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.
Friday, 5 February 2010
Wednesday 3 February 2010
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
Sunday 31 January 2010
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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