Yes, it has come to this...
...Friday night, once the start of the
weekend (Frankie Boyle: “serious and dangerous binge drinking, or,
as we used to know it, 'the weekend'”), once the evening of
celebration after making it through another five days and into
Saturday / Sunday-land. You Tube the opening sequence in 'The
Flintstones' where, down at the quarry, the klaxon sounds and Fred
immediately downs tools and slides off to freedom along the dinosaur's
neck with a “yappa dappa dooo”, that was knocking off time on a
Friday evening.
That is utter baloney, at least in my
case, because I spent twenty years doing shifts, was on a six-day
(including Saturday) work pattern as a betting shop manager before
that, and played Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning football until
hitting thirty-something, when the Sunday morning became a bit too
much, but in any case, it's the principle, not the reality that
matters, because last night it was:
1) No greasy kebab laced with a runny
chilli sauce of unknown provenance dripping on shirtfront, eaten al
fresco, uncaring about the wind or the rain, standing outside the
kebabery. Tomato, coriander and bacon soup, home made, and some wet
walnuts from the farm shop.
2) No beer. Not even tea or coffee, but
bottled water. It was, in a mad moment of hedonism, sparkling.
3) Not out, but in.
4) Made two jars of pickled onions, one
mild, one slightly spicy. Eh? Rock 'n' Roll or what?
Even watching an episode of The
Sopranos meant fiddling with some wires and cables, and therefore
moaning about the stiff back and painful knees, then struggling
through to the end (well, it was ten o'clock or thereabouts), and
having to hobble about a bit to ease the pins and needles and
numbness in my right leg.1
I don't like the Daily Mail
I dislike The Mail sufficiently to
reduce respect for anyone who reads it by a few knotches of the
respectometer, and this starts at zero for strangers, so anyone I
don't know with a copy of The Mail instantly makes the 'avoid at all
costs' list.
For a fine example of the hate, spite
and vitriol the paper pours into the receptive minds of its readers,
have a look at this:
I dislike Littlejohn, and Clarkson, and
all of them because they get ageing, overweight, white males a bad
name. They spout clichés, bitch and moan about anyone to cares about
what's important (the arts, animal welfare, sport that does not
involve internal combustion engines – which, in my opinion makes it
not sport at all, just very very expensive transport, in circles) and
get paid for pouring forth the same rubbish you can get for free at
any bus stop or roadside tea and burgers outlet catering to white van
drivers (the drivers of white vans).
They love to bully soft targets.
The response isn't particularly
dazzling, but it is from the heart and it does show the level of the
journalism: tell 'em what they want to hear, bugger the facts,
they'll gobble it up:
1Due
to domination of the posh seats by BLISS and DLL, and their
absurdist taste for surreal tellivison (last night they were
watching a show of people watching shows on their tellies – now
there's one of those infinite number of universes mirror reflecting
mirrors things: how long before there's a show filming people
watching the show showing people watching and filming more people
(or the same people) watching the show about people watching the
show about...) I'm not used to the comfort of the sofa, and couldn't
get comfortable.
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