Boxing

Froch v Groves, 'Unfinished Business'

“I didn't know you were into boxing” said DLL.

There was a time when everyone was into boxing. The big Ali nights, when everyone stopped up to stupid hours to watch the Rumble in the Jungle and the Thriller in Manilla. Even contributing to popular language. 'Rope a Dope'.

Then there were Chris Eubank, Nigel Benn, Michael Watson, and later Steve Collins slugging it out at middleweight and super-middleweight. Unmissable events, not just nights of boxing. The heavyweights went into the doldrums a bit. Lumbering and slow, and with a small top tier, then a gap, then Frank Bruno, then another gap, leaving poor Frank either bashing up no-hopers or getting a hiding.

Frosch v Groves lit up Wembley, huge screens, fireworks, Groves popped into the arena aboard an open top London bus.

It wasn't the up-and-at-them slugfest the first fight promised. More measured from both. Then, just when he was starting to peg back a few rounds and was looking stronger and stronger, Groves copped a right hook that finished the bout, leaving him on the canvass, reeling. This time there was no doubt whatsoever over the referee stopping the fight.

Frosch was obviously briefed on being a bit more humble. Even seconds before the interviews his corner were frantically whispering in his ear. He tried, but he failed. Groves just promised to learn and come back stronger.

Penny Dreadful

Dr Frankenstein. Dorian Grey. Quasi-vampires with Egyptian hieroglyphic tattoos. An embarrassment of riches in the blood, gore and thrills departments. I'm totally at a loss as to quite what is going on. The only thing for sure is that, while there's no Walking Dead, it'll fill the gap.

The Gothic settings and feel lend atmosphere, and there have been one or two absolutely goosebump moments.

The titles go on just a little bit too long. Other than that...

Qatar and the World Cup

Olympics, winter olympics and World Cups are awarded, not on any fair basis, but through politics, 'hospitality', and getting enough awarding committee votes, by hook or by crook.

Mostly, by crook.

The outcry, a very belated outcry, about Qatar has the targets all wrong.

When the basis of a winning bid is, basically, bribery and corruption, it's sour grapes to complain that someone else has simply out-bribed and out-corrupted you and your bid team.

The problem lies with the method of selection. There is a fair way. Among other fair ways, why not enter all the countries capable and willing to stage the competition into a random number generator, and let it produce a list. New qualifies, back of the queue. No longer able or willing? It passes to the next on the list. No millions spent on hospitality bribery and corruption, no more need to suck up to Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini.

The Orwells

An old fashioned view

I try not to be too much of a dinosaur, despite the fossilised feeling my bones give me most mornings. There's one thing I can't shake off, that I cling onto. That's wanting to listen to music created by, performed by people with a passion for music, and with a particular bias towards anyone willing to push the envelope, to experiment, to come up with something new, or a new combination or direction. I can't lose the marrow-deep conviction that the output of those with a passion for commerce, for manufactured, lowest common denominator success in terms of pounds, shilling and pence is absolutely worthless, and that those people should butt out, leave music alone, and go and do something they're better cut out for, like sitting in front of multi-screen spreadsheets all day shouting down the phone, in a suit.

Equally, I don't like anyone guilty by association. Like playlist radio deejays, terrestrial television's obsession with reality shows and singing trainee pharmacists from Purley. Ant and Dec. I can't stand Ant and Dec. Or Dec and Ant. Whichever is whatever. I don't like the one with the odd forehead, the dodgy eyebrows, or the general look of one of those computer-distorted facial images. I don't like the other one, either. The one that looks like one of those mega-shortarsed irritants. They could get one of those Lego figures and save an absolute fortune.

I don't suppose that there's anything actually evil about Madonna, or Take That, or the solo rubbish put out by rogue members of Take That. Just that I don't see why that, and only that to the exclusion of anything worth a listen, should be played in preference. When's the last time the radio played the Decemberists? Number one album in America not so long ago. Or, for example, anything by the Pogues that isn't Fairytale of New York? I wonder if Chris Moyles or whoever the latest plastic pretend lad is has ever heard A Pair of Brown Eyes.

The Universe Versus Alex Woods

There's bit of a trend in fiction, for first-person narratives written from the point of view of narrators on the outskirts of society, and, or on the borders of sanity.

Alex Woods was the About a Boy boy, hippy, fortune teller mother (there's a beginners' guide to tarot card reading included, for free), until he was hit on the head by a meteorite (or bit of one, anyway), and woke up from brain surgery with meteor impact-induced epilepsy.

That led to his research of astronomy, and the solar system in particular.

Now, and I've no idea how far through the book I am, due to the vagaries of Kobo Arc page numbering and progress-recording, he's about to embark on a second mission: the books of Kurt Vonnegut. A long story, involving making an escape from a gang of bullies, damage to a greenhose, and hiding in a shed belonging to a ageing, lame, Vietnam veteran widower, and Kurt Vonnegut fan.

The Orwells – Disgraceland

Every now and then, everyone needs some dirty guitar band music. It can't always be Exile on Main Street, and therefore that need, every now and again, is for some new dirty guitar band music.

The Orwells, and I've only just come across them, deliver. Even the album title's irreverently funny. From the very first chords of Southern Comfort, it's clear that the albums going to deliver a dose of exactly what's called for. There's even a song called Let it Burn. Imagine The Blue Oyster Cult with a pomp-ectomy and an injection of post-punk energy. There's no tender love songs. There's not one that would be introduced, live, with a mumbled “we're gonna take it down a bit right now”. There's just upbeat, straightforward, dirty guitar band rock 'n' roll, and, every now and again, that's exactly what you need.

May Prince of Darkness - cigar and chips

PETER MANDELSON'S STUDY

Peter Mandelson, Prince of Darkness, is sitting in a large
leather chair, reading the Daily Mail.

                      MANDY
          Terry. TERRY! God. Where is he?
          He's never here when I need him.
          [Now extra loudly] TERRY!!!

Enter Terry, Mandy's man Friday. He is smoking a cigar, and
carries a bag of chips. Mandy is visibly offended by the
smell of smoke and vinegar.

                      MANDY
          Oh, there you are. Terry, what is
          that in your hand?

                      TERRY
          Which one boss?

                      MANDY
          Either, Terry. Either.

                      TERRY
          Well. This, in my right hand, is a
          cigar.

                      MANDY
          A lit cigar.

                      TERRY
          Yeah. A lit cigar.

                      MANDY
          And what is our new rule, Terry?

                      TERRY
          Er...no more going on about the
          world cup?

                      MANDY
          Not that one.

                      TERRY
          Don't mention the Chilcott inquiry?

                      MANDY
          Nope.

                      TERRY
          All empty beer cans straight into
          the recycling because there's no
          such thing as [he does the inverted
          comma finger thing] tinny
          sculpture.

                      MANDY
          Still a bit raw about that one?
          Still no. One last try?
          Cigar-related?

                      TERRY
          Ah. No smoking. Indoors.

                      MANDY
          That's the one.

Terry drops the cigar stub into Mandy's glass of water.

                      MANDY
          I hadn't finished...

                      TERRY
          Eh?

                      MANDY
          Never mind. And in the other hand?

                      TERRY
          Here, boss, I have a portion of Fat
          Joe's best chips, cooked in beef
          dripping and smothered in sea salt
          and vinegar.

He offers the bag to Mandy.

                      MANDY
          No thank you, Terry.

                      TERRY
          I take it you don't want any
          fishcake, either...

                      MANDY
          Terry! Remember: body. Temple.

                      TERRY
          ...or some curry sauce?

                      MANDY
          No. Do not utter the words 'peas'
          or 'mushy', please.

                      TERRY
          Boss. You don't have mushy peas
          with chips, curry sauce and
          fishcake!

                      MANDY
          Really? And what epicurean delight
          do you have them with?

                      TERRY
          Cod and chips, faggots and mash,
          liver, bacon and onion gravy...

                      MANDY
          Enough. Have you followed the news
          Terry. Have you seen the election
          results?

                      TERRY
          Yes boss. He's done good, 'aint he?
          Stirring things up a treat, old
          Nigel?

                      MANDY
           Terry, are you stupid on purpose
          or can't you help it?

                      TERRY
          But he's got an understanding of
          how things are on the street...

                      MANDY
          Jesus. Terry. He's a city-boy
          banker. He went to a private
          school. He's everything...

                      TERRY
          He speaks our language...

                      MANDY
          And what language is that, Terry?

                      TERRY
          Plain speaking, boss. There's too
          many of those Poles and those
          Romanian gippos and the bloody
          muslims telling everyone what to do
          and how to live...

                      MANDY
          I suppose you've got a point,
          Terry. We shouldn't be told how to
          live...

                      TERRY
          ...by a bunch of Westminster suits,
          eh boss?

                      MANDY
          ...exactly...er...no, that's not
          what I was going to say...

                      TERRY
          Anyway boss, I'm guessing something
          in that filthy rag you're reading
          has upset you.

                      MANDY
          They're saying new labour's
          finished. I've devoted my life
          to...

                      TERRY
          To your life, boss. And that's the
          problem.

                      MANDY
          Am I not a man of the people,
          Terry?

                      TERRY
          Have one of these chips, boss.

                      MANDY
          I, er...

Mandy reaches out a trembling hand, then withdraws it
hurredly.

                      MANDY
          ...er, maybe you're right Terry.
          There's some sacrifices I'm just
          not prepared to make. Fix me a
          blueberry yoghurt smoothie and
          juice me some spinach, could you,
          please.

                      TERRY
          Coming right up boss. Have you seen
          'Fight Club'?

                      MANDY
          No. Why?

                      TERRY
          Oh, nothing, boss, nothing.

Tired, old and fragile

I once loved fielding...

...but that was when things (as in knees, ankles, shoulders, back, neck, elbows, etc.) sort of behaved during the game, and only came screaming out of the agony closet the following morning. I wanted to be where the ball was going, I wanted to be busy.

Watch cricketers fielding (or, apparently, indulging in organised loafing) a bit more closely than most , and you'll see them walking in with the bowler – I usually start about nine paces away from where I want to be, walk in as the bowler runs up, and then, unless called into action, walk back again, to walk in again. I find that about right to get me set should the ball come my way off the bat. Or, even up to a season or so ago, that was me. Clapping hands, encouraging the bowler, nagging team mates to be on their toes, plenty of chirp, loads of enthusiasm.

Now, watch me and you'll probably see me with hands in pockets, looking bored and sulky. That's because I'm away from where the ball's likely to go very often, and that's because my back's bad and bending down is an issue and diving to stop the ball is almost a thing of the past, and I'm thinking about things other than the game I'm supposed to be engrossed in: work, mowing the lawn, fixing the rear security light, work, sorting some things out at Kiz's place (the ground floor lights), our dormers, work, kitchens, did I say work?

So now rather than the labour of love it was once, fielding is a chore, one during which I find it difficult to focus on what I should be doing, easy to drift off, and all too easy to drift off to somewhere I don't really want to be, staring at the lights of the oncoming train. Not in the here and now of the game, where I should be, but thinking of all the other things that are being put off to be here, begrudging making the effort.

It also hurts. Whereas reasonably recently the pain was never in question, but at least was deferred until the next day, now it starts from the get-go. As soon as the first few warm up catches get pouched and thrown back, everything starts to creak and send those warning signals.

Now, I must admit that in recent years, the warm-up has gone by the board. However, the way the body feels, there's as much risk of something going ping, pop, crack and ouch in the course of warming up as there is during the action. Or, at the moment, during the inaction.

I've also always been sure that things will blow over, will improve, will get better left to their own devices. I don't dig around in the bag enough for the supports, bandages, wraps and painkillers that would make life easier. I don't go to the doctor, despite now going downstairs one tread at a time most mornings, despite finding getting in and out of the car increasingly painful, and more and more making those arthritic old git noises. At least a little while ago I was making those noise voluntarily.

It's also getting harder to support team mates that don't grasp the facts and the state of the games we're playing. We can't be ultra-defensive and allow opponents to milk us at a run a ball, because we're incapable of scoring at six an over for any sustained period of time. Our 'old reliable blockers' dropped to the bottom of the order to see out the draw are no longer reliable. The SKY and TMS guys are talking over and over again about England losing momentum mid-innings, and letting games slide away from them, and that's what we do all too often. If you ever get your foot on the opponent's throat, then your only thought should be how to increase the pressure. To be frank, if we're going to lose, then I'd rather we lose quickly and get off home and back to other things, not do the slow-dying swan thing and drag things out beyond endurance. We're not only unsuccessful at the moment, we're monumentally boring opponents, incapable of making a game of it, and unwilling to attack with the bat or in the field to even make a show of trying to win a game.

Answers...please

Fairy tales, fun and profit

I really am struggling to understand.

It's probably an autistic-type problem. It's probably an inability to recognise grey areas. I'm okay with them, when I can see them, but BLISS recently pointed out that being honest didn't necessarily mean being brutal or hurting someone's feelings.

Anyway.

There's an email address and there's the comments thing at the bottom of the page, and I'm really interested in how you see this, and how, if you reconcile things, you achieve that.

This is my problem:

Holocaust deniers get banged up in jail. Whether that's OTT or justified and sensible I can't be bothered with thinking about. Frankly, denying a matter of historical fact seems absurd. Absurd to the point of needing some time in stir to think about it, I'm not so sure, but we've all those geniuses in Westminster and elsewhere who want to tell us what to do and how to live to determine what's right and wrong on our behalf.

There are, however, people who claim the earth is flat. They're walking free. There's people who won't recognise climate change as a man-made (or at least man-enhanced) problem. They're not only free to walk the streets, but talking about the absurd, we seem to have one as the minister for the environment. Still. There are, as well, people who claim the earth's only a couple of thousand years old, that some guy ascended to heaven on a winged horse. There's people causing death and disease through their views on birth control, arising from myth and magic. There's all manner of hate and war, oppression and cruelty performed in the name of non-existent gods, and the hangers, the stoners, the killers and the torturers are all walking free.

I don't understand.

A woman gets ten years for talking people out of money with patent rubbish and lies.

Yet any given Sunday there's collection plates passed around churches.

What's the difference? Just because one load of made-up bollocks has been around for years and has loads of people conned, doesn't make it any less a load of bollocks.

For a judge to describe taking £1m off a load of rich and gullible clients as the 'worst con-trick' he's ever come across just does not stack up, when the churches are full of gold.

I don't understand why one bloke in Germany gets jailed for denying the facts, while down the road in the Vatican, another is living the highlife in a silly hat, surrounded by wealth and riches, and denying the facts.

I'd really appreciate an explanation, because it just does not add up.

I don't think fleecing people, telling them their money is going to be stuck on a magic tree and their cancer will be cured, is in any way right, and probably should be punished in some way. Repaying the losses as far as possible would be my preferred option.

But equally I don't think promising people eternal life in return for their faith and compliance is right, either. It has some pretty nasty side-effects, too.

Ten years for you, my love, and a gold throne for you, your holiness

Where does this stop?

This woman is, apparently, the worst con artist our courts have ever seen (according to the judge sending her down for ten years, for conning vulnerable people out of their hard-earned). She told them their cash was being pinned to a magic tree in South Africa, and that would cure all their ills.

Her mistake, I think, was not to call this scam a religion, not to call her victims members of her sect, and not to, thereby, walk free. Like these:

Tell me where we need to stop exploiting vulnerable people, and stop feeding them bullshit, because I'm looking as hard as I can, but I can't see the join:

Stoned. A woman is about to hang for the crime of marrying someone from another religion. They hang kids from christian families, too:

Before anyone starts banging on about 'backward' cultures or countries, there's seven American states where atheists cannot hold public office. We still have Sunday opening hours and the church has its nose into the trough right alongside the politicians. The blessed Tone was guided by his god in sending all those young men and women to their deaths, and signing up to killing all those civilians.

I've not posted any images of halal or jewish animal slaughter.

&TYSYC

The Roots - & Then You Shoot Your Cousin

The album starts with a straightforward quote, Theme from Middle of the Night, Nina Simone. Not a sample, a quote. Then there's Never, with Patty Crash on the opening and closing verses, before and after Tariq Trotter's rap over just Questlove's drums. The song sets the tone, and maybe it was a decision based on the dark and bleak feeling to keep the set short. Trotter has described the album as a satire on violence in hip hop culture, and in American culture, generally.

There's more of those hip hop 'featuring' guest appearances than on other Roots albums, but the feel is consistent over the whole. Dark. Not oppressive, but weighty. It has the feel of the rainy cityscape setting of 'Bladerunner'.

The Dark (Trinity) is the longest song, something of a centrepiece for the album, a hub for the other numbers to revolve around. Raheem DeVaughn features on the closing two songs, The Unravelling, and Tomorrow, which provides a slightly more upbeat closing.

The Roots kick so many hip hop misconceptions and clichés so far into touch it's impossible not to love them to pieces. I don't think &TYKYC is going to be top of anyone's The Roots best of Listmania submission, but the more I listen the more I like it, and particularly the more I listen on headphones without distractions, the better.

This vegetarian lark...

...I said:

“Is giving me terrible wind.”

“But” said DLL, “how can you tell?”

“Look, it's worse than it was before.”

Apparently, it's just imagination. Apparently, meat takes longer to digest, produces more gas in the process, and I should now be feeling better and functioning better than ever before.

“And I feel knackered, too” I said.

“See?” said BLISS “nothing's changed at all.”

The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins

The Sex lives of Siamese Twins

Maybe it's being solidly on the spectrum, but despite all the reviewers seeming to think the fitness instructor is well over the top, she seems entirely believable to me. Maybe not in what she shares with the outside world, but certainly in what she thinks, and how she expresses herself. Perhaps my brain's not only lacking in the ability to empathise, but also hardwired for verbal shortcuts, the more profane the better.

The fitness instructor saves what turn out to be entirely undesirable characters, from a gunman who turns out to have a case against them, her have-a-go-hero status rapidly going sour. She picks up a client, an overweight artist, and takes extreme measures when the pounds don't drop off according to the programme.

There's a back-story of cojoined twins, one of who wants to make out with her boyfriend, while the other, bit of a bible-bashing prude, is grossed out by the idea. At the moment they're looking at surgical separation, despite some poor survival-rate numbers.

There's a full supporting cast. A bad-back fireman ex-boyfriend no longer entitled to mercy-sex. The owner of the gym where the personal trainer works, with, disfigured and missing genitalia after a close encounter with a barracuda suffering from the effects of a chemical spillage. There's estranged mum and dad, and an even stranger mum and dad, dodgy TV people, agents and PR opportunists, ranting politicians, fat folk who want to be thin without ditching the processed foods and convenience lifestyles. There's some Welsh set-pieces missing. No going to the fitba'. Not a lot of drugs. Instead there's a load of salad, tofu and egg-white omelettes, jogging, treadmills and free weights.

There's the feeling (it might be unique to me) that the fitness trainer's bit of a female Begbie wannabe. She's no stranger to violence, and flips out almost to order.

The reviews were lukewarm. Picky. Way too picky. You know (roughly) what to expect, and this delivers. If Irvine Welsh endlessly recycled Trainspotting, they'd moan about that, too.

Gibson, so far...

William Gibson

So far there's a sort of gothic sci-fi collaboration with Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine, a collection of short stories, Burning Chrome, and a collection of essays and magazine articles and suchlike, Distrust That Particular Flavour. They're the peripherals to the main works, which come in three loose trilogies. They don't have to be read in any particular order, each makes sense on a stand alone basis, it's more that each group of three are set in similar worlds, and some of the characters are common to the books.

These are my copies. Apart from the last three, they've all been read more than once, and it shows.

The Sprawl Trilogy: Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive. Set in a future city and it's suburbs, based on Tokyo, computer jockeys plug themselves in and ride their way through corporations' security 'ice' while hi-tec chemically-enhanced ninja assassins watch their backs. There's an evil empire / Tyrell Corporation in there running almost everything, and I think these are the books that included the first use of the word 'cyberspace'.

The Bridge Trilogy: Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties. A rag-tag conglomerate of people live on a bridge (precedent, the old London Bridge, probably among others) in an ad hoc assembly of shipping crates, and other large containers. I think this pre-dates metal box shopping centres, nurseries and hotels by some years. Sort of lower-tech sci-fi writing, even if one of the books includes a music biz star with a virtual girlfriend.

The Blue Ant Trilogy: Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, Zero History. So near-future set, they're virtually in the present. Holograms are projected by artists, we saw some when we visited Bath a couple of years ago, rare clothes are collected by the ultra-rich, and there's much lower-key scrapes and action going on. These I've only read the once.

For someone who coined the word 'cyberspace' and who's writing depends on the ubiquity of interconnected computers, Gibson isn't a digital-life fan. His main use of the things is, apparently, eBay shopping for low-cost but interesting collectable watches. Recently he's pretty well exploded on Twitter, and he's blogged about how that saps the time he should be spending writing.

The Peripheral was, apparently, about a third complete in April 2013.

The kid's spot on...

DLL: spot on, kid

DLL thinks that we shouldn't vote for people.

DLL's idea is that we should vote on issues. Issue by issue.

That, I think would be democracy, and that, I think, would be entirely achievable, if someone in power admitted that we're no longer living in the dark, pre-Internet, ages.

You can't get me...

...I'm part of the union.

A good union works like this:

A local group, a branch, organises itself and elects a representative. That's someone to represent them. To work on their behalf.

The representatives meet regularly, work to a set agenda, and while they're free to speak their minds, each has a mandate from their branch on how to vote on any particular issue. The debate is at the local level.

Compare that with our system:

People are organised, by others, into geographical groups. Every so often they get the chance to elect someone.

That someone then goes off and does what he wants. The agenda is set by others, and not followed to any great extent in any case. The elected person votes according to the will and the whim of others than the people he fails to represent, usually that of his political party, as they tend to be ambitious and compliant to the party lines.

That isn't democracy.

DLL is right, 100%, and the system's 100% wrong, and it's little wonder that with those miserable little toads running things, the lessons of history go by the board and the mess never gets cleaned up.

Don't vote – it only encourages them

It was one of those moments. Parked opposite the local polling station. One man outside, a tall, skinny, puny-looking dude, about sixty-ish, wearing a UKIP rosette. I'd just been to the library expecting to pay a massive fine, drop off an unfinished book (among others) and pick up one reserved book. Instead, the fine was waived (the library near the office has been closed for refurbishment, hence I'd been unable to return the books in working hours).

The bonus reserved collection was Irvine Welsh's The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins. Naturally, I opened that first. After the dedication, on the next page:

I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's.

William Blake.

That's it, right there. We're told how to live, by others, few, or none of who seem to have a clue about how to live.

The dream ticket: DLL and William Blake. Your MP posts the agenda, you hit the buttons, and he has to vote according to the majority view. Until such times, well, wonder over to the polling station, or continue reading Welsh's latest. Hardly a dilemma. A billionth of a microsecond required for that decision.

I aint avin it

I 'aint 'kin 'avin' it

Everyone should have a few cards, each day, that they can lay on the table, then walk away for a cooling off period.

The cards should have:

“I 'aint 'kin-well 'avin' it” written on them.

On a full-time fire station, often visited by people without a clue about just quite what that might mean in terms of testosterone, muscle, and strongly-held opinions, the “I 'aint 'avin' it” ploy was the safety valve between raised voices and raised hands.

MM and I were talking about this recently:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtidXpWaVVM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcQpq0_BqOc

The first one gives you the gist. The second one, with title sequences “Giles, You Legend!”, taken from the lower tier, gives the crowd's reaction.

Bergkamp's testimonial. A friendly game. A proper friendly game, played in a non-contact spirit, with the players avoiding tackles and pulling out of all and any collisions. Genuinely friendly. Arsenal legends v Ajax legends.

Then: Edgar Davids, S***s-tainted, is in on the Arsenal goal, past Seaman, bearing down on the open goal.

Enter the Grimster...

...and:

HE AINT AVIN IT, RIGHT?

He isn't going to stand for no S***s-associated player scoring at the Emirates, competitive, friendly, super-friendly, whatever. Watch the fans' reaction. The whole stadium rises to give him a standing ovation. They understand someone who simply isn't having it. In a world where there's too much bowing and scraping, too much tugging of the forelock and bending over backwards, where the customer's always right and we have to avoid offending the perma-offended, someone's made a call and stood by it.

Naturally, a bemused Seaman saved or watched the penalty go over the bar or whatever.

Not only is I 'aint 'avin' it a valid point of view, it's one that 60,000 people instantly identified with. In full:

“Look. Mate. We can go over and over this for all eternity. You're not going to revise your position, and you're not going to stop talking out of your arse, and I 'aint 'avin' it. I'm going down the gym. I suggest you don't follow me, because the red mist's a-commin' and I'll have trouble telling you from the heavy punchbag.”

Maybe the use is limited to big, hairy folk working in extremely hostile environments. Certainly, I miss it. I recognise early when the other side isn't backing down one iota, but going on at length as if I will, and I won't, and my mood swings instantly to extreme boredom with background simmering violence. I would rather be elsewhere. It would be better were I elsewhere. I can feel that Grimster tackle, or the equivalent, coming on. Thinking about it, I've got a pre-season friendly sending-off on the CV.

If you ever go across the sea to...

Diddle-lee-dee

BLISS and DLL are back from Dublin. They looked exhausted when I collected them from the airport last night. Not surprising, considering how much they crammed in to a short time. Cram it in they did.

They'd just about dropped their bags off (they hadn't passed 'Go' or collected a couple of hundred quid) when they went to the gaol. A long walk (they got a taxi back) from where they were staying, the gaol's a panopticon, with wings radiating from a central hub and open mesh floors BLISS described as making her feel uncomfortable. They weren't banged up in a cell as part of the tour (otherwise it would be remarkable that BLISS was then released), but they had a good look around by the look of the photos. There's a letter from a very young man facing execution that would make even the most hard-nosed pro-capital punishment people perhaps think again. This is where the long replaced the short drop for persons sentenced to hang.

Now, she can't complain about a lack of briefing. I had jokingly talked BLISS through the things best avoided (including her talent for cheeky impersonations of regional accents), so it's entirely her own fault that she ordered, at the bar they visited that night, not a Whiskey, or even a Whisky, but a 'Scotch'.

“You didn't.” I said.

“Oh god” she said “I think I did, too.”

The music and the company were good by the sound of it and they had a fantastic night out.

It was the Guinness brewery and museum on their second day. At least this time BLISS didn't ask for a Murphy's or a Beamish. This time they had one of those bizarre encounters:

BLISS and DLL: [to the bar girl] can we have a half instead of a pint, we won't drink a whole pint.

BARMAID: No. The vouchers are for a pint so I have to do you a pint.

BLISS: Can't you do a half instead?

BARMAID: Not if the voucher is for a pint I can't.

BLISS: That seems bit of waste.

BARMAID: Sorry, but the vouchers are for a pint each, so there's nothing I can do.

BLISS: Okay then.

BARMAID: Tell you what, though, why don't I do a pint, but in two half-pint glasses?

BLISS and DLL: [bemused] yeah. That'll do it.

I'm now the proud owner of two Guinness branded espresso cups, they look like miniature mugs all logo-ed up. Fantastic.

Guinness don't use water from the Liffey, they import some super-pure stuff from Iceland. BLISS still remains to be converted, but DLL's got more of a taste for the peatbog nectar. Apparently Guinness isn't black, rather it's a very, very dark red.

So glad they had such a nice time.