If you can't tweet something nice...

Nice tweets only

What a nice world it would be for our ruling government if only everyone would just quietly go about their lives the right way: quietly ensuring the top 5% can continue to live in luxury, riding to hounds, popping down to the country estate for a bit of peasant-shooting, that sort of thing.

What a nice world it would be if only people stopped saying anything nasty about anyone else.

Twitter is getting a 'report abuse' button.

Can I use it when someone totally inappropriate (Joey Barton, or Michael Owen PV (Personality Vacuum)) comes up in that suggestions box panel on the left hand side?

When I get better at this interweb stuff, or get someone aboard who is, I'm going to launch Winsult ™, or Webfend ™, or Webuse ™, a social interaction site where coating others off isn't frowned upon, but actively ancouraged.

Sidelines might include the cricket site, Web-sledge ™.

The Postmistress General...

...or whatever she calls herself, has copped a 33% payrise. She's on one-and-a-half mill a year. I'm sure someone will argue she's worth that. I'd suggest giving her thirty bob (in stamps) to clear off and let someone with an ounce of decency have a go. Where can we get one of those from the pool of likely candidates?

Is there a theory and practical driving test...

...for Italian cruise ships and Spanish trains?

He's bananas

SHANE WARNE: During a day's play, Peter Siddle eats eighteen bananas. Nothing else.

BUMBLE LLOYD: I bet he's bunged up! He must need a bucket of prunes after that lot!

Bad headline day

I think “Will Self on Happy Pills” means: below is an article by Will Self about happy pills. The Will Self Essay: Happy Pills. There.

It's the desolate northeast...

...you can do whatever you want up there. True colours from Osborne's uncle or father in law or some sort of relative of the pro-austerity £30 hamburger-scoffing bankers arse-licker. There must be a local paper in the northeast with a 'Fracking Hell!' headline.

Bumble Lloyd: dour, and narrow (apparently)

The New Statesman don't get it

Jason Cowley in The New Statesman talks about Test Match Special in political and class terms. He seems unhappy about Brian Johnston's being “trapped in a kind of perpetual early adolescence” and “turning the TMS commentary box into something resembling a prep-school tea party, with its cakes and nicknames...”.

I thought Johnston was hilarious. Perhaps he appealed to part of me trapped forever in early-adolescence. Perhaps that's the part I like to call my sense of humour. Perhaps Cowley ought to extract his head from up his arse.

He goes on to say that there were “first rate and interesting characters dropping by” to be interviewed by Jonathan Agnew. Including, according to Cowley, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Chris Patten, and members of Keane.

I'd dispute the first rate and interesting description. That little list sounds like the bland leading the bland. Cam-moron and Mili-bland were only there to cynically score political points. Mili-bland is new labour. Blair's new labour, the party that recalled its minister for sport from attending the rugby world cup final England won when there was a risk of losing a tight vote in the commons. Yes, Ed, that says it all about your party. Blair deliberately drafted and passed vague legislation on fox hunting. The 'sport' Cam-moron takes part in. If you need a stupid red coat and a horse, it isn't sport in any real terms. If it involves ripping a terrified creature limb from limb, well that's just barbarism.

I suppose The New Statesman is a political magazine, and therefore skewed to thinking that politics is important and interesting. Which it is, compared to, say, reality television or knitting tea cosies, and which it very much isn't, compared to sport.

Cowley then gets things horribly wrong: “How this [Test Match Special] variety contrasts with the dour, narrow professionalism of the Sky commentary team. They are former cricketers every one and, with the admirable exception of Mike Atherton, seem to know little of the world beyond the cricket pitch, the golf course and the wine cellar.” David Lloyd dour and narrow? Michael Holding knows nothing of the world?

Cowley finishes with a CLR James quote, to paraphrase: what do they know of politics who only politics know?

He should know better. He did a good job with the Observer Sports Monthly. He's published a book about our current crop of politicians most hated sport, football. Up until Thatcher, our prime minister would attend the cup final. If she had her way she would have nuked the stadiums, fans and players up and down the country at three o'clock on her first Saturday in power. Her boy Tone was the same. His buddy Brown went for the man of the people thing by claiming to relax by watching garbage TV rather than using the sport angle.

It angers me when people make false claims about their love of sport for whatever reasons. From the bloke on the train loudly reciting what the papers and pundits have said in an attempt to be one of the lads, to the politicians pretending to follow cricket. The guy in the debating chamber with a badly concealed earphone in, the one punching the air for no seeming reason during the endless debate on whether broccoli in school meals constitutes cruelty to children, that's the true follower, enthusiast, the real deal. He's not listening by choice. He has no choice. He has to listen to the game over and above anything else. If you don't need to keep up with the test match / six nations / football, if you feel you have a choice, fine, off you go, join the nerds, wimps, and please-sir-can-I-be-excused-games-I-have-a-note-from-my-mum gang over there. No-one will think any less of you, unless and until you start to pretend, start sneaking over into our territory.

Dynamic Positivism and the Windmill Hole

The philosophy of crazy golf

The hut where you pay and pick up the putter, ball, scorecard and pencil. That’s Capitalism, I think. I mean, you can’t expect to play for free. Unless you ring the bell on the 19^th hole. That’s either altruism (if it’s a genuine attempt to offer something for nothing) or cynicism (if they know that one winner will get more green fees as the rest of the party are dragged along so as not to waste the freebie).

Then there’s the holes:

1. The impossible task hole. Hitting through a small gap into an uphill chute. No chance of a hole-in-one on this first challenge: Defeatism.

2. A hole that slopes in from both sides, and towards the hole from the tee, so that it forms a channel and a hole-in-one is absolutely guaranteed: Utopianism.

3. An absolutely fair hole, where you get the score you deserve for the shots you play: Idealism.

4. A long, long, long, and impossibly difficult hole: Eternalism.

5. The windmill: Classicism.

6. Another long hole, but one where, with perseverance, the end is in sight: Stoicism.

7. The hole where the ball disappears down a hole and, after travelling out of sight along a lengthy hidden pipe, emerges some distance away, with random speed and direction: Mysticism.

8. A hole where all the ball are collected in a holding area along the way, and only being differentiated after a lot of effort by the players: Kierkegaardianism.

9. The mousetrap hole, with multiple chutes, pipes, loops and all sorts of amazing stuff going on: Absurdism.

10. A nice, easy, short hole, light on hazards and worries: Epicureanism.

11. The hole where you all play, and everyone records the best outcome on their scorecard: Marxism.

12. The hole that, from the tee, looks like it will be impossible not to get a hole-in-one: Optimism.

13. The hole that, from the tee, looks impossible: Pessimism, or Realism.

14. The windmill hole: Romanticism.

15. The hole where the players stand on the tee waiting for someone to take their shots for them, or at least to advise them on the best line to take, or, for heaven’s sake, provide some sort of assistance: Statism.

16. The windmill hole: Symbolism.

17. The signature hole that sums up crazy golf: Surrealism.

18. The final hole, that sums up crazy golf: Nihilism.

An absurd and ultimately pointless exercise, or a deep and significant exploration of the meaning of life?

The lighthouse hole philosophy

Competition at the putting edge

It isn’t every day you get the chance to compete in a keenly contested, brilliantly well-organised sporting event along with some of the finest athletes in the country. Today was no exception.

I did get to play in one of three fourballs taking on the old course (crazy golf), and playing the red ball. Adjacent to the newer Pirate Crazy Golf, the old course is a mix of the traditional (windmill, paddle steamer, lighthouse) motifs and some innovations (water hazards, a trimmed Astroturf surface, a short hole with an elevated tee).

In a nod to tradition and cliché, there was the 19^th extra hole, returning the ball to the ticket-seller’s hut with the ‘ring the bell and win a free game’ challenge.

Hat recovery shot on the signature lighthouse hole, by the hole-in-one king.

Those politicians and top business-people meeting up at those G8, G20, and all the other secret summits, they should be made to hold their discussions over round after round of crazy golf.

Zen and the art of putting: this dude has sandals, a tie-dye t-shirt, and a beard. Don't tell me there's not more to this crazy golf thing than meets the eye.

Then they might remember what’s important. It isn’t $5,000 suits, shoes, or any of that fake-wealth paper-deal baloney that’s ruined a planet.

Then they might remember their mum and dad’s, and their children’s laughter, and start taking enlightened rather than entitled decisions.

The absolute, total, utter pointlessness of crazy golf is exactly its appeal. Meaning of life mate? There isn’t one. Just get on with hitting your ball up Bluebeard’s parrot’s arse, and stop the damn fool questions.

Got-gotta get it

We left our scorebook in El Segundo

We gotta get it,

We got-gotta get it.

Well, not El Segundo, exactly. Cowes.

Before we got-gotta get it, there’s the more pressing matter of finding someone to blame, and therefore to remorselessly and mercilessly take the rise out of. My money’s on Mr Naughty.

This is also a rarity: I’m totally in the clear. I’ve been nowhere near the thing, so I’m in Not-Guilty City all day long (not, whenever cricket club cock-ups occur, my usual postal address). When circumstances such as this arise, there’s two approaches you can adopt. One is to underplay the whole thing and keep your powder dry. The other is to milk every last drop, and then some.

When you start to question whether perhaps enough is enough and feel that maybe, just maybe, you should give the poor bloke a chance, that’s the time to heed AD’s advice.

“Should we lay off the poor bloke? D’you think he’s taken enough stick?”

(Quizzically) “How would that be possible? Keep going.”

Rain didn’t stop play

It hadn’t rained for weeks. We hadn’t played a game for two week. So, naturally, it drizzled. Then rained. Then chucked it down good and proper.

Nobby, Dave-O and Mr Naughty were huddled under what had earlier been a bench table parasol. I was sat out in the rain. “Are you mad?” they said. “I’m getting acclimatised”, I said, between chattering teeth, wringing out my batting gloves, “I’m next in.”

To general glee and merriment, when I went in G had nearly got his fifty, and when the game was over, he was no nearer. I did try to get him the strike. It just didn’t work out that way.

In the last over he only needed seven more runs.

First ball: down leg side. I tapped it away. Found the gap in the field. It ran away for four.

Second ball: same ball, this time it was stopped by a fielder and G had the strike.

Next two: absolutely spot on middle stump. All he could do was block them.

Fifth ball: he managed to get it away, but just for one run.

Last ball: me back on strike, wet ball slipped out of the bowler’s hand, full toss, nice height, went for four.

The theory was that he was just avoiding having to fork out for a jug of beer.

Time and space - all relative

Bipolar timetravel

We started off early. Even after stopping off at Boots. [A fact of sporting life: it all starts off almost too simple: a bicycle and a pair of boots, laces tied, hanging over the handlebars; it becomes more serious and complicated: shin pads, neoprene undershorts, Vaseline (initially for the eyebrows, channelling sweat away from the eyes, it helps to see what you’re doing, then additionally for the nipple irritation when shirts went to man-made from cotton fabrics), washing stuff, towel, etc.; then it becomes less serious but still more complicated: bandages, various supports, pills, rubs, potions and lotions, miracle cures low on the miraculous and the cure, buried among the medical supplies, a pair of boots, somewhere.]

Then we hit traffic. Long queues at all the usual pinch-points. We rollercoastered from early to looking at being late.

Then it all cleared and we looked like being in good time again. We’d forgotten the endless Portsmouth one way system. Then late-running ferries gave us fifteen minutes grace.

Meet the designer of the Portsmouth one-way system

Dave-O, super-confident, inspirational. Like “once more unto the breech”, like “on my order, unleash hell”.

“I know the way” he said, “I’ve stayed here before.”

An hour later, we had almost completed the fifteen minute walk to the High Street. Not so bad for the advance party (they probably would’ve done it in half the time) but not ideal for Neil and his game leg and me, also hobbling painfully and slowly along. So we decided that Dave must’ve been on the design team of that endless Portsmouth one-way system.

Now, AD and I are so bad that on away games we either have to travel separately, or with a responsible adult (so we’re told), so when someone else cocks up navigation-wise, it’s time for us to make the most of it, which we duly did.

A bijou en-suite room

I only just fit in the hotel room shower. Just as well as the water pressure isn’t. Pressurised. At first cold water dribbled out. By the time I’d washed, lukewarm water was dribbling to a halt.

BLISS said what’s the view like. I’d not looked. When I did there were two rotary clotheslines and a bloke in budgie-smuggler swimwear pegging out some bedding, all set in some post-apocalypse themed wasteland. I quickly shut the window, and the curtains.

There’s drawers in the fireplace, a good space-saving measure, I suppose, but this made me laugh out loud:

One dado rail, slipped, now set at a jaunty angle.

Thursday sounds

Some Thursday music

I drove to Blackheath in no time at all this morning, listening to this:

Once the Radio Four Today programme started doing its déjà vu thing. It’s energetic and lively and has a fair dose of humour, too.

On the way back it was:

Then a day trying to cram too many hours into too short s space of time. Not enough month left at the end of the to do lists. That means some ECM jazz, quietly soothing the shredded nerves. Starting with:

John Abercrombie, Dave Holland and Jack deJonnette. I’m always stunned at how full and rich trios often sound.

Then:

Pat Metheny tries his best, with things like the programmable ochestron and such, to be unreliable, but always fails and is unfailingly able to produce fantastic music.

Finally, this:

Mel Smith

Mel Smith

Had you been

One of the

Spice Girls

I guess you’d

Have been

Mel S

I take it that

Mel

Is short for

Melvin

And not

Melanie

Not the Nine

O’clock News

Was always

A favourite

Television

Show

I liked the

‘Scratch and Sniff’

Head to heads

With Griff

Rhys-Jones

In particular

Or were they

Actually

On the later

Alas

Smith

And Jones?

I think

You would’ve

Been a great

Addition to

The

Spice Girls

But I don’t

Suppose their

Management

Would’ve seen it

Quite

That way

You were

Neither a

Size zero

Nor a girl

And I seem to remember

You could sing

Oh well

The manufactured

Girl Band world’s

Loss was

Comedy and

Our gain

Dyctionary

D-words

D the Dog’s first thunderstorm. Did he shiver, quake, and disappear behind the sofa like a small child confronted by daleks? None of those. He barked at the thunder and lightning. The same “just let me out there and at it” barking he uses on his most-hated fox. It’s time to add to the D-tionary.

D-tionary n a glossary of terms, relating to D the Dog. Presented in alphabetical order.

Dypical adv the usual behaviour, chaos, and rueful grins that arise from having a D the Dog about the place. Coming home to find the dog baskets upside down, the laundry basket on the floor, its contents scattered and D sitting in the middle of what were clean clothes with a sock in his mouth, you might remark: “well, that’s dypical, that is.”

Dyl Pickle v the condition anyone exposed to D the Dog for any length of time will find themselves in: tired, sleepless, lacking energy, hoarse, stressed, generally exhausted. May include needing medical attention, see Dylision below.

Dyllapidated adj the condition any inanimate object exposed to D the Dog for any length of time will end up in. “Oh god, he’s had me new trainers. Look. They’re all dyllapidated now!”

Dysmembered adj how any soft toy given to D the Dog will be in no time at all: missing limbs and extremities. See also Dy-capitated.

Dylision v what the Sky telly football commentators call a “coming together” if it favours Manchester United, and an “act of unspeakable violence” if it’s perpetrated by an Arsenal player (see the lack of comment made about Sol Campbell’s ‘elbow’ on Ole Gunnar Solskjaer – powder-puff contact that saw the little cheat hit the deck as if he’d been gunned down by a Columbian hitman). A dylision usually involves D setting off at full pelt, reaching top speed, then running into BLISS’ head or my knee, without any deviation, hesitation, or evasive action.

Dyllness n feeling unwell, the condition of suffering from a medical complaint. Can arise from a dylision, being dyl pickled, or in extreme (a-dypical) circumstances, dysmemberment.

The Man Booker Prize long list is out today…

…and I’ve not read any of them. I’d better get going, hadn’t I?

Restaurant Review Number One

Restaurant (sort of) review, number one

The barbecue stand at Hove.

Every so often, when the wind is just right in strength and direction, anyone fielding at deep midwicket when the bowling is from the sea end at The County Ground, Hove (and in the short forms of the game, this is a popular position: cow corner) is in danger of disappearing in a cloud of delicious-smelling smoke. Behind the hot grills a jolly, short, chubby chef cooks chicken, steak, and burgers. These get stuffed into opened and lightly charred oversize ciabatta rolls. The piece of chicken in mine was large enough to overstuff the oversized roll. With these, and all for just £7.50, you help yourself to a mountain of potato salad, home made coleslaw, and salad. Whoever makes the potato salad avoids the temptation to skin the spuds, and to just boil and then slather them in mayo. These are covered in mustard seeds, and have a light dressing. The salad is likewise undressed. There’s a huge pot of mayo you can help yourself to if you feel the need (along with mild mustard, barbecue sauces, salt and pepper, and as many paper napkins as you can eat). The coleslaw is chunky, knife cut rather than grated or machined. Rustic, I think it’s called.

A number of things are important:

• The patrons of the stand are not there for some exotic culinary experience. They’re there to watch the cricket.
• That said, they’re not there to be ripped off, either. That’s how a polystyrene tray with about eight chips in it from the hot dog and burger stand leaves you feeling
• A tip for anyone using the burger / hot dog stall. Don’t wonder off to the gents and leave your chips unguarded if MM is in attendance. You will return to an experiment in flavour, colour, and how much and how many different squeezy bottle sauces a polystyrene tray and eight chips can accommodate. Yes of course I ate them. Yes, of course it was one of the foulest things I’ve ever eaten.
• A lot of seven pound fifties is better than a few tenners is better than hardly any twelve quids.
• See? Just because it’s a sports ground, not everything has to come with chips (there have been good things said (by AD and Mr Naughty) about what the paella van in general admission has to offer.
• I’d say always go for the chicken.
• The potato salad and the coleslaw are really good.
• Why don’t all burgers and similar come in ciabatta rolls? They go much better with flame-grilled meat, having some taste and resistance to the bite, than those lightweight melt away to nothing rolls the big chains stick their whoppers and big macs and breadcrumbed chicken strips in.

Always easier to find value when you’ve not paid and I have the generosity of The BOS to thank for my plateful, but there’s little not to like about what you get. Even the large white plates are heavy and solid, the cutlery is stainless steel, so there’s not that disposable feel about the fare. My chicken was charred and juicy and the roll was man enough to stand up to soaking in some of those juices.

I wonder if, next season, they might provide the jolly chubby chef with a couple of fans, strategically placed to waft the smoke into cow corner when the home side are batting?

Hoist the Jolly Roger

Give ‘em a Jolly Rogering

Pirate Day. Good call. If I were ever forced to salute a flag (and the union jack would be right at the bottom of my list – that’s a nothing combination of national identities that is without any basis in anything) I’d choose the Jolly Roger. I’d have the old-fashioned version, with the bones under the skull, rather than the swords, given the choice.

Is there a filter?

I have an occasional twitter cull. Based on mentions, in the past, for example, of Big Brother, celebrity dancing (on ice or otherwise), pub singer contests hosted by music-for-profit philistines, that sort of thing.

Mark Thomas asked on twitter if there was a royal baby internet news filter. I’d have one of those if it were available. About the royal baby and my ignorance:

1. I don’t know who the mum is.

2. I don’t know who the dad is.

3. I don’t care who the mum or dad is. Or who the grand / great grand parents are.

4. Shove the whole boring affair up your hole, you forelock-tugging brown-nose.

5. Fancy having a baby during the Ashes. That’s just stupid.

6. Whoever Liz is to the expectant couple, can you two get your nan / nan-in-law, whatever, to pitch up at Lords on time so the start of play isn’t delayed with all that gloved handshaking garbage.

7. If she’s going to turn up and delay the start of play, can she have the decency to stay for more than just over an hour. That’s a total waste of a decent seat.

8. I’m about as interested in this royal ankle-biter as queen Liz is in rescue corgis. Maybe it’s a bloke thing.

9. Fancy having a baby when all anyone cares about is who their club may be buying or selling during the summer transfer window.

10. Fancy having another wealthy sponger added to the wealthy sponger list during a time of austerity for the normal folk (non-bankers, non-mps, non-royals).

A note to the Guardian headline writer who came up with “World Awaits News of Royal Baby”, well, I’m part of the world, and I’m part of (I’m sure) a sizeable chunk of that world that is a couple of hoots short of giving two hoots about the next Baron of All Scotland or whatever it’ll be.

The Ashes

Not only is there far more important stuff going on than royal rubbish, (on the IV sliding scale, Ashes Test = Big Bang Birth of the Universe = Discovery of Fire / the Wheel / Evolution of Opposing Thumbs (that sort of thing) and royal baby = price of beans in Aldi = watching (slow drying, nondescript shade) paint dry (on an uninteresting surface)) but we’re two-nil up in the important stuff, and the Aussies are visibly wobbling.

They have a tough visit to THOC (Hove, The Home of Cricket) to negotiate for a three-day tour match before facing England in the third test match at Old Trafford.

Silly hat shopping

What’s the pope need all that money for?

A good question. DLL asked it. I don’t know the answer.

Particularly as, as she pointed out, it isn’t as if he goes out or anything, is it?

Maybe silly hats and 1980’s curry house wallpaper print fabric robes cost a fortune? Rome is expensive, and those hats, dresses and curly-stick things are niche items. You won’t see them in the Freemans Catalogue, or on Amazon or eBay.

I’ve just checked. No hits on Amazon, but “Pope’s hat” does actually come up on eBay, and he could get the full regalia there, for just £7.95 + postage, representing a huge saving to the church they could spend on providing condoms to stop the spread of AIDS feeding the poor, or something.

Just £7.95, full rig-out, what a bargain.

Amazon do silly hats, including this little beauty, and any religion with a head honcho kitted out in one of these would be worth looking at, in my book. All hail the penguin-master, do the waddle-dance, and eat live sardines.

Praise the lord and pass the sardines.

DLL also left me with a clear mental image of the pope going out, shuffling down the Vatican newsagents and general stores, morning hair sticking out from under the papal night-time silly hat, and tartan slippers sticking out from under the dress, to pick up twenty Bensons, a sliced loaf, pint of semi-skimmed, and the papers. The Roman Catholic version of the Sport would be best:

Headlines:

The Archbishop of Canterbury ate my hamster.

Jesus found alive, on the Moon.

Nun on the Run, sister Abigail completes marathon.

Case of gonorrhea found in monastery. “It’ll make a change from that Benedictine” says spokes-monk.

All splashed around a long-lens zoom-in close up of sister Abigail bending over to tie the laces of her running shoes.

Naturally he will then flip straight to the back pages to check how Celtic, Hibs, Barca and, of course, the Vatican City national team (they missed a trick not being called Vatican City there) are getting on. I’d imagine the Vatican City lot might just be struggling, having to play in sackcloth and sandals and say all those Hail Marys after every cynical hack on an opponent through on goal.

How rude...

The rudeness of non-cricket folk

If I rang a non-cricket person, during, say, their mother’s funeral or their daughter’s wedding, I would say ‘sorry to interrupt, can you talk…’ before blurting out what I needed to say.

So how does anyone feel it acceptable to ring between 11:00 and 19:00 during an Ashes Test Match without abjectly apologising and excusing the interruption, or at least confining their trivia to before the start of play, and the lunch and tea intervals?

After the reverence shown to the Olympics, where the centrepiece, mainstream events are, actually, the already minority athletics sports, with the outer zone two, three and four jobs becoming ever more minority (because all the Olympic drum-beaters regularly follow and take part in pistol shooting, synchronised swimming, and leotard ribbon-waving, don’t they?) where’s the respect the proper national sports demand?

I can name award-winning films without any Googling: Fire in Babylon (cricket); Fever Pitch (football); Invictus, Living with Lions (rugby), that are enthralling and magnificent. There’s any number of baseball and American Football films, too.

Don’t, please don’t, quote Chariots of Fire. Cool Runnings, maybe.

There’s loads of good golf films too.

None that I recall about dressage, modern pentathlon, or clay pigeon catapult shooting (I made that up, but wait a few years and see).

So. It’s all publicly available info. Five days for a test match, starts on day one, finishes before, or at the latest, at the end of day five. 11:00 kick off (unless her majesty Mrs Kebab horse-fancier delays things with her baloney), 13:00 lunch, 40 minutes availability. 13:40 to 15:40, afternoon session. Then twenty minutes available during tea. Back on at 16:00 to 18:00, or 18:30, depending on over-rate and other factors.

All these are subject to adjustment according to the state of play, so you need to keep abreast of what’s going on.

If you’re not keeping abreast of what’s going in the test match, why on earth would I want to talk to you in any case?

No stomach for sugar

The Guardian had pieces about how rubbish Alan Sugar is, suggesting that he is now a full-time pretend business bod specialising in dispensing advice on what he’s no longer any good at. He should, they said, go on The Dragon’s Den.

I’ve never seen as much as a microsecond of the Apprentice, or of the Dragon’s Den, and I’d rather, and this is the only way I have of describing my antipathy to such trash, squirt lemon juice into my eyeballs. [Or something like that].

When my revolution comes, anyone who says ‘Strictly’ as if I should know what the hell they’re on about, along with the participants, producers, viewers, everyone in any way linked with or fans of the apprentice or dragons den will be lined up and shot.

Starting with that sawn-off Tottenham tosspot Sugar.

Just ten million miles per hour...

Don’t call me, St Peter, ‘cos I can’t go…

A remarkable bit of grave-dodging by a huge gas cloud. Not that gas clouds have life. Not as far as we know, anyway. But a huge one has done that gravitational catapult thing around the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.

In black hole terms, supermassive means 7 billion kilometres across, and with a mass equivalent to 4 million of our suns. The gas cloud is going to go off into space at 10,000,000 kmh (1% of the speed of light) the fastest speed (apparently – the Starship Enterprise will beg to differ (I think ‘warp 7’ means 70% of the speed of light, but I’m not a proper Treckie)), and certainly something to stop those tedious Formula One bores droning on about how fast those things go, they’re just cars, that’s all. Here’s the wonder and the majesty of the universe, and you bang on about tyres and gear-changes.

…I owe my soul to the company store…

This austerity thing. Years of individual hardship for the greater good. All well and good if you have a strong belief in the country you happen to be living in.

The Greeks and the Spanish are rioting.

I don’t like it here.

I don’t like the forelock-tugging, back-of-the-hand-rollup-hiding game playing.

I don’t like the royal family. If your queen wants to pop along to a test match, can’t she do it before lick off, rather than delaying the start to suit her (and then she buggers of after a couple of hours?).

I don’t like the huge taxes. 40% before I go anywhere or do anything. Then a minimum of 20% on everything else. That’s 60% of hard-earned evaporated in moat cleaning and Mars-bars. Unless you buy petrol, in which case it’s about 95% and has been punched up another 5p / litre just now.

I don’t like the inequity. Football club? You have to pay for the police, regardless of how crap a job they do. Royal wedding? Thatcher’s funeral? Taxpayer pays.

I don’t owe anything. My Dad fought with and alongside the UK forces in WWII, then was told he should consider a one-way ticket to anywhere as he wasn’t really wanted here. Even as recently as a couple of years ago I’ve had to endure listening to a couple of English retards who only knew him well after his prime saying disrespectful things. I should’ve paid no attention to the circumstances and let them have both barrels.

I don’t like (really don’t like) the church and the rubbish that goes with it, and the strong links with the decisions that rule here. Sunday hours, Bishops in the House of Lords, and I really don’t like 90% of the British psyche. Fresh paint for the queen, no thanks. Class system? Shove it. I’m working to fund living somewhere with no attraction. When’s the next riot?

DNA lotto

You shift sixteen tons, and what do you get?

Well, you spend sixty quid, then. On getting your dog’s DNA looked at by some internet charlatans. That’s what the owner of D the Dog’s brother did. Obviously, being bit of a handful runs in the family, because the dog training person (another bunch of charlatans as far as I’m concerned – apologies to any that are genuine, successful and value for money, I think they’re all latter day Barbara Woodhouses, not much practical use (emotionally and socially they fulfil a purpose, paid on performance results they’d not be on minimum wage) and too dogmatic (geddit?) in their approach) said she needed to know the characteristics to determine how to go about training him.

Now, without spending sixty quid, I think I’ve identified bit of a shortcut here. For example, if Labrador DNA suggests food interest and morsels as a training aid, why not try offering morsels of food (at, say, £0.10 a pop) and see how that goes?

Anyway, it seems you pay £60 to play the internet dog bloodline fruit machine, the reels spin, and there’s your random report, nice colour pictures and graphics and all the scientific substance of a toothpaste advert. Look, there’s even double-helix motifs between the generations, can’t get more scientific than that, can you?

On one side, apparently, and despite not looking anything like either, D is half Bouvier des Flandres (stocky giant poodle with gym membership and access to steroids) and half Weimaraner (itself a greyhound / supermodel cross).

On the other side, pure German Spitz (fluffy terrier (you sure about the ‘German’ bit? there's little suggestion of the efficiency and functionality associated with the Germans – this is a vorsprung durch handbag dog if you ask me)) which is about a millionth of the size D has attained at nine months old.

This from the dog trainer BLISS has been to:

1. You must be the most interesting thing for him, if you want his instant interest.
2. You must be the boss not a playmate.

Sorry love. I’m not a dog expert. I’m just a bloke. D the Dog’s a bloke. (1) and (2) are mutually exclusive. Yes, you can be the boss of me, now, (unfortunately we all have people to answer to), but that rules you out of contention for being of the remotest interest, or being anyone I’ll ever gravitate to. Or any bloke (human, canine, whatever) will ever gravitate to.

Another year older and deeper in debt

Thanks a billion (probably several, paid in bonuses) to the bankers and their mates in all parties, all I can see the future bringing is more work, more twelve to fourteen hour days, a brief spell in hospital (not too bad – heart attack (now heart ‘event’ see the New Oxford Politically Correct moron’s dictionary) mild stroke, nervous exhaustion or similar) followed close on the heels by a longer one (cancer, severe heart event, etc) and the popping of the clogs without a day of retirement to enjoy.

I hope you choke on your huge bonuses, your 11% payrise (just this year), and your all-expenses-paid lifestyles. I’ll read the obituaries with glee.

Paved with, er, palladium...

The streets of London are paved with gold

Well, if not actual gold, other stuff that’s more expensive, pound for pound. After sweeping the streets and extracting the more obvious recycling materials to the point where only dust is left, they go to work on that dust, recovering platinum, palladium, and rhodium, which have hi-tech uses, as well as a little gold.

The spokesman for the cleaning company was refreshingly straightforward in a scientific community that has increasingly obfuscated matters behind their over-complication: do you want to die out on a scorched planet (carbon fuel); do you want to die of radiation poisoning (nuclear power); or can you, perhaps, Mr and Mrs NIMBY bird-spotting retard, put up with those wind turbines that represent a threat only to the occasional passing seagull and your view of the hills? Them’re the options, whatever the professors of this and that, particularly those paid by the government or energy companies say.

Cleaning bloke said that either everything goes to landfill, as before, or it gets recycled, which is much better all round. In what sounds like a belated admission that the Dusseldorf model is the way to go, everything is collected, recycled, recycled for a lesser use, burnt for energy, that energy is used to fuel the processes attacking the leftover dust, as are some acids and other chemicals recovered from the dustcarts, to recover the remaining rare and expensive metals in that dust.

League tables for eleven year olds

I don’t see what the fuss is about. Nope, a 45 minute test isn’t exact, but few things are exact. If your guide to what’s worthwhile is what’s exact, then stop teaching the humanities and focus entirely on maths and the sciences, and certainly abandon religious education.

The do-gooders were in full glass half empty voice:

The bottom 10% will get an inferiority complex.

Do-gooders: some deserve an inferiority complex. It might inspire the best of that 10% to do something to move up the percentiles.

The bottom 10% will abandon academic studies.

Do-gooders: not all the top 10% will be academic by nature or inclination. Why does living in the physical world rule out being intelligent? Or is it because do-gooders tend to be physical dyslexics? Note their inability to tolerate one person running faster than another or being better equipped to earn a fortune at sport than a nine-stone weakling (ahh, bless).

The bottom 10%...etc., ad infinitum…

Do-gooders: don’t the top groups get a boost? Sit the exam. Take the results on the chin. Stop the whingeing. Same for everyone.

Lines and lengths

Lines and lengths, chapter two

T20 games are all over in a few hours, forty and fifty over games are over in a longish day, test matches take five days. The last England Australia test match was one very short affair, in terms of time skipping by because it was so enthralling.

A bad T20 game can provide more tedium than a tepid five-day test match. The perception of the passage of time really is relative. In the wrong place, listening to the wrong person, a second weighs a ton. From last Wednesday to Sunday, cricket lovers needed nothing other than a radio capable of receiving TMS, and the Sky highlights between eight and nine in the evening.

Unfortunately, there’s now four whole days until the second, Lords, test.

Luckily, one of the most boring people in the world can’t make the T20 game tomorrow, so I get to go with MM, which is a right good result.

I liked cooking…

…but with as with any number of other enjoyable things, it has now fallen by the wayside. Maybe it’ll be missed, and maybe not, but I’m packing it in, for good, I think.

Instantly, I’m in the anti-foodie camp.

The Observer Food Monthly features rubbish: ice cream, Stella Rimington, shop-bought scotch eggs, taramasalata, pork pies and quiche.

Today’s food features top three are about raspberry cheesecake, cocktails, and the joy of packed lunches.

I don’t like ready meal convenience food, so I don’t know for sure what I’m going to be eating from now on, but I ‘aint gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.

The company will probably be pleased, a few more hours worked every day, as instead of going home to eat and sleep, it’ll now mean going home to sleep, then going back to work the next day. Being hungry because of not eating last night hasn’t improved my temper today, but I’m tired of being nice to people I hate in any case, so it may be quite cathartic in shifting some otherwise bottled-up anger.

Goodbye, kitchen…

…where, now, will I sit?

Goodbye to any lingering doubt…

…about the royals. No wonder HMRC’s finest Gestapo are on my case. Prince Charles owes them the tax on his £19m a year (that’s just Camila’s tab at the fag-shop) income, or something.

Heading towards a goodbye

Lines and lengths, chapter one

What is actually longer? A great long novel, or a godawful short story? Having been occasionally trapped with nothing other than one of those “Aliens Gatecrashed My Wedding” magazines designed for the hard of reading (loads of photos of ‘celebs’ (who, exactly, is Kerry Katona, who, exactly, cares what Mrs Wayne Rooney thinks, or whether she lives or dies, and what, exactly is the point of Robbie Williams (ex-boy-band dancer) and Gary Barlow (soppy, sappy, boy-band wimp))) my opinion is that bad writing, short-form, due to the predictability, the lack of ideas and originality, and the willingness to ignore all the rules of the language, seems to take an age to plough through.

I have two ways of describing this, one personal, one from a long but easy to read novel.

As a boy, the school holidays consisted of football. Up at the crack of dawn, playing football until someone’s disgruntled mother (for some this was a temporary condition, for mine, the default setting – I still dread having anything to do with those perma-disgruntled elderly ladies, and the time-sapping nature of dealing with their joyless, anal, views of life) dragged us in for something to eat (more accurately to bolt down something to keep them happy before running, without gratitude, without agreeing a return time, without saying two words, to be honest – what does a small boy, football mad, have in common with a disgruntled old lady worth talking about?, out of the door to get back to the game) interrupting the day-long game that stopped only when we lost the light. When we went indoors to play Subbeteo or talk about football.

That wasn’t ever, not for a micro-second, boring.

Then, every so often, I had to help carry the shopping. This interfered with the football, so was already incredibly, indescribably, inconvenient. Then, she would meet someone she knew, and start to talk. How are mothers, so (in their own minds) in tune with their kids, so ignorant of how every billionth of a second they spend discussing the price of beans, or whatever it is they talk about, seems like eternity squared to a small boy.

I rebelled. Dumped the shopping, ran for it (she was never going to catch me – we live in a physical world – she thrashed me when she had me locked up without an escape route, I’ve hated bullies ever since, but she’d never catch me in a foot-race, and as soon as I had the mental wherewithal to present a threat (only a threat, and having reached threat-point, not backing down when she turned on the tears) she learned to abandon the thrashing line, quick-sharp) and got back to the mates and football.

In Catch 22, Dunbar decides that living in total boredom = living forever:

"A friend of Yossarian and the only other person who seems to understand that there is a war going on. Dunbar has decided to live as long as possible by making time pass as slowly as possible, so he treasures boredom and discomfort."

Dog-proof? No such thing.

Lampshade, what lampshade?

The doggie lampshade. Scientifically designed to securely fix to their necks and stop dogs chewing and licking their stitches. D the dog chewed his lampshade, escaped it, and chewed it. Within minutes of the anaesthetic wearing off.

Fourteen days of no running, jumping, excitement or anything. He’s had about fourteen minutes, before deciding that that’s quite enough of the boring recuperation and recovery and it’s time to get right back to full-on normal. D the Dog’s normal is pretty damn full-on.

The sedatives? Well, they’re lightweight, herbal things rather than elephant-stoppers. They’ve not touched him. We may as well be giving him placebos, or speed.

What are the vets thinking of? Do they not undertake any animal behaviour training? Is D the Dog so far off the scale?

If you can’t keep the mouth from the stitches, you have to keep the stitches from the mouth. So last night he was wearing a pair of MM’s old boxer shorts (with an additional opening provided for the tail), which, along with the blue ankle-sock resembling bandages around where his dewclaws used to be, were not a good look.

St Cyprian’s School…

…is a great place to play cricket. It’s changed:

Some of the buildings pictured aren’t there any more.

George Orwell went there, as Eric Blair.

Phew, what a scorcher

I found a recipe from the Hunan province of China, where the chilli features in almost all the recipes. Finely chop chillies and layer them with salt in a jar or a plastic box, leave it all to steep in the fridge for a week or two, then use for chilli heat and salt flavours.

So. How hot can it be? Just chillies and salt. I bunged too much into the curry I had and found my face streaming: nose, eyes, sweat. The only part not overheating was my ears.

You call that minor?

Indiana Bones and the lampshade of shame

D the Dog had a couple of operations. I think the vet would describe them as minor, while D might not be in full agreement. Adding liberal amounts of insult to the injury, he's now modelling a fetching translucent blue headguard to stop him biting the stitches and unravelling the bandages. He's got to take it easy for a few days, not a simple matter for a ten-month old puppy full of energy.

They should make human versions of the lampshade of shame:

• Much less expensive than putting in a gastric band, but difficult to scoff endless burgers and kentucky fried when you have to throw your food ten feet in the air and catch it on the way down.

• Over-use of the mobile phone. Kids running up huge bills, commuters irritating their fellow travellers, that sort of thing. At the first sign of mobile dependency syndrome, on goes the lampshade, and without super-long double jointed arms, the phone and the ear are torn asunder.

• Getting schoolboys to focus on what's in front of them, rather than on what's going on outside the windows.

• Nail-biting, nose-picking, ear-investigating, that sort of thing.

There's a proud headline...

...35 years of IVF and five million babies later.

MM summed this up so very well:

In the blue corner, two people who want a baby, and can't have one.

In the red corner, a baby desperate for parents, who hasn't any.

In the way of the obvious introduction and positive outcome, scientists and doctors with syringes of sperm (or whatever).

I'm less eloquent and harder-hearted, and see it as just another example of a human species that has come to the point of stamping its feet and holding its breath as soon as it can't get exactly what it wants. That “I can't help being thick, you shouldn't be excluding me from having a degree” thing. That approach that would rather lower the height of the basketball hoop than disappoint a spoilt five foot two brat bleating on about the inequality of a National Basketball Association players roster skewed in favour of the strong and athletic and over six feet six specimens.

Good luck to all the couples and their IVF children. To the authorities funding and promoting the programme, shame on you for not taking a different line.

There was a kitten found on the tube...

...at Victoria. It's alive and well, and being looked after. Just as well it didn't pitch up on a Southeastern trains facility, or it'd be in pussycat clink right now for travelling without a valid ticket, under interrogation by some of their million jobsworths.

Plaice, and dabs and flounder

Big fish and little fish

Talking of big fish, the Westminster talking-shop boys, while the rest of the public sector get 1%, have got an 11% payrise, as awarded by a body put together by...er...well, by themselves. They're dead keen on performance-related pay. Presumably that means there's some evidence supporting the suggestion that they're doing a really good job.

One of their favourite areas of interference is fishing. How would you rate their performance? Only 4% of the fish landed is by small boats.

The 96% produces little or no joy. Frozen, or made into factory produced fish-like products, and shipped (ooops, sorry) to soulless, grim supermarkets. Where busy mums throw (and I mean throw – I don't get it, pick up food you intend to pay for, and chuck it around like it's already going to waste) them into convenience rubbish packed trolleys, before standing in grim queues, waiting for the privilege of paying. Then throw it into the family hatchback, then throw it into the freezer, then throw it into the microwave, then throw it onto the joyless, soulless plate. No doubt they then throw the plate at their husbands or kids.

The 4%, conversely, gets sold at proper fish stalls and markets, or from those beach huts selling whatever came in the nets that morning. They get properly cooked, with effort and respect, and taste of something.

Compare and contrast, industrial fish fingers in bright orange-coloured grit¹, and those barbecued sardines on the beach in Portugal, straight off the boat. The sardines don't need those red-tinted glasses to be a good memory.

The last thing the Iceland mum needs, I suppose, is the reality of guts and scales, of bones and heads and fins and tails, preferring the lab-processed generic fish oblongs her little cherubs might deign to eat, if they're smothered in enough ketchup to float an armada.

We had some haggis flavour crisps...

...they were vegetarian, so didn't contain any traces of haggis. I thought they were pretty good, if a bit heavy on the salt.

That was too wine-taster pretentious for MM, who described them as “bangin'”.

Another great day's Ashes cricket

The thing where I don't use capitals for conservative party, prime minister, queen, new labour, chief of police, that sort of thing, but capitalise BLISS, KIZ, MM, DLL, D the Dog, White Dog, Ashes, World Cup, Premier League, Rugby Union, those sort of things; that's deliberate, premeditated, and rather immature. Can't help me'self though.

The first test is one you can't glance away from for an instant, every session has had plenty happening. I think that before getting through, say, three newspaper reports tomorrow, you'll have read the word 'rollercoaster'.

1Try it. Next time the café offers fishfingers, chips and peas, see how the reality lets down the expectation.