.

Java nagged about an update.

Boxes were ticked, a new installation was (apparently) underway. Do you want to install the dreaded McAfee antivirus and generally computer-stopping software? it asked, “No” I replied. Right, I’m out of here, the installer huffed off, exit stage left. The next start-up, there was a box asking did I want to update Java? I didn’t, it said, have the latest version. Reluctantly, and only because stuff don’t work if java isn’t there to support it, I hit the yes button. After a Windows-long wait (and that’s a long time) an info-box opened telling me I already had the latest version installed. Thanks Java, thanks Sun Microsystems, good job of fitting in with the general Windows approach: minimum processing time, maximum time-wasting time. Really, move up to Linux and you’ll never move back to Windows. Unless you need to play a certain game, or use a decent CAD programme.

Come on the Lions

It’s a big day in the east

Queensland, Suncorp Stadium, 11:00 (our time) kick off. The Lions (The British and Irish Lions, to be exact, but who wants exact when it doesn’t roll off the tongue?) play the Wallabies in the first of the three test matches. The official Lions site has a clock ticking down to the game. One hour and fifty four minutes it says. I can hardly wait. This is going to be a massive game if it’s anywhere near living up to the hype.

Obviously, like any right-thinking person, first of all I want the Lions to win. Second, like all right-thinking people, I want a bruising, physical, violent game full of huge hits and massive collisions, preferably some bad-temper, too. Third, as any right-think person would, it’d be good for the game to be close and exciting, with the world watching, and advert for the sport of rugby. As long as we win. That is third on the list. If we’re out of sight by half time, I’ll take that.

So, win first, brutal second, and, as long as we win a brutal game, then a decent, close contest.

(Tomorrow) It’s a big day in the midlands

Sometimes competitions end with those dream finals every impartial wants, and I suppose England v India in the final of the ICC one day international competition is one of those. My predictive abilities have been shown up for the non-abilities they truly are as I had a sneaking suspicion the West Indies would surprise everyone and make the final.

Hopefully the weather will hold off and there’ll be a full fifty overs per side game at Edgbaston tomorrow. Hopefully it’ll be a decent, close contest, and most importantly, hopefully we’ll win.

Slow cooker ribs

I’ve never tried twice-cooked ribs before, so I’ve cooked them in the oven this morning, and now they’re in the slow cooker with some miso gravy, to heat up later, or even after cricket, if the rain ever stops and we get a game in.

Puppy school drop-out

Actually D the Dog finishes puppy school today, so he’s going to be a graduate. I wonder if he’s going to come home wearing a silly hat and with a scroll in his mouth.

It’s wet and windy…

…considering we’re so adjacent to the longest day. If we do play I’ll be looking for every warm item of white clothing available this afternoon.

Live long, drink yoghurt

Okinawa…

…has the highest number of people over a hundred years old. It must have something to do with the diet. The first few recipes I looked at all suggested the Okinawans have a low-fat, low-salt, low-this, that and the other diet. Digging deeper revealed more interesting material. Thanks too, to MM for further information.

The low-fat thing is rubbish. The main meat eaten is pork, and stir fries are stir fried in lard. Apparently the whole low-fat thing is a myth perpetuated by the cornstarch lobby, who want people eating stuff sweetened with their product.

I don’t think cutting anything out is the answer, diet-wise, unless it come pre-packed, pre-cooked, or pre-fiddled with. My gut (whoops, sorry) feeling is that it’s the processed things you need to eliminate. Having said that, what counts as processing? Getting tofu from soybeans must involve a certain amount of machinery and test tubes.

The gist of the Okinawa cuisine seems to be: plenty of fresh veg, some fish, about half as much meat as fish. Flavours are soy sauce, sesame oil, and the other usual suspects. Nothing weird or wonderful. Plenty or turmeric, as a seasoning and in the form of tea, turmeric powder, hot water, sugar and lime. That seems to be the main difference from mainland cooking, the turmeric.

The new wonder food

New, as in I’ve not even tried making it yet.

Nepal, everyone not only lives to a ripe old age, but is charging up and down mountains into their nineties, without oxygen tanks. The diet is laden with yoghurt.

Okinawa, where the world’s oldest person has just died at 116, and where the 115 year old taking his place in the Guinness Book of Records resides, and where the secret ingredient is turmeric.

Drum roll, quick change into white top hat and tails, full western bottled miracle cure salesman regalia, Big Audio Dynamite playing ‘Medicine Show’ [Youtube it, great song, awful video] in the background:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Long Life Lassi. Take one good dollop of plain yoghurt, the best, most organic and least played-about-with you can find (or better still make your own). About half a pint or so, you’re going to want a second glass. Stick it in the blender and add approximately an equal volume of water. Throw in salt to taste, a quarter teaspoon of turmeric, and the same amount of curry powder. Zizz until frothy and drink. Cures everything from the acne, through the common cold to zika fever. Thank you”

Here’s some more tips…

…that may make you live longer, but that will help waste less of the time you have:

Linux, not Windows. Less time starting up, shutting down, and watching the little spinney thing.

Avoid the M25 between junctions five and seven. There no-one working but the EEC cone mountain has been dumped there, and there’s a permanent broken down lorry blocking a lane, so it takes an hour to do ten miles.

Same for the Blackwall tunnel in rush hour.

Avoid television.

Adopt a dog that needs a home. People with pets live longer.

Follow the five a day rule:

• One new album, by a musician you’ve not listened to, preferably.
• One online broadsheet, even if it’s just the headlines.
• One chapter of a decent book.
• One good meal.
• One Long Life Lassi ™ from the Long Life Foods shelves of your friendly neighbourhood store.

Diddy Topteeth

Kevin Spacey…

…has been in some good films, but is also in those annoying adverts, and therefore I think it would be fair, for anyone meeting him, to take the Denis Pennis approach and congratulate him on the excellent Citizen Smith and My Family series he had starred in.

Kevin Spacey in Citizen Smith

Robert Lindsay

Blackadder Boris

It’d be good, too, to praise Boris for his portrayal of Nursey in Blackadder.

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London

Nursey, out of Blackadder.

Today’s BLISS-ism

MM: He’s a top dentist. He did Didier Drogba’s teeth.

BLISS: Who? Who’s Diddy Topteeth?

James Gandolfini…

…was superb in more than The Sopranos. Killing Them Softly, Zero Dark Thirty, and the Coen Brothers’ The Man Who Wasn’t There are the ones I’ve seen, and he’s died at the ridiculously young age of fifty-one.

A Prince of Darkness Special

The Lizard King (A Prince of Darkness Special)

Enter Terry (Lord) Peter (The Prince of Darkness) Mandelson’s right hand bloke. He is wearing a Frank Lampard replica Chelsea shirt, and is holding a can of Foster’s lager…

TERRY: (Singing) Jose Mourinho, Jose Mourinho, Jose Mourinho, Jose Mourinho, Jose…

MANDELSON: Have you seen the news, Terry?

TERRY: Yes boss. The Special One! He’s back! Oh, Jose…

MANDELSON: No, Terry, the NEWS, Terry.

TERRY: Yes, boss, THE NEWS. JOSE’S BACK…OH, JOSE…

MANDELSON: No. Terry. No. The news. They’re mocking me. This Bilderberg Group thing. They’re calling me the lizard…

TERRY: Are they like the Spencer Davis Group?

MANDELSON: No Terry, they’re not. It’s the press. They’re mocking me. Again.

TERRY: Oh. Are you wrisible, boss?

MANDELSON: Eh?

TERRY: Are they Biltherberthing the pith, boss?

MANDELSON: What? Terry. Are you drunk? Again?

TERRY: No, bosth. Are you going to weleath Woderick?

MANDELSON: Terry! The New Statesman is laughing at me. All I’m doing…

TERRY: All you’re doing, boss, is attending a meeting of the world’s top bankers, politicians, businessmen and reporters, in secret, to do secret things to line your pockets. You can’t be shocked that the press are having bit of a field day…

MANDELSON: But Terry, all I want is a little love, a little respect, a little recognition. After all, I am the political comeback king…

TERRY: Who else is there from our lot, eh?

MANDELSON: Jacqui Smith…

TERRY: Had to wear a stab-proof vest to walk out in her own constituency, expenses claim for her husband’s porn…

MANDELSON: Charles Clarke…

TERRY: Might as well be Charles Drake, boss. Give it up, you don’t have the gravitas…

MANDELSON: No gravitas?

TERRY: Nope. Not like…(predictably, he starts singing again) Jose Mourinho…

Exit Mandy, shaking his head and tearing up the New Statesman.

I'll saatchi you, then you'll be nigellaed

New slang

Saatchi n. after Saatchi, Charles, wife strangler and ‘playful tiff’ merchant. To get one’s hands around another’s throat. For example: “gor blimey that’s better, he were givin’ me a right saatching before you came along with your truncheon, officer.” To strangle with your bare hands: “if he’s parked in my space again I’ll saatchi the bugger, so I will.”

Nigella n. after Nigella Lawson, celebrity cook and battered wife. To have another’s hands around your throat, to be strangled by someone using their bare hands. For example: “can’t anyone (cough, splutter) help me here? (Cough, splutter, gasp, gasp) I’m being Nigellaed good ‘n’ proper.”

Tipping

BLISS always gets into a pickle about tipping in restaurants, so here’s a useful guide, handily categorised on a geographical basis:

Japan: don’t tip. Nada, ziltch, zip, zero. The favour implies servility, apparently. This should appeal to BLISS, because it is so transparently straightforward and dilemma-free.

Everywhere else: leave a tip. About 10% should do, 20% in North America.

When not to tip: when the service has been awful.

Don’t say ‘keep the change’ when it’s a piffling amount and some poor waiter or waitress has sorted out your Alzheimer’s vegan grannie and your three fussy kids and your pathetic husband who won’t eat onions (how’s he still in the gene pool?).

Talking of waiters…

…there’s a school of thought that goes against that ‘you are what you eat’ and ‘you are what you wear’ baloney and, as a rule of thumb, determines your character by how you treat the staff serving you in restaurants.

I wasn’t aware of this until today, but I like it. I’ve frequently cringed at the way people I’ve been with have behaved.

Apart from anything else, I’d refer you to the relevant scene in ‘Fight Club’.[1]

It must’ve been easier in the past. Fish, chips. Here you go, mate. Enjoy. Salt and vinegar on the table. Slices of (unidentified, non-specific) bread with some sort of butter-substitute spread. Now there’s intolerance not only to staff, but to gluten, to certain oils, to, no doubt, tartar sauce. I’ve heard a grown man utter the words “sorry, I don’t like fish” with a straight face and the expectation that he’d not be thought any worse of for saying such a childish, pathetic thing.

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[1] Brad Pitt, urine, fish soup, rude customer.

Tommy, can you see me?

Varifocal see-sickness

It’s now official. I came away from what I thought was Specsavers with a prescription that said “your next optical devices will be a white stick and a Labrador”, and “by the way this is Halfords”. I’m a proper speccy old git now.

I’m well-balanced, apparently. Not only have I a chip on each shoulder, but my eyesight’s equally poor close up and long distance. Hence these varifocal things, which make me nauseous. Whenever I glance sideways, or up and down, things blur, and I get a see-sick feeling.

I think this variation on bi-focals was designed by the sado-opticians guild, when their members threatened a mass walkout because the dentists were having all the fun. Before you even get to see the optician, they let what looks like a kid on work experience blow a high-speed burst of grit-enhanced air into each eye, just to let you know where you stand in this S&M relationship. Then the optician scratches her head at you and appears to seriously ponder just how, with those things, you ever managed to blunder into the right premises.

“Did you drive here?”

“Yes.”

“Is anyone with you who can drive back?”

Now grit-free, I’m about a week into the “give them a chance, see if you get used to them” zone, and seriously considering the caveat “not everyone does”. It feels like wimping out, but feeling like you’re about to hurl every time you glance over your shoulder isn’t good. Particularly not when emerging from a tight turn.

Just to keep the sado-dentists interested, the filling that was installed recently on the basis that: “we’ll see how this goes, if it doesn’t work it’ll be root canal or extraction” has now de-installed itself (into a soft bread roll, at that), so not only am I permanently seasick on dry land, I have some hours of excruciating agony with lights shining into my eyes to look forward to.

If I don’t mistake the Nag’s Head for the dentists, that is.

Sometimes shortcuts work

Particularly, it seems, when there’s a slow cooker involved. I slow cooked a brisket joint. Not a fashionable cut, but one that turns out well cooked slowly, with onions and garlic and mustard flavouring it. I ended up with some slices to eat with mustard, and some with horseradish, on home made bread, and plenty left over. I also had a slow cooker pot with quite a lot of onion and garlic gravy and juices.

This is the shortcut: I cut up the leftover beef, and put it back into the juices with a dozen green chillies, three tomatoes cut into wedges, and a couple of spoonfuls of various sundry leftover curry pastes (at least one was vindaloo, and another Balti).

This has had two lots of slow cooker cooking, before dolloping it out onto a bed of rice to see what it’s turned out like. Initial tastings suggest it’s worked well, for a shortcut.

Thanks guys

A fun guy with a funny walk

Two fathers’ day cards. One had a seaside postcard cricket scene, the vicar is sipping from his cup of tea and he asks a fat lady in a deckchair:

“Did he get the runs?”

To which she replies:

“No, I think he always walks like that.”

Cricket, toilet humour, and a “no, I always walk like this” joke variant.

The other had a photo of mushrooms, a bold caption saying “Dad, you’re a real fun guy”, and a cryptic message about the zen of knitting. One of the mushrooms is knitted, with eyes, Clangers-style. Whimsy, bad puns (as in good puns), and random references to knitting wool.

My two favourite chilli sauces, real coffee, and rugby tickets, thanks guys.

Six out of ten…

…in the fathers in literature Guardian quiz. Bad memory, as I’d read most of the books: To Kill a Mockingbird (right answer, Atticus Finch is a lawyer); The Railway Children (dad accused of spying); Matilda (house and money stolen); Lord of the Rings (skipping the campfire songs – Denethor was the Steward of Gondor); The Northern Lights (wrong answer, but it was close, Edward Coulter not Edward Daughter); MacBeth (studied under the worst imaginable old bitch of an English Lit teacher, she could suck the joy out of the collected Bob Marley recordings, so no surprise, I got that one wrong); The Owl Service (awfully under-rated books and an excellent telly series, right answer but bit of a guess); Little Women (one I’ve not read but it had to be American Civil War at a guess).

Relationships based on trust?

Or on spying on each other?

Our lot were tapping phone calls and even set up fake Internet Cafes during the G20 summit to collect information from foreign diplomats and delegates.

It’s like they can’t help themselves. Like a body of elderly women with their withered, bony fingers pulling back the curtains or opening their neighbours’ mail, they just have to snoop. Bad enough as it is, but it inevitably ends in bloody nosed embarrassment when it comes out after the horrific events that they had all the information they needed to take positive action and nip things in the bud.

Like those ineffective social workers who visit, report, visit, report, meddle, snoop, then shrug their shoulders when the baby dies from the torture inflicted, our government dig and delve, snoop and pry where they’re not wanted, and still fail to get the tax due from the big companies, still fail to make anything (anything at all) better than it was, and still fail to stop terrorist activity.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Let's do the timewarp again

Our drive up to The Globe, and getting parked (although the parking bay was sub-optimal, by a matter of thirty feet or so), was what it must've been like to do the trip in the 1960s. No real traffic to speak of. A parking space in New Globe Walk. That's only happened once before.. A two minute stroll past the ranks of Boris bikes towards the Thames to the Theatre.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Was a dream. Energetic and comic, an indication of just how good it was was that, despite frequent poring rain, few if any groundlings left in search of drier, warmer conditions. Thanks are due to BLISS for once again organising this season's visits.

Pucker up Puck. Oberon expresses his gratitude.

Titania chases a lugubrious Bottom.

What goes on in the woods, at night.

A magical place. A transport carrying 1,557 people. A new 'old' theatre, and one that was built despite the lack of political will and support for the arts.