Fat bloke, fat dog

D-words

D-the-Dog has a vocabulary all his own:

D-struction and D-vestation: playing harmlessly out in the garden.

Hou – D – nism: playing harmlessly in the neighbour's garden, which, despite being somewhat identical, albeit much tidier and far less D-vestated, to the one he is allowed to be in, remains irresistibly tempting.

D-forestation: a sort of canine agent orange effect. Try planting something in the garden.

D-votion: he has this, if he can be arsed to get up and show it. Otherwise, he has this, although there may be no physical manifestation.

D-licious: the flavour of food. As long as it isn't dogfood.

D-fender of his D-omain: as long as D-fending amounts to copious amounts of noisy barking and agitation. If there's any loud noises that are a bit scary? Not so much.

Down syndrome

I don't know why I was reminded of this, but somewhere I worked there was the Down Syndrome joke, as in:

“She's got Down Syndrome?”

“Has she?”

“Yeah. Watership Down.” pause “too much rabbit.”

The tale of the tape measure

White dog is sleek, slim, and obviously in great shape. She measures the same as D-the-Dog, who is nicknamed Tubs and Lardo and looks like he'd measure about twice as much around as White.

The tale of the scale

BLISS married half the bloke she's ended up with. Well, about half as much again. I was about fourteen, which sounds a lot but was my fittest, fighting weight, and was apportioned about four stones from the waist up and about ten from the waist down, about five of those arse. I've lost some recently and am in the low nineteens rather than creeping about just under the twenty. Which, I know, is ridiculously heavy. My knees keep reminding me of just how ridiculous it is.

Harry Potter endorses WWYT

New WWYT member: Harry Potter

Daniel Radcliffe is in the WWYT corner. A bit, anyway. In his Big Issue interview, he said that he's disappointed with the bland, one flavour political options, and the way all parties kow-tow to business and the lack of 'rabble rousing' politicians to stir things up a bit.

Welcome, Daniel.

Why Waste Your Time has another celebrity endorsement.

Three Colours: Red

I've finally got around to watching the last of the three films, and it's as good as the other two. Dazzling to look at and just a great film. These three would break down most people's resistance to foreign language films. As MM says, much better subtitles than dubbed.

What's more, there's a scene in a music shop, with people listening to CDs on headphones before buying, and there was some beautiful and haunting music. So I did a quick rewind and freeze frame and found a new source of modern classical music, Zbigniew Preisner, who seems to compose mainly for films. In any case, there's days' of back catalogue to listen to. I suppose it's vocal orchestral music, or something.

Hidden (Cache)

Another French film, there's no forgiveness for the main character as his childhood misdemeanours come home to roost. The intrusiveness and destruction that surveillance can cause, the devastation of a missing child (on a spontaneous sleepover), dramatic suicide, yet it unfolds at a steady, easy pace, shot mainly in quite claustrophobic interiors, and one of the best scare the life of a dinner guest jokes on the big screen.

The second Ashes test, soon...

...can I just say that I can't stick Glen M^cGrath. Compare Phil Tufnell. Funny, down to earth, and, under the self-effacing humour, a keen student of the game. M^cGrath is a humourless waste of a commentary-box seat. Test Match Special need to get Tuffers out of the jungle, the pub, or wherever he is, and get shot of the Aussie bore. No harm in a little bit of balance, but our licence fees are paying for someone they could replace by pulling a random rabid Aussie supporter in off the stands.

While we're at Aussie-bashing, Ritchie Benaud needs his national treasure status revised, too. Aussie hit on the pads? What's that appeal all about? It was going down leg side. England player hit on the pads? Plumb. Every time.

Last thing. It's 289 for 7. Two hundred and eighty nine (runs) for (the loss of) seven (wickets), in full. 7 for 289 is back to front. It's just plain wrong. We shouldn't tolerate it from them. As soon as one of their pundits starts with that crap, bin them off and get someone who speaks properly in to take their place.

Oh, and they can shove Kylie, too.

Neighbours (UK) Episode 3

Neighbours (UK)

David Cameron, in his Cotswolds home, pulls back the bedroom curtains, looking at his watch.

CAMERON: I don't believe this...

SAMANTHA: What is it?

CAMERON: Next door. There's all sorts going on. It's midnight and they're all out in the garden.

SAMANTHA: What're they doing? What are those lights?

CAMERON: It's...I can't quite make it out. Wait. It's a huge screen, with...with Sky Sports on it. And there's a barbecue going, and...is that a fridge, out in the garden?

WAYNE: (Shouting up at the window) Caught yer!

CAMERON: Oh no, he's seen me (ducks back inside, away from the window).

WAYNE: (Putting on an Aussie accent) Too late, me old curtain-twitching pommie cobber. C'mon dawn an' 'ave a tinnie and some prawns off the barbie.

CAMERON: (Opening the window) Look here, do you know what the time is?

WAYNE: Yeah, mate. It's time for the first over in Brisbane! The Ashes. Dave. Where's your Barmy Army hat? Ava, Ava, turn the music down, the game's starting.

CAMERON: (To Samantha) I think there's five days of this.

SAMANTHA: (Getting dressed) Good-oh. That Alistair Cook's a bit fit, isn't he?

CAMERON: Where're you going?

SAMANTHA: (Putting on an Aussie accent) To get some prawns and Fosters, mate. (Singing) Once a jolly swagman...

CAMERON: What on earth's going on here? This is Chipping Norton.

WAYNE and SAMANTHA: Come on Dave. (Singing) Swann, Swann will tear you apart, again...

Cameron starts digging around in the bedroom drawers, finding ear plugs, eye shields and the like.

CAMERON: (Muttering) How on earth did those working class scum...

WAYNE, SAMANTHA, SCYNTHYA, and AVA: (Singing):

In the town, where I was born, there was a man, who was a thief,

And he told me of his life, stealing bread and shagging sheep,

So they put him the nick, and a magistrate, he went to see,

And he said “put him on a ship, to the convict colony”

You all live in a convict colony, a convict colony, a convict colony,

You all live in a convict colony, a convict colony, a convict colony”

SAMANTHA: Oy, Wayne, give us another skewer of prawns, and some hot sauce.

WAYNE: Comin' right up, yer 'ighness.

CAMERON: (Laying back down) Dear God.

There's a cheer as the first Australian wicket goes down.

Movember Prince of Darkness Special

November Prince of Darkness Special

Peter Mandelson sits in a leather chair. He holds a hand mirror up to his face and is combing and fusing with a moustache. The early stages of a moustache.

MANDELSON: Terry. Terry! TERRY. TERRY! Jesus, man, where are you? TERRY!!!

TERRY: [Enters the room, carrying a portable radio in one hand, and an oversize bag of heavily salt and vinegared chips in the other] Hold on boss. We've got a free kick on the edge of their box.

MANDELSON: [Through clenched teeth] Terry.

TERRY: Boss, we're playing West Ham. This is important...

MANDELSON: Terry, so is this...

TERRY: [Turns off the radio and flashes a “I'll never forgive you for this” look at Mandy, and, as a true sports fan, he will never forgive] (Heavy sigh, resigned tone) Yes boss. I'm all ears.

MANDELSON: Terry, no one has noticed, let alone reported in the media, my Movember 'tache.

TERRY: Eh? What?

MANDELSON: Watch my top lip. Movember. My contribution.

TERRY: (Squinting) Oh. Yeah. I think I can...how much have you raised?

MANDELSON: That's not the point...

TERRY: But you were the business secretary of state without a...er...portfolio or something, that's the bottom line, isn't it? How much have you raised?

MANDELSON: It isn't all about the money. There's the raising awareness issue...

TERRY: So you've raised awareness, boss?

MANDELSON: No, Terry, I haven't. I've not been on a single telly show, or in the papers or on the radio, or anything, for ages...

TERRY: So. You've attempted...

MANDELSON: Attempted?

TERRY: Well. That's hardly a Merv Hughes you've got there, is it?

MANDELSON: Who?

TERRY: Never mind.

MANDELSON: And there's this...

He shows the cartoon showing Blair in the Fat Cat's back pocket and Mandelson riding the Fat Cat's tail, railing at Miliband's energy freeze policy.

TERRY: That's clever, boss. Good likeness, too. [He turn the radio back on].

MANDELSON: Terry, I'm being ignored, and mocked, it's cruel...

TERRY: Go on Frank, go on...

The Hunger Games 2

The Hunger Games 2

Catching Fire. The winners' tournament. Games within games. Donald Sutherland had the monopoly on playing those kooky, oddball good guys. Then came Jeff Goldblum. Now Sutherland has the monopoly on evil dictators in dystopian future scenarios. Woody Harrelson was last seen (in these parts, at least) being pretty good in Seven Psychopaths, and is good again.

There's more background to the Districts, there's a longer, slower build-up to the tournament, and there's a whole lot more outside interference to the last man standing concept.

DLL is jumpy about monkeys. We found out that DDL's monkey-jumpy. Two rows in front of us was the Boy with the World's Weakest Bladder, who had had several of those dustbin size pre-movie cokes, but even his frequent comfort breaks didn't spoil the spell the film had cast.

I am a movie mug, and I very seldom walk out grumbling, and lets face it, you only walk into the cinema if you want to. Or if you're handcuffed or joined at the hip, perhaps. But that's unlikely. Mug or not, they've done a good job with these, they tell the story, keep it moving on, tell it clearly and well. Looking forward to the third instalment (and the inevitable overthrow of Donald Sutherland's evil empire).

I don't suppose it'll be long before (unless they're out there already) people start wearing hologram fabrics that appear to burst into flame or go from lace to feathers or whatever. William Gibson wrote about a deep and near interpenetrable fashion industry in Zero History, where exclusive retro-wear, military and hi-tec clothes are available by invitation only, if you have sufficient funds. The invisible-to-CCTV t-shirt can't be far away from reality.

In terms of science fiction trilogies, Gibson must be ripe for filming. There's nine waiting to be scripted and made into state-of-the-art movies: the Neuromancer, the Bridge, and the Pattern Recognition trilogies, all of them would be great films.

Film snacks

Popcorn is massively overrated. You could inject it into cavity walls as insulation, perhaps. It has that polystyrene quality, and the rats and mice wouldn't eat it, no sensible creature would.

Hot dogs are unnecessary and smelly. They're for sporting events, not the pictures. If you need proper food, have some before or after, not during. You're not at home in front of the telly with your microwave chemicals on a tray here, you know.

Sainsbury fruit pastilles are good. More like those hard gums. Long lasting, not too much rustling.

Chocolate. The cinema tradition is the more messed about with the better. To the point of Revels, a sort of Russian roulette of confectionary, where you may get the orange delight or the coffee gag-reflex. The best option is a bar of chocolate.

Maltesers. They do rattle in the box a bit, but if you let the chocolate melt then gently crunch the honeycomb stuff with your tongue, then they're good, and will see you through just about the longest epic.

Huge buckets of fizzy pop. No need. See above about small-bladder-boy. You've paid good money to see the film, not stare at the tiles surrounding the urinal.

Jonathan Trott

Jonathan Trott

The bloke that made such a good job of batting at number three for England has decided to come home from Australia and the Ashes series, to battle mental illness.

There were early signs.

He was batting when the winning runs were scored in one of his first games, and, before leaving the crease to celebrate with his team mates, had a last couple of scratches and scrapes of the pitch, marking and re-marking his guard. Trotty being Trotty, or early indications that all wasn't quite right?

He's been a magnificent player for his (adopted) country and deserves to be left alone to recover however he needs.

The spectrum theory

IF's spectrum theory:

If you think you're not somewhere, albeit maybe at the blunt end, of any spectrum anyone cares to mention, or invent, autistic, OCD, manic depressive, each and every one, then you've just confirmed the need for a long session of therapy.

The there but for the grace of god theory, even.

The vagaries of cricket

Cricket is particularly brutal on the mind.

Batting: you can play faultlessly, then one minor, minimal slip sees you dismissed. You can be batting at, say, four in the order, sat around for hours while the openers and number three fill their boots against a bunch of pie-chucking bowlers the opponents have to use because their front line are all indisposed that particular week. When your turn comes, you can face the usual wicket keeper's ball of a lifetime that sends you back to the pavilion, where you can sit and watch numbers five and six bat for the rest of the afternoon.

You can bowl your heart out for no reward, and have your last, tired, over smashed all over the ground to spoil your figures, finish your spell, then see the next bowler take wickets with rank full bungers and long hops.

Old age means...

...starting to feel the cold. We've all had those mates with no sense of hot or cold. My one wore the same kit: jeans, plimsolls, white t-shirt, grey v-neck jumper, through all the seasons, all weathers, come shiver or swelter. I was never that extreme, but it took something for me to consider a jumper, and sub-zero temperatures for the coat to come out of the wardrobe. Not no more. I need fleeces, jackets, hats, gloves, and woolly socks. That's just to go to bed in, outdoors? There's more layers I can squeeze into, surely. D the Dog needs to start coming back so I can do away with the lead and get my hands back into my pockets where they belong (and where it's warmer).

Now, that is just so gay

Body, mind, gay, straight, what have we got?

There's an argument being, er, argued. Goes like this:

“If you describe something that's getting on your nerves as 'gay', you're bullying the gay community”

It concludes:

“Language is the key. Language is everything. After all, what else do we have?”

A bit bullying of the mute, those unable to read, write, listen properly, isn't it? Language is all we have?. Do we not have bodies and minds whether or not we have language?

Take the language, and go do one. Every time. I'll keep my body intact and deal with being unable to communicate any day, thanks.

I reserve the right to call the router 'gay' when it stops performing, if I so wish. I'm not bully anyone by doing so.

The cricket world...

...can teach so-called property professionals some huge lessons.

David Warner described Jonathan Trott's innings as 'poor' and his dismissal as 'weak', and, although, rightly, the England camp didn't over-react, they calmly questioned whether those comments were the sort of thing a fellow professional sportsman, without knowing what may be going on behind the scenes, ought not to say.

Warner has apologised and held his hands up to going too far.

The approach is say what you like the heat of battle, and what goes on on the pitch stays there. Otherwise, watch your mouth and have some respect.

I've never worked in such a nasty, spite filled environment as the one I am now operating in. People are queuing up to waste everyone's time having a pop. Many of them don't have a City and Guilds in Decorating to their name, yet still seem to think they're experts. They could learn from sport. They could learn about respect, decency, and restraint.

Here's an example:

Mr Angry of Ignorant Crescent writes a million-page, snarling email about the holes in his wall that have 'only appeared since the scaffolders left' and are the source of all the world's ills.

Mr, Miss, Ms and Mrs Technically-Inept Limited spiral, escalate and let this all get out of control, when all the evidence needed is there in Mr Angry's photographs.

The holes? At first floor (ground floor ceiling) level. Way below scaffolder's ties. Weep holes. Regularly spaced. With vents. Replicated on the other walls, and on the other buildings. Higher, a storey higher, are clearly visible Hilti-tie drill holes.

How big, in millimetres, is standard brick?

If you can't reel that off, then perhaps, just perhaps, you should express yourself with a measure of restraint on issues in a field you know nothing about.

The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead

If you like zombie apocalypse television (and, in my humble, what's not to like? Blood, guts, gore and plenty of it) the The Walking Dead is for you.

If you don't, then this is the perfect series to kindle a latent love for zombie apocalypse television that may just be lurking deep within. The plot unfolds quickly, characters, generally, come and go, because, well, times are hard in the post zombie apocalypse world. There's food and weapons and fuel shortages, mostly because looting the supermarkets, police stations and filling stations is made difficult by the hoards of walkers out for their fill of flesh. One bite and that's it – you're one of them.

I'm not sure what season we're on now, but DLL and I look forward to our weekly fix.

The Kills

I'm a fair way through the last of the four books now. Most of the threads, if not neatly tied up and resolved, seem to be coming together. The press seems to have a standard description of anything that goes over the Richard and Judy recommend, three for two at Waterstones, three hundred (or thereabouts) pages: sprawling. It's a bit negative, sprawling. By the right author, the more sprawl the better. William Gibson's Neuromancer trilogy is set in The Sprawl, which is, I think, a futuristic vision of Tokyo.

If over 1,000 gripping pages has more attraction than three hundred mundane ones, go for Will Self's Umbrella, it's better than The Kills, but for this year's list, the Kills is one of the best of 2013.

Good and bad Christmas larder ideas

Nuts (good). They don't go off, and, sooner or later, they always get eaten. That's wallnuts, hazelnuts, those in-shell nuts.

Nuts (honey-coated peanuts) (bad) we had some last year. If we don't still have them, they were thrown away.

Pickled onions, gherkins and chillies. These always get used up. They're good.

Piccalilli (very, very bad). I think I've broken the annual buy, try, wonder what I was thinking about, find it at the back of the fridge in September, dispose, cycle now. Particularly that dayglo yellow stuff they have in Aldi and Lidl. In the cold light of the non-festive season, what could be the attraction of a substance that is colour-coded to transmit a toxic or radioactive warning?

Sausages and bacon (good). I'm tempted to forget the turkey and just do a baking tray full of chipolatas wrapped in smoked streaky.

Presents for the dogs (good and bad). I think D the Dog's going to love Christmas, but is going to be bit of a handful if we don't walk the legs off him and tire him right out. White dog don't get Christmas.

Baileys (good, never any left). Port (bad) still have some from a circa 2009 hamper. Mulled wine (bad) a lot of cocking about to spoil some red wine.

Whoops...

Well, that could've gone better, couldn't it?

We've gone from having the Aussies exactly where we want them, to being in desperate trouble. In a couple of sessions. Lost six middle order wickets for nine runs. It's difficult to recover from that sort of collapse, particularly against an Australian team that are properly fired up for this series. There's been no drastic changes in personnel after they were soundly beaten at our place, but they've had a chance for the new coach to settle into the role, and they're not going to let this advantage slip.

It was an odd night. The laptop was on Sky Sports all night, with headphones plugged in so the sound was, effectively, off while got some sleep. I woke and watched bits and pieces, about twenty minutes at a time here and there. An hour or so's sleep was enough for the England innings to go from decent if not exactly stellar, to apocalyptic.

The net training theory

There's already talk about regrouping, a two day game in Alice Springs, and whet they need to do. Here's the IF take on what needs doing:

1. They're not going to give us any free training. They'll prepare a pitch nothing like the next test pitch, and select bowlers without that raw pace that gave us all the problems. So we need to treat the game in that context, let the bowlers that need it have a run-out and get some more overs in the legs. Send out the 'B' or 'C' team otherwise, and gather in the nets.
2. If Johnson's average bowling speed is, say, 93 miles an hour, set up a bowling machine and vary it between 92 and 96 mph, get the operator to follow similar length patterns to those the Aussie bowlers have hit (40% short balls) and get the batters in there for long, hard sessions perfecting the shots to play, and, more importantly, how to take evasive action.
3. Do some more of that.
4. And some more.
5. Still more? Yep.
6. You guessed it.

Until they're ducking and swaying out of the way in their sleep.

Then go back to number 2.

It's not as if they're all immune to the fast, short ball either, and length and direction are more important than pure speed, so get our guys to practice sending the ball down that follows the batter, and the one that threatens their ribcage rather than their helmet-protected head. Then give them it.

Depending on who you listen to...

...it's either the end oif world, deeply embarrassing, or nothing at all to worry about. The fact is that draw the first of five tests, and you're where you started, win and happy days, lose and it can be difficult from there on. Lose big and there's a dent in the team bus that will take time to heal and repair, so the first job is to bowl, and then bat, as well as possible, make things difficult for them, use up as much of the remaining time as possible.

Then?

See action point number 2.

Lau

A Paul Hogan approach to reporting

Us ancients will remember Paul Hogan. Crocodile Dundee.

“Nah, mate. This is a knife.”

Interviewed, he contrasted the Aussie and Pommie approach to reporting on their cricket teams' performances. His theory was this: Aussies do well, and their papers are full of it, and so are ours giving our team a kicking. We do well, both sides of the press gloss over the whole thing in a couple of lines.

Taking the Hogan method:

Decent first day, but boy did we take the heel of our boot off their neck when we should've been applying maximum pressure.

Lau

Three men. Violin. Guitar and vocals. Accordion and (I LOVE THE NHS) keyboard and all the effects and technical stuff.

A huge, warm, energetic, bouncing off the walls sound. Just a great gig, and if you get the chance to see them (and it'll cost a fraction of the cost of seeing better known but lesser musicians) then go and see them and have a great night.

On the music side of things...

...just when you may have been warming to the Elephant Man leading the new old tory labour whatever party, he goes and choses a Robbie Williams track for his Desert Island Discs. These are the eight forever songs you can listen to, and that's either a sign that he's entirely at the mercy of a PA team and therefore not fit to run a nursery let alone the country, or he's made his own mind up and chosen a Robbie Williams song, in which case he clearly not fit to etc etc.

Jesus.

Google Desert Island Discs. Search on our so called leaders, and marvel at the lack of imagination and originality. We may as well have Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Littlejohn running the place supported by Colin Montgomery and Carol Thatcher. If your taste is predictable middle of the road bland, you 'aint likely to have the beans to make significant changes to anything.

Apart from anything else, why go on the show, unless it is just a publicity thing, when you don't really like music. As soon as someone says that they “don't have much time” for music, shouldn't that mean they're not worthy of clogging up the airwaves for the duration of the programme? Unless and until we have people running our nations who reach for the iPod before the popularity polls, we're toast.

Whoever picked the tracks, there's a huge misjudgement there. Unless I'm the only person who would never, ever, vote for anyone with a Robbie Williams song in their Desert Island eight.

We've got a BFG

Six feet seven inches

That's tall.

Chris Tremlett is not just 6'7” tall, but built like a brick outhouse, too. He's in the England squad as a bowler, and also because Joe Root's mum insisted, in case Joe got involved in a nightclub fracas and needed some backup.

Tremlett and Root (actual size).

We've got the BFG:

Actual size.

Now the car wants tyres...

...they're all want, want, want, aren't they? Not satisfied with the regular refuelling, and occasional and grudging refilling of the window-washer thingy, now it wants tyres. Or a tyre. Or not. You can't even get the Re-tread Teds and Ronnie Radials to any sort of consensus.

I've noticed that whenever one of those car-knowledgeable folk get onto tyres, sooner or later they'll say “tracking”, as in:

“You front nearside tracking looks a bit dodgy.”

Tracking, eh? Keep your voice down or it'll be after new trackings soon. I understand that it is clearly of benefit to have the wheels facing vaguely parallel to the intended direction of travel, but we've had years to sort this out, why does it all have to be so critical, where's the tolerance?

Aerosol, and error-prone

This coughing and spluttering thing...

...guys, isn't it about time you sorted it out? There's chemists shops full of little blue pills to make you sleep, red pills to wake you back up again, and yellow ones to make you happy. So why's there nothing to stop your nose, ears, and everything in between filling up with, well, with whatever that stuff is. That stuff that fills the wastepaper basket with tissues, to the point where you start thinking that it has to just run out soon. Nothing's in endless supply, is it? Wouldn't that contravene some basic law of physics or all that's holly or something? Is the search for dark matter operating in the wrong places looking in the vast interstellar wastelands of space, when it should be poking around in the human sinus?

A long wait and a high price

Sky are hard selling the Froch v Groves fight. It's on pay per view live, at £14.95. The last pay per view boxing I paid to view was Tyson v Holyfield, II, The Sound and the Fury.

It was on at ungodly o'clock and involved sitting up late and then sitting through a seemingly endless undercard before the main attractions started a battle to see who to be the most late out of their changing room and into the ring. Eventually it kicked off, and lasted two-and-a-bit rounds before Tyson bit off part of Evander Holyfield's ear and that was that. At today's prices, over £5 / round and then a disqualification followed by endless replays and media furore. Too unpredictable to do the pay per view thing, boxing.

The Ashes Diaries

Graham Swann on the Ashes Diaries he'll be issuing:

“It's a good way of showing that we're all human”

Pause.

“Not cricket-playing robots.”

Pause.

“Well. Apart from Finney, obviously.”

They're never called robots, anyway...

...bowlers that nag away, accurately hitting the same good line and length are invariably referred to “metronomic”.

Bats are either “ever-reliable” or “run machines”.

It tend to be aerosol when bowling, spraying it around indiscriminately, and unreliable, or injudicious, or, well, just rubbish at batting. “Error-prone”, that's the media phrase, “error-prone”.

Ashes week...

It's going to be an odd week...

...pretending to give a flying one about everyone's tales of woe (and, by half past Monday, on a good week, I've had more than enough of these for several lifetimes, in any case) when the Ashes start on Wednesday. So, what else is there? The desktop countdown widget says 2 days, 16 hours, 27 mins, and 57 secs. The ECB calendars have been installed (Outlook (bah – work pc), Evolution and Thunderbird. DAB radios will be charged up and ready to go, and the laptop with the large screen will be permanently on the Sky Sports feed.

Australians being Australians, they're insisting on starting the games at ridiculous hours. Who in their right mind kicks off a test match at midnight? Anything to get at us Poms, that's what it is. They may blather on about time differences and suchlike, but there's floodlights now, so it's just anything to inconvenience us, that's their mentality.

So, you may talk to me, and you may hear me respond and even possibly make some sense, but while your mind might be on your leaking roof or peeling wallpaper, mine's on the battle to get Prior's calf injury sorted out in time for Wednesday, the finalised bowling attack, and Cook winning the toss, batting first, and getting the series off to a start that puts the blighters in their place.

Five ways to wellbeing

Apparently there's empirical evidence that these work:

1. Connect...with the people around you. With family, friends, colleagues and neighbours. At home, work, school or in your local community. Think of these as the cornerstones of your life and invest time in developing them. Building these connections will support and enrich you every day.
2. Be active...go for a walk or run. Step outside. Cycle. Play a game. Garden. Dance. Exercising makes you feel good. Most importantly, discover a physical activity you enjoy and one that suits your level of mobility and fitness.
3. Take notice...be curious. Catch sight of the beautiful. Remark on the unusual. Notice the changing seasons. Savour the moment, whether you are walking to work, eating lunch or talking to friends. Be aware of the world around you and what you are feeling. Reflecting on your experiences will help you appreciate what matters to you.
4. Keep learning...try something new. Rediscover an old interest. Sign up for that course. Take on a different responsibility at work. Fix a bike. Learn to play an instrument or how to cook your favourite food. Set a challenge you will enjoy achieving. Learning new things will make you more confident as well as being fun.
5. Give...do something nice for a friend, or a stranger. Thank someone. Smile. Volunteer your time. Join a community group. Look out, as well as in. Seeing yourself, and your happiness, linked to the wider community can be incredibly rewarding and creates connections with the people around you.

Here's mine:

1. Sever connections, burn bridges, get shot of the baggage. Connect selectively. Good friends and family worth the time and effort will seldom, if ever, hack you off. The minute this isn't the case, consign them to the bin and move on. Work colleagues? The minute they stop watching your back and start looking like stabbing it, keep them at arm's + bargepole length. In fact, that work / life balance thing? Work's work and life's life and never the twain shall meet.
2. Be active. Great advice about what works for you. Dancing does not work for me, nor for a lot of males, and schools that offer salsa and no cricket during formal sports lessons need to take note. Gardening is for batty old women with secateurs.
3. Take notice of the beautiful, and also note the number of people determined to ruin it. Foxes and badgers are beautiful. People on horses in red coats, and people in general, 'aint.
4. Keep learning, but remember that there's more to learning than signing up to sit in a classroom full of lonely retired pharmacists who spend their days pretending to be coppers. Classrooms are to be dreaded.
5. Give 'em nowt. Give an inch and they start to expect mile after mile. There is no time to spare anymore.

A question of tradition

Breaking bad

There's the mayor of Toronto.

Smokes crack. Not during official engagements, obviously.

The Co-op bank boss, and methodist preacher.

He's just cocaine and crystal meth. Not when at the pulpit (that's an assumption, I don't know the first thing about methodism).

Big fuss. How on earth did he get the post? Where's the due diligence? Then the killer "he was a political appointment".

Well, our rulers are, by definition, political appointments. Where's the due diligence, checks and balances? See Toronto.

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay

With that thought, I have some questions:

• Why, after thousands of years experience that have proved that our democratic systems of government and rule fail to improve or change anything, is there so much resistance to any dissenting voices?

• Why, when we're skint, do we waste so much on pomp and ceremony? Do we need a Queen and expensive extended royal family?

• When footballers' pay is 'obscene', why do we still allow MPs to write their own pay deals? Where's the cap on fatcat bosses salaries?

• Same question regarding top civil servants' pay. Don't even try the 'to attract the top people' rubbish – most of them balls up everything they touch. There's loads of them on £100k+ / year that can hardly read and write.

• Where's the value in forking out huge amounts for people who've never held a scalpel or syringe to knacker the NHS and privatise it through the back door, for people who've never prepared and presented a lesson to impose their odd, evangelistic dogma on schools, for people who have never been to war to make calls on the armed forces (and so on)?

Robbie v Liam

There's so much great music out there...

...that the amount of time wasted on some same old rubbish baffles me. I skipped the article about the tiff between Liam Gallagher (in my opinion, one good album (I think it's the first one, it's the one with Cigarettes and Alcohol on it) before disappearing off into some quasi-Bootleg Beatles purgatory) and Robbie Williams (no good output whatsoever, as one of the Gallagher brothers put it, he's just the fat dancer out of Take That). There's nothing wrong with Take That and similar manufactured boy bands, as long as you are a pre-pubescent girl. Otherwise, take a long look at yourself.

So, anyway, I skipped the articles and went to the comments, because that's where the fun in these things is always going to be.

teaandchocolate got things off to a good start with: “Robbie Williams, the man who makes songs you can skip to.”

Tee-ing up thehitchrules for: “delete to.”

Then the one we were waiting for, wading in with size eleven boots, BlankFrack: “What kind of person “likes” Robbie Williams? Someone's stupid, fat, blind and deaf mother, perhaps?” Way to go BlankFrack.

izzy100 summed up my point of view, without the abuse and bad language: "The popularity of Robbie Williams – one of life's great mysteries.”

sorrythisusernameis also summed up my view: “The trouble with boy bands is that we're left with the dregs for years after.”

I liked FellsLunartik's post:

“Robbie Williams makes non-music - by that I mean, it's just not quite anything - for people that buy about two albums a year.

Oasis came out the gates brilliantly....but it didn't take too long for the interviews to be ten times more interesting and entertaining than the albums.
This ongoing 'feud' has all the dignity and grace of a dog turd in a sandpit.”



Last word goes to marktheowl:



“Normally it would be germane after any article about Liam Gallagher to comment on what an out and out tit he was, but in the case of an article that also includes Robbie Williams his bellendry is like a dwarf gnat's chode in comparison.
Aliens probably have tried to contact us, but when they found Williams was in the welcoming party they probably decided they wouldn't bother, not even needing to wipe us out with a heat-ray as any world in which 'Sing When You're Winning' could exist was doomed.”

Nice one marktheowl. Imagine the interstellar speed of light vessel with the super-species about to make contact and teach us how to live in peace and harmony and not wreck the planet to satisfy corporate greed, when they tune into Chris Moyles and decide to go look at somewhere more promising instead.

Luther

Luther

Nope, it isn't remotely believable.

Yes, Idris Elba and others are very good.

Most of all, it asks questions about how we are policed, about how the criminal justice system operates, and the ethics and morality of making your own decisions as opposed to standing by while others let us all down.

Why Waste Your Time

The callers were almost unanimous: disenchanted, they're all the same, what's the point when all they do is swindle and cheat the taxpayer, whichever party they purport to represent?

The only dissenting voices were those maintaining that you should at least go along and spoil your ballot paper to register a protest. I think this need dissembling:

Spoil your ballot paper to register your protest: that makes sense.

Go along: that's the problem, right there. Go along. Travel, wait in the queue, take your turn. In the digital age, that's positively prehistoric. You can pick up the daily paper, watch the test match, do your banking on any number of mobile devices, from wherever you are, safely and securely, but voting still requires pen and paper.

No wonder they're all still wandering about in ermine and silk, pledging allegiance to a hand-me-down crown, and generally behaving as if it were about a hundred and fifty years ago. No wonder there's that inertia that leads to calls for revolution, we're mired in so much tradition we can hardly move for the stuff. Actually, delete 'tradition' and replace with 'baggage'.

Managing expectations

Private Eye had ashen-faced supremo Ron Knee as the stereotype. There were quite a lot of grim faces in the crowd. Sport's like that. No matter how much you fork out on tickets, burgers and replica shirts for the two little lads, mate, the result's always in doubt.

England are a quarter final-ish footballing nation. One World Cup, going on for fifty years ago.

Before the hand-wringing about foreign players kicks off (sorry) that's fifty years during which there's been varying numbers of imported players, with an unvarying amount of trophies added to the cabinet. Zero, nada, ziltch, none.

An England team with plenty of changes and a lot of raw players (in international terms) lost to a team only two places below them in the standings. That isn't grounds for booing them off the park. They didn't fail to try or to give of their best, they were simply outplayed at a couple of important moments by sharp and streetwise opponents with one of the world's most in-form players popping up with two goals.

Parents

Parents

Philip Larkin. On parents. At least half right.

I don't know what my dad wanted in a son. We never talked about it. I was what he got. He was my dad. We just loved each other. Sometimes things are actually simple and straightforward. We didn't always agree or see 100% eye to eye, but that never mattered, because there was that sense of proportion, and the ability to see a minor potential sticking point as just that. Not worth the time and trouble.

I know what my mum wanted. A choirboy, a sickly little academic sat at the front of the class, polishing his best clothes from Wednesday morning onwards for Sunday school. She got me instead, and she never, ever, missed a single opportunity to make it abundantly, totally crystal clear just how bitter a disappointment I was to her.

My dad took the to see 2001 A Space Odyssey, and The Exorcist, and Yellow Submarine, and to orchestral concerts. He came into my room with open ears, and while he didn't like everything he heard, he didn't mock it either. He was able to read post-modern literature and poetry, in his second (or third) language. He made pots and carved wood, from imagination.

My mum dragged me to The Sound of Music. What use has a football-mad young boy for singing nuns and lonely goatherds high on hills? Bored isn't the word for it. Swimming. Why didn't I do swimming. Nice and clean. No mud. No contact. No fun, either. Why didn't I go to church or Sunday school? I didn't believe, and it was boring. Not slightly tedious, but that mind-numbing, strength-sapping boredom old ladies specialise in. She would knit (from patterns) and sew dresses (from patterns) and make cakes (from recipes) and specialised in an all-purpose shoeleather tough grey unidentified meat and overcooked vegetables. She never smoked. She drank one pint of beer about a billion years ago for a bet and still talks about that now, and was generally a god-fearing, god-bothering, cold, anal, joyless specemin.

I lost my dad some time ago, and there's not a day I don't think about him, and miss him, and I love him still. I wish he was still around. My mum? Well I wish my dad was still around, is all.

Farenheit 9/11

Fifteen (or so) of the men directly responsible for the 9/11 attacks were Saudi. But the Bush family and the Saudis and the bin Ladens had strong links and connections.

By strong, Sheikh bin Laden, Osama's dad, through James R Bath, provided the cash to set George W up in business.

So, with Tone (son of Margaret) in tow, off they went pursuing an illegal war on the basis of weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist, in the wrong country.

I know Americans are famed for their provinciallity and their dodgy roadmaps when they stray into other continents, but the degree of cynicism was staggering.

Remember the Chilcot inquiry? Probably not unless you're knocking on a bit, so long has it been running. It's still awaiting the release of information our lot are sitting on.

Phone fatigue

Whereas a few years ago...

...the urge to throw my mobile into the ground and stamp down on it hard would be around a weekly occurrence, it is now a feeling I'm getting at least once a day.

Either phone manners and common sense have evaporated almost entirely, or I'm now so tired and grumpy that I'm constantly on a razor-edge, or both.

If it isn't giving me cancer of the ear or the brain through all the microwave radiation, it's significantly sapping my will to live.

Just when...

...there's thousands of people in real distress through extreme weather events, just when an area that has twenty or more cyclones a year is saying that they've never seen the likes of what's just hit them, some of the major players in climate change are revising their targets. Downwards, in terms of the improvements they were looking to achieve.

Our minister or secretary of state or whatever he is for the environment is in the pocket of the GM lobby and out shooting badgers of a night.

There's a great article in the paper...

...written by an intern earning a few quid in the evenings serving tables. She was at the Lord Mayor of London's do, where our prime minister somehow, between starter, fish and meat courses, pudding and cheeses, all with wines, and finished with desert wine, port, brandy and whisky, managed to squeeze in a speech made standing in front of a gold-plated chair.

About austerity. The speech was about austerity.

Or, in layman's terms, about why mugs like me are going to have to work until we fall over to bail out their mates that actually pull the strings and decide what goes on.

Cheers, Dave. Easy to have a work ethic when you're trousering millions a year in wages and bonuses and the taxpayers will stand you a huge pension.

The All Blacks on Saturday

The biggest game of 2013. Now, I always want England to smash them out of sight. For a number of reasons:

• They're like an international Mn United, always on the receiving end of helpful refereeing decisions, yet always bemoaning their lot.
• They cheat. As much or more so than anyone else, yet have these media-invented haloes. See the spear tackle that ruled Brian O'Driscoll out of the Lions Tour and Zinzan Brooke's uncanny ability to change his stride pattern in order to stamp on an opponent's ankle.
• The haka. By all means have your silly dance and shout, but if that's your choice, omit the national anthem. Time for opponents, particularly at home opponents, to say “sorry guys, no time for that baloney, let's get on with the game”.

Fussy kids

The Brits are a squeamish nation of fussy kids

It's official. Confirmed by a Hastings fishermen's spokesman. We only want easy-cook, easy-eat fish. Heavens, please, throw all those heads, fins, and bones away. Get rid of the skin, too, while you're there, my good man.

While elsewhere there's enthusiasm for roe and lips and whatever, and heads and bones go to make stocks and soups, apparently (according to the Hastings fishermen) they may as well chuck half of their catch away, back into the sea, because they end up cutting 50% by weight from what they land and the rest goes off to landfill.

For an island nation, with food banks feeding people and everyone under the beady eyes of the recycling police trying to keep as much out of landfill as possible, that's awful and shameful, even if it isn't particularly surprising.

There's a poster on the wall...

...of the Suds 'n' Tubs laundrette I noticed while walking past. It says: “No posters on this wall please”.

Man with a Movie Camera

I knew nothing about this film, until today, when I watched it on the netbook pc. I'd listened to the Cinematic Orchestra's soundtrack, but the version I watched had an earlier band playing the same music (I think). There's music because it's silent (apart from the music, that is). It's also in black and white. It's also about a hundred years old, and so was filmed on hand-cranked boxes with a lens at the front and reels of film passing through the mechanism.

There's always disagreement about the 'without'. As in “without Steve Reich there's be no modern trance, dance, etc. music” because there's the countering “but if he'd not done what he did, someone else would've, just a bit later”. Well, maybe a whole lot later or maybe not at all, and maybe not as well, so there's doubt about without. There's also other claims on the 'first use of', too. So, being careful, the film has early use of that fewer frames speeding up traffic and other movements thing, split screen effects, double exposures, there's all sorts of clever stuff, fun and games going on, as some goings on in the Ukraine (Odessa, Kiev, and somewhere else) unfold on the screen.

It may not sound promising (it'll sound unwatchable to DLL, who can't see the point of B&W, let along anything without a soundtrack) but it is dazzling and I didn't want it to end.

How come...

...when we're managing to wipe out decent species on a daily basis, we still have the common cold bug? That just shows how useless we are. Tigers, rhinos, things of power and beauty? We'll soon wipe those off the face of the planet, matey, have no fear. The germs or virus or whatever it is that makes your nose stream and your eyes water for weeks? Sorry. Nothing we can do.

We're losing butterflies and birds and going out at night shooting badgers, but no-one's making the slightest effort to rid the world of Ant and Dec, a true mystery.

11/11

Arsenal lost...so I'm in a bad mood, right?

Sausage baguette

BLISS' sausage baguette, with brown sauce, was the highlight of the afternoon. Good sausages and good bread. Daddies sauce, too. Nice.

Just some numbers...

...to think about, before falling into the cliché trap and labelling footballers' pay 'obscene' (they have a short career, and like it or not, they don't receive huge sums because of who they know or who they were at school with, but because they're among the best in the world at what they do, something millions do every week at their own expense).

£45,000,000,000.00. That's how much the taxpayer handed over to bail out RBS.

£4,000,000.00 per year. That's the pay deal a banker at the bailed-out bank was disappointed with and was complaining about.

£17,000,000.00 is what Jeremy Hunt is about to sell his company for.

£32,925.00 is the boarding fees at Charterhouse, where Jeremy went before becoming an accident and rhyming slang prone culture secretary, on the back of which performance he was promoted to the NHS job and he is about to have A&E departments go belly-up on his watch.

£25,000,000.00 is what Cameron's going to trouser through inheritance.

7% of kids go to fee-paying schools.

34% of MPs went to fee-paying schools.

54% of tory MPs went to fee-paying schools.

Just asking...

...how come:

The bloke seconded from ESB International is designing the government's gas subsidy. ESB International builds gas-burning power stations.

G4S will be running more immigration centres, after killing a few people and being nailed for fraud at high management levels.

The list goes on and on. Who's fighting this on our behalf? Not any of the three major parties why decry calls against voting. Not the BBC which is more and more open to lobbying and taking on business arguments. The Greens, maybe, are there any remaining Monster Raving Loonies about to get behind? The environment minister is all for running around blasting at badgers with his blunderbuss and does not understand any reservations whatsoever about GM crops (those crops that actually require more pesticides and nutrients (bad for the (literal) consumers in terms of health and wallet, good for the chemical industries that make the fertiliser, bug killing agent orange sprays and, er, GM crops. Don't vote, it only encourages them.

Oxtail tales

Wardrobing

One for the little guy. As long as you take on the giant internet retailers and not some cottage industry lady sewing frocks in her spare time, that is.

You shop online, you buy. You wear to that one-off function. You return. What's not to like? There's probably already an on-line community swapping tips and hints, just as M&S and Primark are probably sharpening up their act against wardrobers (I just made that up, but I'm probably not the first).

There was a story of a woman buying a dress then returning it because of a tear, and not actually declaring that it was torn because she fell over the first time she wore it.

Muddy dogs

It's wet out. Very wet. That means muddy dogs. White dog (a) seems to get muddier, because it shows up against the white fur, and (b) actually does get muddier, simply because she's got a real knack for it. D the Dog just sort of does his own thing. He's mud-neutral, or mud ambivalent, or mud apathetic, or whatever. He's neither mud-aholic nor mud-ophobic.

Unsupported operating systems (according to the evil empire)

In one of the cheekiest sales messages ever known to computer users, the Microsoft (world Domination and You'll Need a New PC Annually) Corporation have released a warning about using unsupported operating systems.

They were talking about Windows XP, which will not have updates, or technical support from now on.

I dabbled with Windows 7, reportedly one of the best, most stable, blah, blah, editions, and still had everything grind to an irritating halt, bang on cue, just coming up to the Christmas period (funny that, isn't it?).

The reason open-source software is supported, is exactly that, anyone with the interest and skills can get in under he bonnet and tweak away to their heart's content. Some of those tweaks are of interest to many others, and so they get tested, then included in the next full update.

It gets you fast, stable operating systems and software.

Don't take it from me. BLISS is BLISS-fully uninterested in the techie side of what happens after she hits the keyboard or clicks the mouse, and she's on her third Ubuntu Linux computer and wouldn't consider a windows machine again.

Oxtail, and what to do with it

When you see it, buy it, because like those chicken wings, they'll soon stop selling it because it has bones and sounds like a real bit of something real rather than something lab-grown and sanitised in polystyrene and clingfilm.

I gently coloured mine up in that favourite, heavy, cast iron, orange le Crueset pot, with a little bit of smoked bacon, then simmered it for hours in chicken stock and chucked in some seasoning, some spuds and carrots and a drop of vinegar at the end. Then the meat fell off those awkward-shaped bones, and I had a gelatinous, thick mess of vegetables and beef in a tasty broth.