Hairybloke's Haiku Diary of Common Sense

Saturday 13 November 2010

2010-11-13T10:29:00.000-08:00

Having weighed myself last week and discovered, to my horror, that I am carrying the equivalent of a litter of shetland ponies around with me, I have embarked on a diet.
I'm trying to come to terms with soup, something with which I do not become regularly involved. Oxtail is very nice however, and I've come to like Red Pepper with Goat's Cheese, although the Chunky Vegetable is far too much like watery minestrone for my liking. I've never liked minestrone much at the best of times, its only saving grace being that at least it had the decency to appear with some pasta in it. Now, it appears in disguise, with no pasta, trying to pass itself off as a vegetable medley. Get thee gone, Chunky Vegetable! I have seen through you to the bottom of the bowl, quite literally.

Friday 12 November 2010

2010-11-13T10:19:00.001-08:00

Van Gogh painted a twisted church, so I thought I might like to photograph one. Why, you may ask, would a committed atheist want to go about photographing churches? Well, despite the curious and deluded ideas behind their construction they are in the main quite beautiful creations. I'm often struck by the paradox that many artists (and indeed composers) have produced religious work of outstanding quality. Than again, many creative people, including myself, are a bit bonkers. There was a lot of money in it too, back in the day. Many a painter made his reputation and a few bob by knocking up the odd crucifixion scene, or an instructional mural. They were like graphic novels for those in the congregation (nearly all of them) who could not read.

Thursday 11 November 2010

2010-11-13T10:11:00.001-08:00

Through my window I can see the weather vane of the local church which, being the godless soul that I am, I have never attended. Nevertheless, the spire and the golden cockerel which spins in the wind are a comforting sight. Sometimes, when the weather is more inclement, the outline of the construction can adopt a more sinister appearance.

Wednesday 10 November 2010

2010-11-13T10:04:00.000-08:00

Taking photographs of TV offers great opportunities for experimentation. I must confess that some post production was employed in Photoshop to doodle in certain areas. However, I think I like the air of mystery which is created by this.

Tuesday 9 November 2010

2010-11-13T10:01:00.000-08:00

I had a dream in which Damien Hirst and I were taking long exposure photographs of Janice Battersby from Coronation Street. Sadly, I don't know Damien Hirst, and I'm sure this is a project that neither he nor Janice Batterbsy will ever be interested in, and even if they were, they'd probably go ahead and do it without me.

Monday 8 November 2010

2010-11-08T15:17:00.001-08:00

Today's photo is an infrared view of Brompton Cemetery. Unusually for me I have chosen to keep it in colour as the otherworldliness of it is highlighted much better.
The diet, despite my trepidations, isn't too bad. I've signed up on t'internet to a company that sends me all my food for a month, divided into breakfasts, lunches, snacks and dinners. The first day has gone ok. My butterbean and carrot soup was surprisingly edible, and the Paella - which featured tuna strangely - was quite filling once I'd added a couple of roasted peppers. (I'm allowed additional vegetable accompaniments within reason).

Sunday 7 November 2010

2010-11-08T15:06:00.001-08:00

It's often worthwhile photographing the doodles one composes during a meeting while one's colleagues are discussing the merits of 'going forward' and 'making a difference.' Such work can often offer an insight into one's state of mind and possibly highlight deep-rooted anxieties.
I'd be grateful for suggestions.
As I embark on a diet tomorrow in an attempt to combat the state of my fat liver, I thought it best to weigh myself in order that a chart of progress could be set up.
Oh, the horror! I'm on the obesity cusp, which, now I think about it, is a good name for a fat rock band, Obesity Cusp, or else for a portly Victorian jewel thieif and international spy.

Saturday 6 November 2010

2010-11-06T08:18:00.001-07:00

There are five thousand stories in The Bush of Shepherds, and this is one of them. (The picture is another story altogether.) Last week, I found a black Nokia phone on the tube, and since then have been attempting to reunite phone with owner. Unfortunately, the owner of the phone doesn't speak very good English, and so I have been negotiating the terms of return with various of his friends.
Someone rang me last Saturday and I told him I would be free all day Sunday to meet up and hand the phone over. No one rang. Then I had a call Friday morning, and gave someone else my address so that they come and pick it up. It took about twenty minutes to spell out the name of the street, and consequently I suspect no one wrote anything down as no one turned up.
Today, however, I was coming out of the second hand CD shop in Shepherds Bush when my phone rang again.
'It's about this phone, Mr Rob,' the man said. 'We are not sure how far away you are.'
'Where are you now?' I asked.
'Shepherds Bush,' he said.
'So am I,' I said. 'I'll meet you outside Morrisons in five minutes. I'm wearing headphones and a green parkah.'
I'm not sure why I handed out the physical description. There was no one else but me waiting outside Morrisons. In retrospect I regret giving him the short notice as a few minutes later a rather breathless pair of Turkish men staggered round the corner and waved at me.
They were effusively thankful, which was nice. I was a little disappointed that no one suggested sexual favours by way of a reward, but c'est la vie.
The next time I find a phone on the train however, I'm handing it in to someone official and letting them deal with it.

Friday 5 November

2010-11-06T08:08:00.000-07:00

This is my street. Even without the long infrared exposure it's a bit of a surreal area in itself, tucked away between Housing Estates and within two minutes walk of an Underground Station that no one has ever heard of.
Christie, West London's best known serial killer, lived just around the corner and frequented what was my local pub. I was barred once, for two days, for impuning the honour of the landlord's wife. Sadly, it was turned into a hideous theme bar in the Eighties, with decor so garish that no one dared enter. It was closed within weeks and then demolished. I think there might be a community centre there now. I've never thought of change as being a particularly good thing. In this case I am right.

Thursday 4 November 2010

2010-11-04T13:32:00.000-07:00

I think it might be interesting to post a photograph a day for the next month or so. I'm a surrealist at heart and firmly believe that surreal situations occur everywhere, but that only certain people can see them and make them visible to others.
Whilst on the South Bank this summer I turned a corner and was confronted by this gentleman, in the act of assembling some form of costume. The lady emerged from around the corner just as I raised the camera, and adds somehow to the strangeness of the scene.

Wednesday 3 November 2010

2010-11-03T16:33:00.000-07:00

My experimental photography has taken a strange turn, as you can see. There's very little photoshop involvement, apart from a black and white conversion and some dodging and burning. It's all old-fashioned smoke and mirrors. Hopefully, I can post some more when I've developed the technique a bit further.

Sunday 24 October 2010

2010-10-26T06:02:00.000-07:00

It’s that bipolar time again. Recently, to escape the rain, I ducked into ‘The Green Man’ on Edgware Road and ordered myself a large whisky. Within thirty seconds I was accosted by one of those men who just like to wail about the state of the world. I don’t mind that particularly. It means I don’t have to say much.
‘I had an ‘eart attack you know. They won’t give me no disability. Thing is, I’m a butcher, and if I stand up for more than two hours my ankles expand four inches.
‘Thing is, if I went in and said I was bipolar I’d get ninety-five quid a week extra. I reckon there’s no such thing. In my day, people called it ‘being a bit fed up’”.
So, I’m a bit fed up.
I tend to do crazy creative things when I’m a bit fed up so I started a painting of David Bowie’s ‘Aladdin Sane’ cover. I’ve also been watching ‘Spartacus’ on and off. One could base a drinking game around Spartacus, where one would have to take a sip of drink every time a penis was referred to, or down a shot every time John Hannah mentions bums, poo or wee-wee. I don’t think even Paul Gascoigne would get to the end of one episode before passing out.

Thursday 21 October 2010

2010-10-26T06:01:00.001-07:00

It was the Ugly One’s birthday this week and his chosen restaurant for the celebration was Aroma in Shepherds Bush, the ‘Eat As Much as You Like’ Chinese Restaurant. The lady who showed us to our table had a somewhat grim demeanour and a semi-permanent scowl. I suspect she thought that, as fat people, we would no doubt eat far more than the twelve pounds charge would cover. I did my best to match her expectations.
We got home just in time to catch ‘The Apprentice’, one of my regular addictions each year, in which this week the teams had to produce bread and other baked products for sale to clients such as hotels and on a market stall.
One imagines that Melissa is what a Su Pollard Mogwai would turn into if one fed her after midnight. If I had to live with her, I fear I would be forced to murder her in a manner involving blunt instruments or strangulation. Melissa somehow managed to win the task, but only because the other team was so woefully inept and she had a military mind running her kitchen.
The surgeon, whose name escapes me, Dippy, Zippy, something like that, was fired.
Back to Holby City for you, sunshine.

Sunday 17 October 2010

2010-10-26T05:58:00.000-07:00

I am glad to report that Wagner has been saved for another week. Hoorah! I made celebratory chicken curry in his honour. I want Wagner (although it has been established that this is pronounced Vagner, Louis Walsh has a blind spot and insists on calling him Wagner, as in Robert Wagner) to go through to the final, knocking Simon Cowell’s remaining dreary groups back into obscurity.
Seeing Kröd Mändoon must be a portent of hope for the world.

Saturday 16 October 2010

2010-10-19T05:56:00.001-07:00

I’m enjoying the X-Factor this year, especially as Simon Cowell has been put in charge of the groups, and doesn’t seem that keen to deal with them.
The acts were supposed to sing songs by their heroes but I suspect many of them were told who their heroes were. Cowell’s bunch of young chartreuses, Belle Amie, chose to sing ‘You Really Got Me’ by The Kinks, which isn’t suspicious at all since, as we all know, most teenage girls worship Ray Davies and no doubt have all the Kinks albums.
I am backing the wonderful Wagner, and entreat you all to vote for him to get through to the final.

Friday 15 October 2010

2010-10-19T05:53:00.000-07:00

Santander are vexing me now. Their suspicious activity software is way too sensitive and seems to trigger warnings whenever I buy stuff from t’internet. I had to ring them up and went through a robot system which read out my recent purchases, and I had to press 1 to confirm that it was me that actually purchased them. I want to deal with real people. Had someone with common sense examined the purchases they would see that it was minor purchases and exactly the same sort of thing as I’ve bought in the past. If someone was regularly buying Vin Diesel’s underwear on e-bay, you’d think Santander would make a note of it and register it as normal behaviour.
I haven’t had a celebrity omen for some time. I did see Ginny Weasley from Harry Potter on the Central Line some weeks ago but I’m not sure if she counts. She’d be a negligible omen at best.
Today, however, I was coming out of Edgware Road station and saw Kröd Mändoon going in. Strangely, some time back I saw Rula Lenska exiting this very station, rising up the stairs with her scarlet barnet shining like a hairy dawn.

Thursday 14 October 2010

2010-10-15T02:33:00.000-07:00

Back in the Seventies TV Comedy was a mixture of standard sitcoms – spread over a wide spectrum of quality and funniness – and genuinely cutting edge ‘experimental’ work. Even there, the quality was variable. Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which, although it emerged from other mould-breaking programmes, was the flagship of the new way of doing things. Although much of the Python canon has stood the test of time, there is much of it that seems ill-judged and a little tedious today. Other programmes still shine as masterclasses in half-hour comedy. ‘The Good Life’ is still shown regularly and seems as fresh today as in yesteryear, as does ‘Steptoe and Son’, ‘Dad’s Army’ and of course, ‘The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin,’ a truly groundbreaking and somewhat philosophical series about an intelligent man’s fight against the banality of existence. Many would argue that the series owed its success to Leonard Rossiter, cast as the legendary Reggie, and this view has its merits as this was undoubtedly Rossiter’s finest hour. The show was simply different, though, in terms of writing, acting, directing, the surreal shots of Reggie’s inner thoughts as when a hippo appears every time his mother-in-law is mentioned. There was also the clever use of the catch-phrase which in this series was not only used in its traditional way, but as a metaphor for the tedious repetition of daily life. Every day, Reggie set off for work through the Poet’s Estate to arrive at Sunshine Desserts, where the forces of entropy were represented by the letters falling from the name of the company above the door, day by day.
It was a truly classic and brilliant series, and therefore one can surely understand my concern when the BBC planned to remake it.
If there are Comedy Gods, (if there are any Gods at all, I would imagine the best ones to have would be comedy ones) I hope that they have their thunderbolts and lethal sarcastic barbs aimed squarely at Clunes and the BBC. Despite the lukewarm to hostile response to the first series, the BBC have made a second series. Ironically, this Reggie – complete with overloud and hysterical laughter track - is more closely related to the worst of Nineteen Seventies comedy than to its original incarnation. It’s a crude clunking abomination of a show, and I am at a loss to understand why the BBC didn’t just make a completely new series since this seems to be only popular with those who don’t know the original, or don’t know any better.
It’s a shame. I used to like Martin Clunes. Oddly enough, my mother hates him, but then she always did have a bit of psychic foresight. She must have seen all this coming.

Wednesday 13 October 2010

2010-10-14T08:12:00.000-07:00

My baby Olympus E420 has acquired a new lease of life. Having got my new Nikon I was preparing to sell the Olympus, but fate stepped in. We’ve been cleaning out the attic and discovered – among other things – a box of old Olympus lenses, filters and attachments. I sent off for an OM adapter, and now I have a whole new kit.
The most confusing thing about this is that most magazines and books have been telling me that I have to have a digital camera adapted to take infrared photographs. I have a dedicated infrared filter from when I used to use ‘proper film’ and thought I would try it out. Surprisingly, via various lengths of exposure, both cameras produced infrared images with dark skies, white clouds and ghostly blue and violet trees.
The Apprentice is back on TV. Hoorah! And the Chilean miners are being piped to the surface in a claustrophobic tube. Hoorah!
Apropos of nothing, for reasons known only to themselves, Prince Charles, Camilla Merton-Parker and Pope Herr Lipp all visited the Underground Bunker this year. C&M didn’t linger too long. They thanked us for our sterling service, asked us what exactly it was that we did and then complimented us on the pristine state of the lift. They went on to Brixton market after that and Camilla was given free mangos. You’d think she could afford fruit, wouldn’t you?
The Pope had a nice cup of tea, blessed our kettle and then went on to Lambeth Palace. I think he’d rather have stayed with us. They don’t have Hobnobs at Lambeth Palace, or the Vatican either, it appears. Just Garibaldis. Despite the fact that he thinks I’m the greatest evil facing civilisation today, I feel rather sorry for him.
Peter Tatchell was planning to pop round and arrest him, but there was a signal failure at Seven Sisters and he was stuck at Stockwell for forty minutes so nothing came of it.

Tuesday 12 October 2010

2010-10-13T05:52:00.001-07:00

What with the recession and the plight of the Chilean miners, not to mention Alex Read and his fight with Mr Kong Watson, I have been just too worried to type. The Secret Underground bunker in which I work is feeling the pinch and the Powers That Be are drawing up lists and checking them twice, trying to work out who’s naughty or nice.
To take my mind off things on Sunday I made some spelt flour cinnamon and honey cookies which looked amazing, but tasted like Chilean miners’ armpits. I gave them to the Ugly One to feed to the ducks in St James Park.
Recently we purchased a Barefoot Contessa style Kitchenaid; a great red beast of a machine which not only produces perfect cake mixes, but minces meat and kneads bread dough to a point where my bread rises to the perfect shape of a chubby dwarf’s belly. Previously, my bread has sunk and resembles the flat and lifeless abdomens of evil thin people.
On 26 August, my ancient bread tin having given up the ghost I ordered a 2lb adonised industrial bread tin from De Cuisine, an online company who seemed to have cornered the market in bread accessories.
Having heard nothing after two weeks I rang their helpline and spoke to a very friendly brummie.
‘My order number is 78666,’ I said.
‘Oooooh, the number of the beast,’ he said. ‘That don’t bode well. Hang on. Ohhhh… adonised bread tin. Now, I can tell you what’s happened there without even looking it up. My son and daughter-in-law, right, they’ve gone and gone on holiday for two weeks and left me with all this. Can you imagine?... What I did, I’ll tell ya, what I did was, I ordered the steel bread tins not the adonised ones. Now, the adonised ones are on order, and I should be able to have one out to you Wednesday. I know you’re keen to get on with your baking, so we’ll do our best. That’s part of the problem, you know. Baking has become really popular. It’s the new knitting.’
This all sounded promising, and I hadn’t had to say a word as the garrulous brummie had dealt with the conversation all by himself, so I got on with my life. I baked a series of 1lb loaves in some old bread tins that seem to have been passed down to me from First World War bakers who took them to the trenches by the look of it, but two weeks later I got a bit vexed and did a search on t’internet for feedback about this company.
It didn’t bode well, as the nice brummie had already pointed out. Some people waited months for things to arrive. I didn’t want to wait months. I tried to ring them again, but the number was permanently engaged. Luckily, the website which held most of the complaints about this company handily provided an additional number.
I got through straightaway. It was the friendly brummie again.
‘Oh yes… I remember. Number of the beast, yes. Right, well, the adonised tins are on their way to me. They should be out to you Wednesday,’
‘But that’s what you said last time.’
‘I know, and I apologise, but I’m hoping that we’ll be able to ring you with good news on Wednesday.’
‘You will ring?’
‘Yes… or I can e-mail.’
‘Please do both.’
Wednesday dawned. By lunchtime having received neither call nor e-mail from De Cuisine I rang their secret number again. A nice brummie lady answered me this time, and things became somewhat surreal.
‘Oh, yes, six six six, sir. The gentleman’s with another customer at the moment but if you hang on he’ll be with you in a tick.’
The nice lady put the receiver down and muted conversation ensued, which suddenly became louder and clearer.
‘Yes, but there’s sawdust everywhere.’ she said
‘Is it sawdust?’ said the brummie man.
‘Yes, look at it. It’s all over everything and it’s into the computers. Look, it’s thick.’
‘Oh yes. Sawdust.’
‘Yes.’
Long pause. ‘Well…. That will have to be dealt with.’
There was a rattle and the brummie man was through to me.
‘Hello sir, it’s the number of the beast again, isn’t it?’
‘You were supposed to ring me today.’
‘Yes. I was going to ring you later this afternoon. If I can just explain what’s happened, someone from our delivery company has died.’
‘Died?’
‘Yes, died. And everyone’s at the funeral today, but the anodised tins will be here tomorrow and I’m certain that you’ll be receiving a dispatch e-mail tomorrow.’
‘Ohh Kay.’
To be honest I was a bit stunned by the audacity of the explanation. As an excuse it’s a corker, being both disarming and unexpected. In retrospect I should have frothed and raged and demanded my bread tin be couriered in by helicopter, but the dead body tactic did for me.
However, the next day, the brummie did me proud and a mail did indeed arrive confirming dispatch and the lovely bread tin arrived the next day and is now doing sterling work providing me with decent sized loaves.
So, De Cuisine are not, as many people seem to think, a scam. They provide very good equipment, but are somewhat laid back about sending it out. I can recommend their adonised bread tins, but be prepared to wait.

Monday 13 September 2010

2010-10-13T05:49:00.000-07:00

It has been many months, O My Brothers, since I have recorded my general views on life. In the interim I have been diagnosed as giving a fat liver. This is hardly surprising, as I suspect that amongst my circle, I would be the one who ate all the pies. (The Ugly One would be he who ate all the cakes.)
I have been sent for blood tests and must return this Wednesday to see a liver specialist who ironically is fatter than I am.
Following this page’s campaign to discover the true age of Pineapple Studios’ Andrew Stone, Andrew appeared in the reality show ‘Dating In The Dark’ which billed him in a subtitle as Andrew Stone, 37, which is at least a step in the right direction since throughout Pineapple Studios the rather well-preserved Stone insisted he was 28. I’m still of the opinion that he’s 39, but I suspect that we’ll never get that confirmed.
The most disturbing aspect of all this business is that he got his father to lie and insist to the press that he was born in 1981.
He was in Big Brother as well, teaching the housemates to sing and dance for a video task. They seemed as eager to get rid of him as the record producers in Pineapple were.
This was the final series of Big Brother, at least on Channel Four, and it was a little anticlimactic. The much awaited ‘Ultimate Big Brother’ in which former winners and ‘notable’ housemates competed for the title of Ultimate Housemate was again, a bit of a damp squib, made damper by the presence of Coolio, whose alleged bullying of transsexual Nadia earned him three warnings and resulted in him leaving early, although it seems that these warnings and the majority of his abuse was not transmitted. The surprise contestant was ‘Slick Vic’ Victor Ebuwa, who I hated during his term as an original contestant, but now seems to have matured and grown up. I kind of like him now.

Monday 10 May 2010

2010-05-20T02:10:00.000-07:00

again I’m obsessed
this time it’s with a Nikon
D three hundred S

People may well wonder what I have been doing for the past month, as well they might. I am a little curious myself as the weeks seem to have whisked by.
Actually our government underground secret bunker was on overdrive due to the forthcoming elections. I don’t know why we bothered. They still haven’t sorted it out.
Half of Sheffield didn’t get to vote, and some of Hackney, and various other parts of the country, although really, if you do want to vote, I wouldn’t leave it until 9.30pm.
There was no queue at our Polling Station. I voted for my MP and then my Councillors. There were no crazy parties this time standing for local election. Usually you have a plethora of minority groups with long names and strange convictions. The longer the name, in my experience, the stranger the convictions.

Monday 12 April 2010

2010-05-20T02:08:00.000-07:00

blisters on the lips,
it could be from pineapple.
not the studio.

The Ugly One is on a diet currently, which is why he had none of my Cornish Pastie. Consequently, I am free to choose all my own dinners. This may not be such a good thing, as I suspect I will end up eating pies every day.
Meanwhile, naughty Louis Spence from Pineapple Dance Studios (If you haven’t been watching this series then you have missed a treat) appears to have revealed the truth about Andrew Stone’s real age on his twitter page in a conversation with none other than Denise Van Outen. Denise asked if Andrew was really 28 and Louis replied as follows:-

@dvobumpalicious not 28 darling I beat him in junior star time I was 16 & he was 14 you do the maths darrrrrrling,did I just say that? oops
10:14 AM Mar 14th
I think we can all do the math. How old is Andrew Stone? It would appear that the secret is now out and that Andrew Stone is actually at least 38, probably 39 by now.

Sunday 11 April 2010

2010-04-14T01:53:00.000-07:00

Latitude (n) An expression of Latvian pomposity.

I forgot to mention yesterday – as I got carried away with the relationship between the rock world and the classical world – that I spent a small fortune on music. I found a double CD of vintage sex songs, i.e. jazz and blues numbers from the twenties with somewhat racey lyrics. My favourite so far is ‘I Need More Grease in my Fryin’ Pan’ and the sublime ‘Banana in My Fruitbasket.’
The age of Andrew Stone, lead singer of Starman (featured in the marvellous Pineapple Studios on Sky One) is still a mystery to many people and the subject of many google searches. One forum had a posting from a lady who remembered him from school and thinks he is at least thirty-four. I think he’s forty. I’m looking at the neck, and I’m thinking ‘That neck is forty!’
He claims he’s heterosexual as well, but my Gaydar is beeping like a Chernobyl Gayger Counter.
Recently, Andrew went on ‘a lads’ night out’ with his baby manager, Rob. I think he must be lying about his age as well. He claims He’s twenty-one but I suspect he’s twelve. They filmed Andrew trying to chat up some young women in a spookily empty pub which was intended to bolster his butch image, no doubt, although ultimately he came across as a creepy lesbian stalker. Poor Rob stood about looking slightly embarrassed, rather like a teenager who finds himself in the same bar as his drunken mother.
My culinary exploration today was The Hairy Bikers’ Cornish pasties, for which I had a recipe downloaded from the BBC website.
The recipe, so I surmised, gave the amounts to make one pastie, which was a little alarming as it suggested I use a dinner plate as the template for my pastry circle.
However, it did turn out to be a very lovely, if massive, pastie. I ate half of it with chips and saved the rest for another day.

Saturday 10 April 2010

2010-04-12T05:54:00.002-07:00

Yak (n) A probiotic drink with half the fat bacteria of other probiotics

‘When life looks black and cares attack, how sweet it is to pot a yak.’ – PG Wodehouse.

It is my wont, when spirits are low, to hie myself to the big HMV in Oxford Street and browse copiously amongst the music. Surprising things can come to light. I had not realised for instance that Rick Wakeman had made so many solo albums (including one inspired by the Lord of The Rings’ and a soundtrack to the silent version of Phantom of The Opera.)
I also had to text the Ugly One when I saw that Roger Waters had penned an opera which starred no less a figure (and not many can boast that they have so large a figure) than Bryn Terfel, the opera world’s Welsh Meat Loaf.
The lines between rock and classical music are blurring suddenly. Wakeman (himself classically trained) is interviewed in Gramophone magazine this week, expounding on his theory that Prokofiev was the creator of the concept album (and who are we to argue?), while the reviews include the latest release from classical composer John Lord, who used to play the keyboards for Deep Purple.
Rock star’s children, meanwhile are moving into the film industry and tonight we saw ‘Moon’, the highly impressive film from Duncan Jones, once known as Zowie Bowie back in the days when his dad David thought that such a name might be a good idea.

Friday 9 April 2010

2010-04-12T05:54:00.001-07:00

Guttersnipe (n) A snipe that lives in a gutter

I met with the Ugly One and we went to see ‘Clash of The Titans’ in 3D. Remakes are always dodgy territory, especially if one has a particular fondness for the original. For its time the 1981 COTT was an epic mythic spectacle with an all-star cast and a script which gave weight to both the Gods and the mortals.
The CGI and the 3-D gives this version a realistic feel that could only be done with Harryhausen's stop-motion back in the day, but something was lacking. Certainly, the original idea of the Gods playing a form of real-life chess by moving pieces about on a board was a far better concept than this one, where the other gods hardly get a look in, and no name checks, so we're not actually sure what gods they were supposed to be.
Liam Neeson as Zeus seemed to think he would play the part as a bored old glam rock star in glittery armour, while Ralph Fiennes (as Hades) turned his camp meter right up to eleven. All that was missing was a moustache he could twiddle while purring 'Oooooh, I'm ever so evil, I am!'
However, I enjoyed the rest of it, and laughed (no doubt with the other old COTT fans) when Perseus picked up the clockwork owl from the original movie and was told by Liam Cunningham in no uncertain terms to leave it behind.

Thursday 8 April 2010

2010-04-12T05:52:00.000-07:00

Phlegm (n) The thirteenth moon of Saturn, named after the son of Zeus by Anathema, whom he seduced in the form of a pig.

I had to go for an ultrasound this evening, which was mainly to check whether the antibiotics I have been taking have caused any damage since a blood test seems to show that enzyme levels are a little high in my liver. As it turns out, it appears that the problem is that I am just too fat.
This is upsetting news, as I had considered myself merely curvaceous. I think I would have preferred some obscure but curable condition.
To cheer myself up I bought a couple of Cornish pasties and a bottle of wine. I also bought the Ugly One a copy of the Dean Martin ‘That’s Amore’ album, for which he expressed a disturbing desire when he saw it on TV.
When I got home I found a personalised leaflet from my Labour candidate, a Mr Gurney, who is photographed grinning with his Labour activist colleagues, one of whom looked spookily familiar.
It turns out to be Beinazair from Big Brother 10. I’m not sure she’s a very good endorsement for Labour. She didn’t even get into the Big Brother House and got sent home on a bus.
As most readers know I work in a secret government bunker underneath the Brixton Academy. Things are moving into overdrive now that an election is looming.

Wednesday 31 March 2010

2010-04-12T05:51:00.000-07:00

Nailfile (n) A lover of nails

One of my favourite comedies was the short-lived ‘Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace’ which took the form of a mythical horror writer (Garth Marenghi) looking retrospectively at his seminal 1980s series ‘Darkplace’.
I watched the last three episodes this evening and bemoaned the fact that comedy of this calibre is left unrecognised while the BBC regularly churns out dross in mass quantities. I sat through a whole episode of ‘The Big Top’ some time ago and I’m still traumatised.

Tuesday 30 March 2010

2010-04-08T01:54:00.001-07:00

Hench (n) The reinforced strap which connects two cups of a standard brassier. See also LUMBERGUSSET.

Over the previous week, whilst dogsitting Henry Tiberius Bond, the bipolar terrier, I busied myself with a whole mess of cooking, which included an authentic lamb madras (Henry finished off the leftovers), Northern Thai Ginger Curry, some Chicken patties, pizza and Italian pasta broth. Over the weekend I assembled the filling for Chicken Pot Pies and tonight I finally found time to make the pastry and stick the bloody things in the oven.
They were lovely, although next time I think I might have to add a touch of spice, or at least, some more black pepper.

Monday 29 March 2010

2010-04-08T01:53:00.000-07:00

Nauseous (n) Trade name of a Steps tribute band of the mid 2000s.

My mail order Indian Spices arrived, I did not get my Rasham Patti chillies as they are out of stock, but I did get my Kashmiri chillies, a replacement bag of Rasham Patti chilli powder and some complimentary Bombay Mix in a bag, which was nice.
I also replaced my cardamoms, which have been been bleached white by the passage of years. It really isn’t a good idea to have spices that are older than some of your friends.
Talking of the passage of years, I am becomingly increasingly enamoured of Louie Spence, the camp superstar of Sky 1’s Pineapple Studios, and increasingly nauseated by Andrew ‘I AM Showbusiness’ Stone.
Last week, Andrew’s very nervous manager managed to arrange a showcase performance by Andrew’s band ‘Starman’ in front of the movers and the shakers of the British Music Industry, (Well, the crawlers and the nudgers anyway).
Most of them left the performance with comments along the lines of ‘far too camp for me,’ but Andrew held a somewhat different view and felt everything had gone fabulously.
For some time now, the Ugly One and I have been debating the age of Andrew Stone who seems somewhat well-preserved although ostensibly 28. In a recent interview, however, things become a little clearer:-

“ ‘I was born to be on the stage,’ said Andrew, 28.
‘The minimum I want is a No1 hit and I know I'm going to make it big. ‘I've been in this game for so many years and I know my time has come.
‘As an artist, I could learn a song in an evening and a dance overnight, so I feel very sincerely that I'm ready to crack the world.’
The show spotlights relationships between Andrew, the outrageously camp Louie and their boss, Debbie Moore.
And, amazingly, the fame Andrew so desperately seeks appears to be coming to fruition.
Since the show started, he has been able to jump queues at B&Q and gets free burgers at McDonald's.
‘Showbusiness is my life,’ he said. ‘I love it when people recognise me and it gives me a massive boost.
‘Louie loves it too, although he might not admit it.
‘We've known each other since we were 10 years old when we used to compete against each other in dance competitions in Norwich. It's weird how things have come full circle.’ ”

OK.. It has been already established that Louie is forty years old, so unless the 22 year old Louie was in competition with ten year olds in Norwich at some point, something is gravely amiss.

Saturday 27 March

2010-04-08T01:52:00.001-07:00

Voluble (adj) Capable of adjusting the sound on an electronic device.

For the last week we have been looking after Henry, our friend Robert’s loveable but bipolar dog. Henry’s moods alter between comatose and manic, the manic exhibiting itself in Henry throwing his toys around the room as if they are stunned prey awaiting dispatch.
This evening, Henry had to be banished to his owner’s flat for a few hours as we went to see Peter Gabriel at the O2 performing his new ‘Scratch my Back’ album.
Despite looking now like a cross between Anthony Hopkins and Phil Mitchell, and sporting a designer Jedi master hoodie, Gabriel has lost none of his power to dazzle and amaze. I have seen him perform live three times now and he always leaves me stunned.
What also left me stunned was the O2 vending machine which required £3.90 for a bag of Rowntrees Fruit Pastilles.
I had a vision of Daleks rampaging through the dome, blasting any and all vending machines with their lethal rays and screeching ‘Extortionate! Extortionate!’

Thursday 18 March 2010

2010-04-08T01:51:00.000-07:00

Perturb (v) To attempt to dislodge the headgear of a Sikh by means of a long stick.

I had a complaint filter into the Underground Bunker today via our Call Centre minions which read, ‘This lady has bruised her ankle and is pregnant because of some defective paving.’ This subsequently became known as The Tarmaculate Conception.
On TV this morning were Cornish shanty singers ‘The Fisherman’s Friends’. Yes, they wear a lot of Arran jumpers, but I was a little disappointed to discover that only three of them are fishermen, and the rest comprise of potters, artists and god knows what else. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find Rick Stein lurking in the back row playing a hurdy gurdy.

Wednesday 17 March 2010

2010-04-01T01:53:00.001-07:00

Cellophane (n) A protective plastic covering specifically designed for cellos.

On the Piccadilly Line this morning I ended up standing next to Charlie from Big Brother (that’s the cute gay Charlie, not the ugly feral Charley from Croydon). He was looking very well-scrubbed and wearing a nice suit. He caught me staring at him and shifted away.
Regular readers will know that I am a great believer in Celebrity Omens, and I haven’t had one yet this year. I am wondering however, whether he is enough of a celebrity to merit an omen. I imagine it would be a minor omen, portending something unsurprising along the lines of Ricky Martin coming out of the closet. Who can tell?
Another man on the Tube was wearing a badge which said ‘Daddy Has Meow Meow’ which was a bit tasteless given that this is another name for the drug Methedrone, which has sent several people to the great beyond of late.
Some CDs and books arrived today as well as my new 1 terabyte hard drive. Hoorah!

Tuesday 16 March 2010

2010-04-01T01:52:00.000-07:00

Violate (v) To carve or mould into the shape of a stringed musical instrument.

I’m liking ‘Them Crooked Vultures’, as well as Gabriel’s new album which is superb.
I’m also liking ‘Caprica’, the prequel to ‘Battlestar Galactica’ which examines the origins of the Cylons on a planet whose design can be described as hi-tech 1930s Chicago.
I’m also liking Mumford & Sons and The Handsome Family, so I’m liking quite a lot today.

Monday 15 March 2010

2010-04-01T01:51:00.002-07:00

Inseminate (adj) Completely devoid of Jewish people

Continuing with my obsessional Indian food mania, I got home this evening, dismantled an old coffee grinder, cleaned it, put it together again and ground up some spices to make garam masala. I have also found an online Indian supermarket that can provide me with the things they don’t sell down Shepherds Bush Market
The Ugly One was somewhat perplexed by all this, since we were watching Coronation Street at the time. Gail Tilsley has been arrested for the murder of her gormless husband and Rita’s come back from holiday with, I am sure, some sort of facelift, although it’s not on the Ivy Tilsley level of inappropriateness.

Sunday 14 March 2010

2010-04-01T01:51:00.001-07:00

Coxswain (n) The Pagan Festival of post-coital disappointment.

Sunday Morning on Radio Three boasted ‘Iain Burnside celebrates wood, exploring its tonal properties and its wider cultural resonances.’ To my disappointment, some of its more racy cultural resonances weren’t explored at all. I think I may write a stiff letter of complaint.

Saturday 13 March 2010

2010-04-01T01:46:00.000-07:00

Courgette (n) An iconic Nineteen Sixties American car which only came in red and ecru. It was the subject of various songs by artists such as Prince, Leonard Cohen and Val Doonican.

Of late, my bipolar obsessions have tended toward the kitchen. I’m working my way steadily through ’50 Great Curries of India’ by Camellia Panjabi.
‘This book will delight, educate and inspire anyone who longs to make authentic curries at home,’ says Nigel Slater on the front cover. He just can’t help sticking his nose in, can he? As people may know, I have an allergy to Nigel Slater.
It may be because he reminds me so much of Alan Bennett that I keep expecting him to say something profound about Thora Hird or the range of rotisserie chickens in Morrisons, but he doesn’t. Nigel doesn’t have a sense of humour, sadly. He just gets inordinately excited about the prospect of eating a courgette while it’s more or less still attached to its parent plant.
Today I made bread; a split tin loaf. It failed to rise to its expected height but is nevertheless very light and tasty. In shape rather than having the aspect of a country cottage with a curved thatch roof, it more resembles one of those flat-topped red brick pubs they build on the corner of council estates.
Then I made a Parsee Red Chicken Curry which wasn’t as red as I’d hoped it would be. I need authentic Kashmiri chillies for that, not the ‘so-called’ Kashmiri chillies I bought from Waitrose. Camellia Panjabi clearly illustrates the difference on page 58.
So, apart from the colour, which ended up being a kind of dark mustard bordering on russet, it was lovely.
This evening we saw ‘Telstar’ which starred Con O’Neill, whom I remembered fondly from a series years ago about removal men based on the film ‘Moving Story’.
It’s a stunning film. O’Neill in particular certainly deserves some kind of award for his performance as Joe Meek, the eccentric record producer who had a studio in his small flat above a handbag shop. Despite the tragic end it’s a joyous and wonderful tale of the triumph of creative genius.
Odd facts emerge from this; two of the guitarists in Meek’s band were Chas Hodges, who went on to be Chas from Chas and Dave, and Ritchie Blackmore who went on to Heavy Rock fame with Deep Purple.

Friday 12 March 2010

2010-03-16T06:49:00.001-07:00

Cardamom (n) An Italian Mothers Day Tradition in which children post written greetings to the mother in question.

As part of our Book Club selection I am now reading ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ by Mohsin Hamid, somewhat reluctantly.
Last year the BBC did a whole series in which Andrew Lord Webber, with the aid of the public, Graham Norton and the ubiquitous Barrowman, selected a candidate for Eurovision for whom Lord Webber wrote a suitably schmaltzy tune.
This year, the songwriters are chubby professional cockney Pete Waterman and his evil sidekick, Mike Stock. Perhaps worried by the effect that Pete Waterman may have on BBC viewers with his menacing glare for six weeks, the PTB wisely cut the whole thing down to one show.
With his customary modesty, Waterman auditioned the hopefuls by requesting them to sing some of his old hits. ‘This is a classic pop song!’ he said, with absolutely no sense of irony, when requesting one poor boy to sing ‘Too Many Broken Hearts’.
A girl called Esma screeched, shouted and hit nearly every wrong note in the catalogue, but was nevertheless put through to the final three by Mr W.
Thankfully, the public have a great deal more sense than Pete Waterman and kicked her arse off the stage straightaway.
Our singer this year then, is a nice man called Josh with a large nose.
Due to the nature of Eurovision, and the fact that songs from the Stock/Aitken/Waterman stable tend to be pants beyond even the Ashley Cole level, we might actually stand a good chance of winning this year.

Thursday 11 March 2010

2010-03-16T06:47:00.001-07:00

Rudder (n) One who ruds professionally and is an accredited member of the Worshipful Order of Rudders. Unqualified or acolyte rudders are generally known as prehensiles , having not yet been awarded the hensiles necessary for full ruddership and membership of the society.

I wish Ashley Cole would stop texting me pictures of his underpants. It wouldn’t be so bad if he was actually in them.
Today I had to visit another doctor, this time an OHS referral from the underground bunker who had sent me to an address near Liverpool Street in the shadow of the gherkin. That sounds like a good title for a novel, I thought, as I strolled past, ‘In The Shadow of The Gherkin’.
The doctor, a very nice but rather strange and intense individual, pronounced me fit and hale and capable of sustained and intense word processing.
So I left and met up with the Ugly One in the Vue at Westfield, where we saw a 3D Alice in Wonderland in their extreme auditorium. The White Queen is based on Nigella Lawson apparently, which is quite apparent when one watches the movie.
After that a KFC bucket was called for, and we quaffed it merrily, pleased with the way that the day had gone.

Wednesday 10 March 2010

2010-03-16T06:44:00.000-07:00

Facetious (adj) In possession or alleged possession of a fat wide head on which the face appears to be wider spread across the front than would be normally acceptable.

I had a very difficult time getting to the hospital for my monthly appointment with the Professor. There were signal failures everywhere it seems and I was stranded at Edgware Road for a goodly period.
Once at the hospital however, I went straight to the blood test department and took a ticket from their safeways deli ticket machine just in case I needed one, as the waiting time is usually horrendously long. It is a good job I did as the Professor, being a thorough sort of person, requested some blood tests anyway. Consequently my wait was a shorter one as my number still hadn’t come up by the time I got back there.

Monday 8 March 2010

2010-03-16T06:41:00.000-07:00

Mildew (n) Word derived from the name of Shakespeare’s hero from the play ‘How’s About It?’

I had to stay home today to wait for the boilerman. He comes every year to check that our boiler is up to spec, and generally tells us that, like myself, it’s a bit old, but working OK.
While he was tinkering with the plumbing I was online and had got a message from a man in Saudi Arabia who had tracked me down on the internet.
‘You look like Michael Chiklis!’ he said, ‘I’ve been searching for someone who looks like Michael Chiklis.’
‘Michael Chiklis? The man from The Shield? That’s a coincidence,’ I said, looking at his online photo, ‘because I’ve been searching for someone who looks like Carlos from Desperate Housewives.’
‘I haven’t seen The Shield,’ said Carlos, ‘but I fell in love with Michael Chiklis in The Fantastic Four.’
‘So…’ I said, ‘You think I look like Michael Chiklis in The Fantastic Four as The Thing!’
I was interrupted by the boilerman who needed to check my gas cooker, which I had fortunately cleaned the day before.
Carlos from Desperate Housewives must have thought I was highly offended and had diplomatically logged off, although he did send me an apologetic message later.

Sunday 7 March 2010

2010-03-16T06:35:00.000-07:00

Pilate (n) A Japanese pirate

I hied it off to the celebrity sauna, which I am now renaming The Celebrity Lookalike Sauna. Hugh Firmly-Wherewithal was there today wandering around in some outrageously tight white boxer briefs. I can’t think what he was after dressed like that. It wasn’t wild garlic or rabbits, I know that.
Back home, I cooked my famous Kung Pao Chicken. It normally has peanuts in it, but I had some cashews to use up so I chucked those in. It makes a very good alternative.
There have been several versions of Agatha Christies ‘Ten Little Indians’. The original novel had the ‘N’ word rather than ‘Indians’ and featured, as I recall, a golliwog on the front cover in a pool of blodd, or maybe I’m imagining the blood.
The title has been variously changed to ‘Ten Little Indians’ or ‘Then There Were None’ (which was used when we saw the stage play some time ago). Tonight we saw a version from 1974 with Richard Attenborough, Oliver Reed and Elke Sommer set not on an island but a remote desert hotel. It also featured Charles Aznavour who, upon arrival, headed straight for the piano and began to sing ‘Dance in the Old Fashioned Way’.
‘I hope he’s the first to go,’ I said to the Ugly One, ‘I can’t stand much more of this.’
Nor could the murderer apparently, for within minutes Aznavour was lying dead on the stairs poisoned by a spiked after dinner sherry.

Saturday 6 March 2010

2010-03-16T06:34:00.000-07:00

Aspirate (n.) An angry snake

I didn’t go anywhere today. Instead I mooched around the house, getting on the Ugly One’s nerves while he was trying to watch ‘Poirot’. We were supposed to have gone to see The Wolfman at the new Vue in Westfield, but they’ve taken it off.
This evening I made Ghosht Alu Bakharah (which is probably spelt completely differently) which is curried lamb with plums. Despite the somewhat offputting mixture, it tastes very good.

Friday 5 March 2010

2010-03-12T01:51:00.001-08:00

Predetermine (v) To get oneself suitably vexed and stubborn well in advance of a pending argument.

The Ugly One made sausage and mash. These days it’s never ordinary sausage and mash, not that I’m complaining. It was mashed swede, potato and spring onion with home made gravy, peas and roasted fennel. I am being slowly killed by indulgence.
Tonight we watched ‘Prime Suspect’, the original 1991 series in which Helen Mirren as DCI Tennison takes over a murder investigation when DCI Shefford has a heart attack in the Super’s office and dies in the arms of Sergeant Ottley.
I’d forgotten how good this is. Gripping, gritty, compelling, and with the occasional dash of mordant wit, it’s an acting masterclass from Mirren and Tom Bell as the old school Sergeant Ottley.

Thursday 4 March 2010

2010-03-12T01:47:00.001-08:00

Pneumonia (n) A morbid fear of decimal currency which reached epidemic proportions when old money was abolished in 1971.

On a whim I bought a new filofax from the filofax shop in the West End, opposite Vivienne Westwood’s. My last filofax, which I only occasionalluy used, is a special Batman edition which came out at the same time as the original Michael Keaton film.
I’m going to keep it. I thought it might be worth a bob or two but having checked on e-bay I discover that an unused one has sold for £2.20.
My new one is a gooseberry leather domino, which looks as gay as it sounds, and is quite lovely.
Celebrities are dying like flies. It must be the latest fashion among the glitterati. Let’s hope it spreads to the Z-list.

Wednesday 3 March 2010

2010-03-12T01:44:00.000-08:00

Quark (n) The call of an aristocratic duck. (v) To call in such a manner.

The BBC, which hasn’t made a sensible decision in years (apart from possibly to cancel Amanda Holden’s woeful sitcom ‘The Big Top’, although one also has to remember that it was the BBC’s decision to make it in the first place) has now decided to axe Radio 6 Music, which has caused a bit of a storm. Cerys from Catatonia has started a protest to save the station which champions new music and upcoming bands. She has described the decision as ‘like cutting off your little finger to lose weight.’
This rather painful simile seems to have roused the world of music and entertainment into action since as I was buying my coffee this morning in the San Marino I saw Gary Numan on their TV lambasting the BBC whose decision is based on the shaky premise that there are other commercial stations that provide the same service.
Gary Numan pointed out that there are far more that provide exactly the same service as Radio One, which plays only chart music (at least during peak hours). The executive who made the decision (a rather portly lady in a business suit who didn’t look as if she’d know her Aerosmith from her Elbow) bleated a little about ratings and audience expectations and seemed to imagine that the role of Radio 6 could be incorporated in Radios 1 and 2. I can’t see this as a viable option since their airspace is finite, and any incursion by Radio 6 programming would have to be in the low-peak hours when Girls Aloud aren’t squawking .
Anyway, I’d be grateful if people could lodge their protests with the BBC to save this valuable resource.

Tuesday 2 March 2010

2010-03-12T01:39:00.000-08:00

Prioritise (v) To book someone into an expensive rehab clinic.

We saw ‘Angels and Demons’ tonight. Oh dear! From what I can gather, since I was laughing too much to follow the plot too closely, a Vatican priest had been creating anti-matter with the aid of what looked like some Victorian brass gas pipes, and some of the anti-matter had subsequently gone missing. Tom Hanks was summoned back to the Vatican to help look for it, and track down The Illuminati. They are a kind of Opus Dei Lite, and appear to be behind the theft, some killings, brandings, and the threat to send the Vatican into a black hole.
It wasn’t difficult to work out what was really going on. The real mysteries were how Ewan McGregor could have lived in Italy since the age of four and still have an Irish accent, and why Dan Brown is so bafflingly popular.

Sunday 28 February 2010

2010-03-05T06:06:00.001-08:00

Fishkettle (n) The Aztec God of Kitchenware.

I was full of beans today. I cannot say why. I cleaned out the shelves on which I keep my spices and sundry comestibles, since they were somewhat unkempt and discovered several bags of noodles, some unopened cashew nuts and half a bag of rice, all of which I was unaware.
I also made some Polish Rye bread, but it didn’t rise to the occasion as much as I had hoped. It tastes lovely, but has the consistency of a small bag of sand, and it takes a full head of steam to get the knife in to it.
Nevertheless, I was determined to eat it and had some toasted with smoked salmon, and later created a somewhat stiff chicken and mayonnaise sandwich.
I spent the evening sorting out the music on my MP3 player.

Thursday 25 February 2010

2010-03-05T06:04:00.002-08:00

Cochineal (n) An interesting example of onomatopoeia in that this is the word for sneeze in the Aztec dialect

I had a day off today, just on a whim, and went first thing to pick up the new DVD/HDD beast, which I left for the Ugly One to deal with and nipped off to the Celebrity Sauna.
No celebrities today, which was a relief, since they inevitably stalk me.
The Ugly One duly set up the new beast which is working perfectly, although in a perverse act of defiance the old one has now decided to work properly.

Wednesday 24 February 2010

2010-03-05T06:04:00.001-08:00

Parasite (n) A designated area reserved for soldiers who wish to go camping.

Our DVD/HDD recorder has become progressively sicker over the last couple of days and now just flashes messages of distress at us.
Consequently, we have ordered a new one from The Great God Argos which I will be picking up tomorrow.

Tuesday 23 February 2010

2010-03-03T05:52:00.001-08:00

Balaclava (n) A Welsh harpsichord

I have to say that although I normally avoid reality shows, I am unaccountably hooked by ‘Pineapple Studios’ which takes the cameras inside the famous dance studio to show us the lives of the shy and retiring folk who work there.
One could be forgiven for thinking one was watching a mockumentary along the lines of ‘That Peter Kay Thing’ or ‘This is Spinal Tap’ since some of the protagonists seem completely unaware of the yawning void between the image they have of themselves and hard reality.
On the good side we have Louie Spence, the ubercamp Creative Director who, I am sure, will never return to TV obscurity. Like Julian and Sandy reborn in one muscle-bound volume, Louie is a lisping high-energy witmeister who can turn his hand to anything from having to ‘clean up poo. Someone missed the ¬toilet twice the other day and did it on the doorstep. I Am Not Lying’ to backflipping around the dancefloor to show a crowd of wannabee teenagers how it’s done. I love him.
On the dark side, someone really needs to have a word with Andrew Stone, the self-proclaimed ‘ready made pop star.’ He may have been ready made at some point, but things have gone off a bit since.
Andrew (‘Some people are IN showbusiness, some people ARE showbusiness. I AM showbusiness!’) is the lead singer of the (unsigned) band ‘Starman’, whose members and manager seem to think it is still the Nineteen Eighties. Like most people who want to BE showbusiness, Andrew and his band have worked very hard on their image and have done a professional photoshoot (during which Andrew got very concerned and lip-trembly about being upstaged by a lady in a loud frock, and Jesus the guitarist threw a hissy fit when someone got chocolate on his nice shirt), but so far don’t seem to have actually produced any music. Having said that, if you ARE showbusiness, that’s not really necessary, I suppose.

Monday 22 February 2010

2010-03-03T05:51:00.000-08:00

Depot (v) To pour the tea.

Now our DVD/TV recorder has decided to throw a strop and refuses to record ‘Days of Our Lives’ which is a bit of a worry for me since characters are currently being murdered weekly. Doctor Marlena has had a mouthful of poisoned dip at the funeral of the last victim, and now lies close to death while her family and friends fall to their knees around the bed, clenching their fists and shouting ‘Nooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!’
John Black’s detachable and sentient eyebrows are so incensed by this turn of events that they have left his face altogether and gone off to find the murderer on their own.
I will have to purchase a new machine just so I can keep up.

Sunday 21 February 2010

2010-03-03T05:45:00.000-08:00

Gully (n) The V-shaped depression in the neck which in men nestles the Adam’s Apple.

The odious Katie Price has a new series and in the trailer she hopes, somewhat optimistically, that nothing terrible happens to her this year. I hope that too. Well, nothing trivial anyway. Her vocal cords may get eaten by a ferret, which would make interesting tv, and improve the programme no end in the process. She may have a fatal attack of good taste and give her child a proper name, rather than Tiramisu. Who knows?
We had fortune cookies at dinner yesterday and mine said that I was destined to enjoy fine things and would never have a serious accident.
Hoorah!

Saturday 20 February 2010

2010-03-03T05:44:00.000-08:00

Dermatology (n) The study of Irish TV presenters.

her face is the rain
it dampens the atmosphere
pulls down all our skies

Robert and his dog Henry came round for dinner this evening and the Ugly One cooked Sweet and Sour Pork, which came out perfick.
When I plugged my mp3 player into the pc to play some ambient sounds, the computer went a bit weird and switched all its speakers off.
The Ugly One had to fiddle with the setting for ages to get everything back to normal.
I hate technology.

Wednesday 17 February 2010

2010-03-03T05:42:00.000-08:00

Vista (n) A popular brand of Nineeten Seventies New Zealand Packet curries.

the black dog is back
following me through the rain
sleeping on my chest

‘Holby City’ has been on twice a week, which is very confusing. We also watched ‘Wallander’, the Kenneth Branagh version, not the Swedish version. It’s very bleak. I’m surprised the man gets out of bed in the mornings. He’s suffering from depression because he killed someone, his artist father is in a nursing home, and this week men were being tortured and killed all over the Swedish countryside while his father escaped and went home to his studio to die.

Tuesday 16 February 2010

2010-02-19T02:23:00.001-08:00

Prevaricate (v) To paint fashionable veins one one’s legs in advance of old age.

My mp3 player is so full of stuff now that half the time I have no idea what I am listening to, and, while reading on the Tube for instance, can’t be bothered half the time to pull the machine out of my pocket to check what the track is. In the future, no doubt, I will have the option to have the name of the track and artist scroll across my eyeballs in an organic font of my choosing, but for now, I’m stuck with what I have.
I leave it on constant shuffle, which is perfect for me since it forces me to listen to stuff I may not choose voluntarily, and the tracks are a genuine surprise.
It is, as you may expect (or not, since you may not know who I am), an eclectic mix. representing the Classical community, we have Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi, Maria Callas and Philip Glass (among others). There’s a good representation of World music, which consists in the main of South American/Latino although I also have some Romanian gypsy music which was recommended by The Evening Standard. Then we have jazz and blues, from Charlie Mingus, Albert King, The Nigel Price Trio and some older blues artists whose names escape me, although I’m pretty sure they all begin with ‘Blind’.
Then there’s rock from Rammstein, Pink Floyd and Yes, some Beatles, Them Crooked Vultures, Frank Zappa, Syd Barrett, the complete Kraftwerk, some folky stuff from The Imagined Village (who do a very interesting version of Slade’s ‘Cum On Feel The Noize’) and a double CD of cover versions from The Ministry of Sound, a double CD of Erasure that I found in Barnardos, Siouxsie and The Banshees and The Editors.
I’m particularly fond of The Editors, who are the best band I’ve come across in the last few years. They seem to know what they’re doing, and they do it very well, which is all one can ask for.

Monday 15 February 2010

2010-02-19T02:22:00.001-08:00

Acrophobia (n) a morbid fear of circus performers

The Ugly One rang me in a panic at work, as Robert’s boss had rung our home, Robert having put us down as his emergency contact. It seemed that he had not turned up for work this morning, and was not answering his phone. Just to be sure I rang it myself, but it just rang for about a minute and then disconnected.
‘I’ll have to go round and check on him!’ the UO said, and promised that he would ring me when he found out what was happening.
My colleague, Mr WCS Harbinger (WCS being ‘Worst Case Scenario’) immediately began concocting visions of Robert lying dead at home being systematically consumed by his dog who would have no other source of nourishment.
As it turned out, R had been ill during the night, had slept through the morning and consequently had not rung in.
‘How is he?’ asked Mr WCS Harbinger.
‘Alive, but slightly chewed,’ I replied.

Sunday 14 February 2010

2010-02-19T02:21:00.001-08:00

Billingsgate (n) Word used to denote the scandal of Beryl Billings, who was exposed by The Wrexham Leader in 1989 via taped conversations as the one woman in North Wales who voted Conservative throughout the Nineteen Eighties.

I had a dream the other night in which I was looking after some goats in a field. A man I had never seen before, a tall, chunky, gingery blonde man, came up to me and said ‘How did you get into keeping goats?’ to which I replied, ‘I used to drive pigs about.’
Yes. that’s what I thought.
This evening I made some seafood laksa with king prawns, Pollock, salmon and smoked haddock. I’m not sure how successful the final result was, as the smoked haddock tended to overpower everything.

Saturday 13 February 2010

2010-02-19T02:19:00.000-08:00

Plethora (n) The placenta of the sperm whale. In the eighteenth century this was often collected, dried, cured, and used by whalers’ wives as shopping baskets.

On a whim, I decided to make my own pizza. Actually it wasn’t an immediate whim, as I had bought some packets of pizza base mix from Sainsburys earlier in the week.
So, I made the bases, and the UO had kindly made me a tomato sauce to spread over them. It was then just a case of strategically arranging some mozzarella and assembling the toppings. I had, being the sort of person who perennially overbuys, supplied myself with a plethora of toppings. One pizza had coverings of two sorts of salami, parma ham, olives, anchovies and roasted peppers, and the other had chicken, bacon, chillies, anchovies and roasted peppers.
Once they were ready, the UO fired up the DVD and we watched ‘X-Men origins – Wolverine’ in which Hugh Jackman reprised his role as the blade-fisted one. It was better than X-Men 3, but that isn’t saying much. On the whole it was very good. Gambit makes an experience. I’ve always thought his mutant power to be a stupid one, since he would be entirely helpless if playing cards had never been invented.
The pizzas came out very well, if a little weighty. Holding an entire slice just wasn’t viable so we had to resort to knives and forks.

Friday 12 February 2010

2010-02-19T02:17:00.000-08:00

Loth (n) A square of translucent material which was traditionally used by mediums to cover and consequently dim the glare of electric light

As we were loth (we are often loth, it has to be said. If there is one thing which we regularly are, it is loth) to go out on Sunday to celebrate Valentine’s Day, I booked a table at Indian Zing in Hammersmith, which is becoming one of my favourite places to go.
I met up with The Ugly One in a pub called Salutation, and either they are very expensive or I haven’t been out drinking for quite some time. Two double vodka and cokes, in very narrow test tube style glasses, came to £12.80.
By the time I’d picked myself up off the floor, which I presume they pepper with sawdust from some of the rarest of Amazonian trees, the Ugly One had arrived.
Indian Zing was marvellous. I had crab claws and lobster.
I’m so posh sometimes I despise myself.

Thursday 11 February 2010

2010-02-12T05:54:00.002-08:00

Persiflage (v) To constantly beat, e,g a wilful child or a carpet.

While sitting in Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, waiting to be called in for a blood-test, my thoughts were drawn, as they often are, to ‘Coronation Street’ and the onscreen lives of Ken and Dierdre Barlow. The hospital has picked up some old ticket machines from a Safeways Deli Counter. The number on the LCD screen was 9. My ticket was 34, so I had quite a time to ponder.
I’m thinking of commissioning an opera based on the life of Ken and Dierdre, although I haven’t thought of a title as yet.
Ideally it would have a score by Philip Glass, and would be a Beckett-esque tragedy covering thirty years, one decade per act, and with a different person playing their psychotic daughter Tracy every time she appears on stage, just to keep it real.
Act I begins on a high note with the wedding of Ken and Dierdre, lots of choruses and a duet, but laced with a menacing counter-melody from Mike Baldwin, whose affair with Dierdre in 1983 initiates a feud that continues through the years until Mike’s tragic death in Ken Barlow’s arms in 2006.
After the blood test I had to have my knee x-rayed by two children. I swear they were on work experience or something. One of them had barely started shaving, and she was the one who looked the oldest.

Wednesday 12 February 2010.

2010-02-12T05:54:00.001-08:00

Matador (n) A Spanish rug, placed at the entrance of the house in order that guests may wipe their feet on it before they enter the house.

We watched a very interesting Horizon documentary about infinity this evening which was presented in the usual pop-science way that the BBC presents science these days. Intercut with scenes of children who were asked for the biggest number they could think of (one of said ‘a hundred and twenty’) were interviews with working scientists and mathematicians who have long pondered the concept and presented us with some of their conclusions.
It is a sad fact that most scientists are far more eccentric in real life than any of their fictional counterparts, although it cannot be doubted that they are weirdly brilliant.
I did like the concept of the infinite hotel, which one professor (who looked and sounded like Marty Feldman’s Igor from ‘Young Frankenstein’) used as an example of how to understand infinity.
If, for instance, the professor booked a room at the infinite hotel, and it was fully booked, a room could be found by making all the guests move one room up, thus leaving room 1 free.
Thinking about that in depth makes me feel queasy.
I also learned that a googol is a 1 with a hundred noughts after it, and is a very big number indeed, not as big as a googolplex which is the number 10 raised to the power of googol.
Then there is Graham’s number, invented by Ronald Graham, a mathematician and former circus performer (honestly, he was trampolining on ‘Horizon’ just to emphasise the fact) which seeks to solve a problem in Ramsey theory involving n-dimensional hypercubes.
In layman’s terms, the problem is:-
‘Take any number of people, list every possible committee that can be formed from them, and consider every possible pair of committees. How many people must be in the original group so that no matter how the assignments are made, there will be four committees in which all the pairs fall in the same group, and all the people belong to an even number of committees.’ I am obviously not a layman, as I still can make head nor tail of it.
Anyhoo, Graham’s number is so big that there isn’t enough matter in the universe on which to write it down.
I confess that at this point I got a bit lost. I was on more familiar ground when they started talking about monkeys and typewriters, and a scientist has started a computer simulation to try and produce sections of Shakespeare from randomly generated text, although already he has surmised that to produce an entire line of Shakespeare’s text would take at least from the time of the Big Bang until now. So, given infinite time, the complete works of Shakespeare could be produced randomly by a monkey on a typewriter, but that gives me a terrifying partial glimpse of how long infinite time just might be.

Monday 8 February 2010

2010-02-10T05:37:00.000-08:00

Flimsy (adj.) Exhibiting the characteristics of a Flim.

Coronation Street is getting a bit dark of late. Peter Barlow is descending into a self-created hell of alcoholic madness, possibly because he has never come to terms with the fact that he used to be Scottish and ginger, and some time back transformed, in true Doctor Who fashion, into an Italian Mancunian. Or maybe it’s because no one seems to recognise that his best friend is Keith Duffy from Boyzone, or realise that Kim from Hearsay is working behind the bar in the Rovers. It’s enough to drive anyone to the Newton and Ridley.
Meanwhile, Gail Potter-Tilsley-Platt-Hillman-McIntyre has been taken off to ‘The Lakes’ by her newest husband, Joe. (‘The Lakes’ for Corrie residents is a bit like Leicester is for Eastenders characters. Some people never return.)
Joe has refurbished a boat and ominously named it ‘Gail Force’. Joe is also in serious debt to a creepy loan shark, and has decided to fake his own death. He should have known better than to try and fake it in ‘The Lakes’. The power of ‘The Lakes’ will compel him to stay, and indeed he was dragged to a watery doom beneath ‘Gail Force’ while a baleful full moon shone down on Gail Potter-Tilsley-Platt-Hillman-McIntyre, falling to her knees on the jetty and shouting ‘Joooooooooooooooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!’
OK. She did shout ‘Joooooooooooooooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!’ but she didn’t fall to her knees. She should have. It’s the traditional thing to do in these circumstances.
Gail should have known better than to marry Joe. Out of her four husbands, three have come to sticky ends, and the other one ran off with a Geordie, which is worse than being gay in Weatherfield. However, as her husband sinks (possibly to re-emerge in Holby City), her son Nick returns, himself transformed into a less blonde version with new sticky-out grabbable ears.
I want to live in a street where you can go away and come back regenerated. I’d avoid ‘The Lakes’ though, and Leicester.

Sunday 7 February 2010

2010-02-10T05:36:00.000-08:00

Mancunian (adj) A description applied in the Nineteenth Century to the Chinese residents of Rusholme. A film, ‘The Mancunian Candidate’ starring George Formby and Gracie Fields, detailing the trials and tribulations of one such immigrant was released in 1946, but soon withdrawn due to complaints about its depressing subject matter. Formby’s famous songs about Mr Woo were originally commissioned for this picture.

I couldn’t be arsed to go out anywhere, and planned a quiet day on the sofa reading my book, but the Ugly One decided to clean out the fish tank so I escaped to the bedroom and put all my books in alphabetical order.
At the moment I am reading ‘The Shadow of The Torturer’ by Gene Wolfe, which I read some years ago, and didn’t get on with. Now however, I am finding it a vastly more enjoyable experience.
‘24’ is back, and Jack Bauer is up to his neck in it trying to prevent weapons grade uranium reaching a dastardly foreign country. Oddly, the president of the country is the presenter of the Indian ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’.

Saturday 6 February 2010

2010-02-10T05:35:00.000-08:00

Scouse (n) A small parasitical invertebrate which infests the armpits. Not as common today as in Victorian times when the practice of mutual armpit-rubbing was a secret vice among many sections of society.

I spent a relaxing afternoon making Penang paste. I’d already been out to the shops but had to go back to get cumin seeds. God bless Indian corner shops! This evening I made Chicken Penang which was so good I wanted it to bear my children.
The Sky ad with Gene Wilder singing a song from Willy Wonka is beginning to get on my nerves. Needless to say, the Go Compare ads haven’t got any funnier, or any more appealing in any sense. The meerkats have nothing to worry about.

Friday 5 February 2010

2010-02-10T05:34:00.000-08:00

Acquiesce (v) To leak water until one dissipates completely, leaving only a greasy puddle.

Today I went into the underground bunker gentlemen’s toilet and someone was sitting playing Super Mario in the next cubicle. I could recognise the distinctive sound effects.

Thursday 4 February 2010

2010-02-05T05:46:00.000-08:00

Mendacious (adj) Fabulously masculine

Sometimes fiction and reality interact to provide a surreal day. This morning I walked into the gentlemen’s toilet in the underground bunker and found a Traffic warden singing and dancing in front of the mirror.
Then there’s the Sontarans. I have two colleagues who bear such a strong resemblance to Doctor Who’s Sontarans that I cannot but help imagining them in warrior space suits. There is another one who comes in for meetings, bearing the same hairless dome. Maybe I am right. Maybe this is a small scout party on a reconnaissance trip to gauge the underground bunker’s defences.
Watch the skies, readers!
On a whim, having realised that I have no Bob Dylan in my CD collection, I popped into HMV and found two Bob Dylan albums in their ‘2 for £10’ sale. There never seems to be a time of the year when HMV are not having a sale so one might as well conclude that at any one time they will be selling cheap CDs of one sort or another.
I was delayed getting home due to a person under a train at Finchley Road, which is a very sanitised way of telling commuters that someone has flung themselves under the wheels of a moving train and has no doubt, ended up in various bloody pieces.
In these times of campaigns for the legalisation of assisted suicides, it should surely be an option that people who wish to take the ‘under the train’ route to the hereafter should be allowed to do so at a scheduled time and place. I would imagine the stretch between Uxbridge and Hillingdon on the Piccadilly Line would be perfect as it seems to be always closed for random spurious reasons.

Wednesday 3 February 2010

2010-02-05T05:42:00.000-08:00

Polynesia (n) A pernicious disease which strikes unexpectedly at parrots’ legs.

Midsomer Murders has become something of a National Treasure. DCI Tom Barnaby has been mopping up the blood and bodies in the sleepy Shire of Midsomer since 1997, so the entire premise of the programme has acquired a kind of tongue in cheek element.
The greatest mystery of Midsomer, however, is why DS Dan Scott (John Hopkins) went sick in 2005 and never came back. I’m not that fussed, as he was replaced by a cute Welshman, (Jason Hughes as DS Ben Jones) but I would love to know why his passing was so abrupt.
Tonight we watched DCI Barnaby investigate ‘The Creeper’, in which Rik Mayall was drugged and suffocated by Jenny Agutter.

Tuesday 2 February 2010

2010-02-05T05:41:00.000-08:00

Nomad (n.) A wandering sane person.

Sausage chips and beans! Hoorah!
My favourite meals, despite my predilection for complicated exotic recipes, are the comfort foods of my youth, which generally involve either sausages or potatoes, or both.
The Ugly One decided, on a whim, that tonight we would have sausage, chips and beans, and very nice it was too.
Continuing from my hype diatribe of yesterday, I am rather surprised at myself since I never mentioned the I-Pod, perhaps the most pernicious of bad quality fashion accessories, not only because one is committed to having to use I-Tunes to upload music, but also because the product (as has been reported) is prone to breakages and the company are loth to replace the damaged items. Another problem is that the trademark white earphones are possibly the most sound-polluting headphones ever made. Whenever I hear the overloud hissbeat of an MP3 player on the Tube (and it has to be loud to be overheard on the Tube) nine times out of ten it is the evil white headphones of the Satan I-Pod.
And yet the I-Pod is baffling popular. Why?
‘They come in nice colours,’ a colleague told me yesterday when I questioned her rationale for planning to purchase one. That says it all really. We live in a culture where style is vastly more important than content or function. Where greed was good in the eighties, shallowness is the virtue of the Noughties and beyond.

Monday 1 February 2010

2010-02-05T05:40:00.000-08:00

Impotent (adj) Incapable of erecting a wigwam

Our book club book this month is Alan Bennett’s ‘Talking Heads’, the scripts of his seminal BBC series in which he wrote monologues for famous actors of the day, including himself. One would have thought that in reading them without the benefit of the actor’s interpretation one might have lost something, but so far that is not the case. In the case of Patricia Routledge’s beautifully rounded tones, they are easy to imagine in one’s head, and for Alan Bennett’s own performance ‘A Chip In the Sugar’ I tried to imagine it as a Welsh voice. This worked remarkably well, and if one exchanged the placenames, i.e. Bolton, Bradford and Ripon with, for instance, Chester, Wrexham and Ruthin, one might never know that this had been written for a Lancashire voice, since the cultures are in essence very similar.
There are people in the underground bunker where I work with Blackberrys now. I have nothing against the Blackberry per se, but I have, over the course of my life, acquired an innate hype-sensor.
We are all slaves to many things, but slaves to the hype are the most common. What is it, for instance, that a Blackberry can do that a less expensive mobile phone cannot do? Yes, it has the QWERTY keyboard, which is designed for the thumbs of a small and rare South American monkey, but otherwise, what does it do?
The name Blackberry alone, it seems, confers a glamour which bewitches the most technophobic of us.
‘I’m getting a Blackberry,’ a friend announced to me recently, with such evident glee that I suspected it was a euphemism for penile excitement.
‘Why?’ I asked, which provoked a look of confusion, as if the question had not occurred to him until now.
I never got a proper answer, but the reason is, as I know, that they are fashionable. They may be the most annoying and impractical things on the planet but they are, as Americans would say ‘cute’ or ‘adorable’. I would call them memes personally, cultural viruses which infect the gullible, and are on the same level, culturally speaking, as Hula Hoopas, clackers and moon boots.

Sunday 31 January 2010

2010-02-02T05:55:00.001-08:00

Brogue (n) A popular lesbian fashion magazine.

I took Henry for a walk, or rather, he took me. He had his own ideas about where he wanted to go so I saw no reason to dispute them.
Robert returned and took Henry home. Suddenly it feels very quiet and still, and I am haunted by the thought that something is missing.

Saturday 30 January 2010

2010-02-02T05:53:00.000-08:00

Incurious (adj) Having a long felt want for a tattoo.

So, I braved the bitter winds of Bayswater and set off for the Thai supermarket. As some may know I like to make my own Thai curry pastes, and have been finding it very hard to get hold of Kaffir limes. They look a little bit like proper limes, but are smaller, darker and knobblier. They had no Kaffir limes, so I bought a small ordinary lime instead.
As recommended in my Big Book of Thai Curries, I painstakingly ground the ingredients together in a pestle and mortar. Quite honestly, I don’t see that doing it this way makes any vast difference to the result, so next time I’m using the food-processor.
The Ugly One ordered ‘G-Force’ on his DVD subscription list, not something I would normally choose to watch, but it was an enjoyable enough tale of CGI guinea-pigs and a geek mole forming an elite Task Force.
Henry sat and stared at me pleadingly while I ate my Spicy Coconut Chicken.

Friday 29 January 2010

2010-02-02T05:52:00.001-08:00

Ballad (n) A naughty Chinese boy.

I took the day off today. My bruised ribs are giving me some jip. My intention was to visit the Thai supermarket to stock up on supplies. Instead I limped to Morrisons and bought a lot of ordinary things and some sausage rolls, and had a quiet cappuccino in BB’s café..
I didn’t have to buy much as we were expecting a Tescos delivery this evening.
We were also expecting a visitor since our friend Robert was going home to the Frozen North for the weekend and was leaving his dog Henry in our care.
Henry is a loveable mutt, but being essentially still a puppy he is both boisterous and inquisitive. After Robert dropped him off he whined and whimpered for a good half-hour and then spent the rest of the evening sniffing everything in sight.
We had to lock him in the bathroom when the Tesco man arrived in case he jumped up at him and knocked him back down the stairs.
Anyway, once all that was over and we wiped up the wee that Henry had done when he panicked in the bathroom, we settled down to watch the final of Big Brother.
Celebrity BB has been a bit of a damp squib this year. One would have thought, as this is the last Celebrity BB ever, that Channel Four would have made more of an effort to find actual celebrities as they have in previous years (One is reminded of the Jack Dee, Vanessa Feltz year or the Rula Lenska/George Galloway/Michael Barrymore year, or even the Germaine Greer/John McQuiddick times). Katia, Lady Sovereign and Thisqo? Please! It is little wonder that many people were thinking that BB had filled half the house with fake celebrities (as they did with Chantelle back in the day) who had to convince the real celebrities that they were famous.
Ironically, the competition was won by Alex Reid, the latest victim of the lamia Katie Price. He seems a very nice man, although not the brightest himbo in the firmament.
‘I love Katie Price,’ he told the assembled mob, who all then booed in a very satisfactory manner.
Henry followed us up to bed and slept between us like a furry bolster.

Tuesday 24 January 2010

2010-01-27T07:34:00.001-08:00

Overt (v) To go out in public dressed as an egg.

‘Days of Our Lives’ is continuing one of its periodic dark and spooky periods. A killer is stalking Salem and has already claimed the lives of Pensioner and Supercop Abe Carver and has now bashed ace reporter Jack Devereaux over the head with a brick.
Supernatural signs have been visited upon the people of Salem, far more potent than my Green Man experience. Old Alice Horton has been seeing the floating head of her dead husband hovering over the sofa, and Maggie Horton has been hearing evil children singing nursery rhymes about chopping up members of the cast.
Jack Devereaux, of course, has returned from the dead before. This time, however, having been seen in the obligatory coma which at least one cast member has to be in at any one time, his wife Jennifer switched off his life-support at the mains. His body then shone and his ghostly glowing soul rose from the sheets and winked a final wink to the viewers before fading away into the credits. I don’t think he can come back from this as Jennifer has farmed out his organs to needy Salem transplant-list people.

Monday 23 January 2010

2010-01-27T07:33:00.000-08:00

Overween (v) To miss the toilet when urinating.

My embarrassing moment of the day came when I was returning to the Underground bunker from the Brixton branch of Marks & Spencer with a bag of biscuits and tripped over a kerbstone, hurling myself bodily flat onto the wet pavement. I suffered a grazed knee and a bruised chest. I was touched by the fact that a nice Portuguese man came to my aid, as well as a colleague who had been walking behind me.
‘You should be careful,’ said the Portuguese man. ‘If you fall like that you can break your spectacles!’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I shall bear that in mind when next I fall.’
I felt more stupid than anything else, and what further annoyed me was that not one biscuit had suffered so much as a crack.

Saturday 22 January 2010

2010-01-27T05:26:00.000-08:00

Scamper (n) A conman who lives in a tent.

I have seen today how easily superstitions or the concepts of ‘signs’ can emerge within society.
I got up this morning and the Ugly One was watching ‘The Green Man’, a somewhat vintage, although quite brilliant, black comedy starring Alistair Sim and a variety of British talent; Dora Bryan, Richard Wattis, George Cole and Arthur Brough (Mr Grainger from ‘Are You Being Served?’) playing the landlord of The Green Man itself.
Once it had finished I set off for the shops and went to up to Edgware Road to do some shopping. As I got on the bus to go two stops to Somerfield, I noticed that the pub behind me had been ‘The Green Man’. Then we passed a set of pelican crossings which was showing the sign to cross, i.e. the green man, and then, almost immediately, we were upon Marks & Spencer, whose large scale window artwork features a sketch of a man wearing presumably M&S clothing, but who is completely green.
Now, the gullible among us having had such an experience would say ‘Oooh, it must mean something’ and it is quite understandable that they should do so, but why should it mean something?
The randomness of events ensure that generally events conform to the laws of averages and probabilities. However, this also ensures that occasionally coincidences occur, and because our brains are hardwired for pattern recognition we connect those items which have symbolic value. Logically there should be no connection between a pub and an electric traffic sign, but because we have attributed a colour and the figurative symbol of a man to both we create a connection.
Yes, it was odd that this particular movie was shown this morning, but the rest of the green men have been in situ for quite some time, and pure coincidence can sometimes be a delight. There is nothing supernatural about it, and to those of you who habitually say ‘There must be something in it!’ I would ask you to think very hard upon the question ‘Why must there be something in it?’

Thursday 21 January 2010

2010-01-22T06:55:00.002-08:00

Risotto (n) A famous German brand of cigarette paper.

On a whim, I decided to cook my signature dish, Welsh Baked Chilli Beef Risotto, which is an old Welsh family recipe handed down from the dawn of recorded vinyl. Being a kind fellow, I have decided to share this recipe with the world.

Roddy’s Welsh Baked Chilli Beef Risotto

(Y Risotto Cig Eidion Chillio Rhodri yn Crasu)

450 gms lean beef mice
1 beef tomato (blanched, peeled and chopped)
1 large onion (chopped)
3 or 4 red or green chillies (chopped, one left unseeded)
3 red and yellow peppers (seeded and sliced)
2 cups of easycook rice (cooked, drained and left to go cold)
1 beef stock cube
2 tbsp tomato ketchup
2 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
1 large packet of tortilla chips
Mild Cheddar Cheese (or any cheese of your choice)
2 Tablespoons Groundnut Oil

In a large saucepan, fry the onions, peppers and chillies in the groundnut oil until soft.
Pour yourself a large vodka and coke, and drink liberally throughout the process.

Meanwhile, in a small pan heat 250ml of water on a low light and add the stock cube, ketchup and chilli sauce.

Add the meat to the fried vegetables and stir until the meat is browned, and mixed with the vegetables.

Add the chopped tomato and continue to fry and stir for 2 minutes.

Add the cooked rice, stir to mix and then add the sauce. Lower the heat and continue stirring until the mixture is mixed. Top up the vodka and coke as necessary.

Decant the mixture into a lasagne dish or baking dish and allow to cool a little. This might be a good time for another drink. Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 4.

Crumble the tortillas into a layer on top and then grate a generous layer of cheese on top of this.

Place in the centre of the oven for 30 minutes.

Serve a slice of the topping with each helping of the risotto, and praise the Welsh for their culinary genius.

Wednesday 20 January 2010

2010-01-22T06:55:00.001-08:00

Fatuous (adj) Too fat to be called just fat.

reluctant morning
the light won’t get out of bed
because the sky sulks.

I was too tired for anything complicated for dinner so I got us a Marks and Spencer Lasagne al Forno, which I hope had the meat of several fawns in it.

Tuesday 19 January 2010

2010-01-20T08:32:00.000-08:00

Avatar (n) A Peruvian form of bitumen, composed of the crushed bodies of Gardner beetles (Dactylopius Avagardnerus). Gardner beetles were discovered in the Nineteen Forties by Hollywood actress Ava Gardner, who often spent her spare time in Peru, classifying insects and cage-fighting with nuns.

vodka and monsters
wetherspoons. three ninety-nine,
and then ‘avatar’.

After two double Smirnoff and Monsters (Monster being the new Red Bull, or, as far as I could tell, the old Red Bull called something else) the Ugly One and I donned our 3-D specs for ‘Avatar’ at the Shepherds Bush Vue.
It was marvellous, despite the fact that the lead female character looks like a blue Katie Price. I was particularly impressed that the US produced a film blatantly demonstrating the US tendency to muscle in on other cultures when there might be a profit in it. Particularly telling was the phrase from the brutal American general, ‘We will fight Terror with Terror!’ which has the strong and repellent whiff of George Bush about it.
The 3-D was outstanding, and this is probably the first film that uses 3-D intelligently rather than a gimmick. I did have to laugh at the use of the word ‘Unobtainium’ which is a phrase coined many decades ago in SF circles to describe those rare metals which the heroes of the works of authors such as John W Campbell and EE ‘Doc’ Smith used to discover on far flung planets, and which could not be found anywhere else.
Rather than hand them back, I kept my 3-D glasses. I paid for them. They are mine.

Monday 18 January 2010

2010-01-20T08:30:00.000-08:00

Oology (n) The study of exclamations of awe.

people make demands
I am glad I’m not famous.
I’d be found in shreds.

Days of Our Lives is going through a spooky phase following the murder of pensioner-cop Abe Carver. Residents are plagued by the voices of children singing nursery rhymes with bad lyrics, and a Blood Moon hangs over Salem shedding a crimson luminance so bright one could almost imagine it was a studio light with a red filter on it.

Sunday 17 January 2010

2010-01-20T08:28:00.000-08:00

Drench (n) A wooden device of the Gwent area of Wales, used for excavating and cleaning the nasal passages.

my chicken rendang
did not look like the picture.
cookery books lie.

London Transport have seen fit to close my local tube lines this weekend so I could not venture far. I therefore went to Morrisons and to the local cut-price bookshop which has opened recently in Shepherds Bush precinct following the demise of Books Etc.
I bought a book which promised me one hundred and eighty wok recipes, and set about making Chicken Rendang.
Although it looked nothing like the picture in the book, which shows something akin to some portions of Kentucky Fried Chicken, it tasted luvverly. Its appearance was somewhat like porridge, and I am baffled as to how the recipe can end up with what it is supposed to look like on the page. Having looked at some pictures online, my Rendang looks far more like those than the one in the book. I suspect that the authors may have used some Kentucky Fried Chicken in the absence of the proper dish.

Saturday 16 January 2010

2010-01-18T08:37:00.000-08:00

Shannara (n) A mythical world where the gullible are tricked by magical means into reading the same story over and over and over again….

then there was the rain
it colours the whole picture.
a soaked tree glistened.

We have started a book club down in the secret government bunker, and the management of this has devolved to me, which is OK, as I can veto the rubbish books.
My choice so far, which my victims will have to read in May, is ‘The Day of The Triffids’ since I am keen to introduce people to real Science Fiction, rather than the Space Opera pap they peddle on the skiffy channel.
Those who know me know that I am an SF junkie and devour books with the same voracious saliva-raged fervour as Kerry Katona in a pasty eating contest.
I like to read the Award Winners when I can. If I had to try and categorise them, the Arthur C Clarke Award is most like the Booker Prize, whereas the Philip K Dick Award is more like the Turner Prize. The Nebulas and Hugos can be compared to the Baftas and the Oscars. Now and again you get a veteran writer getting an award for a book that may have sold well but was probably a sequel to something written forty years ago.
Then there’s the Locus Award which is voted for by the general public (democracy in these matters is never a good idea) and can be related to the TV Quick Award more than anything else. As with some other awards it incorporates fantasy novels, and invariably has a Terry Pratchett title in the finalists and something along the lines of ‘The [insert name of weapon, royal title, piece of jewellery or item of clothing] of Shannara’ (Vol IV of VII). It seems that any excuse for a Shannara novel will do. The latest one is about as asphalter who is called upon to fight the Dark Lord and is called ‘The Tarrer of Shannara.’
Further suggestions for ‘Shannara’ titles are welcomed.
Apart from the Locus TV Quick Awards, most of them do a good job in picking out the best, based on the criteria of the award. The Philip K Dick Award, for instance, goes to the best novel which went straight to paperback (since much of Dick’s early work was published in paperback with no hope at the time of a hardback edition) and often brings up a quirky selection.
This month, our book club selection is ‘Things Fall Apart’ by Chinua Achebe, and is as far from SF as Katie Price is from a dictionary.
It is the story of Okonkwo, a Nigerian of the Nineteenth Century, a hardworking man of tradition, who is faced with alarming changes to his family and culture when European missionaries set up camp in his village.
I enjoyed it enormously.

Friday 15 January 2010

2010-01-16T16:37:00.000-08:00

Homicide (n) A chemical developed by The Christian Right designed to kill gay weeds.

and a fat carmen
sang from a strong balcony
to her fat lover.

When one embarks on egosurfing, i.e. typing one’s own name into a search engine, one should employ discretion in analysing the results.
For instance, apart from the fact that I am apparently both a classical singer and the captain of the England Polo Team, I appear to have been cast as the central figure in the novel ‘Shadows of The Moon Dancing’ by Jim Green, the blurb of which tells me that:-

‘Roddy Williams must hide from the gangsters who have put a contract on his life. His grandfather, a retired Chicago homicide detective sends him to live with a friend and onetime partner who owns a trading post near the Navajo Reservation in Arizona.
Roddy becomes involved in the lives, history, and legends of three different cultures. Can he survive the intercultural conflicts plus the ancient curse that surround his new environment and still keep secret his hiding place?’

I don’t know, but I’ll try my best to do so. I’ve got some experience of intercultural conflicts, but I’ve not so far had to cope with ancient curses.
Talking of ancient curses, Ivana Trump has been remarkably lively and spry in the BB house for a woman of her age, especially considering the additional weight of her unfeasibly huge ears.
This evening the public evicted Katia, the girl who fell for 62 year old Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood, not for his money, but due solely to his good looks and irresistible personality and charm. Also evicted was Heidi Fleiss, the ex-brothel keeper who now breeds parrots for hopefully non-sexual purposes.

Thursday 14 January 2010

2010-01-15T06:01:00.001-08:00

Mullion (n) A stud mullet, used for breeding purposes on fish farms

someone has made me
the lead in a crime novel.
I am fictional.

I haven’t ranted about religion in quite a while. I didn’t want to make a comical point about the Pope being knocked to the ground, as that is akin to those terrible American blooper shows where they feel they have to add sound effects to the clips to make it funnier. I will therefore let the incident stand on its own comical merits.
What has been annoying me of late is his Holiness Stephen Baldwin, who obviously feels he is God’s emissary to the Big Brother House and last night succeeded in convincing Alex Reid to publicly accept Jesus as his Lord and Master.
Far from decrying this act, I am glad it has been shown, since it shows all too graphically how fundamentalist Christians groom their victims. Sadly, the stupider the victim, the easier the process appears to be, and when it comes to poor Alex, he’s not exactly the brightest himbo in the house.
I just hope Vinnie Jones can bring him to his senses before he gets baptised in the Big Brother bathtub.

Wednesday 13 January 2010

2010-01-14T09:41:00.002-08:00

Squeamish (n. adj.) An American Puritan sect who eschew all the trappings of modern life apart from calamari.

snow is nice. babies
who grow up to be killers
are nice at some point.

The snow returned today, on the day I had to go to the doctor to have my prescription renewed. Being British, we have a tendency not to organise ourselves and then to overdramatise the situation.
Admittedly, things are pretty serious in rural areas and many people are isolated by the weather, but in London, most of us will admit that the snow isn’t an enormous problem.
It would appear that stocks of rocksalt and grit have been exhausted, so councils have not been able to grit all the roads.
I crept out and tiptoed tentatively to the doctor’s surgery which was mostly ok, seeing as it was all on level ground, until I came to the surgery itself which has a steep path up to the front door, liberally covered with snow and ice. Not too bad going up. A little scary coming back down.
I decided that a nice hot sauna would be the antidote to such conditions and so set off for the celebrity sauna. Sadly, apart from the steam room and the coffee bar, the place was freezing. Consequently, I spent some time drinking coffee and chatting to the Philippino masseur who tried to convince me via a graphic demonsrtation which involved hoisting his tank top that one of his nipples was bigger than the other after an abortive and ill-judged foray into piercing.
I couldn’t see the difference quite honestly.
You don’t get this sort of thing in Caffé Nero…. sadly.

Tuesday 12 January 2010

2010-01-14T09:41:00.001-08:00

Brandish (n) a ceramic bowl from which one would eat milked oat flakes.

the mornings washed out
like a vest wrung to its death
hanging damp and grey.

Not having been out very much my life is revolving around TV and life in the secret underground bunker, both of which tend to be surreal, fascinating and tedious in equal measure.
In ‘Days of Our Lives’ Abe Carver, the oldest policeman in America, has been gunned down on his own doorstep while his wife and friends were waiting for him to turn up for his son’s christening at the church.
Even though it was within walking distance, and people were getting frantic (including Celeste, who regularly has spooky psychic visions of doom) no one thought to go to the house to see what was keeping him. Had they done so they would then have found him lying in the front garden in a pool of geriatric blood, with a tumbled zimmer frame beside him.

Monday 11 January 2010

2010-01-12T05:44:00.000-08:00

Sonorous (adj) In the manner of an annoying male child.

IT managers
should be sent to slough to wait
for the friendly bombs.

Our secret government bunker underneath the Brixton Academy has been on high alert with all this snow. Such activity has not been seen since the Academy spelt Skunk Anansie’s name wrong a few weeks ago on their big sign above the door.
‘Skunk Ananise’ it shouted out at Brixton in three-foot high letters.
I imagine that Skunk herself must have seriously kicked some Academy ass since the sign was changed by the afternoon.
The council’s efforts to grit the pavements were battled fiercely by both the weather and the Council’s Streetcare Street cleaners who followed the gritters round and dutifully brushed the grit into the gutter.
I am a person of particular habits, one of which is singing at my desk. I claim this as a genetic requirement, since, being Welsh, it is a racial necessity. For generations Welsh mothers who find that their children cannot sing have left them out on a mountain to die. It has long been believed that had the French Canadians adopted this practice we might have avoided the musical holocaust that was Celine Dion, but alas, hindsight is, as they say, twenty-twenty.
My boss, however, is tiring of my warbling and accuses me of singing only old material.
‘You’re always singing songs like ‘Seven Brothers for Seven Sisters’!’ she declared yesterday, despite the fact that, if there even was a song called ‘Seven Brothers for Seven Sisters’, it’s unlikely I would be caught singing it.
She has now provided a money-box and I am obliged to pay 20p a day for the privilege of singing at my own desk. This, I reflect morosely, makes the survival of Celine Dion all the more ironic.
The snow has abated somewhat, and back at home I have become fascinated by Ivana Trump’s ears, which surely have to rival Leonard Nimoy’s in their size and convolutedness.

Sunday 10 January 2010

2010-01-11T06:00:00.000-08:00

Exigent (n) The doorway leading to the outside toilet.

sundays still carry
a nagging scent of terror
PE on mondays.

The weather, as they say, is inclement. Not so much here in the city, although my pavement was iced up for a couple of days. Nevertheless it is cold, and outside of London the country is having a hard time of it.
Older people of course are having none of that.
‘It was much worse in 1963,’ they say. ‘I walked across the Thames!’
Apparently, most of London took the opportunity to walk across the Thames in 1963, even Tony Blair allegedly, who would have been ten years old at the time. However, the number of people who claim to have walked across the Thames would have blanketed it to the point where no ice could be seen.
Ivana Trump is now in the Big Brother House, presumably because there were no British celebrities left on the Z-list from which they pluck their contestants. Stephen Baldwin is beginning to tire me with his relentless gormless cheerfulness and his childish view of the world.
I am not sure if he was serious when he went into the diary room and suggested that Ivana Trump may ‘sleep-cougar’ him if he occupied the bed next to her, and requested to be moved. I’m hoping the sleep-cougaring involves ripping his liver out with a set of US designer nails.

Thursday 7 January 2010

2010-01-08T06:06:00.000-08:00

An arrest warrant has been issued for a Leicester man accused of having sex with a horse and a donkey after he failed to turn up to court.
There’s something particularly British about our fascination with bestiality. Being Welsh, I am regularly and somewhat disconcertingly cheerfully accused of consorting with sheep. I accept the charge with good grace, although in my own defence I have to state that there were no lambs involved, and all the rams were consenting adults.
Paradoxically though, it seems to be generally the English who get charged with these offences. There was a case of horse abuse not so long ago where the accused was caught on cctv carefully placing a bucket behind the object of his affections for him to stand on during the act of congress.
Talking of inbred behaviour, I am fascinated and horrified in equal measure by Stephen Baldwin’s manic religious rants on Celebrity Big Brother.
He has already shocked his fellow housemates by telling them a rather odd story about how, if his daughter was held hostage by someone with a gun to her head who asked her to say ‘Jesus does not exist!’ then he would rather she says ‘Jesus definitely exists!’ which assumes that he would rather his daughter die than say something she probably does not mean under duress.
Now he states that he does not believe in evolution because, ‘if man had evolved from apes then why are apes still here?’
One begins to wonder what sort of education Mr Baldwin and his fellow Americans receive over there. However, no one jumped up to argue with him, or to point out, as most people of my age who had a proper education will know, that apes and humans are descended from a common ancestor and evolved simultaneously.
I suspect that the Bible is the first and last book he will ever read. There seems to be a heavy emphasis on the Old Testament. The other housemates are beginning to look glassy-eyed and one or two are glancing furtively at the meat-knives.

Wednesday 6 January 2010

2010-01-07T08:05:00.000-08:00

The very last ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ seems to be far more of a misnomer this year than in all of its previous incarnations, boasting only two people whom one could properly label as celebrities. There were two people who I thought might have been put in as fake celebrities, namely Cisqo and Lady Sovereign. Neither the Ugly One or myself had ever heard of them. It turns out that Cisqo had a hit in 2000 with a song about thongs and Lady Sovereign is a chav rapper. OK.
Like Jo McElderry, Cisqo is absolutely heterosexual, so it looks like I will have to get my gaydar repaired.
Jonas (aka Basshunter) I only know from random dance tracks which I have avoided on the internet. He is a Scandinavian Tourettes sufferer, who has taken a shine to Katia. Katia is the diminutive and very young Russian blonde who until recently was struggling to explain what first attracted her to the 62 year old millionaire Ronnie Wood.
Dane Bowers lives in Croydon and was having a successful career until he made a single with Victoria Beckham (some years ago) and shacked up with Katie Price. He is rumoured to have recently had a fight with fellow housemate Alex Reid, a cross-dressing cagefighter, currently shacked up with Katie Price.
There’s a page three girl whose name I can’t be bothered to try to remember.
Heidi Fleiss went to prison for prostitution related crimes and has since been a professional reality show contestant, having come straight here from ‘Celebrity Rehab’ and ‘Sober House’. Classy.
Stephen Baldwin once snorted his way through a Mount Ararat of cocaine. Now he is born again and God has fixed his face into an expression of benign and sinister amusement. He was once in The Usual Suspects. In his contract he is allowed to have his big leatherbound bible out for an hour a day. I am sure that very soon many people will want to beat him to death with it.

Real Celebrities:-
Stephanie Beacham: From Dynasty to Coronation Street. Proper classy she is.
Vinnie Jones. Actor, ex-footballer, hard man.

Tuesday 5 January 2010

2010-01-07T05:52:00.000-08:00

‘The Day of The Triffids’ was one of the Christmas shows that the BBC promised. The BBC, it has to be said, are usually very good with their novel adaptations. Their 1981 Day of The Triffids is still regarded as a classic, and is available on DVD, and although the low-tech triffids now seem a tad unrealistic to some, the show was carried by pace and drama and varied little from the original novel.
My fears began when a magazine promised the sight of ‘twenty-foot carnivorous plants rampaging across Britain’. Mmmmm.
It is a sad fact of life that Science Fiction novels, no matter what their historical or literary merit, are never treated with the same respect as their mainstream counterparts. One would never imagine for instance, that a BBC producer would suggest updating ‘Pride and Prejudice’ to the Noughties, or setting ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ in Thatcher’s blighted Britain of the Nineteen Eighties.
Genre novels, however, are fair game for the most annoying of writers to ‘improve’, and usually writers who have only a cursory acquaintance with SF. One only has to look at the recent cinematic versions of ‘The Time Machine’ or ‘War of The Worlds’ to understand the extent of the travesties that result from such decisions.
One would have thought that the BBC would know better. Unfortunately, it seems not.
Yes, ‘Day of The Triffids’ has been set in the present day and the basic framework of the novel has been retained, although the spirit and indeed, the basic point of the novel have been completely lost.
In the original, the triffids were a genetically engineered species some of whose seeds were stolen. The plane in which the seeds were being carried was shot down, but in the process, the box was shattered, and the triffid seeds scattered to the far winds. Thus, not long afterwards, strange plants begin growing across the world, and it is discovered that they produce a very fine oil, but also, that they can walk, on three rudimentary rootlike feet and can also kill, via a stinger from the large lilylike orifice at the top of their stalk. People find that the stinger can be docked and many people keep triffids in their gardens. Undocked species are kept in farms and their oil harvested.
Dr Bill Masen was stung as a child and so has a fascination with the creatures, and has become a scientist researching the beasties.
In the new version, triffids are a natural species, originating from Africa where Masen’s parents were studying them. Masen’s mother was killed by a triffid and his father genetically engineered the plants to produce the oil which replaced carbon fuels.
Ridiculous premise 1: No one, it seems, knows what triffids look like, since they are locked away in farms.
Ridiculous premise 2: The triffids are voraciously carnivorous which begs the question ‘What are they being fed on, in order to produce the environmentally sound oil?’
Ridiculous premise 3: The triffids have prehensile roots which allow them to grip humans so tightly, they cannot break free.
One of the factors of the original novel, which is what makes the story so chilling, is that the triffids are biologically feasible, and had become such a part of the background of our society that we had become used to them. Thus, when the catastrophe occurs (again, the writers felt it important to take it upon themselves to change the meteor showers to a solar flare which again ruins one of the premises of the novel) the sighted survivors find it hard initially to take Masen seriously when he maintains that triffids will become a serious danger.
And, disappointingly, the much-hyped CGI triffids were a bit of a laughable anticlimax. Looking rather like a cross between an aloe vera plant and a Harry Potter dementor being pushed along on castors the triffids are rather too slow to be taken seriously. Again, returning to the original novel, the triffids could work up a bit of speed when travelling in open country and were seen worrying a flock of sheep across a field at one point.
These triffids have all the lumbering urgency of a Nineteen Thirties mummy.
One imagines that the casting of Jason Priestley as Coker was in an attempt to sell the mini-series to the US, since the assumption seems to be that Americans will not watch anything that does not contain a home-grown accent somewhere.
The most glaring annoyance however, is the repeated scenes of Masen’s memories of Africa and his mother’s death, in which he is presented with a wooden tribal mask.
Now, one has to explain that, in both versions, Masen is hospitalised having been stung in the eyes with triffid venom. The hospital consultant explains that Masen has a fifty/fifty chance of regaining his sight.
At the denouement, which is similar to the novel in that the survivors are in a farmhouse surrounded by triffids, Masen suddenly picks up the African mask and remembers how he can escape from the triffids.
The answer is, bafflingly, illogically and really annoyingly, that the family drip triffid poison into their eyes in order to fool the triffids into thinking they’d been stung already. How will they not be poisoned? The idea is simply ludicrous, as is the idea that Masen has only just remembered that this is what an African native did to him when he was a child to lead him past the local triffids.
You should hang your heads in shame, BBC, at wasting money on such a travesty.

Tuesday 15 December 2009

2010-01-05T05:28:00.001-08:00

The X-Factor is all over for another year, for which I’m quietly grateful, since it means that the secret government bunker operatives will have to find a new topic of discussion.
The Sun today is proclaiming that the winner, Geordie Jo McElderry, is a raving heterosexual. This has come as something of a shock to me. I hadn’t realised that my Gaydar was so askew. How could I have been so wrong?

Monday 7 December 2009

2010-01-05T05:26:00.001-08:00

Argos saw fit to answer my prayers and Danyl was sent back to the land of the strange big-eyed folk. It only struck me today that they must be using his relatives in that TV ad where the police spot drug users by their uncannily huge eyes.

Saturday 5 December 2009

2010-01-05T05:25:00.002-08:00

My prayers to Argos, the God of Catalogue Shopping, seem to have been answered of late. I prayed that the ghastly Jedward would be thrown off X-Factor, and thrown off they were. May they be sent back to Dublin obscurity where the only words anyone will hear out of their rosy-cheeked annoying faces again is ‘Do You Want Fries With That?’
This week, my X-Factor prayers are that Danyl will go. I’m not sure if it is his goofy grin or his creepy manga eyes, but there is something about him that makes me feel very uneasy.
In terms of pure performance, he cannot be faulted, and therein lies my problem. His performance is always good, but he hasn’t improved any since the start of the series, and, quite honestly, I get no emotion from him. I’m sure he would be excellent in stage musicals, but as a singer, he leaves me cold.
We must be getting old as we had to have a man round to fix our computer today. He’s sorted it out and installed Windows 7.

Friday 4 December 2009

2010-01-05T05:25:00.001-08:00

I had one of my rare days off today from the secret government bunker, and went in to an ‘adult shop’ which had appeared unaccountably in Paddington. I wasn’t planning to buy anything. I was just curious as to what sort of things might be on sale.
DVD porn titles are getting no better. The other week, in the Celebrity Sauna, I was treated to the sight of a DVD called ‘Chinese C**k Sucking Soldier Boys’
I had thought the shop could not better this but as soon as I walked in I was greeted with the sight of ‘Even Grandma Loves Black C**k’.
I imagine she does. You don’t get that sort of thing in HMV.

Monday 16 November 2009

2010-01-05T05:23:00.000-08:00

Currently, I am interested in the potential for surrealist expression with digital cameras. Certainly it has become far easier to create photographic deceptions (for want of a better word) lately and I have already created some composite images which, at first glance at least, would pass as a single shot photograph.
These days, without the time-intensive practice of developing film and subsequently the full darkroom process, one can view one’s images in-camera and, in tandem with Photoshop or one of the many other photographic software packages available, manipulate the image endlessly with a high degree of sophistication.
My previous experience of photosurrealism was, back in the days of SLRs and real film, the random effects of double exposures. This was, for me anyway, achieved by making a mark on the film when it is first loaded in the camera which matches to a corresponding mark in the camera body. Pictures are taken at half the estimated normal exposure. When the film is used up, one rewinds the film, but not completely. If you did rewind it completely, I devised a method of retrieving the end by sticking a piece of double sided tape on a card and poking it into the film cartridge.
The sellotape latches on to the surface of the film and, with some patience, the end can be drawn out.
Then one reloads the same film in the camera, matching up the marks so that the exposed frames match up to the overlaid exposed images and again are taken at half the usual exposure.
The results are variable but often very interesting, especially if you mix for instance, portraits with landscapes or close-ups of still life with a mass of vegetation.
Later I did some photoshop collage illustrations for the magazine The Third Alternative, most of which had a surrealist edge.
Now, I’m finding that the very act of subverting reality by mixing things up unobtrusively, rather than obviously, is interesting me greatly. I have photographed people in the street, used photographs of people I’ve met on the internet and combined them to produce an image which could have been shot as regular image, but is a situation which has never happened.
In one of these, I attached a friend’s head to the body of a man I shot in Shepherds Bush, and placed this chimera on the platform of my local tube station.
It looks realistic enough, but what I like is that there is something ‘not quite right’ about these pictures, something which disturbs the mind.

Saturday 7 November 2009

2010-01-05T05:20:00.000-08:00

I dreamt that an angel
Glad Tidings did bring.
God was sending down Elvis
and taking back Sting.

The X-Factor has caused something of a furore this year which began with Louis Walsh’s bizarre choice of freak show twins John and Edward (or Jedward, as they are now known in the popular press) as one of his finalists. I suspect, from the quality of groups that got through boot camp, and the fact that three individual entrants had to be virtually pressganged into forming a girl group, that groups of a certain calibre were in very short supply. However, this doesn’t excuse Louis’s choice. Even in a sixth form end of term show these Leprechauns of the Apocalypse would be hard put to have got through the audition.
Get through they did though, and seem to have taken the nation by storm, since people seem determined to keep them in the show, no doubt through some ghoulish sense of fascination at seeing two eighteen year olds with hairstyles that went out with Split Enz, jumping around the stage, singing out of time and out of tune and employing cringeworthy inappropriate dialogue between verses.
‘Oooh Edward, I’m so scared!’ whimpered John as they paused during their demolition of the Ghostbusters song this week.
Now, there have been differences in the format of X-Factor this year, which may explain something about the bizarre voting patterns we have experienced.
In previous years, the shows have been split into two over a Saturday night, and voters are given an hour or so to ring in, before there is a showdown of the least popular two in the second show.
This year, the showdown has been moved to Sunday evening, which gives ITV and Simon Cowell far more revenue from phone-ins, but also gives the opportunity to vote to those who previously would not have done so. I suspect there is a subversive element in Britain who are ringing in for Jedward just to buck the trend and demonstrate the size of the creative vacuum in which this show exists. Otherwise I can only blame the popularity of Jedward on backward children and special needs people with access to mobile phones.
Sting, of all people, has criticised the show this week. I don’t often hold with the opinions of Sting, and occasionally wish he would go off and play with his lute and leave the rest of us be, but this week he proclaimed (sometime after his dinner with Lucian Freud) that The X-Factor has put British music back by decades.
I tend to agree.

Thursday 15 October 2009

2009-10-30T06:20:00.000-07:00

I’m a bit bemused as to why someone should want to thump Leona Lewis. I can only imagine it’s because Celine Dion wasn’t available.

Monday 5 October 2009

2009-10-30T06:19:00.000-07:00

This morning after the usual breakfast (toast, sausages, bacon, egg, black pudding and baked beans, with coffee) we checked out of the hotel, waved off by its genial and eccentric host, Robert, and set off for the Scottish Folk Museum, since no one wanted to sign up for a trip to see the dolphins in the Firth of Moray.
I haven’t really mentioned our fellow travellers much. On the whole, they are a friendly bunch. There are two who look like the couple in the painting ‘American Gothic’. I suspect the husband is a retired army man and is always very neatly and properly turned out. He is also very fond of his red wine.
Every day we’ve had breakfast and dinner with a couple called Ted and Jean. Despite their ages, they are both very fit. Until now Ted has done only backpacking holidays, which isn’t something I can imagine pensioners doing on a regular basis. He has let his garden run fallow ‘to encourage wildlife’ he says, although Jean rolls her eyes at this. Ted and Jean are my favourites although I also like John and Margaret. They are couple who fell over independently in the reindeer enclosure. Margaret is quite chubby and jolly while John is taller and thinner with a wry sense of humour. He carries a dated Nikon SLR camera which uses real film and looks on digital photography as ‘point and click’ blasphemy.
I showed him my Olympus E420 but he wasn’t impressed.
There are two couples from Bristol and Yorkshire who have commandeered the back seat of the coach and talk interminably about memory foam mattresses and terminal diseases.
When we arrived at the Folk Museum our tour guide was planning to show us round, but while we were waiting for someone to fix the projector in the introductory video room, we decided to show ourselves around.
It’s basically a large area where bygone buildings have either been recreated or dismantled on site and reassembled here, so one can see original sheep shearer’s cottages, an original village post-office, a sweet shop, a farm etc. etc.
The farm features real animals and the UO was treated to the bizarre spectacle of a cat catching a mouse and eating the whole thing, apart from one piece, which appeared to be a blue-green section of intestine.
We then ended up in Dingwall, a very dour town where the locals seemed to be angry at having been forced to live there. The UO and I went to The Viking Bar where a Scots version of Hurley from Lost was working behind the bar. We comprised of half the pub’s customers, the other two being a nice old lady and a man playing a ‘Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?’ slot machine.
We only went in to use the toilet. Outside we’d seen two signs, more or less pointing at each other saying ‘Toilets’ but we could find none in the area between them. I suspect that angry locals had moved the signs around in order to punish non-locals for having the good sense to live somewhere else.
Then we drove up to the top of a mountain so that people could take photos of the view. There should have been more of that sort of thing.
Finally we were returned to Inverness where the UO and I went back to ‘Pyramid’, a shop we’d seen on our first arrival, but which hadn’t been open. It sells gothic objet d’art and we were keen on a figure of Death holding a sign that says ‘Welcome’. We also bought a figure of a dragon, ‘Luminax’ which holds a T-light in each outstretched clawed hand. I could well imagine Mo, the Blair Athol tour guide, pointing these out and explaining their origins and significance to interested visitors to our home.
We found a Chinese Restaurant, ‘The Mandarin Palace’, boasting itself as ‘The Only Real Chinese Restaurant in Inverness.’ Above the urinals in the gents a sign had been put up which read ‘Please stand closer. Your Big John is not as big as you like to think it is.!’
The food was excellent. I also particularly liked the crazy Chinese waitress who asked us if we were OK with chopsticks.
‘If you make a mess.’ she said, ‘we will have to ask you to do some washing up.’
Finally we tried out a sixteen year old Glen Roth single malt whisky in the Royal Highland Hotel outside the station before collecting our bags and finding our bunks on the allnight train, where I am now. The UO has banished me to the top bunk.
I don’t care. I just want to sleep the sleep of the just can’t be bothered to stay awake.

Sunday 4 October 2009

2009-10-30T06:14:00.001-07:00

Today we went off to The Reindeer Centre which is less a centre than a vast area in which reindeer are allowed to roam and multiply, like retired maths teachers. I had thought reindeer to be alien to the UK, but apparently they were plentiful here until about 2000 years ago when they disappeared for unknown reasons, but which was no doubt connected with early venison burgers.
They were reintroduced fairly recently in millennial terms and now there are around a couple of hundred roaming around.
After negotiating a tortuous series of stone steps we emerged onto a mountain plain to meet the reindeer which we were allowed to feed by hand.
It was a day of minor casualties. Two of our party fell over and a woman who bent down to get some feed was summarily mounted by a short-sighted stag. She leapt up with a squeal and the reindeer fled, leaving not only hoofprints on her shoulders, but a sinister glistening stain on the back of her skirt.
The Ugly One was similarly mounted as we left the enclosure. The last thing we expected when we embarked on this holiday was to be sexually assaulted by reindeer. I’d have preferred the kilted prison officers, but as I have discovered in life, one can’t have everything in this world. Not straightaway anyway.
After a pleasant and very filling lunch in Aviemore, not even spoiled by the screaming presence of several annoying children, we took the steam train trip to Glenbogle (which somehow has stuck in my head as being called Benfogle) from whence we headed back to the hotel for an early dinner.
The ME & D tonight was a very good performer with an electric accordion although we did not see much of him. We went upstairs to find out who the finalists of X-Factor were.
Louis Walsh has picked those eejit Irish twins, Famine and Pestilence or whatever their names are. I’m with Simon Cowell, unusually, on this. ‘Hate them! Hate them! Hate them!’
I pointedly push my finger onto a flat surface with each repetition.

Saturday 3 October 2009

2009-10-30T06:10:00.000-07:00

After rising at an ungodly hour, we ate a hearty breakfast and set off for The Isle of Skye, breaking off only to visit Eilean Donan Castle to take some photographs. Apparently it’s featured in a lot of films and TV shows and is popular for weddings. The castle is closed this afternoon as there is a wedding going on. It’s likely to be a gothic ceremony as the sky is overcast and looking bleak in a particularly Scottish way.
As we approached the West Coast of Scotland the heavens opened and clouds descended to shroud the peaks of bleak scarred mountains, a phrase for which I apologise since I seemed to have been momentarily possessed by a Bronte sister.
I can’t help finding this scenery very beautiful, however. It appeals to my sense of the gothic. Brilliantly white foaming rivers were pouring down the sides of the mountains. The mountains themselves, when in sunlight, were a complex mixture of colours which ranged from a rusty salmon pink to a lovely shade of pistachio. I’m Ok there, as the Brontes would never have used the word ‘pistachio’.
By the time we got to Skye the rain had passed and we crossed the Skye bridge to be greeted by the sight of ‘A Taste of India’ emblazoned across the first restaurant we saw as we arrived on the island. Hoorah!
We had fish and chips in a sea-front restaurant in Portree, one which had apparently been frequented by Hugh Firmly-Wherewithall. A photograph of Hugh being firmly gripped by the manager lest Hugh escape before the photo was taken had been mounted and hung on the wall.
It seemed a popular place. Half of our coach party were there, as well as six well-dressed men conversing in gallic. At that point our tour guide waltzed in with his young friend and commandeered a table. He has a very loud and carrying voice, and either didn’t realise or didn’t care that the entire restaurant was privy to his conversation.
‘Oh! I didn’t tell you about the Thai girl my brother brought back from abroad!’ he announced to the young friend.
‘Tiger?’
‘No! Thai girl! A girl from Thailand. I’m sure he bought her on the internet. Anyway, they came to London and stayed at my house, and when I got back I found she’d Feng Shuied right through. The walls had been repainted, half my furniture was in storage and the rest had all been shifted round.
‘I was livid!’
I ordered their recommended fish and chips, having toyed with the idea of the Cullen Skink, and made a visit to the toilet before it arrived.
Bizarrely, the mirror had been put in the toilet at a level where, unless one was six foot nine, one would have to stand on the toilet to use it.
This evening I had prawn and apple cocktail (surprisingly delicious), scampi (with vegetables rather than chips… odd) and mandarin cheesecake. We have now discovered that every dessert comes drizzled with the same red fruity sauce, although it has not as yet been properly identified.
The Blue Knights were in full kilt regalia tonight and very nice they looked too. A different musical duo (violin and accordion) were also trying to get people to do Scottish Country Dancing. Why don’t they just play the music? It’s nice enough as it is.
The angry barman, who for reasons of his own has decided that we are his new best friends, looked at me and nodded at the large lady playing the violin.
‘She’s got a right attitude problem,’ he said. ‘I’m tempted to smack her over the head with this!’ and brandished the empty wine bottle he was clutching with a desperate white-knuckled grip.
‘O…K…’ I said slowly, and decided that this might be a good moment to leave him and The Blue Knights and retire to my room. I might have been suspected of stealing hotel memorabilia and chased with a stick, and not in a nice way.