Raging toothache drove me to the dentist today where he confirmed that I have a hole in my wisdom tooth and an infection. He gave me more antibiotics.
On the way home I was on the platform of Hammersmith tube station when my spectacles fell to pieces for no reason I could see.
I had to stumble home blind where I could not find my spare glasses and have had to make do with my Roy Orbison prescription sunglasses.
I look like a battered husband.
Meanwhile, on ‘Dynasty’, Blake, having previously got drunk and raped Kristal (I’m not sure how she could have allowed it. He was a drunken pensioner. She could have broken his brittle leg bones with a swish of her lacquered locks.) now returns home to discover that Ted has returned to Denver with his curious New York ways, and is upstairs in The Carrington mansion being curious with his son.
Blake rampages upstairs and finds the two in an embrace. ‘Get your curious hands off my curious son!’ he shouts, and a tussle ensues, following which Ted flies backwards and hits his head on the fire fender, which kills him instantly.
The moral of this story of course, is that women and gay men are no match for a feisty senior citizen.
Thursday, 30 July 2009
Tuesday 28 July 2009
After many years we are watching ‘Dynasty’ again. It looks so dated now, and Blake Carrington’s butler, Joseph (whom I always assumed to be a butler, but is in fact a Major Domo) has odd luminous blue hair at the sides of his head.
Back in the day, Dynasty was a racy show, featuring a gay character (Steven Carrington). Steven’s father, Blake. isn’t at all happy about this ‘gay’ business, and can only describe as it as Steven’s ‘curious New York ways’ which have no place in Denver, Colorado.
As it happened, Steven could only last four episodes before his heterosexuality broke through and he launched into an affair with his boss’s wife, Claudia. Claudia’s husband, Matthew, had previously had an affair with Blake’s wife Kristal, while Claudia was locked up in a nuthouse mainly, I suspect, because her twenty-seven year old daughter is at school believing she is fourteen while at the same time dressing like a colourblind grandmother.
Back in the day, Dynasty was a racy show, featuring a gay character (Steven Carrington). Steven’s father, Blake. isn’t at all happy about this ‘gay’ business, and can only describe as it as Steven’s ‘curious New York ways’ which have no place in Denver, Colorado.
As it happened, Steven could only last four episodes before his heterosexuality broke through and he launched into an affair with his boss’s wife, Claudia. Claudia’s husband, Matthew, had previously had an affair with Blake’s wife Kristal, while Claudia was locked up in a nuthouse mainly, I suspect, because her twenty-seven year old daughter is at school believing she is fourteen while at the same time dressing like a colourblind grandmother.
Monday 27 July 2009
Hoorah! My new Lacie rugged external hard disk drive has arrived. Now I can carry the entire contents of my PC from place to place, for no reason whatsoever.
Sunday 26 July 2009
I took my camera out today and spent a happy couple of hours photographing the natives of Shepherds Bush. Actually, I suspect that most of them were pilgrims to Westfield, since these days one spots a preponderance of stylish bags in and around Shepherds Bush station.
It’s very like photographing wildlife. I’ve found that if I stand inside one of the stations (tube or rail) like Bill Oddie in a BBC hide, I can photograph people through the windows without them threatening to break my legs and throw my twitching body onto the A40.
It’s very like photographing wildlife. I’ve found that if I stand inside one of the stations (tube or rail) like Bill Oddie in a BBC hide, I can photograph people through the windows without them threatening to break my legs and throw my twitching body onto the A40.
Saturday 25 July 2009
I’m on sale in Borders bookshop, in a magazine called Magma. I’ve had quite a bit published this year, but I was quite surprised to find any of it actually on sale in a shop. I imagine this officially qualifies me as a published writer.
Saturday, 25 July 2009
Friday 24 July 2009
I had to go back to hospital for an update on my unidentified condition. I was referred to the Urology waiting room which was a dark fresh hell, peopled with mad folk. A nurse very promptly took me into a consultation room and began to measure the circumference of my stomach at a somewhat arbitrary point between my nipples and my belly button.
‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked, since it’s never been a requirement in my previous examinations.
‘I have been asked to!’ she replied somewhat brusquely, repeatedly asking me if I had properly relaxed my stomach before she notated her findings.
I was then given a sample jar and sent off to a private cubicle to provide my urine. Then I returned to Dante’s comfy chair area and was greeted by a tannoy which informed me that all doctor’s appointments were running one hour late.
I watched the fish in a disconcertingly grimy tank swimming back and forth, and took out my book figuring that I could get maybe three chapters in before I was called. However, my name came up almost immediately. They never get it right, but it’s near enough that I can recognise myself.
The consultant was a very cute Indian man who went through my notes and quite cheered me up initially by telling me that there was nothing wrong with my blood, blood pressure, liver, lungs, kidneys and white blood cell count. Microbiology had been through my fluids with a micro-tooth comb of the finest degree and could find nothing.
I have therefore been diagnosed as having an Idiopathic something-or-other. ‘Idiopathic,’ he said, with a wide smile, ‘means we don’t know what it is.’
So… He was toying with the idea of putting me on steroids, just for a laugh I suspect, but plumped, after a word with yet another consultant in the next room, for referring me to a specialist in Things-They-Know-Nothing-About, which I imagine is a Professor of Idiopathology.
From there I escaped into Praed Street and headed for a café. I had a cappuccino, which I strongly suspect was instant coffee with some frothed milk and chocolate stuck on top like a posh wig on Britney.
Later, the Ugly One and I met up in Wetherspoons in Shepherds Bush from whence we went to see ‘Harry Potter and the Arse of the Bandersnipe’ or ‘ Harry Potter and the Half-Tone Prints’ or… anyway, it was OK. Long, but OK.
Dumbledore is gay, as JK Rowling confirmed some time ago. That’s hardly news. A quick look round his study would leave no one in doubt. And as for Professor Snape…. There’s no wife and two wizardlings waiting at home there. Mark my words!
At home, in bed, my thoughts turned, not to the aesthetics of wizardish cinema, or the social implications of being the gay headmaster of a school of magic, but to the fact that I had not asked the consultant why the nurse was measuring my stomach in such an eccentric manner.
‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked, since it’s never been a requirement in my previous examinations.
‘I have been asked to!’ she replied somewhat brusquely, repeatedly asking me if I had properly relaxed my stomach before she notated her findings.
I was then given a sample jar and sent off to a private cubicle to provide my urine. Then I returned to Dante’s comfy chair area and was greeted by a tannoy which informed me that all doctor’s appointments were running one hour late.
I watched the fish in a disconcertingly grimy tank swimming back and forth, and took out my book figuring that I could get maybe three chapters in before I was called. However, my name came up almost immediately. They never get it right, but it’s near enough that I can recognise myself.
The consultant was a very cute Indian man who went through my notes and quite cheered me up initially by telling me that there was nothing wrong with my blood, blood pressure, liver, lungs, kidneys and white blood cell count. Microbiology had been through my fluids with a micro-tooth comb of the finest degree and could find nothing.
I have therefore been diagnosed as having an Idiopathic something-or-other. ‘Idiopathic,’ he said, with a wide smile, ‘means we don’t know what it is.’
So… He was toying with the idea of putting me on steroids, just for a laugh I suspect, but plumped, after a word with yet another consultant in the next room, for referring me to a specialist in Things-They-Know-Nothing-About, which I imagine is a Professor of Idiopathology.
From there I escaped into Praed Street and headed for a café. I had a cappuccino, which I strongly suspect was instant coffee with some frothed milk and chocolate stuck on top like a posh wig on Britney.
Later, the Ugly One and I met up in Wetherspoons in Shepherds Bush from whence we went to see ‘Harry Potter and the Arse of the Bandersnipe’ or ‘ Harry Potter and the Half-Tone Prints’ or… anyway, it was OK. Long, but OK.
Dumbledore is gay, as JK Rowling confirmed some time ago. That’s hardly news. A quick look round his study would leave no one in doubt. And as for Professor Snape…. There’s no wife and two wizardlings waiting at home there. Mark my words!
At home, in bed, my thoughts turned, not to the aesthetics of wizardish cinema, or the social implications of being the gay headmaster of a school of magic, but to the fact that I had not asked the consultant why the nurse was measuring my stomach in such an eccentric manner.
Thursday, 23 July 2009
Thursday 23 July 2009
I’ve not had a chance to comment on this year’s Big Brother, which has been interesting and not, until this week, populated by anyone obnoxious enough to make me pick up the phone and vote. There’s always one though, eventually. This year it is Kenneth, a ‘self-employed international playboy’ he is the boyfriend of the unintelligible Karly who left last week.
‘I could have any woman in the world,’ Kenneth blubbed last night in the Diary Room, ‘but there’s only one that’s got to me.’
Let’s be frank. Kenneth is a multi-millionaire, and not the most attractive man in the cosmos. He patently could not have any woman in the world, unless they were willing to prostitute themselves for a couple of dinners and a dress (as Kenneth so tactfully spelled it out to his new friends the other night).
I’m reminded of a line Mrs Merton used on her TV show when interviewing Debbie McGee, the wife of gnome-like magician Paul Daniels, and it’s a question I would dearly have loved Davina to have asked Karly when she came out of the BB house:-
‘So, Karly, what first attracted you to the obnoxious, sexist, multi-millionaire, Kenneth?’
However, it seems I will be denied the pleasure of seeing the little toad evicted as last night he climbed over the wall and buggered off to the oblivion he deserves.
‘I could have any woman in the world,’ Kenneth blubbed last night in the Diary Room, ‘but there’s only one that’s got to me.’
Let’s be frank. Kenneth is a multi-millionaire, and not the most attractive man in the cosmos. He patently could not have any woman in the world, unless they were willing to prostitute themselves for a couple of dinners and a dress (as Kenneth so tactfully spelled it out to his new friends the other night).
I’m reminded of a line Mrs Merton used on her TV show when interviewing Debbie McGee, the wife of gnome-like magician Paul Daniels, and it’s a question I would dearly have loved Davina to have asked Karly when she came out of the BB house:-
‘So, Karly, what first attracted you to the obnoxious, sexist, multi-millionaire, Kenneth?’
However, it seems I will be denied the pleasure of seeing the little toad evicted as last night he climbed over the wall and buggered off to the oblivion he deserves.
Wednesday, 22 July 2009
Wednesday 22 July 2009
It is precisely two months since I updated anyone on my existence. To be honest, I’ve been a bit poorly sick and even had to go into hospital for a few days. Typically of me, I have some odd (but thankfully not life-threatening) condition which no one seems to be able to diagnose.
So, after the initial visit to my GP, a hospital consultation and a couple of weeks of antibiotics, I was sent back to the hospital where they decided to keep me in.
Being full of so many drugs I then decided that now might be a good time to give up smoking. So, I gave all my cigarettes to a nice Indian man in the next ward whom I had been keeping company while he sneaked out to the roof garden for a crafty fag.
Consequently, the hospital signed me off work for another two weeks which, in other circumstances, would have been bliss but this time was not very enjoyable as I have been doped up the eyes on yet another course of antibiotics, and have spent my time reading and watching the Polish builders across the street strip down to their underpants every afternoon on the public highway to get changed to go home. This has, I must admit, aided my recuperation greatly.
I also managed to get some painting done, and got oddly addicted to ‘In The Night Garden’, a BBC children’s programme set in a surreal garden world where the relative sizes of characters and objects changes arbitrarily, and which is narrated by the wonderful Derek Jacobi. Towards the end of every episode he says ‘Isn’t that a pip!’ with some thespian relish. Now and again the characters will go off to have a ride on the Ninky Nonk, which is some kind of a giant teapot pulling a Tardis behind it. The best way to watch it, I suspect, is to take some drugs, turn the sound down and put some Pink Floyd on.
So, after the initial visit to my GP, a hospital consultation and a couple of weeks of antibiotics, I was sent back to the hospital where they decided to keep me in.
Being full of so many drugs I then decided that now might be a good time to give up smoking. So, I gave all my cigarettes to a nice Indian man in the next ward whom I had been keeping company while he sneaked out to the roof garden for a crafty fag.
Consequently, the hospital signed me off work for another two weeks which, in other circumstances, would have been bliss but this time was not very enjoyable as I have been doped up the eyes on yet another course of antibiotics, and have spent my time reading and watching the Polish builders across the street strip down to their underpants every afternoon on the public highway to get changed to go home. This has, I must admit, aided my recuperation greatly.
I also managed to get some painting done, and got oddly addicted to ‘In The Night Garden’, a BBC children’s programme set in a surreal garden world where the relative sizes of characters and objects changes arbitrarily, and which is narrated by the wonderful Derek Jacobi. Towards the end of every episode he says ‘Isn’t that a pip!’ with some thespian relish. Now and again the characters will go off to have a ride on the Ninky Nonk, which is some kind of a giant teapot pulling a Tardis behind it. The best way to watch it, I suspect, is to take some drugs, turn the sound down and put some Pink Floyd on.
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