waiting for a man.
builder, courier, lover.
they never turn up.
The gasman was due to come round today to give my boiler its annual inspection. ‘Between 8am and 5 pm’ they said.
At two o’clock, the doorbell rang and a brummy voice said ‘I’m just checking you’re in, I’m doing an inspection down the road and I’ll be with you in half an hour.’
Forty minutes later he rang the bell again to tell me he’d been called to an emergency and would get back to me.
At four o’clock, the contractors rang me to say that he’d been called to yet another emergency and unfortunately, would not be coming to my house today.
Unsurprisingly I was vexed.
I went to Hammersmith and bought some chicken and a large bottle of vodka, noticing a headline in The London Lite as I left the train which read ‘Feral Children Arrested in Possession of Tactical Nukes’.
The UO made a blinding curry and we got drunk and watched ‘Big Brother’.
BB, for its own reasons, seems to have been targeting Carole this week. Admittedly, the woman has control issues and seems compelled to give instructions or advice to anyone venturing within a teabag’s throw of the kitchen. I cannot imagine, however, that the rest of the housemates’ behaviour was so dull that the producers were left with no alternative but to show relentless scenes of Carole arguing about slices of bread and whether carafes of water should be placed on the dining table or not.
So, the public voted from a pool of six housemates and Carole and Gerry garnered the highest figures.
Earlier in the week, the housemates had competed to become gurus in tasks of self-improvement, and the three gurus (Tracy, Ziggy and The Twins – who are now considered as a single entity) had to decide which of them to evict.
Obviously BB was hoping for some drama and tears, but Gerry, bless him, scuppered all that by volunteering himself before anyone could cast a single vote.
Showing posts with label Big Brother 8. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Big Brother 8. Show all posts
Tuesday, 21 August 2007
Monday, 30 July 2007
Friday 27 July 2007
the black dog is back,
sitting on my thoughts and just
snarling at my work.
Please mark any sightings of Paul Ross in your Celebrity Almanacs as an omen of good for all humanity (see last posting) as tonight, Charley, the cabbage-patch troll, has been evicted from the Big Brother House with 87% of the vote. I am hoping I will never have to hear her brain-stabbing voice again or see her odious face. I suspect, however, that this is a forlorn hope.
sitting on my thoughts and just
snarling at my work.
Please mark any sightings of Paul Ross in your Celebrity Almanacs as an omen of good for all humanity (see last posting) as tonight, Charley, the cabbage-patch troll, has been evicted from the Big Brother House with 87% of the vote. I am hoping I will never have to hear her brain-stabbing voice again or see her odious face. I suspect, however, that this is a forlorn hope.
Tuesday, 24 July 2007
Monday 23 July 2007
victoria line.
hot and slow, a tango danced
seated on tartan.
Our mate Robert came to visit us this evening. I was late home due to several delays on the London Underground due to various factors such as Humour Failure at Seven Sisters and Passenger Apathy at Mile End.
The Ugly One made pasta and we watched Big Brother, although Robert, having drunk several glasses of red wine, talked all the way through.
I am growing more cynical by the day of BB’s manipulation of voting and selection. This week, presumably in response to a growing dissatisfaction among viewers that the vile and potato-faced Charley is still in house (‘Body from Baywatch, Face from Crimewatch’ as someone recently described her) BB have been portraying her in a less than flattering light. The sequence in which she described the viewing audience as ‘those idiots out there’ has been shown at least twice with the inclusion of Davina McCall’s comment ‘Did she just call the audience ‘idiots’?’, added to which, during Friday’s eviction, the crowd were allowed to shout ‘Get Charley Out’, something which has not been allowed to happen in previous weeks.
Thankfully for us, we are not idiots (well, not all of us) and are beginning to see the BB game plan for what it really is.Charley, I was told today, has already been signed up by the agency that represents Davina McCall and Dermot O’Leary.
If that did happen, when and where did it happen?
hot and slow, a tango danced
seated on tartan.
Our mate Robert came to visit us this evening. I was late home due to several delays on the London Underground due to various factors such as Humour Failure at Seven Sisters and Passenger Apathy at Mile End.
The Ugly One made pasta and we watched Big Brother, although Robert, having drunk several glasses of red wine, talked all the way through.
I am growing more cynical by the day of BB’s manipulation of voting and selection. This week, presumably in response to a growing dissatisfaction among viewers that the vile and potato-faced Charley is still in house (‘Body from Baywatch, Face from Crimewatch’ as someone recently described her) BB have been portraying her in a less than flattering light. The sequence in which she described the viewing audience as ‘those idiots out there’ has been shown at least twice with the inclusion of Davina McCall’s comment ‘Did she just call the audience ‘idiots’?’, added to which, during Friday’s eviction, the crowd were allowed to shout ‘Get Charley Out’, something which has not been allowed to happen in previous weeks.
Thankfully for us, we are not idiots (well, not all of us) and are beginning to see the BB game plan for what it really is.Charley, I was told today, has already been signed up by the agency that represents Davina McCall and Dermot O’Leary.
If that did happen, when and where did it happen?
Friday, 13 July 2007
Thursday 12 July 2007
‘sorry’, he said, ‘for
not ringing. it’s family.’
then a pause. ‘love you.’
I love getting post. Today it was ‘Poetry Wales’ with an audio cassette of Anglo-Welsh poetry, and my subscription copy of ‘Anon’, a marvellous poetry magazine which judges its submissions anonymously so that work is not accepted for publication on the basis of fame or notoriety.
I can highly recommend this magazine. The poetry is of a very high standard and is interspersed with articles of relevance to the Poetry community (if indeed, there is such a beast).
My favourite poem from the last issue was called The Kipper and The Corpse (I regret that I do not recall the name of the poet) and was a tribute to the episode of ‘Fawlty Towers’ where Basil found one of the guests dead, and spent the rest of the episode attempting to hide the fact from his other paying customers.
It gave me faith that Poetry is indeed universal and can address any subject, a concept which was never conveyed to us when we sat through English Literature lessons, baffled by Chaucer and Wordsworth whose work, excellent though it now seems in retrospect, did not inspire us to express our own lives through poetry in a contemporary manner.
I seem to have come over all pretentious, so I’ll move swiftly on and express my continuing disappointment with this year’s Big Brother.
I am, it has to be said, a cynical sort of bloke, and when Big Brother announced that this week was Fake Week, I began to smell a rat. It appears there will be no eviction this week. The housemates think there will be an eviction, but the evictee (either the odious Charley, or her gormless and nasally monotonic friend, Nicky) will be evicted, interviewed, and returned to the House.
For me, this is just another ploy on the part of Big Brother to keep Charley in the House, after having fixed the nominations last week to ensure she escaped the public vote.
After eight years, Big Brother has evolved into something other than it was when it began.
The first series, which featured contestants who could at least conjure up a vocabulary, and were more than two years out of puberty, was compulsive viewing. We were glued to the daily updates and the dramas which arose naturally out of the sheer boredom of the experience. That was exciting.
Now, everything seems stage-managed, and the contestants chosen for their stupidity or freak value. Yes, Brian is very sweet, but shouldn’t we be ashamed that someone born and raised in this country can reach the age of twenty and not know who Shakespeare is?
I see no hope for this series, but would like Channel 4 or Endemol to appoint new producers for the next series. Why not have a Mensa Members’ House, or two teenagers and twelve ASBO pensioners? Everyone over 40?
I can guarantee that any of those options would be far more entertaining than this year’s relentless machine-gun gob name-dropping, ranting and arguing over toast and bananas.
not ringing. it’s family.’
then a pause. ‘love you.’
I love getting post. Today it was ‘Poetry Wales’ with an audio cassette of Anglo-Welsh poetry, and my subscription copy of ‘Anon’, a marvellous poetry magazine which judges its submissions anonymously so that work is not accepted for publication on the basis of fame or notoriety.
I can highly recommend this magazine. The poetry is of a very high standard and is interspersed with articles of relevance to the Poetry community (if indeed, there is such a beast).
My favourite poem from the last issue was called The Kipper and The Corpse (I regret that I do not recall the name of the poet) and was a tribute to the episode of ‘Fawlty Towers’ where Basil found one of the guests dead, and spent the rest of the episode attempting to hide the fact from his other paying customers.
It gave me faith that Poetry is indeed universal and can address any subject, a concept which was never conveyed to us when we sat through English Literature lessons, baffled by Chaucer and Wordsworth whose work, excellent though it now seems in retrospect, did not inspire us to express our own lives through poetry in a contemporary manner.
I seem to have come over all pretentious, so I’ll move swiftly on and express my continuing disappointment with this year’s Big Brother.
I am, it has to be said, a cynical sort of bloke, and when Big Brother announced that this week was Fake Week, I began to smell a rat. It appears there will be no eviction this week. The housemates think there will be an eviction, but the evictee (either the odious Charley, or her gormless and nasally monotonic friend, Nicky) will be evicted, interviewed, and returned to the House.
For me, this is just another ploy on the part of Big Brother to keep Charley in the House, after having fixed the nominations last week to ensure she escaped the public vote.
After eight years, Big Brother has evolved into something other than it was when it began.
The first series, which featured contestants who could at least conjure up a vocabulary, and were more than two years out of puberty, was compulsive viewing. We were glued to the daily updates and the dramas which arose naturally out of the sheer boredom of the experience. That was exciting.
Now, everything seems stage-managed, and the contestants chosen for their stupidity or freak value. Yes, Brian is very sweet, but shouldn’t we be ashamed that someone born and raised in this country can reach the age of twenty and not know who Shakespeare is?
I see no hope for this series, but would like Channel 4 or Endemol to appoint new producers for the next series. Why not have a Mensa Members’ House, or two teenagers and twelve ASBO pensioners? Everyone over 40?
I can guarantee that any of those options would be far more entertaining than this year’s relentless machine-gun gob name-dropping, ranting and arguing over toast and bananas.
Thursday, 21 June 2007
Tuesday 19 June 2007
the toilet leaking;
an australian plumber;
abandoned chinese.
We returned home from seeing ‘The Rise of The Silver Surfer’ to find our bathroom awash and the agitated neighbours downstairs eager to show us how water had been pouring in through their ceiling. It appears that the Dave Gorman plumber who repaired our toilet last week did more harm than good.
One of the contractors who had been working in another flat during the day had to climb a ladder, get into our flat and switch the water off while we were at work.
Later, having contacted the out of hours emergency people and mopped up the lake that had formed around the washbasin, an Australian plumber turned up and examined the toilet and cistern, with a lot of ‘Awww mate! Look at this…’ and ‘Whoaah mate… it’s coming from here!’.
By this time it was midnight and I had been gloomily contemplating the prospect of using a bucket should a toilet-related emergency occur.
Finally however, he made it safe and useable and arranged for someone else to come tomorrow.
Stressed beyond endurance, I lit a cigarette and settled down to watch the Big Brother nominations.
Foolishly, I always tend to underestimate the stupidity of the contestants. The twins (whose favourite colour, tellingly and ominously, is pink) must share a brain between them. They both nominated Carole who seems to have been single-handedly doing their washing and cleaning for the last three weeks.
Their only reason for nomination seemed to be that when they want to do dangerous and stupid things, Carole tells them not to.
‘Fun’ seems to be the thing that the housemates want to do most, although their definition of ‘fun’ seems to be somewhat vague. ‘Fun’ is a fuzzy concept which exists only as potential in some Shangri-la-la-land. It is what Jodie Marsh and Paris Hilton have.
Seany’s idea of ‘Fun’ is to play tedious practical jokes on other people. He poured water into Charley’s boots and put wet tissues in her pumps. Then he put a condom over the head of Gerry’s toy monkey, Freddy, which Gerry refers to unaccountably as a bear. My, how we, and the other housemates, laughed!
This somewhat childish behaviour earned him enough nominations to face the public vote, along with Carole and Jonathan, whose only crime seems to be that he’s rich and looks a little like Bilbo Baggins.
Somehow, Charley avoided the public vote by one nomination.
Apart from her other extensive charming habits, Charley is constantly gnawing her fist, as if this is the only way she can stop herself talking. Sadly, it’s not working.
Get Charley Out! Get Charley Out! Get Charley Out!
an australian plumber;
abandoned chinese.
We returned home from seeing ‘The Rise of The Silver Surfer’ to find our bathroom awash and the agitated neighbours downstairs eager to show us how water had been pouring in through their ceiling. It appears that the Dave Gorman plumber who repaired our toilet last week did more harm than good.
One of the contractors who had been working in another flat during the day had to climb a ladder, get into our flat and switch the water off while we were at work.
Later, having contacted the out of hours emergency people and mopped up the lake that had formed around the washbasin, an Australian plumber turned up and examined the toilet and cistern, with a lot of ‘Awww mate! Look at this…’ and ‘Whoaah mate… it’s coming from here!’.
By this time it was midnight and I had been gloomily contemplating the prospect of using a bucket should a toilet-related emergency occur.
Finally however, he made it safe and useable and arranged for someone else to come tomorrow.
Stressed beyond endurance, I lit a cigarette and settled down to watch the Big Brother nominations.
Foolishly, I always tend to underestimate the stupidity of the contestants. The twins (whose favourite colour, tellingly and ominously, is pink) must share a brain between them. They both nominated Carole who seems to have been single-handedly doing their washing and cleaning for the last three weeks.
Their only reason for nomination seemed to be that when they want to do dangerous and stupid things, Carole tells them not to.
‘Fun’ seems to be the thing that the housemates want to do most, although their definition of ‘fun’ seems to be somewhat vague. ‘Fun’ is a fuzzy concept which exists only as potential in some Shangri-la-la-land. It is what Jodie Marsh and Paris Hilton have.
Seany’s idea of ‘Fun’ is to play tedious practical jokes on other people. He poured water into Charley’s boots and put wet tissues in her pumps. Then he put a condom over the head of Gerry’s toy monkey, Freddy, which Gerry refers to unaccountably as a bear. My, how we, and the other housemates, laughed!
This somewhat childish behaviour earned him enough nominations to face the public vote, along with Carole and Jonathan, whose only crime seems to be that he’s rich and looks a little like Bilbo Baggins.
Somehow, Charley avoided the public vote by one nomination.
Apart from her other extensive charming habits, Charley is constantly gnawing her fist, as if this is the only way she can stop herself talking. Sadly, it’s not working.
Get Charley Out! Get Charley Out! Get Charley Out!
Thursday, 14 June 2007
Tuesday 12 June 2007
aftershave bottles
line up like a cityscape.
i don't even shave.
I had a day off today to deal with a workman who came round to fix the cistern on the toilet. He looked like a thin Dave Gorman. Not his fault, I suppose. I don’t wish to be judgemental like the men my mate Glyn encountered yesterday. A few pies and some of my hotpot would be certain to fill him out and make him quite lovely.
I seem to be getting a lot of verbal abuse myself lately, mainly from mad people. Once the workman had packed up and gone I went out to The Bush of Shepherds and, on passing the Baptist Church, an old black man sitting on the steps clutching a can of Tennants looked at me and said ‘Oi! Fatso!’
Ignoring the unjust and unwarranted remark I waddled on with quiet dignity and grace.
Despite the presence of the odious Simon Cowell, ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ continues to fascinate me, more for its celebration of British eccentricity than anything else. A middle-aged married man, indistinguishable from a million or more other middle-aged married men, for no reason anyone could fathom, decided to enter dressed as Kylie Minogue, singing ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head.’
Mr Cowell, as has become customary, threw a couple of his usual moodies when acts he didn’t approve of were put through by the other judges.
Cowell, who appears, oddly, much nicer than he normally does in these sort of programmes, doesn’t seem to have any middle ground. The acts in Cowell’s view are either ‘pointless’ or ‘brilliant’, apart from one which paraxodically was ‘pointless but brilliant’.
As he relentlessly points out, the search is being conducted for an act of quality suitable to perform for the Royal family, though why the Royal Family’s taste in variety acts should be so superior to the rest of us is not clear.
Simon Cowell doesn’t seem to understand what a variety act is. A seasoned club performer who played the keyboard and did rather good impressions of Neil Diamond and George Formby (and whom the audience loved) was summarily dismissed by Cowell, whereas two days before he’d put through a pole dancer who produces sparks from her crotch with the aid of an angle grinder and a metal codpiece.
I’m sure Her Maj is going to love that.
Talking of stupidity, in the Big Brother House the Housemates nominated today. Gerry and Seany chose the dozey twins Sam and Amanda to nominate alongside them and not one of them nominated Charley.
Consequently, up for nomination this week are Carole (I’m baffled by this), Tracy (perhaps because she reminds the housemates too much of Sean Bean as Boromir when he’s looking angry and about to kill some orcs) and Satnav.
My money’s on Satnav. She think it’s funny to keep people awake all night, does no housework at all, and then wonders why people get grumpy with her.
Mmmmmm.
line up like a cityscape.
i don't even shave.
I had a day off today to deal with a workman who came round to fix the cistern on the toilet. He looked like a thin Dave Gorman. Not his fault, I suppose. I don’t wish to be judgemental like the men my mate Glyn encountered yesterday. A few pies and some of my hotpot would be certain to fill him out and make him quite lovely.
I seem to be getting a lot of verbal abuse myself lately, mainly from mad people. Once the workman had packed up and gone I went out to The Bush of Shepherds and, on passing the Baptist Church, an old black man sitting on the steps clutching a can of Tennants looked at me and said ‘Oi! Fatso!’
Ignoring the unjust and unwarranted remark I waddled on with quiet dignity and grace.
Despite the presence of the odious Simon Cowell, ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ continues to fascinate me, more for its celebration of British eccentricity than anything else. A middle-aged married man, indistinguishable from a million or more other middle-aged married men, for no reason anyone could fathom, decided to enter dressed as Kylie Minogue, singing ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head.’
Mr Cowell, as has become customary, threw a couple of his usual moodies when acts he didn’t approve of were put through by the other judges.
Cowell, who appears, oddly, much nicer than he normally does in these sort of programmes, doesn’t seem to have any middle ground. The acts in Cowell’s view are either ‘pointless’ or ‘brilliant’, apart from one which paraxodically was ‘pointless but brilliant’.
As he relentlessly points out, the search is being conducted for an act of quality suitable to perform for the Royal family, though why the Royal Family’s taste in variety acts should be so superior to the rest of us is not clear.
Simon Cowell doesn’t seem to understand what a variety act is. A seasoned club performer who played the keyboard and did rather good impressions of Neil Diamond and George Formby (and whom the audience loved) was summarily dismissed by Cowell, whereas two days before he’d put through a pole dancer who produces sparks from her crotch with the aid of an angle grinder and a metal codpiece.
I’m sure Her Maj is going to love that.
Talking of stupidity, in the Big Brother House the Housemates nominated today. Gerry and Seany chose the dozey twins Sam and Amanda to nominate alongside them and not one of them nominated Charley.
Consequently, up for nomination this week are Carole (I’m baffled by this), Tracy (perhaps because she reminds the housemates too much of Sean Bean as Boromir when he’s looking angry and about to kill some orcs) and Satnav.
My money’s on Satnav. She think it’s funny to keep people awake all night, does no housework at all, and then wonders why people get grumpy with her.
Mmmmmm.
Wednesday, 13 June 2007
Sunday 10 June 2007
sunday has escaped
again while I was elsewhere
preparing for it.
I suspect that Sundays were invented to deceive us into thinking it was a day of rest, when in fact it seems to fill itself with things that need to be done.
Having done the usual morning coffee, bath and shave thing I went shopping for food, returned and caught up with my e-mail and correspondence, did the washing up and, having fallen asleep, was awoken by an ice-cream van playing ‘I love to go a-wandering along the mountain track’. By this time the day was mostly over. It only remained to watch ‘Coronation Street’ and ‘Big Brother’.
Ken, no doubt worried for the sanctity of his laptop and faced with the prospect of a large hairdresser forcing her way into his cardigan, has packed up and left and returned to the far less threatening bosom of Diedre.
As for BB, this was the usual round of arguments about food, allocation of household chores and those odd indefinable arguments which seem to be about nothing at all. Charley is very good at those. She opens her mouth and a torrent of nonsense falls out, usually prefaced by ‘I’m not being funny, right, but…’
She’s quite right, she isn’t being funny. As far as I can recall, over the last thirteen days or so she hasn’t been in the least bit funny at all.
again while I was elsewhere
preparing for it.
I suspect that Sundays were invented to deceive us into thinking it was a day of rest, when in fact it seems to fill itself with things that need to be done.
Having done the usual morning coffee, bath and shave thing I went shopping for food, returned and caught up with my e-mail and correspondence, did the washing up and, having fallen asleep, was awoken by an ice-cream van playing ‘I love to go a-wandering along the mountain track’. By this time the day was mostly over. It only remained to watch ‘Coronation Street’ and ‘Big Brother’.
Ken, no doubt worried for the sanctity of his laptop and faced with the prospect of a large hairdresser forcing her way into his cardigan, has packed up and left and returned to the far less threatening bosom of Diedre.
As for BB, this was the usual round of arguments about food, allocation of household chores and those odd indefinable arguments which seem to be about nothing at all. Charley is very good at those. She opens her mouth and a torrent of nonsense falls out, usually prefaced by ‘I’m not being funny, right, but…’
She’s quite right, she isn’t being funny. As far as I can recall, over the last thirteen days or so she hasn’t been in the least bit funny at all.
Monday, 11 June 2007
Friday 8 June 2007
the conversations
on my mobile are all fake.
I speak to myself.
I was heartened by the arrival in the post of a large brown envelope which contained the latest copy of ‘The Rialto’ which features one of my poems, for which I was paid twenty pounds. I imagine that this makes me officially a poet.
If you want to know what it is and what it’s about I suggest you buy a copy. ‘The Rialto’ is a well-established, high quality magazine which needs to be supported. Details can be found at www.therialto.co.uk.
In ‘Coronation Street’, Ken and Diedre’s relationship remains in limbo. Ken is shacked up with a large hairdresser, a laptop and his hobbit-like son. It’s never been clear what Ken does with his laptop. He stares at the screen while tapping at his teeth with his glasses, adopting a look of weary resignation. Maybe, he too, has a blog and is keeping Weatherfield residents up to date on the semiological significance of events in the Big Brother House.
Realising, perhaps too late, that his behaviour has been somewhat bizarre, he lies to the large hairdresser, telling her that he is off to the library to do research, when in fact he is lurking at the Coronation Street bus-stop, spying on Diedre as she nips out to buy some parkin and barmcakes.
Later, after a bottle of wine, the large hairdresser makes a saucy lunge at Ken, but he pushes her away - no mean feat for a man of his age dealing with a woman of her size - maybe on the understandable grounds that she’s likely to crease his cardigan.
Meanwhile, in The Big Brother House, the housemates deal with the aftermath of Emily’s racist remarks. Charley, who, to be honest, didn’t seem too bothered at first by the incident, has once more turned herself into a victim and has bleating loudly to all and sundry about what a horrible experience it was for her.
Her bleating was temporarily interrupted by the arrival of two new housemates. Gerry (or is it Jerry?), a
gay Greek archaeologist of some sort, and Seany, a gay Irish lunatic who looks like a cross between Mick Hucknell and Benny Hill.
Ziggy seemed confused by the arrival while Tracy adopted the look of Sean Bean as Boromir when he first saw the ring of Sauron in Rivendell.
Charley, obviously still so traumatised by Emily’s racist abuse later dared Seany to pull the duvet from sleeping sixty year old Lesley, which he did. Lesley, shocked and disoriented, obviously deeming this to be the final straw, promptly requested that she leave the House as soon as possible.She left at about 9.30 Saturday morning. A terrible, terrible shame, as Lesley was ten times more entertaining than the odious Charley could ever be, even with the help of a support band and a team of writers.
on my mobile are all fake.
I speak to myself.
I was heartened by the arrival in the post of a large brown envelope which contained the latest copy of ‘The Rialto’ which features one of my poems, for which I was paid twenty pounds. I imagine that this makes me officially a poet.
If you want to know what it is and what it’s about I suggest you buy a copy. ‘The Rialto’ is a well-established, high quality magazine which needs to be supported. Details can be found at www.therialto.co.uk.
In ‘Coronation Street’, Ken and Diedre’s relationship remains in limbo. Ken is shacked up with a large hairdresser, a laptop and his hobbit-like son. It’s never been clear what Ken does with his laptop. He stares at the screen while tapping at his teeth with his glasses, adopting a look of weary resignation. Maybe, he too, has a blog and is keeping Weatherfield residents up to date on the semiological significance of events in the Big Brother House.
Realising, perhaps too late, that his behaviour has been somewhat bizarre, he lies to the large hairdresser, telling her that he is off to the library to do research, when in fact he is lurking at the Coronation Street bus-stop, spying on Diedre as she nips out to buy some parkin and barmcakes.
Later, after a bottle of wine, the large hairdresser makes a saucy lunge at Ken, but he pushes her away - no mean feat for a man of his age dealing with a woman of her size - maybe on the understandable grounds that she’s likely to crease his cardigan.
Meanwhile, in The Big Brother House, the housemates deal with the aftermath of Emily’s racist remarks. Charley, who, to be honest, didn’t seem too bothered at first by the incident, has once more turned herself into a victim and has bleating loudly to all and sundry about what a horrible experience it was for her.
Her bleating was temporarily interrupted by the arrival of two new housemates. Gerry (or is it Jerry?), a
gay Greek archaeologist of some sort, and Seany, a gay Irish lunatic who looks like a cross between Mick Hucknell and Benny Hill.
Ziggy seemed confused by the arrival while Tracy adopted the look of Sean Bean as Boromir when he first saw the ring of Sauron in Rivendell.
Charley, obviously still so traumatised by Emily’s racist abuse later dared Seany to pull the duvet from sleeping sixty year old Lesley, which he did. Lesley, shocked and disoriented, obviously deeming this to be the final straw, promptly requested that she leave the House as soon as possible.She left at about 9.30 Saturday morning. A terrible, terrible shame, as Lesley was ten times more entertaining than the odious Charley could ever be, even with the help of a support band and a team of writers.
Friday, 8 June 2007
Thursday 7 Jun 2007
mabel’s goat curry
is a tribute to the goat
he died not in vain.
I am in the odd position of not knowing what to do about the mayonnaise in my local coffee shop. I having been using the same coffee shop most mornings for nearly five years from whence I pick up my
cappuccino and my ham roll, with mayonnaise.
Recently, the mayo has changed. I am not sure into what. I suspect that the café have decided to try making their own, while leaving out a very vital step in the process; that of tasting it.
I am on the horns of a dilemma, the very horns, I say!
Do I point out that their new mayonnaise is just nasty, with an aftertaste of onions, a pretaste of garlic and a during-taste of…. metal? Maybe it dissolves spoons. I cannot tell them this. They are Italian and therefore easily roused to wrath, especially if their cooking is criticised. I could wake up with a donkey’s head on my pillow.
Or do I avoid the place and send in minions at weekly intervals to see if the mayo has returned to its former quality?
Today I just got cappuccino on its own and later went to a new West Indian café and had Curried Goat with Saffron Rice. They called it Saffron Rice, but I suspect the nearest the rice got to saffron was on the shelf. Nevertheless it was damn good, and free from disturbing flavours which shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
Why is life so complex? Why do people change things that don’t need to be changed?
I was torn from my dilemma by the news that posh Emily from Big Brother had been summarily ejected from the house after using the word ‘n*gg*r’, allegedly in jest, to Charley.
Hoorah! One bimbo down. Five to go.
Big Brother, to be fair, had no choice but to remove Emily from the house. Her remark, although her intent might not have been a racial one, no doubt caused offence throughout the land. It is wrong, however, to compare this isolated situation with the sustained intentional nastiness which was such a prominent feature of the recent Celebrity Big Brother.
is a tribute to the goat
he died not in vain.
I am in the odd position of not knowing what to do about the mayonnaise in my local coffee shop. I having been using the same coffee shop most mornings for nearly five years from whence I pick up my
cappuccino and my ham roll, with mayonnaise.
Recently, the mayo has changed. I am not sure into what. I suspect that the café have decided to try making their own, while leaving out a very vital step in the process; that of tasting it.
I am on the horns of a dilemma, the very horns, I say!
Do I point out that their new mayonnaise is just nasty, with an aftertaste of onions, a pretaste of garlic and a during-taste of…. metal? Maybe it dissolves spoons. I cannot tell them this. They are Italian and therefore easily roused to wrath, especially if their cooking is criticised. I could wake up with a donkey’s head on my pillow.
Or do I avoid the place and send in minions at weekly intervals to see if the mayo has returned to its former quality?
Today I just got cappuccino on its own and later went to a new West Indian café and had Curried Goat with Saffron Rice. They called it Saffron Rice, but I suspect the nearest the rice got to saffron was on the shelf. Nevertheless it was damn good, and free from disturbing flavours which shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
Why is life so complex? Why do people change things that don’t need to be changed?
I was torn from my dilemma by the news that posh Emily from Big Brother had been summarily ejected from the house after using the word ‘n*gg*r’, allegedly in jest, to Charley.
Hoorah! One bimbo down. Five to go.
Big Brother, to be fair, had no choice but to remove Emily from the house. Her remark, although her intent might not have been a racial one, no doubt caused offence throughout the land. It is wrong, however, to compare this isolated situation with the sustained intentional nastiness which was such a prominent feature of the recent Celebrity Big Brother.
Wednesday 6 June 2007
they always steal pens.
large awkward office magpies
with nests full of ink
And so it begins.
The initial harmony which pervaded the Big Brother House has vanished like a Jade Goody advertising contract.
Ziggy (I am further confused by the fact that some people call him Zak), in order to win money for the shopping budget, had to judge where the housemates would place themselves in order (from 1 to 11) in various categories, i.e. intelligence, attractiveness and consideration.
He guessed, not unsurprisingly, that Lesley would be judged most intelligent. One would have to employ the full forces of the SETI project to find intelligence elsewhere in the house, so this wasn’t a hard task.
Somehow, Charley managed to get the number one spot for attractiveness, although she loudly (she does everything loudly, even silence) protested afterwards that it wasn’t her choice.
The rest was a random scramble for podia, and ultimately, poor Ziggy could only get two answers correct.
Then, the poor man, already beaten to near insanity by the girls singing ‘I’m a Barbie Girl’ over and over again, had to nominate.
large awkward office magpies
with nests full of ink
And so it begins.
The initial harmony which pervaded the Big Brother House has vanished like a Jade Goody advertising contract.
Ziggy (I am further confused by the fact that some people call him Zak), in order to win money for the shopping budget, had to judge where the housemates would place themselves in order (from 1 to 11) in various categories, i.e. intelligence, attractiveness and consideration.
He guessed, not unsurprisingly, that Lesley would be judged most intelligent. One would have to employ the full forces of the SETI project to find intelligence elsewhere in the house, so this wasn’t a hard task.
Somehow, Charley managed to get the number one spot for attractiveness, although she loudly (she does everything loudly, even silence) protested afterwards that it wasn’t her choice.
The rest was a random scramble for podia, and ultimately, poor Ziggy could only get two answers correct.
Then, the poor man, already beaten to near insanity by the girls singing ‘I’m a Barbie Girl’ over and over again, had to nominate.
Wednesday, 6 June 2007
Tuesday 5 June 2007
coffee and sushi
and the late sun shimmering
like a metaphor
There’s a small furore going on concerning the new logo for the 2012 olympics. A top advertising concern was commissioned at the cost of the annual income of a small European kingdom and the result is, well, crap. There are five pastel shapes, four of which represent an abstraction of the numbers 2012, and the fifth is… just a shape.
The populace has risen in fury at such amateurism, added to which the animated version on the website has had to be withdrawn as it’s caused people to have epileptic fits.
The BBC morning news, which is always ready to jump on the bandwagon of popular uprisings, has been running a continuous feature every day in which viewers have sent in their own ideas for logos, the majority of which are far superior to, and more practical than, the agreed design.
Most popular of these is a simple idea in which the word ‘London’ is used, with the initial L O N doubling as 2012.
A ‘design guru’ was interviewed this morning and expressed his own dismay at the accepted design and showed some alternatives submitted by students which again, were interesting, exciting, and far more acceptable than what has been chosen.
Personally, as far as the Olympics are concerned, I couldn’t be less bothered. My only involvement with this regular circus is to complain about it commandeering the TV schedules for months without the terrestrial TV companies providing any alternative viewing for those of us who find sporting events only slightly more entertaining than a conversation with Katy Price.
It doesn’t bode well, though, that with five years to go till the event, we can’t even get the logo right.
Meanwhile, in the Big Brother house, the housemates are unaware of the nation’s unhappiness with a bit of design tat.
Food and toilet rolls are running out, and despite Nicky’s best efforts to get the girls to discuss rationing what food they’ve got left, it appears impossible to get them to stop talking about themselves in order to debate the issue.
Satnav (or whatever her name is) had earlier asked Ziggy (I’m wondering now if this is short for Sigmund) if he’d nominate her, as she wants to leave. She’s already been to the Diary room to ask Big Brother if she can ‘still get deals’ if she leaves by the back door.
Those of us who actually watch Big Brother know that discussing or soliciting nominations is a rule one breaks at one’s peril, and Satnav has been punished by Big Brother in the form of banning all the housemates from the bathroom.
Who could have predicted what a terrible punishment that would be? Hair-straighteners have assumed the status of Sauron’s ring, with various females turning to the dark side and attempting to take possession of ‘the precious’.
Lesley watches from another room with the eyes of a reptilian professor, studying the subjects of a vital experiment.
and the late sun shimmering
like a metaphor
There’s a small furore going on concerning the new logo for the 2012 olympics. A top advertising concern was commissioned at the cost of the annual income of a small European kingdom and the result is, well, crap. There are five pastel shapes, four of which represent an abstraction of the numbers 2012, and the fifth is… just a shape.
The populace has risen in fury at such amateurism, added to which the animated version on the website has had to be withdrawn as it’s caused people to have epileptic fits.
The BBC morning news, which is always ready to jump on the bandwagon of popular uprisings, has been running a continuous feature every day in which viewers have sent in their own ideas for logos, the majority of which are far superior to, and more practical than, the agreed design.
Most popular of these is a simple idea in which the word ‘London’ is used, with the initial L O N doubling as 2012.
A ‘design guru’ was interviewed this morning and expressed his own dismay at the accepted design and showed some alternatives submitted by students which again, were interesting, exciting, and far more acceptable than what has been chosen.
Personally, as far as the Olympics are concerned, I couldn’t be less bothered. My only involvement with this regular circus is to complain about it commandeering the TV schedules for months without the terrestrial TV companies providing any alternative viewing for those of us who find sporting events only slightly more entertaining than a conversation with Katy Price.
It doesn’t bode well, though, that with five years to go till the event, we can’t even get the logo right.
Meanwhile, in the Big Brother house, the housemates are unaware of the nation’s unhappiness with a bit of design tat.
Food and toilet rolls are running out, and despite Nicky’s best efforts to get the girls to discuss rationing what food they’ve got left, it appears impossible to get them to stop talking about themselves in order to debate the issue.
Satnav (or whatever her name is) had earlier asked Ziggy (I’m wondering now if this is short for Sigmund) if he’d nominate her, as she wants to leave. She’s already been to the Diary room to ask Big Brother if she can ‘still get deals’ if she leaves by the back door.
Those of us who actually watch Big Brother know that discussing or soliciting nominations is a rule one breaks at one’s peril, and Satnav has been punished by Big Brother in the form of banning all the housemates from the bathroom.
Who could have predicted what a terrible punishment that would be? Hair-straighteners have assumed the status of Sauron’s ring, with various females turning to the dark side and attempting to take possession of ‘the precious’.
Lesley watches from another room with the eyes of a reptilian professor, studying the subjects of a vital experiment.
Tuesday, 5 June 2007
Monday 4 June 2007
thirty years have gone
since marc bolan died in a
purple explosion.
I am beginning to wonder where those thirty years have gone. I recall sitting at my mother’s table, eating (I remember vividly) bacon, egg and fried tomato when the news came on the radio that Bolan had been killed in a car accident, having wrapped his purple mini round a tree near Barnes.
I was in Wales at the time and had no clue where Barnes was, nor did I care, since the terrible truth was filtering through to me that Bolan was dead.
I was seventeen and not terribly sane at the time so it was understandable, at least to me, that I should be upset as Bolan had been an important figure in my life since about 1970. So I cried.
My family, as always, were confused by my behaviour and for the most part remain confused at my behaviour to the present day. There was a fair bit of tutting, frowning and mocking, which is the standard procedure in North Wales for dealing with unusual situations.
Certainly my mother has always found my addiction to Big Brother to be deviant behaviour on my part and one year banished me to the kitchen to watch it while I was staying with her for a few days.
Ziggy from BB (surely that can’t be his real name) today hosted a dinner party for the girls, wheeling them in one at a time so he could share a different course with each of them.
He used the time wisely, and probed the ladies on how they felt about their housemates. No one, it transpires, likes Charley very much.
‘She’s got no substance,’ said Emily, neatly emphasising the fact that she wasn’t discussing nominations, just telling Ziggy (he’s Jewish. Is that a Jewish name?) about the people she’d rather not have in the house.
Later, Charley was the last to come to bed at 5am and started the girls on a sensitively-timed singalong.
‘Will you stop singing shite???’ raged Tracy from her bed, her face adopting the expression of Sean Bean as Boromir when Frodo goes invisible and escapes.
‘It’s the Spice Girls!’
‘Exactly! It’s shite! shite!’
This gets Tracy lots of points from me. Anyone who realises that the Spice Girls are shite has reached a certain level of spiritual enlightenment.
Meanwhile in Coronation Street, Leanne Battersby’s secret is out. She is a woman of the night (or at least a woman of the afternoon) and has been selling her scrawny bones via an agency in one of the only two hotels that Manchester has.
Unfortunately, as Manchester is such a small place, it was inevitable that one of her customers would turn out to be someone she knows, like her boyfriend’s brother.
In soapworld there is no such thing as a secret, and very soon, boyfriend’s brother’s wife is threatening divorce and (as you do) the boyfriend’s brother manhandles Leanne into his car-boot and drives off with her, his expression rather like Sean Bean as Boromir when Frodo goes invisible and escapes.
Attempting to retrieve his ringing mobile from the floor of the car while Leanne screams ‘Let me out! Let me out!’ he runs through a red light and gets driven into by a Greggs Delivery Truck (heavy with pies).
I feel a tragedy coming on…
since marc bolan died in a
purple explosion.
I am beginning to wonder where those thirty years have gone. I recall sitting at my mother’s table, eating (I remember vividly) bacon, egg and fried tomato when the news came on the radio that Bolan had been killed in a car accident, having wrapped his purple mini round a tree near Barnes.
I was in Wales at the time and had no clue where Barnes was, nor did I care, since the terrible truth was filtering through to me that Bolan was dead.
I was seventeen and not terribly sane at the time so it was understandable, at least to me, that I should be upset as Bolan had been an important figure in my life since about 1970. So I cried.
My family, as always, were confused by my behaviour and for the most part remain confused at my behaviour to the present day. There was a fair bit of tutting, frowning and mocking, which is the standard procedure in North Wales for dealing with unusual situations.
Certainly my mother has always found my addiction to Big Brother to be deviant behaviour on my part and one year banished me to the kitchen to watch it while I was staying with her for a few days.
Ziggy from BB (surely that can’t be his real name) today hosted a dinner party for the girls, wheeling them in one at a time so he could share a different course with each of them.
He used the time wisely, and probed the ladies on how they felt about their housemates. No one, it transpires, likes Charley very much.
‘She’s got no substance,’ said Emily, neatly emphasising the fact that she wasn’t discussing nominations, just telling Ziggy (he’s Jewish. Is that a Jewish name?) about the people she’d rather not have in the house.
Later, Charley was the last to come to bed at 5am and started the girls on a sensitively-timed singalong.
‘Will you stop singing shite???’ raged Tracy from her bed, her face adopting the expression of Sean Bean as Boromir when Frodo goes invisible and escapes.
‘It’s the Spice Girls!’
‘Exactly! It’s shite! shite!’
This gets Tracy lots of points from me. Anyone who realises that the Spice Girls are shite has reached a certain level of spiritual enlightenment.
Meanwhile in Coronation Street, Leanne Battersby’s secret is out. She is a woman of the night (or at least a woman of the afternoon) and has been selling her scrawny bones via an agency in one of the only two hotels that Manchester has.
Unfortunately, as Manchester is such a small place, it was inevitable that one of her customers would turn out to be someone she knows, like her boyfriend’s brother.
In soapworld there is no such thing as a secret, and very soon, boyfriend’s brother’s wife is threatening divorce and (as you do) the boyfriend’s brother manhandles Leanne into his car-boot and drives off with her, his expression rather like Sean Bean as Boromir when Frodo goes invisible and escapes.
Attempting to retrieve his ringing mobile from the floor of the car while Leanne screams ‘Let me out! Let me out!’ he runs through a red light and gets driven into by a Greggs Delivery Truck (heavy with pies).
I feel a tragedy coming on…
Sunday 3 June 2007
a sausage sandwich
half a bottle of lost sheep
and a jazz woodbine.
Sadly, due to a power cut which affected our aerial I missed Big Brother this evening as we were employing the satellite to watch the finale of 24.
I last saw BB on Friday night when a young man called Ziggy was admitted to the Big Brother House, unaware that his housemates had been living there since Wednesday and that they were all women.
I have no further opinions on the housemates as yet other than that Charley (as I now discover it is spelt) is my first choice for eviction.
Charley is an example of some of the worst aspects of British Society. She seriously believes that she does not need to work, cook, wash her clothes or indeed, do any anything productive other than exist for the glorification of herself.
If she actually had anything positive going for her she might stand a chance, but judging her by her own values (of which, it appears, there are few) she is sadly lacking. Rude, patronising, aggressive, attention-seeking, and (being as kind as I can be) not really that attractive, I can’t see the point of her.
What is she for?
half a bottle of lost sheep
and a jazz woodbine.
Sadly, due to a power cut which affected our aerial I missed Big Brother this evening as we were employing the satellite to watch the finale of 24.
I last saw BB on Friday night when a young man called Ziggy was admitted to the Big Brother House, unaware that his housemates had been living there since Wednesday and that they were all women.
I have no further opinions on the housemates as yet other than that Charley (as I now discover it is spelt) is my first choice for eviction.
Charley is an example of some of the worst aspects of British Society. She seriously believes that she does not need to work, cook, wash her clothes or indeed, do any anything productive other than exist for the glorification of herself.
If she actually had anything positive going for her she might stand a chance, but judging her by her own values (of which, it appears, there are few) she is sadly lacking. Rude, patronising, aggressive, attention-seeking, and (being as kind as I can be) not really that attractive, I can’t see the point of her.
What is she for?
Friday, 1 June 2007
Wednesday 30 May 2007
i anticipate
my ‘rendezvous with rama’
and space on the train
I have learned to enjoy my journeys backward and forward to work, mainly through shrewd timing which generally gets me a seat on the tube. My passion, if I can describe it as such, is Science Fiction. That’s the literary sort, not the televisual sort, which in most cases is not science fiction at all, but soap opera featuring characters with bumpy faces. It’s only at this time, which amounts to about two hours a day, that I get to read without distractions.
This week I am reading Arthur C Clarke’s ‘Rendezvous with Rama’ in which a vast cylindrical habitat enters the Solar System, and whose exploration throws up alien mysteries which are never solved.
In SF circles these vast unfathomable alien structures (of which there are many) are known as ‘Big Dumb Objects’, a term supposedly first employed by reviewer Roz Kaveney, and one which has been used to describe these feats of extravagant (and usually alien) engineering.
I was reminded of the term this evening when I tuned in to watch the new Big Brother Contestants entering the house. This year they have elected to have an all-female house although it appears that a man will be put in amongst the baying hordes some time on Friday.
I am not sure what BB’s criteria is in choosing housemates. Their target audience (allegedly) is 18-24 year olds, but I seriously doubt that premise since it appears that Big Brother fans come from all age groups. It still does not explain why the people behind the choices seek to fill the house with people guaranteed to irritate and annoy its audience.
There are a pair of Northern airhead teenage twins who (much in the manner of Katherine Tate’s character) scream in unison when confronted with anything unusual. Chanel (if that is how you spell it) bases her life and looks on Victoria Beckham and claims that she once told her mother she had spent £400 paying for a friend’s operation when in fact she’d bought a pair of the pock-faced one’s designer label jeans. That in itself is grounds for sectioning.
Charlie, from South London, is a gobby unemployed girl who was booed on the way in after boasting that she loves money and goes clubbing five nights a week. One suspects that she doesn’t buy many rounds even though her income support seems to be going a long way.
Why put these people in the house? Given the choice, I’d rather not share the same planet with them, let alone have to watch them practicing their limited vocabulary on each other.
On the plus side I like Lesley, at 60, the oldest Big Brother contestant ever, a retired businesswoman who, scarily, sounds a little like Thatcher. Then there’s Carol, 53, from the East End, a bisexual vegetarian sex clinic worker. Laura from South Wales, looks so much like a Little Britain character I can’t believe she’s real. She wants to train to be an embalmer. We should, in a fair world, be able to vote which of her housemates she can practice on.
Tracy is a crazy pink-haired cleaner who says ‘Having it!’ rather a lot.
There are others, but to be honest they’re so dull I can’t find anything to say about them.
So far, Big Brother, I’m not impressed.
my ‘rendezvous with rama’
and space on the train
I have learned to enjoy my journeys backward and forward to work, mainly through shrewd timing which generally gets me a seat on the tube. My passion, if I can describe it as such, is Science Fiction. That’s the literary sort, not the televisual sort, which in most cases is not science fiction at all, but soap opera featuring characters with bumpy faces. It’s only at this time, which amounts to about two hours a day, that I get to read without distractions.
This week I am reading Arthur C Clarke’s ‘Rendezvous with Rama’ in which a vast cylindrical habitat enters the Solar System, and whose exploration throws up alien mysteries which are never solved.
In SF circles these vast unfathomable alien structures (of which there are many) are known as ‘Big Dumb Objects’, a term supposedly first employed by reviewer Roz Kaveney, and one which has been used to describe these feats of extravagant (and usually alien) engineering.
I was reminded of the term this evening when I tuned in to watch the new Big Brother Contestants entering the house. This year they have elected to have an all-female house although it appears that a man will be put in amongst the baying hordes some time on Friday.
I am not sure what BB’s criteria is in choosing housemates. Their target audience (allegedly) is 18-24 year olds, but I seriously doubt that premise since it appears that Big Brother fans come from all age groups. It still does not explain why the people behind the choices seek to fill the house with people guaranteed to irritate and annoy its audience.
There are a pair of Northern airhead teenage twins who (much in the manner of Katherine Tate’s character) scream in unison when confronted with anything unusual. Chanel (if that is how you spell it) bases her life and looks on Victoria Beckham and claims that she once told her mother she had spent £400 paying for a friend’s operation when in fact she’d bought a pair of the pock-faced one’s designer label jeans. That in itself is grounds for sectioning.
Charlie, from South London, is a gobby unemployed girl who was booed on the way in after boasting that she loves money and goes clubbing five nights a week. One suspects that she doesn’t buy many rounds even though her income support seems to be going a long way.
Why put these people in the house? Given the choice, I’d rather not share the same planet with them, let alone have to watch them practicing their limited vocabulary on each other.
On the plus side I like Lesley, at 60, the oldest Big Brother contestant ever, a retired businesswoman who, scarily, sounds a little like Thatcher. Then there’s Carol, 53, from the East End, a bisexual vegetarian sex clinic worker. Laura from South Wales, looks so much like a Little Britain character I can’t believe she’s real. She wants to train to be an embalmer. We should, in a fair world, be able to vote which of her housemates she can practice on.
Tracy is a crazy pink-haired cleaner who says ‘Having it!’ rather a lot.
There are others, but to be honest they’re so dull I can’t find anything to say about them.
So far, Big Brother, I’m not impressed.
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