I think it was in his adverts for the Inland Revenue's taxation self-assasment forms that Adam Hart-Davies that said "Tax doesn't have to be taxing". Well bollocks. He only said it becasue they'd locked him in a giant egg timer and wouldn't let him out unless he said nice things about an SA100 form before he was sucked through the pinch and crushed under eight cubic kilometres of sand.
He'd be singing a different tune if he'd had to deal with Leicester City Council's Revenues and Benefits service. Such a shower of monkeys I have seldom known. I can't say never as I am a BT Internet customer and as such I am in the ninth circle of customer service hell already. I also regularly use our nation's railways, famous across the world for their inability to tell their arse from a hole in the ground. But at least they haven't seen fit to send me three mutually contradictory letters in less than a week.
Now let me start by saying that I am not one of these libertarian types who thinks all tax is theft and the whole world would be one blissfully contented giant version of Switzerland if we abolished all government and let the free market sort it all out. People like that are not neccessarily known for their well-thought-out opinions and often tend to be members of organisations like News International or the Ku Klux Klan as well. This is not, I want to make clear, to imply in any way that Rupert Murdoch is in some way intolerant of difference in others or those less fortunate than he so clearly is. I do not make that claim here at all. You might want to, but remember that his lawyers are doubtless well-paid, very reliable and ever-vigilant.
In fact, to return to the very long-winded run up to my eventual point, we in Britain are happily largely free from the Pat Buchanan/ Steve Forbes types in our political discourse. Yes there is the UK Independence Party who advocate a flat tax rate of ten percent to be levelled on everyone and everything regardless of individual wealth, but they also campaign for repatriation of war refugees and leaving the European Union. Again, these are not aims which I can share, having as I do an IQ of more than fifty.
I will grant that Adam Smith, the spiritual founder of modern capitalist economics, was British but then so is Simon Cowell and I don't think he's neccessarily right about everything either. Smith's idea was that taxation was extortion, levelled on the poor to keep them nicely oppressed and supply the idle rich with all the venison and wig pomade they could eat. This may have been true at the time, but the time was the 1700s, when the idle rich were all inbred aristocrats who thought they were rich because God liked them more than their serfs and villeins. Things have moved on since then. We now have the NHS to pay for, along with schools, roads, defence, pensions and all the other stuff we need to keep us alive. Smith unaccountably failed to take account of the cost of government IT systems when he first wrote The Wealth of Nations, possibly because they didn't exist at the time. Also, he decided that if any inequalites should by chance arise, God would sort it out for us. Excellent work, there Adam. Right up there with mesmerism and Boswellox.
So in order to escape the shackles of a modern liberal democracy that Adam Smith, and later Milton "Bonkers" Friedmann and Friedrich "Hallucinations" Hayek so disapproved of (like pensions you could live on and trains that actually work) we have, over the last thirty years, voted for a series of governments that smashed up and sold off basically everything that wasn't nailed down, and much that was. All that is left now is the Royal Family, nuclear weapons and, bizarrely, the Tote. Nuclear power stations and air traffic control were the last to go, after steel, coal, electricity, water, gas, British Leyland, hospital cleaning, school dinners, ports, airports, the railways, the buses, North Sea oil, bin men, the Royal Ordonance, universities, the Post Office, care of the elderly, mental health provision, most of the NHS and Caledonian MacBrayne ferries. There may be more, but that's quite a lot as it is.
As we can see, all of these institutions in Britain are now very obviously the envy of the world and not at all a hollow bastardised shell of the dedicated public service institutions they once were. But this still leaves us with a question - why do we still moan about paying our taxes when we don't have that much left to pay for, can fairly easily see what it is we do pay for, and we don't really pay that much compared to the rest of Europe anyway?
Well. Perhaps I'm missing something. Perhaps the British are just very, very stupid. Who knows? Either way, the people of the world's fifth largest economy deem it too expensive to pay for university education, a non-commercial public service broadcaster or decent public transport. You know, all the things the rest of Europe wonder how we do without. We compare ourselves with the Americans, but I think that this is not really a valid model. For a start, whereas the US is 4000 miles away, France is twenty. Secondly, Canada. This is a cause of endless anger to me, and if I start I won't stop.
But, when it comes to the crunch, I am beginning to see their point. Not as to the need to pay for public services, as unlike some I don't believe that fires will somehow magically put themselves out, nor do I think that having a mechanism to keep me from starving to death in the streeet is somehow an unacceptable burden on the middle classes. No. But I wish that the Council could sort out their fucking letters.
Afetr I moved house, I go to the Council Tax office at the beginning of May, sort out a direct debit for the first of the month and feel happy that my bills are all taken care of, leaving me more free time to write these endless blogs and eat pizza. Then I get a threatening letter on Wednesday telling me that if I don't pay up the full 714 quid within seven days they'll break my legs and bailiffs will take my pancreas (and did you know that if bailiffs come to repossess your possessions you have to pay for their services? No, I didn't either until Wednesday). So on Thursday I go to see them with the copy of the direct debit form that they gave me telling me that they would take 90 notes on the first of June, a copy of my bank statement showing that at no point did they even try, and finally the aforesaid threatening letter with its predicitons of a court-ordered doom.
I know Council Tax well. I work for the council so in effect I am paying at least some of my own wages, but I am not too worried about that. As long as I can afford broadband and houmous I am happy. I know what else it pays for as well - social services, parks, bus stops, and all sorts of contracts from things like bin collection to things like traffic wardens. And really, it isn't too onerous. Me and Blake pay ninety pounds a month for our Band A house. The price you pay depends on where you live. Our mate Hardip pays a thousand a year but he lives in a nice new flat (it's lovely, like something from an expensive lifestyle magazine - wood floors, recessed lighting, the works) in a nice bit of town, hence he's Band B, hence he pays more. We live in a two-up two-down in what was until very recently a slum where the local pub was so rough the police closed it down. It's lovely now, and is flying the flags of all the nations so far knocked out of the World Cup. But back to my story.
Turned out they'd mixed up the last two digits of my bank account number when some clerk typed it in. Now, I am a tolerant man, and used to be a data-entry clerk myself, but I am unhappy to receive a blood-curdling official letter telling me to look forward to my new career as prison bitch to a GBH convict called Psycho because some sausage-fingered idiot can't type an eight digit number properly. And when this morning saw the delivery of yet another letter from the Revenues and Benefits Department (hereafter to be known as The Leicester City Council Gilbert and Sullivan Society, because they sure as hell can't cope with administering local taxation) dated the day before yesterday telling me that they'd made an admin error and I should ignore their previous correspondance I am even less inclined to be as forgiving as I'd like.
And they still haven't emptied my recycling bin either. Next chance I get, I'm moving to Switzerland.
Good Night, and Good Luck
Dougal
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Guidebook
Change is in the air. Dangerous, reckless change. Yes, the BBC is cancelling Top of the Pops. It is, apparently, out of date and not relevant to the modern young audience. Well, I beg to differ. I may not be young anymore, but I am not quite old just yet, and have these people no idea of tradition? If it wasn't for TOTP I'd have never seen and been scared by the video to Duran Duran's Wild Boys or been made to feel... funny by Louise Wener of Sleeper in 1994. Great days.
Of course, the rot set in years ago. First Going Live, then Sportsnight, then Tomorrow's World. Bastards. These were the foundations of my childhood. I watched Going Live for gunge, Sportsnight for ice skating and crown green bowls and Tomorrow's World for a glimpse of a world ruled by robots and to be made to feel... funny by Phillipa Forrester.
Nowadays it is all much different. Phillip Schofield left Going Live to be Joseph in his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, whilst Peter Simon now makes his living as a bitter shell of a man flogging diamonique jewellery and no-effort weight loss programs on Bid-Up TV. Sportsnight was never really that good anyway, and even the excellent music has been ruined by having Jonny Vaughan steal it for one of his many short-lived and hateful Letterman rip-offs - why the BBC ever though giving that man money was a good idea is beyond me. And now it actually is the 21st century Tomorrow's World has been passed by events, whilst these days Phillipa Forrester presents some God Slot programme on BBC2 on Sunday morning and can now only be described by the word "homely". Oh, the passage of time.
But anyway. Our principal subject today is the perennially thorny one of foreigners. Now I know some of you who choose to subscribe to my irregular but depressingly frequent column are, in fact, foreign yourselves, but don't worry, you can't help it and I sympathise as much as I can.
I may be joking there. But I am off to Germany on Monday with work for a week, and I have been thinking about travel generally, having bought a new Lonely Planet guide to take with me. The sight of a hundred LPs for a hundred countries in Waterstones always makes me want to head off with my backpack for as long as I can afford and work will let me get away with. I lived in Germany for the 1999/2000 academic year and reading my guidebook in Caffe Nero I found myself smiling widely and laughing at old memories. The holiday season is here. Thank God.
I am lucky in many ways. I live not too far from a couple of decent airports and Ryanair or Easyjet can generally get me to somewhere European for about thirty quid. I have taken plenty of advantage of this cheap and easy way out of the country. I find it invigorating. You meet some cool people and do things you wouldn't normally do. I tend towards the Lonely Planet and backpack method of travel, so it's always a slightly enclosed existence. Like being in a bubble. I like that a lot, it makes me feel like Bill Bryson. Perhaps that's not as cool a travel writer as I could choose, but he has a way with words I admire greatly. Plus it's my blog, so there.
There's nothing to compare with being 19 and spending a week in Rome eating nothing but pizza and trying to persuade a girl from Sweden called Christa to let you see her naked. In a more measured example, an Australian girl called Mindy and I accidentally crashed an art gallery launch party in Krakow (no blame attahces itself to us in this - we were looking for coffee, and the sign in the window said it was a cafe. The fact that it turned out to be an exhibit in said gallery, we did not know) but were allowed to stay because we spoke English and I knew who Paul Klee was. We got riotously drunk on free Bulgarian wine and ate our weights in Pringles.
You see things that you'd never see. An open-air rave on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, a street which belies its fearsome and seedy reputation as Germany's biggest sink of iniquity by having a huge furniture shop and a theatre playing Cats halfway down it. Six men with astounding moustaches on Castle Hill in Prague singing ancient and beautiful folk songs that, if you picked up the translated lyrics from their stall turned out to all (and I mean all) be about hunting down Russians and skinning them alive. Buying beer like liquid honey and foot-long cigars for the equivalent of three pounds in Lublin. Getting into an argument with an East German about architecture. Meeting six members of the USAF in two days in a hostel in Paris. Wearing a water melon on my head on a Roman beach.
In fact, Christa turned out to be nuts. She lived in Brighton, which is much less impressive than Sweden, and spent her days stealing clothes from BHS because they were a big chainstore and, in her words, no-one got hurt. I was very careful with my wallet after that. For each excellent person you meet there is always someone you never want to see again, even naked. Mindy was nice though, and taught me the most space efficient way to pack a backpack. Useful.
I'd bore you with more, but I won't. I will be off now to read in my LP about Karlsruhe, the German city work are sending me to. It's work, sure, but I can get Apfelschorle whenever I want. And perhaps that's the greatest reward of all.
Good Night, and Good Luck
Dougal
Of course, the rot set in years ago. First Going Live, then Sportsnight, then Tomorrow's World. Bastards. These were the foundations of my childhood. I watched Going Live for gunge, Sportsnight for ice skating and crown green bowls and Tomorrow's World for a glimpse of a world ruled by robots and to be made to feel... funny by Phillipa Forrester.
Nowadays it is all much different. Phillip Schofield left Going Live to be Joseph in his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, whilst Peter Simon now makes his living as a bitter shell of a man flogging diamonique jewellery and no-effort weight loss programs on Bid-Up TV. Sportsnight was never really that good anyway, and even the excellent music has been ruined by having Jonny Vaughan steal it for one of his many short-lived and hateful Letterman rip-offs - why the BBC ever though giving that man money was a good idea is beyond me. And now it actually is the 21st century Tomorrow's World has been passed by events, whilst these days Phillipa Forrester presents some God Slot programme on BBC2 on Sunday morning and can now only be described by the word "homely". Oh, the passage of time.
But anyway. Our principal subject today is the perennially thorny one of foreigners. Now I know some of you who choose to subscribe to my irregular but depressingly frequent column are, in fact, foreign yourselves, but don't worry, you can't help it and I sympathise as much as I can.
I may be joking there. But I am off to Germany on Monday with work for a week, and I have been thinking about travel generally, having bought a new Lonely Planet guide to take with me. The sight of a hundred LPs for a hundred countries in Waterstones always makes me want to head off with my backpack for as long as I can afford and work will let me get away with. I lived in Germany for the 1999/2000 academic year and reading my guidebook in Caffe Nero I found myself smiling widely and laughing at old memories. The holiday season is here. Thank God.
I am lucky in many ways. I live not too far from a couple of decent airports and Ryanair or Easyjet can generally get me to somewhere European for about thirty quid. I have taken plenty of advantage of this cheap and easy way out of the country. I find it invigorating. You meet some cool people and do things you wouldn't normally do. I tend towards the Lonely Planet and backpack method of travel, so it's always a slightly enclosed existence. Like being in a bubble. I like that a lot, it makes me feel like Bill Bryson. Perhaps that's not as cool a travel writer as I could choose, but he has a way with words I admire greatly. Plus it's my blog, so there.
There's nothing to compare with being 19 and spending a week in Rome eating nothing but pizza and trying to persuade a girl from Sweden called Christa to let you see her naked. In a more measured example, an Australian girl called Mindy and I accidentally crashed an art gallery launch party in Krakow (no blame attahces itself to us in this - we were looking for coffee, and the sign in the window said it was a cafe. The fact that it turned out to be an exhibit in said gallery, we did not know) but were allowed to stay because we spoke English and I knew who Paul Klee was. We got riotously drunk on free Bulgarian wine and ate our weights in Pringles.
You see things that you'd never see. An open-air rave on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, a street which belies its fearsome and seedy reputation as Germany's biggest sink of iniquity by having a huge furniture shop and a theatre playing Cats halfway down it. Six men with astounding moustaches on Castle Hill in Prague singing ancient and beautiful folk songs that, if you picked up the translated lyrics from their stall turned out to all (and I mean all) be about hunting down Russians and skinning them alive. Buying beer like liquid honey and foot-long cigars for the equivalent of three pounds in Lublin. Getting into an argument with an East German about architecture. Meeting six members of the USAF in two days in a hostel in Paris. Wearing a water melon on my head on a Roman beach.
In fact, Christa turned out to be nuts. She lived in Brighton, which is much less impressive than Sweden, and spent her days stealing clothes from BHS because they were a big chainstore and, in her words, no-one got hurt. I was very careful with my wallet after that. For each excellent person you meet there is always someone you never want to see again, even naked. Mindy was nice though, and taught me the most space efficient way to pack a backpack. Useful.
I'd bore you with more, but I won't. I will be off now to read in my LP about Karlsruhe, the German city work are sending me to. It's work, sure, but I can get Apfelschorle whenever I want. And perhaps that's the greatest reward of all.
Good Night, and Good Luck
Dougal
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Beautiful
We start today with a fact; Dindos is Greek for Latin and also Latin for Greek. How's about that? I had literally no idea. I learnt that from a repeat of Yes, Minister on UK Gold. It's amazing what you pick up. I have also realised that if I write my posts out in shorthand before I begin to type they generally make more sense. Can you guess which method I used today? There will be a small* prize if you guess correctly.
So onto my main topic, which today is change. Basically, as I have said before, the British are ambivalent towards the internet. It's a bit like CB radio was in the 70's - you have to learn how it works, so it's automatically for poofs and lasses. Sad-acts who can't talk to girls and spend all their waking hours masturbating over pictures of buxom axe-carrying elves in leather combat gear and playing Warhammer 40,000 with other withdrawn losers in South Korea. Real people are too busy drinking delicious lager and fighting. The internet is for four things -
a) Tesco Direct,
b) hard core pornography,
c) child molesters, and
d) complaining about.
I may have touched on these themes before. Nowadays I am worrying less but still keeping my blog notebook well out of sight in public. Prejudices linger in all sorts of places. And I know, get to the point, Burgess, but stick with me, this does all come together eventually.
So anyway, Land of War or whatever it's called. It seems that one day in some fantasy MORPG somewhere, a person was talking to another person in battle-clad guise. The conversation, after the obligatory "I am Skra-gorn, son of Arathorn, my personality is seventy-six" stuff, they both discovered that they were British women and began to talk like normal people instead. Even in virtual space, we Brits can get very self-conscious if caught playing about with fancy dress. And so the conversation turned, as the Human League said, until the sun went down. A new friend had been made.
After a while the subject of men came up. And in her turn Warrior A said to Warrior B,
"Actually, I'm gay".
"Oh," said Warrior B and thought no more of it until about ten minutes later a message arrived from the moderator of this fantasy place saying:
"Talking about being gay is inappropriate for this game, cease and desist".
"But I am," said Warrior A.
"Nonetheless, keep it to yourself," came the reply, "we'll have none of that kind of thing here. Go back to casting spells and battling orcs."
"So I can't be gay on here?" asked A
"No," said the moderator.
A thought about this for a while, and using the magic of email organised a reply to this edict that would get her point across in a way that could not be ignored. And so, one day, from all five corners of this virtual magical kingdom came eleves, knights, warriros, trolls and warlocks to the first annual Fantasy Land Gay Pride Parade. Rainbow flags were draped on the walls of the city and thousands marched through the streets for equality and self-determination. Now there is a gay bar and several alternative bookshops, plus support groups for gay wizards and closeted necromancers.
See? Things change. World Of Goblins is now the main RPG for the world gay community. Society moves on in many ways, some subtle, some less so. I think the wholehearted acceptance by the public at large of James Blunt is a sign that we are less macho now than we once were during the Go-Go Eighties when Europe and Bon Jovi ruled the airwaves. Whereas then we would have called them a bunch of bleeding-heart nancy boys, now we take these sensitive balladeers to our hearts and nurture their bruised sensibilites with love, affection and a room full of money.
James Blunt, is of course, a trained killer. I saw him and Damien Rice fighting in the car park of Morrison's in Leicester over who was the most lovelorn and James made mincemeat of him. The last I saw as I ran away was James garotting Damien with a cello string having pulled out his eyeballs with the sharp edge of a slim volume of Keats's Odes. Nasty. He didn't stand a chance against a Sandhurst graduate, and all that was left when I came back was a scarred acoustic guitar fretboard and a human heart with a knitting needle stuck through it.
I have opinions now on all sorts of things I never used to think about at all. Traffic. The police. The need for team games to be played in school and the quality of said teaching. That last one is a big surprise. I used to fulminate endlessly about the unfairness of forcing us kids out into the cold to play rugby on Wednesday afternoons, and I still feel as sharply now what I felt about it at the time. But I also now realise, that it was in fact down to the sheer awfulness of most PE teachers, not to the activity itself. If you were to ask me now I'd say that it was vitally important that kids learn how to operate in teams and get into the habit of doing at least some exercise between bouts of Death Kille 3 on the X-Box 360. This leads me neatly (or not so neatly, don't split hairs) to last night's draw with Sweden, a team we haven't beaten since 1968, and hey, surprise surprise, that's a record that still stands today.
I've said it before, I'll say it again - we are a society of highly competitive yet deeply lazy hypocritical bastards. Perfidious Albion indeed, especially when it comes to the life or death subject of Professional Football. Therefore I don't see how our placing of our vicarious sense of keep fit and competition in the persons of the eleven men of the England football team is wise. They can only disappoint us, and yesterday they did just that.
I don't see how they can't see it. Is it just me or do Joe "Twinkle Toes" Cole's displays of his silky dribbling skills generally come when he's stood by a corner flag with four defenders surrounding him? Perhaps he could have passed the ball on when he had the opportunity earlier, although that wouldn't have been infront of a camera. But there he is, dancing expertly away where he is doing no good whatsoever except to Sweden who then take the ball away and menace the England end largely unchallenged. Here we find Rio "King of the Strollers" Ferdinand, who has been known to set up a deckchair on the 18 yard line and take a nap during matches.
This is not to criticse Joe Cole (although I will go on record as taking a pop at Rio, the stupid haired lion-faced berk). I have no skill with a football whatsoever, but looking at last night's game with a dispassionate organisational eye, it strikes me that it's all very well celebrating a goal, but when you spend so much time shouting, waving, hugging Peter Crouch and kissing the Three Lions adorning the shirt as England did last night, you are likely to be forgetting that the whole Swedish team are now running towards the England goal with the ball. Similarly, a game lasts 90 minutes and not just until England score. With that in mind, perhaps remembering to be paying attention for that whole period might be in order should we hope to see the team progress beyond the next round.
But that's an aside. Things, as the Bluetones sang back in the heady days of '95, Change. I read on the BBC website that the German police have been extremely impressed with the behaviour of England fans at the World Cup so far. The dreadful reputation of the past seems to be just that. They did, admittedly, confiscate 3000 people's passports to stop them travelling to Germany and they did send 500 uniformed bobbies to patrol the venues alongside their colleagues from the Polizei so perhaps it's more down to the huge policing operation, but still, there have been no baton charges yet, and so, for now, we can be pleased with ourselves. Nowadays we are happier for people like the Germans or Spanish to be foreign at us when we go abroad. Wait till we meet the Germans in the next round and lose, though.
Closer to home, I never used to get hayfever. I grew up on the coast where the sand meets the sea. The bracing sea breezes meant any pollen was muscularly diverted from the area and I could breathe easily throughout my childhood years, as though Tunes were no more than the fevered imaginings of a madman. Now I am a wreck, rattling with pills and my nose red from blowing. Damn immune system. But that's not all. It is a far deeper change than the acquisition of a mere immune disorder.
Nowadays I find myself saying things like "It's expensive, but it'll last longer than a cheap one" and "I'm busy in August, how about October?" and "I'd love to come out, but I've got to be in Nottingham for work by ten," and so on. I am turning into my parents, and the really scary thing is that I don't really mind. I long for domesticity. Perhaps this is because I am sick of the single batchelor life. That, by the way, is a myth. I do not have a WKD side, nor do I subscribe to the Lynx Effect. I am too busy to go out and shark about in some gloomy hangout full of people a decade younger than me. I can't go to work with a hangover, partly because I have stuff to do that needs me to be functioning properly and partly because if I do drink I am ill for the best part of a week. And if you do drink WKD and are over fifteen, you are a lost cause and I will trouble to think of you no more.
Well, maybe I have always been like this, especially the bit about drink. I make no claims of a wild youth. I was a child of the 90's and as such feel guilt for just walking past a MacDonalds. But I know one thing. James Blunt is a vicious bugger when he's cornered. Look out, kids.
Good Night, and Good Luck
Dougal
*There is no prize in fact. You may have guessed this.
So onto my main topic, which today is change. Basically, as I have said before, the British are ambivalent towards the internet. It's a bit like CB radio was in the 70's - you have to learn how it works, so it's automatically for poofs and lasses. Sad-acts who can't talk to girls and spend all their waking hours masturbating over pictures of buxom axe-carrying elves in leather combat gear and playing Warhammer 40,000 with other withdrawn losers in South Korea. Real people are too busy drinking delicious lager and fighting. The internet is for four things -
a) Tesco Direct,
b) hard core pornography,
c) child molesters, and
d) complaining about.
I may have touched on these themes before. Nowadays I am worrying less but still keeping my blog notebook well out of sight in public. Prejudices linger in all sorts of places. And I know, get to the point, Burgess, but stick with me, this does all come together eventually.
So anyway, Land of War or whatever it's called. It seems that one day in some fantasy MORPG somewhere, a person was talking to another person in battle-clad guise. The conversation, after the obligatory "I am Skra-gorn, son of Arathorn, my personality is seventy-six" stuff, they both discovered that they were British women and began to talk like normal people instead. Even in virtual space, we Brits can get very self-conscious if caught playing about with fancy dress. And so the conversation turned, as the Human League said, until the sun went down. A new friend had been made.
After a while the subject of men came up. And in her turn Warrior A said to Warrior B,
"Actually, I'm gay".
"Oh," said Warrior B and thought no more of it until about ten minutes later a message arrived from the moderator of this fantasy place saying:
"Talking about being gay is inappropriate for this game, cease and desist".
"But I am," said Warrior A.
"Nonetheless, keep it to yourself," came the reply, "we'll have none of that kind of thing here. Go back to casting spells and battling orcs."
"So I can't be gay on here?" asked A
"No," said the moderator.
A thought about this for a while, and using the magic of email organised a reply to this edict that would get her point across in a way that could not be ignored. And so, one day, from all five corners of this virtual magical kingdom came eleves, knights, warriros, trolls and warlocks to the first annual Fantasy Land Gay Pride Parade. Rainbow flags were draped on the walls of the city and thousands marched through the streets for equality and self-determination. Now there is a gay bar and several alternative bookshops, plus support groups for gay wizards and closeted necromancers.
See? Things change. World Of Goblins is now the main RPG for the world gay community. Society moves on in many ways, some subtle, some less so. I think the wholehearted acceptance by the public at large of James Blunt is a sign that we are less macho now than we once were during the Go-Go Eighties when Europe and Bon Jovi ruled the airwaves. Whereas then we would have called them a bunch of bleeding-heart nancy boys, now we take these sensitive balladeers to our hearts and nurture their bruised sensibilites with love, affection and a room full of money.
James Blunt, is of course, a trained killer. I saw him and Damien Rice fighting in the car park of Morrison's in Leicester over who was the most lovelorn and James made mincemeat of him. The last I saw as I ran away was James garotting Damien with a cello string having pulled out his eyeballs with the sharp edge of a slim volume of Keats's Odes. Nasty. He didn't stand a chance against a Sandhurst graduate, and all that was left when I came back was a scarred acoustic guitar fretboard and a human heart with a knitting needle stuck through it.
I have opinions now on all sorts of things I never used to think about at all. Traffic. The police. The need for team games to be played in school and the quality of said teaching. That last one is a big surprise. I used to fulminate endlessly about the unfairness of forcing us kids out into the cold to play rugby on Wednesday afternoons, and I still feel as sharply now what I felt about it at the time. But I also now realise, that it was in fact down to the sheer awfulness of most PE teachers, not to the activity itself. If you were to ask me now I'd say that it was vitally important that kids learn how to operate in teams and get into the habit of doing at least some exercise between bouts of Death Kille 3 on the X-Box 360. This leads me neatly (or not so neatly, don't split hairs) to last night's draw with Sweden, a team we haven't beaten since 1968, and hey, surprise surprise, that's a record that still stands today.
I've said it before, I'll say it again - we are a society of highly competitive yet deeply lazy hypocritical bastards. Perfidious Albion indeed, especially when it comes to the life or death subject of Professional Football. Therefore I don't see how our placing of our vicarious sense of keep fit and competition in the persons of the eleven men of the England football team is wise. They can only disappoint us, and yesterday they did just that.
I don't see how they can't see it. Is it just me or do Joe "Twinkle Toes" Cole's displays of his silky dribbling skills generally come when he's stood by a corner flag with four defenders surrounding him? Perhaps he could have passed the ball on when he had the opportunity earlier, although that wouldn't have been infront of a camera. But there he is, dancing expertly away where he is doing no good whatsoever except to Sweden who then take the ball away and menace the England end largely unchallenged. Here we find Rio "King of the Strollers" Ferdinand, who has been known to set up a deckchair on the 18 yard line and take a nap during matches.
This is not to criticse Joe Cole (although I will go on record as taking a pop at Rio, the stupid haired lion-faced berk). I have no skill with a football whatsoever, but looking at last night's game with a dispassionate organisational eye, it strikes me that it's all very well celebrating a goal, but when you spend so much time shouting, waving, hugging Peter Crouch and kissing the Three Lions adorning the shirt as England did last night, you are likely to be forgetting that the whole Swedish team are now running towards the England goal with the ball. Similarly, a game lasts 90 minutes and not just until England score. With that in mind, perhaps remembering to be paying attention for that whole period might be in order should we hope to see the team progress beyond the next round.
But that's an aside. Things, as the Bluetones sang back in the heady days of '95, Change. I read on the BBC website that the German police have been extremely impressed with the behaviour of England fans at the World Cup so far. The dreadful reputation of the past seems to be just that. They did, admittedly, confiscate 3000 people's passports to stop them travelling to Germany and they did send 500 uniformed bobbies to patrol the venues alongside their colleagues from the Polizei so perhaps it's more down to the huge policing operation, but still, there have been no baton charges yet, and so, for now, we can be pleased with ourselves. Nowadays we are happier for people like the Germans or Spanish to be foreign at us when we go abroad. Wait till we meet the Germans in the next round and lose, though.
Closer to home, I never used to get hayfever. I grew up on the coast where the sand meets the sea. The bracing sea breezes meant any pollen was muscularly diverted from the area and I could breathe easily throughout my childhood years, as though Tunes were no more than the fevered imaginings of a madman. Now I am a wreck, rattling with pills and my nose red from blowing. Damn immune system. But that's not all. It is a far deeper change than the acquisition of a mere immune disorder.
Nowadays I find myself saying things like "It's expensive, but it'll last longer than a cheap one" and "I'm busy in August, how about October?" and "I'd love to come out, but I've got to be in Nottingham for work by ten," and so on. I am turning into my parents, and the really scary thing is that I don't really mind. I long for domesticity. Perhaps this is because I am sick of the single batchelor life. That, by the way, is a myth. I do not have a WKD side, nor do I subscribe to the Lynx Effect. I am too busy to go out and shark about in some gloomy hangout full of people a decade younger than me. I can't go to work with a hangover, partly because I have stuff to do that needs me to be functioning properly and partly because if I do drink I am ill for the best part of a week. And if you do drink WKD and are over fifteen, you are a lost cause and I will trouble to think of you no more.
Well, maybe I have always been like this, especially the bit about drink. I make no claims of a wild youth. I was a child of the 90's and as such feel guilt for just walking past a MacDonalds. But I know one thing. James Blunt is a vicious bugger when he's cornered. Look out, kids.
Good Night, and Good Luck
Dougal
*There is no prize in fact. You may have guessed this.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
L'avis (With apologies to Arthur Abromov)
All
Welcome to my latest experiment. You may have read in my latest post (if you got that far) about my trip to the National Theatre to see Peter Shaffer's Royal Hunt Of The Sun. Inspired, I dug out all of my drama texts from university, hit Amazon for more, and started to read. So far I have gone through Edward Bond (epic-scale settings, extreme violence and an on-stage autopsy), David Mamet (the decay of the American Dream, lots of swearing and an on-stage autopsy) and Samuel Beckett (bleak abstractness, gallows humour and an on-stage autopsy).
Not all of those descriptions may be truly accurate. But my renewed interest in theatre has bought me back to reading the Theatre of the Absurd. This was a school of drama, mostly French, that started as a reaction to the Victorian school of the "well-made" play and its hectoring insistence on a beginning, middle and end, plus moral. Ibsen's The Pillars of Society is a good example. The absurdists decided that instead a play should instead be as far from a didactic text as possible, and also, for preference, very difficult to stage. Ionesco's Chairs, for example, demands the stage be filled with about a hundred chairs and two actors talking to the invisible occupants of those chairs. Beckett put people in big jars and dustbins and Brecht didn't use scenery at all. This is just being awkward in my opinion, but it would save on nails and plywood at a time of post WWII austerity. Theatrical props were also in short supply, having all been melted down to build Lancaster Bombers.
How does this relate to me? Well, I have run out of ideas. I am serious when I say I have no opinions left. I doubt if anyone is interested in a recapitulation of my feelings towards Coca-Cola's World Cup marketing campaign, although just typing those words has made me grind another layer of enamel off my teeth in rage. Similarly, yes I had a nice weekend, but then so did a billion other people but only a small number decided to write it up in longhand, decorate it with pictures and then show it to people. Holiday snaps are inherently boring, and mine had a commentary. Two for the price of one, and I didn't even wait to be asked.
So I'm struggling. I need an angle to keep up the momentum to towards the day when I displace the gorgeous, pouting and unutterably inane Tila Tequila from the top of the MS blog rankings, and lacking as I do fantastic buns, I must do it with words alone. I am driven, ambitious and also, doomed.
For I was born middle aged, like Trevor Howard or Jeffrey Barnard. All I do is complain. I'd go on Grumpy Old Men, but Rick Wakeman is so much more photogenic. And anyway, one of the cheif gripes of the guests on that august show is the internet and their bewilderment at what it does, who uses it and why they can't do it. I am quite adept at this internet lark, am discerning enough to use Firefox instead of Explorer, can do some light HTML when required and so would be exiled from the curmudgeonly set as some kind of fifth columnist.
So not only must I do this with just words, I must do it alone. Perhaps I could do what those Hammer chaps are doing, and be fiercly critical of other people's blogs until I get a publishing deal with Random House (thus keeping it all within the Rupertocracy and only having to pay one set of solicitors fees). I dare say I can slag off some of MS's more modelly members because what are the chances of them
a) ever getting to my poison pen portraits through the millions of emailed photos of fraternity brother's penises and the unsolicited lurid sexual fantasies from wierdos that all women on MS get, and
b) understanding them.
Well, perhaps that's cruel. I have worked out however, that it is perfectly acceptable to call dessert90210 a pointless, air-headed cipher of a Pamela Anderson wannabe who'd be out of her intellectual depth in a puddle, if I make it clear that it's just conjectural and not an actual opinion. Which it was. No misunderstandings there, I hope. I bet she's lovely. Hello there!
In keeping with this, I could become bitter and twisted and berate society for its iniquities, God for allowing pain and suffering and girls for not wanting to go out with me. I could tear myself to pieces in a full-on Freudian deconstruction, but I've done that already and although everyone who replied was very nice, I doubt if they'd want to hear it all again. I could become reactionary and talk about nothing but the Queen and how much we all love her in the Commonwealth, but that'd be boring, pointless and also a lie. Or I could just descend into self parody and ramble endlessly about badminton, cooking and parking a car in Leicester. Choices, choices.
All this brings us back to the Theatre of the Absurd. Well, actually it doesn't, but I want to get lunch before three and so have to stop somewhere. It is my aim, then, in tribute to these brave, revolutionary and deeply pretentious playwrights of the 1920's to string together something like a thousand words and say nothing. A blog void of all content and empty of all meaning. What do we think? Perhaps this was a success, perhaps not. Perhaps that's the point, intellecutally speaking.
Mind you, it's all for naught anyway, as I heard on the radio this morning that half of all Europe's eggs are currently infected with salmonella and gastric death is mere hours away, except for vegans who are doubtless relishing the chance to be twice as smug as usual whilst the rest of us less awkward people fall dead in the streets from egg ague. I'll look out for it; until then I will be outside eating chocolate cake and smoking high tar cigarettes. That way I get to live forever.
Good Night, And Good Luck
Dougal
Welcome to my latest experiment. You may have read in my latest post (if you got that far) about my trip to the National Theatre to see Peter Shaffer's Royal Hunt Of The Sun. Inspired, I dug out all of my drama texts from university, hit Amazon for more, and started to read. So far I have gone through Edward Bond (epic-scale settings, extreme violence and an on-stage autopsy), David Mamet (the decay of the American Dream, lots of swearing and an on-stage autopsy) and Samuel Beckett (bleak abstractness, gallows humour and an on-stage autopsy).
Not all of those descriptions may be truly accurate. But my renewed interest in theatre has bought me back to reading the Theatre of the Absurd. This was a school of drama, mostly French, that started as a reaction to the Victorian school of the "well-made" play and its hectoring insistence on a beginning, middle and end, plus moral. Ibsen's The Pillars of Society is a good example. The absurdists decided that instead a play should instead be as far from a didactic text as possible, and also, for preference, very difficult to stage. Ionesco's Chairs, for example, demands the stage be filled with about a hundred chairs and two actors talking to the invisible occupants of those chairs. Beckett put people in big jars and dustbins and Brecht didn't use scenery at all. This is just being awkward in my opinion, but it would save on nails and plywood at a time of post WWII austerity. Theatrical props were also in short supply, having all been melted down to build Lancaster Bombers.
How does this relate to me? Well, I have run out of ideas. I am serious when I say I have no opinions left. I doubt if anyone is interested in a recapitulation of my feelings towards Coca-Cola's World Cup marketing campaign, although just typing those words has made me grind another layer of enamel off my teeth in rage. Similarly, yes I had a nice weekend, but then so did a billion other people but only a small number decided to write it up in longhand, decorate it with pictures and then show it to people. Holiday snaps are inherently boring, and mine had a commentary. Two for the price of one, and I didn't even wait to be asked.
So I'm struggling. I need an angle to keep up the momentum to towards the day when I displace the gorgeous, pouting and unutterably inane Tila Tequila from the top of the MS blog rankings, and lacking as I do fantastic buns, I must do it with words alone. I am driven, ambitious and also, doomed.
For I was born middle aged, like Trevor Howard or Jeffrey Barnard. All I do is complain. I'd go on Grumpy Old Men, but Rick Wakeman is so much more photogenic. And anyway, one of the cheif gripes of the guests on that august show is the internet and their bewilderment at what it does, who uses it and why they can't do it. I am quite adept at this internet lark, am discerning enough to use Firefox instead of Explorer, can do some light HTML when required and so would be exiled from the curmudgeonly set as some kind of fifth columnist.
So not only must I do this with just words, I must do it alone. Perhaps I could do what those Hammer chaps are doing, and be fiercly critical of other people's blogs until I get a publishing deal with Random House (thus keeping it all within the Rupertocracy and only having to pay one set of solicitors fees). I dare say I can slag off some of MS's more modelly members because what are the chances of them
a) ever getting to my poison pen portraits through the millions of emailed photos of fraternity brother's penises and the unsolicited lurid sexual fantasies from wierdos that all women on MS get, and
b) understanding them.
Well, perhaps that's cruel. I have worked out however, that it is perfectly acceptable to call dessert90210 a pointless, air-headed cipher of a Pamela Anderson wannabe who'd be out of her intellectual depth in a puddle, if I make it clear that it's just conjectural and not an actual opinion. Which it was. No misunderstandings there, I hope. I bet she's lovely. Hello there!
In keeping with this, I could become bitter and twisted and berate society for its iniquities, God for allowing pain and suffering and girls for not wanting to go out with me. I could tear myself to pieces in a full-on Freudian deconstruction, but I've done that already and although everyone who replied was very nice, I doubt if they'd want to hear it all again. I could become reactionary and talk about nothing but the Queen and how much we all love her in the Commonwealth, but that'd be boring, pointless and also a lie. Or I could just descend into self parody and ramble endlessly about badminton, cooking and parking a car in Leicester. Choices, choices.
All this brings us back to the Theatre of the Absurd. Well, actually it doesn't, but I want to get lunch before three and so have to stop somewhere. It is my aim, then, in tribute to these brave, revolutionary and deeply pretentious playwrights of the 1920's to string together something like a thousand words and say nothing. A blog void of all content and empty of all meaning. What do we think? Perhaps this was a success, perhaps not. Perhaps that's the point, intellecutally speaking.
Mind you, it's all for naught anyway, as I heard on the radio this morning that half of all Europe's eggs are currently infected with salmonella and gastric death is mere hours away, except for vegans who are doubtless relishing the chance to be twice as smug as usual whilst the rest of us less awkward people fall dead in the streets from egg ague. I'll look out for it; until then I will be outside eating chocolate cake and smoking high tar cigarettes. That way I get to live forever.
Good Night, And Good Luck
Dougal
Monday, June 12, 2006
Saturday
Hello again.
A couple of things - this will cover Saturday and Sunday, but if anyone really wants to spread the process of reading about my weekend away then I will tell you when to look away and you can pick it up again there tomorrow. It's a bit like having to avoid football scores on the news and Huw Edwards says "If you don't want to know the score, then look away now". If I was Huw Edwards, though, I'd wait just a couple of seconds, for the nation to turn away from the screen, and then shout out the score as loud as I could. Perhaps on my last day.
So yes, Saturday. Really, after the dizzying highs of Friday night the rest of the weekend was bound to be conducted at a lower pace. Accordingly we bummed around the flat until about eleven and then leapt on the train to Borough Market for lunch.
The Duke of Edinburgh gives his daily blessing to the nation on all channels and in all major public places.
Borough Market is the single most middle class place in the world, and by that I mean the posh end of middle class. The kind of Dads who carry their babies in titanium framed papooses whilst Mum looks at the organic cold-pressed extra virgin olive oils and gluten free hand-baked Polish breads. Companies that sell four hundred different types of coffee bean. Prominent use of the word "Welsh", for I know not what reason. Stalls exist which sell nothing but one type of cheese. Very nice cheese, but if the bottom falls out of the Caerphilly market, Euros Morgan of Borough Market will suffer badly, and at twenty-three quid a kilo that's avery selective market to begin with. It is a different world. It is also where my friend Dave had had three mobile phones stolen in two years and someone gets their pockets picked ten times a day.
I had a lovely organic lamb kebab with home-made garlic Tzatziki on an authentic Minoan flatbread (I will stop, this is starting to sound like an M&S Food commercial), but at four pounds fifty it couldn't have not been delicious or blood would have been spilled. I also bought a chocolate brownie so chocolately I went blind. Flour came second on the ingredients list after chocolate. Felt sick and dirty, more dead than alive.
Then to the South Bank.
Home of Tate Modern, the Globe Theatre, the Royal Festival Hall but most importantly, South London's biggest smack shooting gallery. You don't get this kind of information in a Let's Go guide, do you?
We walked, bought expensive ice lollies (cherry brandy and cider lollies - childhood nirvana, but I don't remember them being one fifty each) and then hit a huge crowd at the Festival Hall, there for the Festival de Cuba. We didn't linger as the crowd was one of those that would set off claustrophobic episodes in people who live in a wardrobe. The sheer density of morons was challenging as well. I heard an Australian woman saying very loudly that she was sure churros had meat in them, despite being stood under a sign that said "Vegan Friendly" in big yellow letters. I don't know, perhaps she thought it meant that they were merely well disposed to vegans, as opposed to selling things they could eat. Add the people who don't know how to walk in a crowd without fucking everyone else off despite millions of years of evolution as social animals (the stall selling Mexican wrestling masks will still be there in half an hour; keep walking or else three hundred people will tear you to bits and throuw the pieces in the Thames) we decided not to linger. It was unpleasant, and thirty five degrees. We retired to Streatham Hill for the rest of the day.
We in fact came back a couple of hours later to watch the National Theatre's excellent production of Peter Shaffer's The Royal Hunt Of The Sun. All about Aztecs, conquistadors and tragedy. Very, very good. It was a big slice of old-fashioned Brechtian design with peerless performances from Alun Armstrong and Paterson Joseph (you now, him out of Hustle). I was inspired enough to hit Amazon's zShops and buy a load of second-hand Edward Bond and Peter Shaffer plays - I used to read that kind of thing for pleasure but haven't in ages. Time to start again. Anyway, during the interval we stood on the high balcony of the NT and breathed deeply of the miasma that London makes in the Summer - pollen, pollution and eight million people's used air. I was very happy.
Sunday was another boiling day. We ate breakfast and then hit Tooting Bec Common. We took water, sun lotion, straw mats, guitars and an aerosol of some disgusting stuff that Louise bought called Magicool. It, apparently, cools you down in the heat. I just though it smelled of chemicals and not good huffable ones, at that. If you say the name fast enough, is sounds like "magical", but that's not a good enough justification for such a crap product. If you're hot, either stand under a tree or move to Iceland. Simple. You can buy cans of scented oxygen as well these days. Christ on a bike.
This is James, by the way.
And this is Louise.
Look, she's shy.
Really the weather was a bit too hot. The British go mad at the first sign of a sunbeam. Barbecues are lit all along the nation and 40 million cans of Carling are drunk every hour. The redtop tabloids head to Bournemouth to photograph comely 19 year old women in bikinis as soon as the thermometer hits 20. We take off our shirts and head for the park, garden or beach, turn red and then complain of having sunburn. The Australians, a society famous for spending 250 out of 365 days a year without going indoors at all, know how to do it right. Slip, slap, slop. They also have the bulk of the hole in the ozone layer, so you can say they have more incentive. That's as maybe. We are just stupid. So we sat under a nice big tree full of Britain's only wild parakeets playing summery tunes to the uninterested but mercifully tolerant people of Streatham and felt very happy with the world. Then it was time to go home.
I headed back to St Pancras on the 59 Death Run, driven by a bug-eyed driver who missed most of the stops, jumped red lights and tested the roadholding ability of a double-decker bus to its limits. This happens occasionally. London bus drivers are a strange breed. Argue with them and they will destroy you. I once saw one on a 91 at Aldwych shout at a mouthy woman (who was, by the way, entirely wrong) so loudly that he left a haze of spit on the inside of his violence-proof screen. Those things work both ways. Perhaps they are driven mad by the screens that are appearing on buses now that show a constantly-repeating four-minute loop of E! News reports about Ashlee Simpson and the cast of Desperate Housewives. It was quite harrowing, all told.
Good Night, And Good Luck
Dougal
A couple of things - this will cover Saturday and Sunday, but if anyone really wants to spread the process of reading about my weekend away then I will tell you when to look away and you can pick it up again there tomorrow. It's a bit like having to avoid football scores on the news and Huw Edwards says "If you don't want to know the score, then look away now". If I was Huw Edwards, though, I'd wait just a couple of seconds, for the nation to turn away from the screen, and then shout out the score as loud as I could. Perhaps on my last day.
So yes, Saturday. Really, after the dizzying highs of Friday night the rest of the weekend was bound to be conducted at a lower pace. Accordingly we bummed around the flat until about eleven and then leapt on the train to Borough Market for lunch.
The Duke of Edinburgh gives his daily blessing to the nation on all channels and in all major public places.
Borough Market is the single most middle class place in the world, and by that I mean the posh end of middle class. The kind of Dads who carry their babies in titanium framed papooses whilst Mum looks at the organic cold-pressed extra virgin olive oils and gluten free hand-baked Polish breads. Companies that sell four hundred different types of coffee bean. Prominent use of the word "Welsh", for I know not what reason. Stalls exist which sell nothing but one type of cheese. Very nice cheese, but if the bottom falls out of the Caerphilly market, Euros Morgan of Borough Market will suffer badly, and at twenty-three quid a kilo that's avery selective market to begin with. It is a different world. It is also where my friend Dave had had three mobile phones stolen in two years and someone gets their pockets picked ten times a day.
I had a lovely organic lamb kebab with home-made garlic Tzatziki on an authentic Minoan flatbread (I will stop, this is starting to sound like an M&S Food commercial), but at four pounds fifty it couldn't have not been delicious or blood would have been spilled. I also bought a chocolate brownie so chocolately I went blind. Flour came second on the ingredients list after chocolate. Felt sick and dirty, more dead than alive.
Then to the South Bank.
Home of Tate Modern, the Globe Theatre, the Royal Festival Hall but most importantly, South London's biggest smack shooting gallery. You don't get this kind of information in a Let's Go guide, do you?
We walked, bought expensive ice lollies (cherry brandy and cider lollies - childhood nirvana, but I don't remember them being one fifty each) and then hit a huge crowd at the Festival Hall, there for the Festival de Cuba. We didn't linger as the crowd was one of those that would set off claustrophobic episodes in people who live in a wardrobe. The sheer density of morons was challenging as well. I heard an Australian woman saying very loudly that she was sure churros had meat in them, despite being stood under a sign that said "Vegan Friendly" in big yellow letters. I don't know, perhaps she thought it meant that they were merely well disposed to vegans, as opposed to selling things they could eat. Add the people who don't know how to walk in a crowd without fucking everyone else off despite millions of years of evolution as social animals (the stall selling Mexican wrestling masks will still be there in half an hour; keep walking or else three hundred people will tear you to bits and throuw the pieces in the Thames) we decided not to linger. It was unpleasant, and thirty five degrees. We retired to Streatham Hill for the rest of the day.
We in fact came back a couple of hours later to watch the National Theatre's excellent production of Peter Shaffer's The Royal Hunt Of The Sun. All about Aztecs, conquistadors and tragedy. Very, very good. It was a big slice of old-fashioned Brechtian design with peerless performances from Alun Armstrong and Paterson Joseph (you now, him out of Hustle). I was inspired enough to hit Amazon's zShops and buy a load of second-hand Edward Bond and Peter Shaffer plays - I used to read that kind of thing for pleasure but haven't in ages. Time to start again. Anyway, during the interval we stood on the high balcony of the NT and breathed deeply of the miasma that London makes in the Summer - pollen, pollution and eight million people's used air. I was very happy.
Sunday was another boiling day. We ate breakfast and then hit Tooting Bec Common. We took water, sun lotion, straw mats, guitars and an aerosol of some disgusting stuff that Louise bought called Magicool. It, apparently, cools you down in the heat. I just though it smelled of chemicals and not good huffable ones, at that. If you say the name fast enough, is sounds like "magical", but that's not a good enough justification for such a crap product. If you're hot, either stand under a tree or move to Iceland. Simple. You can buy cans of scented oxygen as well these days. Christ on a bike.
This is James, by the way.
And this is Louise.
Look, she's shy.
Really the weather was a bit too hot. The British go mad at the first sign of a sunbeam. Barbecues are lit all along the nation and 40 million cans of Carling are drunk every hour. The redtop tabloids head to Bournemouth to photograph comely 19 year old women in bikinis as soon as the thermometer hits 20. We take off our shirts and head for the park, garden or beach, turn red and then complain of having sunburn. The Australians, a society famous for spending 250 out of 365 days a year without going indoors at all, know how to do it right. Slip, slap, slop. They also have the bulk of the hole in the ozone layer, so you can say they have more incentive. That's as maybe. We are just stupid. So we sat under a nice big tree full of Britain's only wild parakeets playing summery tunes to the uninterested but mercifully tolerant people of Streatham and felt very happy with the world. Then it was time to go home.
I headed back to St Pancras on the 59 Death Run, driven by a bug-eyed driver who missed most of the stops, jumped red lights and tested the roadholding ability of a double-decker bus to its limits. This happens occasionally. London bus drivers are a strange breed. Argue with them and they will destroy you. I once saw one on a 91 at Aldwych shout at a mouthy woman (who was, by the way, entirely wrong) so loudly that he left a haze of spit on the inside of his violence-proof screen. Those things work both ways. Perhaps they are driven mad by the screens that are appearing on buses now that show a constantly-repeating four-minute loop of E! News reports about Ashlee Simpson and the cast of Desperate Housewives. It was quite harrowing, all told.
Good Night, And Good Luck
Dougal
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Friday
Hello all
So, a weekend away. So much to tell, so for the most part I am going to show you some pictures. A picture tells a thousand words, which will save me an appreciable amount of typing. Out of curiosity I copied my last proper entry into MS Word and it covered two pages of A4. I clearly do go on.
But yes, Friday. I had the day off to prepare for the big night, or Big Night if you'd prefer. I fooled about on MySpace a bit, posted to my Blogger page and then it was off to the station. It was a lovely day in town.
Richard III. Shakespeare really had it in for this one.
Town Hall Square. Derelict drunks just out of shot
On the train, and off I went. The station was full of beery fools in Rooney shirts carrying plastic pitchers of watery Carling. One of the new great pleasures of this type of wanker (and there are so many kinds these days) is to wait quietly for someone to walk past them and the shout "Hey!" as loud as they can. Hee-larious. Luckily I have nerves of steel and am immune, but they still need pushing under a train. It is a shame, really, that the FA didn't get more tickets for England fans. If they had, they'd all be in Germany and out of my way. Penalties in the second round, you mark my typing.
Anyway. It is hot and hayfeverish. I am really not in the best of frames of mind to take the train. this is not to say I dislike the train. I love travelling by train. It is my second most favourite means of locomotion after ferries. But somehow Midland Mainline connive to drain it of all possible pleasure. They make a big thing of their free tea and coffee but that's all smoke and mirrors. MML are painful to endure. If it isn't the tinny, feedback-laced and utterly incoherent ten minute long announcements about the buffet car and safety posters, the regular endless delays or the fact that a ten minute journey costs six quid, it's the sure and certain knowledge that as a passenger with a guitar on a journey to London on a Friday, someone with a "Don't Fuck With Me" look and eight cans of cider will be sat in my long-reserved seat and the luggae rack will be full of backpacks, suitcases on wheels and, inevitably, a surfboard.. I will not find this out, however, until I am utterly immobilised, halfway down the carriage with my guitar and backpack hitting everyone within ten feet and two queues of people on either side. In situations like this, death is the easiest solution for everyone.
In the event the train was half empty and I spent the trip chatting happily to an Australian woman who was pointedly wearing a jumper to show how handily she could handle the 32 degree heat. "It gets to forty in Melbourne," she said, and she was pretty enough for me to believe her.
The gig itself was in the Walrus pub, which is a pleasant place on Lower Marsh on the 59 bus not far from Waterloo station. It is a pub of some people's dreams, where the air is smoke free, the jukebox is muted but eclectic and Kronenbourg 1664 costs three pounds a pint. Two out of three ain't bad, but three quid for exactly the same stuff that costs two pounds twenty in Leicester is plainly insane. That gripe aside, it's a nice place. It has pleasant, and fairly recent, memories of Nick vomiting into a carrier bag at a bus stop on Kennington Road at 1am after our much-storied trip to Vinopolis and Masters Superfish. We all trooped upstairs, and the Sniffle Showcase began.
There were eight acts in all, a lot, but it was really more of a big party than a gig. We had a raffle, which I would eventually win. There were t-shirts for no more than 17 members of the cast, as that was how many Chris had been able to get for twenty quid at Stockwell's branch of Poundland. Despite this, Nick and I were quite nervous. We planned to do five short, poppy tunes, no more than fifteen minutes then hoss the fuck out of it. First on were Club Paranoia, who laid down a backing track of bleepy samples and other more scary noises as a middle aged drunken Scotsman intoned his terrible, terrible abstract beat poems in a silly voice. this broke the ice nicely.
We went on next and it actually went terribly well. We remembered all the words, were mostly in tune and finished at the same time on eighty percetn of the set. This is all you can ask in a live gig situation. People clapped and we went back tou our seats on a wave of adrenaline.
This bit coming up is a bit slushy, but I really don't care. These are my favourite people in the world. Only James Buckley was missing, though I know he dearly wanted to be there. James Whittle was sat at the front, singing and grinning widely. He remembered every word. Louise arrived just in time and waved at us from the crowd throughout. No-one cheered more loudly. It was like coming home. We all did a large part of our growing up together and now, in that room, we were together again, we were family again, singing the songs we had written together when we were younger, fitter and stupider. Back then we were going to be stars. It's been a long time. But on Friday night, for fifteen minutes, we were nineteen again.
And then the next act went on, and then the next. Some were very good, some less so. Mississippi MacDonald, or Olly to his friends, is one of the Tavistock Mafia, who now all live in South London. He is an excellent blues guitarist, and also a very nice chap.
He is, however, prone to saying things like, "I learned this song in San Antonio at the feet of Blind Grapefruit O'Jefferson" and not be making it up. This is a bit too pseudy, even for me. He recently broke his wrist, which is a terrible thing for a guitarist. But he broke it snowboarding, and that's just such a ridiculously prattish thing to be doing he immediately forefited any sympathy he might have got out of me. Besides, he was on top blues form that night so he'd healed successfully.
Then The Sniffle Brothers. They are in fact James Whittle and Chris Ancil, and Sniffle Records is their joke record label. It started as a joke, that is, but now it seems to be taking on a life of its own. It has a showcase night, for example, of which me and Nick (or Johnny Bastard and the Creamy Darlings, to use our stage names) were members. They played a couple of covers, including a version of Come On Eileen that would have Kevin Rowland turning in his grave. It's a song James loathes, and so he's quite happy about that. They do the bit where it speeds up, and it's quite satisfying, as a bit of a muso myslef, to get it right.
The Sniffle Brothers, quite likely playing something by The Cheeky Girls.
Another highlight was the set from Franco's Chariot. Franco (Luke)is another of the Tavistock set. They play nice short bluesly tunes that sound a bit like Gomez, but without the self-importance and endless widdling. Their site has some lovely mp3s, which I recommend. In fact, this was one of the main reasons the night was such a success. Everyone (except Club Paranoia's poetry wierdness) played a variation on either nice pop, blues or contry. Having played many gigs with precious, sharp suited and achingly fashionable bands over the years, it is nice to be in an environment where it is physically impossible to pose about. We all looked silly, fucked bits up and played jolly tunes. Indigo Moss, a blugrass band from New Cross (really) were professional and tight, but even that didn't matter. Franco's do one about famous alcoholic miserable Evenig Standard columnist Jeffey Barnard, whom they described as "that one-legged drunken hack what died of booze". It was an atmosphere you'd genuinely bottle and sell if you could.
This ethos reached its apotheosis (I think that's what that means) in the Sniffle Supergroup. Various members of Franco's Chariot, The Sniffle Brothers and Mississippi MacDonald assembled to perform famous dirty song Afternoon Delight, featuring a killer solo from Olly and some obscene miming from Chris, and then the theme tune to The Littlest Hobo. They ran out of songs and ended up playing half the set twice. How can that be cool? I loved every minute of it.
The Sniffle Supergroup, probably playing the theme to the Littlest Hobo for the second or even third time.
We were taken into the night by DJ Pamplemousse, or Dan Simmonds as it says on his passport. Dan is one of the nicest men in the universe and is loved by all, despite the massive handicap of being from Birmingham. He is also the worst DJ in the world.
DJ Pamplemousse on the Wheels Of Steel.
He played an 80's gay-a-rama set heavy on the Cher, Kylie and Donna Summer, punctuated throughout by the sound of him cueing up the next track through the PA instead of his cans, and which he would inevitably fade in halfway through a verse or before it had started. It wasn't his fault. We were all loving it so much that he kept coming out of the DJ booth to dance to his own set, and it was only when the dead air started that he remembered that he was supposed to be in charge, whereupon he would run back behind the bar and try to find something to put on. He looked so happy he wanted to cry.
So yes, an utterly excellent evening. And my prize?
The richest reward.
Fucking-A. Next time - I'm not doing any more today, this has taken nearly three hours to get all my errors out of the HTML - we will look at the rest of my weekend. Crazy times ahead, oh yes...
Good Night, And Good Luck
Dougal
So, a weekend away. So much to tell, so for the most part I am going to show you some pictures. A picture tells a thousand words, which will save me an appreciable amount of typing. Out of curiosity I copied my last proper entry into MS Word and it covered two pages of A4. I clearly do go on.
But yes, Friday. I had the day off to prepare for the big night, or Big Night if you'd prefer. I fooled about on MySpace a bit, posted to my Blogger page and then it was off to the station. It was a lovely day in town.
Richard III. Shakespeare really had it in for this one.
Town Hall Square. Derelict drunks just out of shot
On the train, and off I went. The station was full of beery fools in Rooney shirts carrying plastic pitchers of watery Carling. One of the new great pleasures of this type of wanker (and there are so many kinds these days) is to wait quietly for someone to walk past them and the shout "Hey!" as loud as they can. Hee-larious. Luckily I have nerves of steel and am immune, but they still need pushing under a train. It is a shame, really, that the FA didn't get more tickets for England fans. If they had, they'd all be in Germany and out of my way. Penalties in the second round, you mark my typing.
Anyway. It is hot and hayfeverish. I am really not in the best of frames of mind to take the train. this is not to say I dislike the train. I love travelling by train. It is my second most favourite means of locomotion after ferries. But somehow Midland Mainline connive to drain it of all possible pleasure. They make a big thing of their free tea and coffee but that's all smoke and mirrors. MML are painful to endure. If it isn't the tinny, feedback-laced and utterly incoherent ten minute long announcements about the buffet car and safety posters, the regular endless delays or the fact that a ten minute journey costs six quid, it's the sure and certain knowledge that as a passenger with a guitar on a journey to London on a Friday, someone with a "Don't Fuck With Me" look and eight cans of cider will be sat in my long-reserved seat and the luggae rack will be full of backpacks, suitcases on wheels and, inevitably, a surfboard.. I will not find this out, however, until I am utterly immobilised, halfway down the carriage with my guitar and backpack hitting everyone within ten feet and two queues of people on either side. In situations like this, death is the easiest solution for everyone.
In the event the train was half empty and I spent the trip chatting happily to an Australian woman who was pointedly wearing a jumper to show how handily she could handle the 32 degree heat. "It gets to forty in Melbourne," she said, and she was pretty enough for me to believe her.
The gig itself was in the Walrus pub, which is a pleasant place on Lower Marsh on the 59 bus not far from Waterloo station. It is a pub of some people's dreams, where the air is smoke free, the jukebox is muted but eclectic and Kronenbourg 1664 costs three pounds a pint. Two out of three ain't bad, but three quid for exactly the same stuff that costs two pounds twenty in Leicester is plainly insane. That gripe aside, it's a nice place. It has pleasant, and fairly recent, memories of Nick vomiting into a carrier bag at a bus stop on Kennington Road at 1am after our much-storied trip to Vinopolis and Masters Superfish. We all trooped upstairs, and the Sniffle Showcase began.
There were eight acts in all, a lot, but it was really more of a big party than a gig. We had a raffle, which I would eventually win. There were t-shirts for no more than 17 members of the cast, as that was how many Chris had been able to get for twenty quid at Stockwell's branch of Poundland. Despite this, Nick and I were quite nervous. We planned to do five short, poppy tunes, no more than fifteen minutes then hoss the fuck out of it. First on were Club Paranoia, who laid down a backing track of bleepy samples and other more scary noises as a middle aged drunken Scotsman intoned his terrible, terrible abstract beat poems in a silly voice. this broke the ice nicely.
We went on next and it actually went terribly well. We remembered all the words, were mostly in tune and finished at the same time on eighty percetn of the set. This is all you can ask in a live gig situation. People clapped and we went back tou our seats on a wave of adrenaline.
This bit coming up is a bit slushy, but I really don't care. These are my favourite people in the world. Only James Buckley was missing, though I know he dearly wanted to be there. James Whittle was sat at the front, singing and grinning widely. He remembered every word. Louise arrived just in time and waved at us from the crowd throughout. No-one cheered more loudly. It was like coming home. We all did a large part of our growing up together and now, in that room, we were together again, we were family again, singing the songs we had written together when we were younger, fitter and stupider. Back then we were going to be stars. It's been a long time. But on Friday night, for fifteen minutes, we were nineteen again.
And then the next act went on, and then the next. Some were very good, some less so. Mississippi MacDonald, or Olly to his friends, is one of the Tavistock Mafia, who now all live in South London. He is an excellent blues guitarist, and also a very nice chap.
He is, however, prone to saying things like, "I learned this song in San Antonio at the feet of Blind Grapefruit O'Jefferson" and not be making it up. This is a bit too pseudy, even for me. He recently broke his wrist, which is a terrible thing for a guitarist. But he broke it snowboarding, and that's just such a ridiculously prattish thing to be doing he immediately forefited any sympathy he might have got out of me. Besides, he was on top blues form that night so he'd healed successfully.
Then The Sniffle Brothers. They are in fact James Whittle and Chris Ancil, and Sniffle Records is their joke record label. It started as a joke, that is, but now it seems to be taking on a life of its own. It has a showcase night, for example, of which me and Nick (or Johnny Bastard and the Creamy Darlings, to use our stage names) were members. They played a couple of covers, including a version of Come On Eileen that would have Kevin Rowland turning in his grave. It's a song James loathes, and so he's quite happy about that. They do the bit where it speeds up, and it's quite satisfying, as a bit of a muso myslef, to get it right.
The Sniffle Brothers, quite likely playing something by The Cheeky Girls.
Another highlight was the set from Franco's Chariot. Franco (Luke)is another of the Tavistock set. They play nice short bluesly tunes that sound a bit like Gomez, but without the self-importance and endless widdling. Their site has some lovely mp3s, which I recommend. In fact, this was one of the main reasons the night was such a success. Everyone (except Club Paranoia's poetry wierdness) played a variation on either nice pop, blues or contry. Having played many gigs with precious, sharp suited and achingly fashionable bands over the years, it is nice to be in an environment where it is physically impossible to pose about. We all looked silly, fucked bits up and played jolly tunes. Indigo Moss, a blugrass band from New Cross (really) were professional and tight, but even that didn't matter. Franco's do one about famous alcoholic miserable Evenig Standard columnist Jeffey Barnard, whom they described as "that one-legged drunken hack what died of booze". It was an atmosphere you'd genuinely bottle and sell if you could.
This ethos reached its apotheosis (I think that's what that means) in the Sniffle Supergroup. Various members of Franco's Chariot, The Sniffle Brothers and Mississippi MacDonald assembled to perform famous dirty song Afternoon Delight, featuring a killer solo from Olly and some obscene miming from Chris, and then the theme tune to The Littlest Hobo. They ran out of songs and ended up playing half the set twice. How can that be cool? I loved every minute of it.
The Sniffle Supergroup, probably playing the theme to the Littlest Hobo for the second or even third time.
We were taken into the night by DJ Pamplemousse, or Dan Simmonds as it says on his passport. Dan is one of the nicest men in the universe and is loved by all, despite the massive handicap of being from Birmingham. He is also the worst DJ in the world.
DJ Pamplemousse on the Wheels Of Steel.
He played an 80's gay-a-rama set heavy on the Cher, Kylie and Donna Summer, punctuated throughout by the sound of him cueing up the next track through the PA instead of his cans, and which he would inevitably fade in halfway through a verse or before it had started. It wasn't his fault. We were all loving it so much that he kept coming out of the DJ booth to dance to his own set, and it was only when the dead air started that he remembered that he was supposed to be in charge, whereupon he would run back behind the bar and try to find something to put on. He looked so happy he wanted to cry.
So yes, an utterly excellent evening. And my prize?
The richest reward.
Fucking-A. Next time - I'm not doing any more today, this has taken nearly three hours to get all my errors out of the HTML - we will look at the rest of my weekend. Crazy times ahead, oh yes...
Good Night, And Good Luck
Dougal
Friday, June 09, 2006
Martin Esslin
Wow!
To be frank, I'm amazed to be alive. After all, Tuesday was Satan's big day. Nostradamus said so, in hindsight. A man in Australia spent the day praying for the souls of Australians. Presumably groups of Baptists across the USA did the same for everyone except those who didn't vote for George. In local events, a small group of evangelists gathered in Town Hall Square to tell all of Leicester that we should be begging God for forgiveness, especially the 45 percent of us who are Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Jainists, Jews, Zoroastrians, Jedi or other Miscellaneous non-evangelical Protestants and sohave doomed ourselves from the outset.
And then nothing happened. Surprise sur-fucking-prise. It may have something to do with the Bible having been written in Greek some 500 years after the event rather than as a live ticker-tape of the kind seen at the bottom of the screen on Sky News. Doubtless if it had been Rupert Murdoch would have had it on Sky Jesus Live for only ten pounds a month, but that's an aside. Thirty quid for one of his poxy dishes and all I get is adverts, adverts, adverts.
I blame, of course, 20th Century Fox. Had it not been for the remake of The Omen I doubt if anyone had noticed. But Rupe's bottomless appetite for money must be sated, and so we have another pointless remake to go along with The Poseidon Adventure. This is what I call a Columbia Idea. The men at Columbia are desperate for a hit and are stood around the ideas barrel:
"How many ideas are there left?", says one.
"Just the one," says another.
"Get me Jet Li!"
Although this is without doubt the funniest thing I have said to date, it has nothing to do with my prevailing theme and I apologise if the reference is obscure. I am, of course, talking about civil unrest.
People don't think much of us. As I type a police helicopter is cruising over ASBOville just across the hill, in case the poor try to escape from their council houses and wreak havoc on the defenceless middle classes of LE3. All papers have moved news of the hideously complicated process of building a government in Iraq or the brewing diplomatic storm at the UN between the US and everyone else ("Do as you're told!") in favour of Wayne Rooney's foot or John Prescott playing croquet. This is because we are deemed unable to grasp the fact that as Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott may in fact have an answering machine for when Vladimir Putin rings and so can spend what was actually five minutes in his garden holding a croquet mallet, or that invading Iraq may have backfired for other reasons than that they are foreign and so too excitable to be trusted to look after their own oil.
Add to this the heat and hayfever and it's a powder keg waiting for a spark. In my case, the spark is badminton. Yesterday was my storied return to the court and to be frank, I sucked. In three games my team lost 3-15, 3-15 and in a rousing, never-say-die finale, 4-15. I sweated progusely and hit my hand with my own raquet. I woke this morning feeling like I had been savagely beaten.
Really I have no-one to blame but everyone else. I lack any hand-eye co-ordination. I hated PE at school. Nick, who's a teacher, says that this is because of bad PE teachers. He may have a point. A lot of my teachers have faded into a kind of generic memory of a person stood in front of a whiteboard or being unable to use a video. But Mr Penford, Mr Payne, Mr Margetts, Mr Swann, Mr Thorpe, Mrs Johnson, all these are names burned into my soul with a thermite lance. Even as a nine year old I could see that I was lacking in brio on the playing fields, but if I asked exactly how I was supposed to hold the mysterious object I had just had thrust into my unwilling hands (a hockey stick, rounders bat, tennis raquet, rugby ball, javelin, whatever) I would immediately have the piss ripped from my shivering frame by everyone, including the bastard in the tracksuit who was supposed to have told me in the first place. They would then disappear, laughing and fulfilled, to jump, run and catch as I waited in a corner of the field for death's sweet kiss.
Perhaps it wasn't that bad. But it did irk me that although I couldn't run the whole length of the Sheppey Canal or climb a rope with one hand or even catch a ball thrown gently from six feet away, I could at least string three bloody words together. I was out of my element. I was also seethingly jealous. It's complicated. Really, in those pre-national curriculum days I was lucky to have learned anything at primary school at all except Beatles songs in assembly and how to program a Big Trak. This is scant consolation, however, for the fact that I am currently walking like a man with hips made of cake mix.
But I have a weekend in London with James and Lousie to look forward to. Nick and I play at The Walrus on Friday night (tickets still very much available, by the way) and then it's off to a play at the National Theatre. I can't tell you what it's called or who it's by as I forgot immediately after James told me, but it is apparently about Aztecs and Conquistadors. Fair enough. My contact with indigenous South American civilizations has been limited to seeing every episode of Children Of The Lost Cities Of Gold when I was a kid, except for the last one, which I missed. I immediately lost patience with that kind of thing and to this day do not give the tiniest toss about Lost or Alias or 24 or any of that bollocks. It's amazing the aversions you have from that age. Like PE.
It's a tangled web we weave, and no mistake. Thank you for your patience.
Good Night and Good Luck,
Dougal
To be frank, I'm amazed to be alive. After all, Tuesday was Satan's big day. Nostradamus said so, in hindsight. A man in Australia spent the day praying for the souls of Australians. Presumably groups of Baptists across the USA did the same for everyone except those who didn't vote for George. In local events, a small group of evangelists gathered in Town Hall Square to tell all of Leicester that we should be begging God for forgiveness, especially the 45 percent of us who are Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Jainists, Jews, Zoroastrians, Jedi or other Miscellaneous non-evangelical Protestants and sohave doomed ourselves from the outset.
And then nothing happened. Surprise sur-fucking-prise. It may have something to do with the Bible having been written in Greek some 500 years after the event rather than as a live ticker-tape of the kind seen at the bottom of the screen on Sky News. Doubtless if it had been Rupert Murdoch would have had it on Sky Jesus Live for only ten pounds a month, but that's an aside. Thirty quid for one of his poxy dishes and all I get is adverts, adverts, adverts.
I blame, of course, 20th Century Fox. Had it not been for the remake of The Omen I doubt if anyone had noticed. But Rupe's bottomless appetite for money must be sated, and so we have another pointless remake to go along with The Poseidon Adventure. This is what I call a Columbia Idea. The men at Columbia are desperate for a hit and are stood around the ideas barrel:
"How many ideas are there left?", says one.
"Just the one," says another.
"Get me Jet Li!"
Although this is without doubt the funniest thing I have said to date, it has nothing to do with my prevailing theme and I apologise if the reference is obscure. I am, of course, talking about civil unrest.
People don't think much of us. As I type a police helicopter is cruising over ASBOville just across the hill, in case the poor try to escape from their council houses and wreak havoc on the defenceless middle classes of LE3. All papers have moved news of the hideously complicated process of building a government in Iraq or the brewing diplomatic storm at the UN between the US and everyone else ("Do as you're told!") in favour of Wayne Rooney's foot or John Prescott playing croquet. This is because we are deemed unable to grasp the fact that as Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott may in fact have an answering machine for when Vladimir Putin rings and so can spend what was actually five minutes in his garden holding a croquet mallet, or that invading Iraq may have backfired for other reasons than that they are foreign and so too excitable to be trusted to look after their own oil.
Add to this the heat and hayfever and it's a powder keg waiting for a spark. In my case, the spark is badminton. Yesterday was my storied return to the court and to be frank, I sucked. In three games my team lost 3-15, 3-15 and in a rousing, never-say-die finale, 4-15. I sweated progusely and hit my hand with my own raquet. I woke this morning feeling like I had been savagely beaten.
Really I have no-one to blame but everyone else. I lack any hand-eye co-ordination. I hated PE at school. Nick, who's a teacher, says that this is because of bad PE teachers. He may have a point. A lot of my teachers have faded into a kind of generic memory of a person stood in front of a whiteboard or being unable to use a video. But Mr Penford, Mr Payne, Mr Margetts, Mr Swann, Mr Thorpe, Mrs Johnson, all these are names burned into my soul with a thermite lance. Even as a nine year old I could see that I was lacking in brio on the playing fields, but if I asked exactly how I was supposed to hold the mysterious object I had just had thrust into my unwilling hands (a hockey stick, rounders bat, tennis raquet, rugby ball, javelin, whatever) I would immediately have the piss ripped from my shivering frame by everyone, including the bastard in the tracksuit who was supposed to have told me in the first place. They would then disappear, laughing and fulfilled, to jump, run and catch as I waited in a corner of the field for death's sweet kiss.
Perhaps it wasn't that bad. But it did irk me that although I couldn't run the whole length of the Sheppey Canal or climb a rope with one hand or even catch a ball thrown gently from six feet away, I could at least string three bloody words together. I was out of my element. I was also seethingly jealous. It's complicated. Really, in those pre-national curriculum days I was lucky to have learned anything at primary school at all except Beatles songs in assembly and how to program a Big Trak. This is scant consolation, however, for the fact that I am currently walking like a man with hips made of cake mix.
But I have a weekend in London with James and Lousie to look forward to. Nick and I play at The Walrus on Friday night (tickets still very much available, by the way) and then it's off to a play at the National Theatre. I can't tell you what it's called or who it's by as I forgot immediately after James told me, but it is apparently about Aztecs and Conquistadors. Fair enough. My contact with indigenous South American civilizations has been limited to seeing every episode of Children Of The Lost Cities Of Gold when I was a kid, except for the last one, which I missed. I immediately lost patience with that kind of thing and to this day do not give the tiniest toss about Lost or Alias or 24 or any of that bollocks. It's amazing the aversions you have from that age. Like PE.
It's a tangled web we weave, and no mistake. Thank you for your patience.
Good Night and Good Luck,
Dougal
Community Singing
So hello...
A quiet 6th of June so far, despite today's Infernal overtones. Apparently we are all going to die in Satanic fire. Hmm. Ten fifty. He's got about an hour left. But yes, quiet. It has been for a while. No more women action yet, despite Melanie's up-bigging of me on Sunday (many thanks; it's not for want of willing, more having no-one at all show even a flicker on interest, ho hum. I am going to stop thinking about that). Work has been fairly low key, consisting mostly of me having to sit on a bus watching an LED sign tell us where the next stop is supposed to be. It has not, as you may have guessed, been the most engrossing time I have ever spent. Kids, shoppers, the elderly and a surprising number of nurses. My Spanish class is clashing with all the good films at The Phoenix... I have learned how to make good roast potatoes... And I am supposed to be able to make this kind of thing funny.
Anyway, Nick and I have been continuing to practice our small act for Friday's big gig. I hadn't made music with anyone for ages. It's huge fun, and never really really annoying for any housemates who might be around. The last band I was in had fallen apart in a shower of apathy and general bonhomie nine months ago and the guitar has been gathering dust ever since. I have instead been dedicated to learning to play the most complicated bass lines I can find. The music the BBC used to use for the cricket is a current favourite - I think it's something by Booker T and the MGs, but I'm not sure. I was twenty before I learned that the Formula 1 music the BBC used to use was the second half of The Chain by Fleetwood Mac. Life has been, as I said, dull.
So with the real excitement lacking, and me not actually being Dylan Moran - much as I'd like to be that's just not going to happen - I have been thinking about acting up. Make some stuff up, tell some lies, exaggerate at least a little bit. Who'll ever know? What can possibly go wrong? Well, I could tell everyone about it for a start.
Not that I am going to go mad. Although, in a way, I am acting already. I have said before that blogging is essentially an exercise in talking to onesself. This way, though, I get to edit what I say before I say it. Normally, when we think if talking to ourselves we think of the crazy man on the bus who smells of farms and keeps laughing at the ceiling. I remember once on the tram in Germany when I was a student:
Max and I are heading into town to buy some, I can't remember, something mundane, anyway. We are sat there when we hear, above the rumble of the tram
Man: Disaster! Elloi! Errint jeder hier, die deutsche Rockband Elloi? Disaster! Elloi!
Me: What?
Man: Wir bedanked zwanzigtausend Zuschauer! Es was so schoen! Disaster! Elloi!
And so on through this man's memory of a gig twenty years past at which he clearly took that one-too-many tab of blotter acid, until we reached the train station and everyone, but everyone, got off.
This may be an extreme example, and also mostly in German, but you get the idea. It was also on a bus in Germany where I was enjoying repeatedly saying my then-favourite German word, Geschlectsverkehr, when Max noticed the funny looks from the schoolkids I was getting and had to gently remind me that it means sexual intercourse. This is not neccessarily relevant.
Where was I? Oh yes. Blogging. We all adpot a public face. Mine is of an uptight Englishman with a chip on his shoulder and a thing about trying to confuse Americans with references to things like public school, Midland Mainline and Test Match Special. Really I am not like this at all. I am polite to the point of being craven and will do anything to avoid a cross word or even a quizzical look. I told someone off today in my capacity as a traffic officer and it was terrifying, even though he was illegally parked and it was my job to tell him. He will hate me now forever and I don't like the idea of that one bit.
Pretending is the new rock and roll. The white kids in Raiders jackets and high-tops pimp rollin' their way through the Shires Centre thinking they look like 50 Cent but actually looking more like Two-and-a-half Pence. The berk on the train leaning intensely into thes screen of his PDA, as if we are supposed to be impressed by him working on a train at quarter to six when we are actually finished for the day and so couldn't think of anything worse. My sister directs in the theatre and is constantly amazed by the huge number of largely talentless Jennifer Lopez wannabes (this is Leicester, not New York, remember) who are full of indignation and Marlboro Lights but no actual talent; when told they cannot be Snow White, they do not accept it and go off to learn to act, but instead call her a dyke and then cry. On Hinckley Road today on the way home from work I was passed by a man in a Ferrari who was clearly driving it around in first gear so it sounded like a racing car. My first instinct was to throw a bomb into his passenger seat, but lacking as I did a bomb I settled on tutting instead. Wanker. He'll destroy his engine doing that, and frankly, it'll serve him right.
It's all an act. This is an act, although the increasing lack of focus is very real. It's half eleven, and on a school night too. I should go to bed. But then, my DVD of Bad Santa is in the player, and that's a hell of a film. Do you hate Christmas? Watch this. I don't know what Angelina Jolie was on about. On the strength of Bad Santa I'd happily marry Billy Bob Thornton. As long as he doesn't sing.
Don't think I'm a traffic warden, by the way. I'm not. I just want to make that clear before I look tomorrow and find that all my friends are... gone.
Good Night, And Good Luck
Dougal
A quiet 6th of June so far, despite today's Infernal overtones. Apparently we are all going to die in Satanic fire. Hmm. Ten fifty. He's got about an hour left. But yes, quiet. It has been for a while. No more women action yet, despite Melanie's up-bigging of me on Sunday (many thanks; it's not for want of willing, more having no-one at all show even a flicker on interest, ho hum. I am going to stop thinking about that). Work has been fairly low key, consisting mostly of me having to sit on a bus watching an LED sign tell us where the next stop is supposed to be. It has not, as you may have guessed, been the most engrossing time I have ever spent. Kids, shoppers, the elderly and a surprising number of nurses. My Spanish class is clashing with all the good films at The Phoenix... I have learned how to make good roast potatoes... And I am supposed to be able to make this kind of thing funny.
Anyway, Nick and I have been continuing to practice our small act for Friday's big gig. I hadn't made music with anyone for ages. It's huge fun, and never really really annoying for any housemates who might be around. The last band I was in had fallen apart in a shower of apathy and general bonhomie nine months ago and the guitar has been gathering dust ever since. I have instead been dedicated to learning to play the most complicated bass lines I can find. The music the BBC used to use for the cricket is a current favourite - I think it's something by Booker T and the MGs, but I'm not sure. I was twenty before I learned that the Formula 1 music the BBC used to use was the second half of The Chain by Fleetwood Mac. Life has been, as I said, dull.
So with the real excitement lacking, and me not actually being Dylan Moran - much as I'd like to be that's just not going to happen - I have been thinking about acting up. Make some stuff up, tell some lies, exaggerate at least a little bit. Who'll ever know? What can possibly go wrong? Well, I could tell everyone about it for a start.
Not that I am going to go mad. Although, in a way, I am acting already. I have said before that blogging is essentially an exercise in talking to onesself. This way, though, I get to edit what I say before I say it. Normally, when we think if talking to ourselves we think of the crazy man on the bus who smells of farms and keeps laughing at the ceiling. I remember once on the tram in Germany when I was a student:
Max and I are heading into town to buy some, I can't remember, something mundane, anyway. We are sat there when we hear, above the rumble of the tram
Man: Disaster! Elloi! Errint jeder hier, die deutsche Rockband Elloi? Disaster! Elloi!
Me: What?
Man: Wir bedanked zwanzigtausend Zuschauer! Es was so schoen! Disaster! Elloi!
And so on through this man's memory of a gig twenty years past at which he clearly took that one-too-many tab of blotter acid, until we reached the train station and everyone, but everyone, got off.
This may be an extreme example, and also mostly in German, but you get the idea. It was also on a bus in Germany where I was enjoying repeatedly saying my then-favourite German word, Geschlectsverkehr, when Max noticed the funny looks from the schoolkids I was getting and had to gently remind me that it means sexual intercourse. This is not neccessarily relevant.
Where was I? Oh yes. Blogging. We all adpot a public face. Mine is of an uptight Englishman with a chip on his shoulder and a thing about trying to confuse Americans with references to things like public school, Midland Mainline and Test Match Special. Really I am not like this at all. I am polite to the point of being craven and will do anything to avoid a cross word or even a quizzical look. I told someone off today in my capacity as a traffic officer and it was terrifying, even though he was illegally parked and it was my job to tell him. He will hate me now forever and I don't like the idea of that one bit.
Pretending is the new rock and roll. The white kids in Raiders jackets and high-tops pimp rollin' their way through the Shires Centre thinking they look like 50 Cent but actually looking more like Two-and-a-half Pence. The berk on the train leaning intensely into thes screen of his PDA, as if we are supposed to be impressed by him working on a train at quarter to six when we are actually finished for the day and so couldn't think of anything worse. My sister directs in the theatre and is constantly amazed by the huge number of largely talentless Jennifer Lopez wannabes (this is Leicester, not New York, remember) who are full of indignation and Marlboro Lights but no actual talent; when told they cannot be Snow White, they do not accept it and go off to learn to act, but instead call her a dyke and then cry. On Hinckley Road today on the way home from work I was passed by a man in a Ferrari who was clearly driving it around in first gear so it sounded like a racing car. My first instinct was to throw a bomb into his passenger seat, but lacking as I did a bomb I settled on tutting instead. Wanker. He'll destroy his engine doing that, and frankly, it'll serve him right.
It's all an act. This is an act, although the increasing lack of focus is very real. It's half eleven, and on a school night too. I should go to bed. But then, my DVD of Bad Santa is in the player, and that's a hell of a film. Do you hate Christmas? Watch this. I don't know what Angelina Jolie was on about. On the strength of Bad Santa I'd happily marry Billy Bob Thornton. As long as he doesn't sing.
Don't think I'm a traffic warden, by the way. I'm not. I just want to make that clear before I look tomorrow and find that all my friends are... gone.
Good Night, And Good Luck
Dougal
Shoe Heaven
Kallispera, y'all
Sunday again. I should, at this moment, be driving to the swimming pool in Aylestone for healthful exercise, but to be honest, I can't be bothered. I have drunk rather too much caffeine today as well. I am shaking like Pete Doherty waiting for his man. As I can't swim terribly well this is enough of a reason not to go and expose my less than perfect chest to ridicule. I was walking back to my crib (thaks for that, Westwood) from a cafe this morning and someone pointed at my t-shirt and laughed, but then perhaps "Nie kumam" is hysterically funny in Polish. I don't know. I only bought it in Wroclaw train station to get rid of my last Zlotys before I got to Germany and could communicate again.
Anyway, what I did do today was go to Fosse Park for jeans. I will confess now - I went to Gap, but I will defend myself with two responses - the good jeans place in town has shut down and, have you been to Fosse Park on a Sunday? It's hellish. It's a sea of fake Burberry and England football shirts. I had already been into JJB Sport and Sport World looking for trainers, but the idea that someone might want some Adidas Gazelles in a size 10 has not reached them yet. It was ugly white leather 80's reissues, ugly red and black Nike space shoes with sprung soles, or nothing. The shops are like mazes full of blind idiots and the only place for drinks is McDonalds. It's every lowest common denominator made brick. I felt quite out of place, as my car does not have one of those bloody flags on it and no item of sportswear adorned my body.
So I wanted out. I went into Gap and was back on the road within five minutes with two pairs of reasonable quality if ethically unsound jeans and sixty quid the lighter. Shopping is never any fun. You do silly things, like shop in Gap out of desperation. I suppose it could have been worse - at least I could park and the queues weren't out of the door, but it's all so faceless. The two sports shops there, which sit less than a hundred yards apart, had exactly the same items for exactly the same prices decorated with exactly the same pictures of Michael Owen and Frank Lampard and exactly the same exhortations to "Believe!". I asked the woman in the shoe section of JJB whether they had an area for people who don't believe especially and she looked pained. "The warehouse, perhaps" she said. Maybe she loved the game and the team feeling and all that, but working with it ten hours a day, six days a week could well mute the joy somewhat. She looked like she wanted to kill someone.
So I went to the Borders next door. They have a vibrating floor upstairs, which is offputting enough when it's quiet, but especially when some damn kid notices that it vibrates and insists on jumping up and down. He might be having the time of his young life, but I was siezed with images of collapsing beams and the folorn ringing of the mobile phones of the dead. To distact myself I browsed the snooty films - Kristof Krislowski's Three Colours trilogy for thirty quid; tempting - and bought "America: The Book" by Jon Stewart. A fine read, and very funny. I like American satire. It tends to be much less subtle than British satire. Why make gentle fun at Tony Blair's expense when you can rip out George Bush's throat and piss down his neck?
I approve whole-heartedly. At the risk of sounding serious, I have no idea why we have soldiers in Iraq at the moment, and have never had any idea. I got terribly angry when the troops first went in, and now 120-odd have been killed I am just as angry. It's not like we're getting anything out of it except the ire of the other 196 countries in the world. If you don't think that the rewarding of re-construction contracts hasn't been nicely stitched up then frankly, you are a fool. Tony Blair has as good as said he did it because he wanted to be remembered. Well, Tone, a billion and a bit pounds, 30,000 dead Iraqis, 2,000 dead Americans and 120 British war widows on various Army bases around the country later, I'm fairly sure you will indeed be remembered; but not perhaps for the reasons you wanted. Another of his more specious reasons was that he wanted to exercise some restraint on Bush. We can all see what a success that was as Ronald Regan's old plans for Iran are dusted down, and then the pipeline can go all the way through.
But that's by the by. We are all thoroughly doomed by now, so let's make the most of it. The other thing I got in Borders was the Raconteurs album, and I ended up singing Steady As She Goes to the girl behind the till, who looked charmed. I may have also charmed the woman from Virginia who unaccountably works in the Starbucks upstairs and told me she was a great fan of The Daily Show when she saw my book. Apparently bookshops are the best place to meet nice, intelligent, unattached women. Hmm. I haven't been out with anyone for nine months, and making a couple of women in a bookshop smile is hardly going to end that kind of losing streak, but it was nice nonetheless. The male ego is a deeply pathetic thing, especially in Summer when the clothes shrink and the hair is worn loose.
Next Week: Coping with the 80's revival for those who remember it from the first time round - where to find the best hiding places and blacked out ski goggles.
Good Night, and Good Luck
Dougal
Sunday again. I should, at this moment, be driving to the swimming pool in Aylestone for healthful exercise, but to be honest, I can't be bothered. I have drunk rather too much caffeine today as well. I am shaking like Pete Doherty waiting for his man. As I can't swim terribly well this is enough of a reason not to go and expose my less than perfect chest to ridicule. I was walking back to my crib (thaks for that, Westwood) from a cafe this morning and someone pointed at my t-shirt and laughed, but then perhaps "Nie kumam" is hysterically funny in Polish. I don't know. I only bought it in Wroclaw train station to get rid of my last Zlotys before I got to Germany and could communicate again.
Anyway, what I did do today was go to Fosse Park for jeans. I will confess now - I went to Gap, but I will defend myself with two responses - the good jeans place in town has shut down and, have you been to Fosse Park on a Sunday? It's hellish. It's a sea of fake Burberry and England football shirts. I had already been into JJB Sport and Sport World looking for trainers, but the idea that someone might want some Adidas Gazelles in a size 10 has not reached them yet. It was ugly white leather 80's reissues, ugly red and black Nike space shoes with sprung soles, or nothing. The shops are like mazes full of blind idiots and the only place for drinks is McDonalds. It's every lowest common denominator made brick. I felt quite out of place, as my car does not have one of those bloody flags on it and no item of sportswear adorned my body.
So I wanted out. I went into Gap and was back on the road within five minutes with two pairs of reasonable quality if ethically unsound jeans and sixty quid the lighter. Shopping is never any fun. You do silly things, like shop in Gap out of desperation. I suppose it could have been worse - at least I could park and the queues weren't out of the door, but it's all so faceless. The two sports shops there, which sit less than a hundred yards apart, had exactly the same items for exactly the same prices decorated with exactly the same pictures of Michael Owen and Frank Lampard and exactly the same exhortations to "Believe!". I asked the woman in the shoe section of JJB whether they had an area for people who don't believe especially and she looked pained. "The warehouse, perhaps" she said. Maybe she loved the game and the team feeling and all that, but working with it ten hours a day, six days a week could well mute the joy somewhat. She looked like she wanted to kill someone.
So I went to the Borders next door. They have a vibrating floor upstairs, which is offputting enough when it's quiet, but especially when some damn kid notices that it vibrates and insists on jumping up and down. He might be having the time of his young life, but I was siezed with images of collapsing beams and the folorn ringing of the mobile phones of the dead. To distact myself I browsed the snooty films - Kristof Krislowski's Three Colours trilogy for thirty quid; tempting - and bought "America: The Book" by Jon Stewart. A fine read, and very funny. I like American satire. It tends to be much less subtle than British satire. Why make gentle fun at Tony Blair's expense when you can rip out George Bush's throat and piss down his neck?
I approve whole-heartedly. At the risk of sounding serious, I have no idea why we have soldiers in Iraq at the moment, and have never had any idea. I got terribly angry when the troops first went in, and now 120-odd have been killed I am just as angry. It's not like we're getting anything out of it except the ire of the other 196 countries in the world. If you don't think that the rewarding of re-construction contracts hasn't been nicely stitched up then frankly, you are a fool. Tony Blair has as good as said he did it because he wanted to be remembered. Well, Tone, a billion and a bit pounds, 30,000 dead Iraqis, 2,000 dead Americans and 120 British war widows on various Army bases around the country later, I'm fairly sure you will indeed be remembered; but not perhaps for the reasons you wanted. Another of his more specious reasons was that he wanted to exercise some restraint on Bush. We can all see what a success that was as Ronald Regan's old plans for Iran are dusted down, and then the pipeline can go all the way through.
But that's by the by. We are all thoroughly doomed by now, so let's make the most of it. The other thing I got in Borders was the Raconteurs album, and I ended up singing Steady As She Goes to the girl behind the till, who looked charmed. I may have also charmed the woman from Virginia who unaccountably works in the Starbucks upstairs and told me she was a great fan of The Daily Show when she saw my book. Apparently bookshops are the best place to meet nice, intelligent, unattached women. Hmm. I haven't been out with anyone for nine months, and making a couple of women in a bookshop smile is hardly going to end that kind of losing streak, but it was nice nonetheless. The male ego is a deeply pathetic thing, especially in Summer when the clothes shrink and the hair is worn loose.
Next Week: Coping with the 80's revival for those who remember it from the first time round - where to find the best hiding places and blacked out ski goggles.
Good Night, and Good Luck
Dougal
How Many Modems Do You Need?
How Many Modems Do You Need?
Me again.
This week we turn inwards and talk of blogging. There is still much I have to learn about blogging. I was tagged on MySpace recently and it came back to haunt me in many ways, namely being shouted at by everyone I tagged. But it's not just poor choice of playmates. There's judging content, for example. With that in mind I would like to tell you some Ray Budick stories - the name given by the mighty Bill Bryson for things I have read and like, but can't make fit my prevailing theme, such as it might be. So.
1. I heard this in a bar in Barcelona, and so it is automatically a cool thing. Any story that begins "I was in a bar in Barcelona when..." is going to be cool no matter what it is about, no matter how mundane. A tale which starts with "I was in Swindon, when..." will automatically be dull whatever it concerns, be it bank raid, aliens or spontaneous human combustion. Whereas "I was in Barcelona when I caught the bus..." has much more cachet, despite being something that could happen anywhere. This in mind, I was in a bar in Barcelona and heard this story from a Dutch backpacker called Ulle. I found Ulle in the kitchen of our hostel taking what he assured me was a brand-new digital camera apart with a kitchen knife to fix a rattle in it. I do not know Dutch for "warranty" but I am sure he found out once he got home.
Anyway, in 1975, Maestro Dorban, Peru's most famous magician, performed his last and greatest illusion. He was well known for a knack for making things previously thought secure, disappear. And so one day the ruling military junta allowed him to borrow a suitcase containing Peru's last $2,000,000 in order to give the annual Military Variety Command Performance a climax to remember. Accordingly, on live TV in front of El Presidente and the whole of Peru, the suitcase vanished, and so did Maestro Dorban. Naturally my friends and I were mightily impressed by this, and it was topped off by the barman, a short man with a giant moustache, orange peel nose and nine fingers. Peru's most wanted criminal and we find him in a small bar off La Rambla in Barcelona. Perhaps we were a bit drunk. Calle Mocho. Dangerous in the wrong hands.
2. There is a regimental sergeant major in the Royal Norwegian Guards called Nils Olaffson. He has been twice decorated for his long and loyal serivce to Norway, some 21 years of military life. He is unlike other soldiers, though. He is a penguin in Dundee Zoo.
3. I used to be rabidly left wing. I believed in smashing the state, abolishing the Royals and the rise of the working classes. I though Ben Elton was funny I was so bad. Then came We Will Rock You and references to Bo Rap, and that all went out of the window. I am still left wing, though perhaps more circumspect. I am definately still an idealist, but not so much the guerrila. Well, Banksy has sold out too. Anarchy.
4. Somewthing from ny Uncle Charlie's local paper: Mrs Irene Graham of Thorpe Avenue, Boscombe, delighted the audience with her reminiscence of the German prisoner of war who was sent each week to do her garden. He was repatriated at the end of 1945, she
recalled. "He'd always seemed a nice friendly chap, but when the crocuses came up in the middle of our lawn in February 1946, they spelt out Heil Hitler".
(Bournemouth Evening Echo)
5. I work in local government, and with its liberal dress codes, I haven't found myself wearing a suit to work since my third day there. No-one does, and because we are traffic engineers and so never seen, we are left to it. I wear jeans most days. One man in my office wears shorts every day of the year. Eat it, private sector types. Anyway, the one time I did wear a suit, apart from my interview, was for a photo for some award we tried to win for bus lanes and stuff. And if you look closely, one of the people pictured has forgotten he has a pencil behind his ear. I am definately not a suit person.
6. I have been poisoned by tapas every time I have eaten it. It seems that the more expensive the tapas, the worse it has been. A dive bar in Malaga just made me throw up afterwards. The posh place on Queens Road in Leicester left me laid up for three days and I lost a stone.
7. A quote from a national newspaper this time: A young girl who was blown out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth was rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster. A coastguard spokesman commented, "this sort of thing is all too common". (The Times)
8. No-one else I know can cut a deck of cards with one hand, but I can. I learnt it from a man on a train in Devon; I don't know if any of my friends have been on trains in Devon. Perhaps that's why. He called himself a grifter. How cool is that?
How am I supposed to keep those to myself?
Good Night, and Good Luck
Dougal
Me again.
This week we turn inwards and talk of blogging. There is still much I have to learn about blogging. I was tagged on MySpace recently and it came back to haunt me in many ways, namely being shouted at by everyone I tagged. But it's not just poor choice of playmates. There's judging content, for example. With that in mind I would like to tell you some Ray Budick stories - the name given by the mighty Bill Bryson for things I have read and like, but can't make fit my prevailing theme, such as it might be. So.
1. I heard this in a bar in Barcelona, and so it is automatically a cool thing. Any story that begins "I was in a bar in Barcelona when..." is going to be cool no matter what it is about, no matter how mundane. A tale which starts with "I was in Swindon, when..." will automatically be dull whatever it concerns, be it bank raid, aliens or spontaneous human combustion. Whereas "I was in Barcelona when I caught the bus..." has much more cachet, despite being something that could happen anywhere. This in mind, I was in a bar in Barcelona and heard this story from a Dutch backpacker called Ulle. I found Ulle in the kitchen of our hostel taking what he assured me was a brand-new digital camera apart with a kitchen knife to fix a rattle in it. I do not know Dutch for "warranty" but I am sure he found out once he got home.
Anyway, in 1975, Maestro Dorban, Peru's most famous magician, performed his last and greatest illusion. He was well known for a knack for making things previously thought secure, disappear. And so one day the ruling military junta allowed him to borrow a suitcase containing Peru's last $2,000,000 in order to give the annual Military Variety Command Performance a climax to remember. Accordingly, on live TV in front of El Presidente and the whole of Peru, the suitcase vanished, and so did Maestro Dorban. Naturally my friends and I were mightily impressed by this, and it was topped off by the barman, a short man with a giant moustache, orange peel nose and nine fingers. Peru's most wanted criminal and we find him in a small bar off La Rambla in Barcelona. Perhaps we were a bit drunk. Calle Mocho. Dangerous in the wrong hands.
2. There is a regimental sergeant major in the Royal Norwegian Guards called Nils Olaffson. He has been twice decorated for his long and loyal serivce to Norway, some 21 years of military life. He is unlike other soldiers, though. He is a penguin in Dundee Zoo.
3. I used to be rabidly left wing. I believed in smashing the state, abolishing the Royals and the rise of the working classes. I though Ben Elton was funny I was so bad. Then came We Will Rock You and references to Bo Rap, and that all went out of the window. I am still left wing, though perhaps more circumspect. I am definately still an idealist, but not so much the guerrila. Well, Banksy has sold out too. Anarchy.
4. Somewthing from ny Uncle Charlie's local paper: Mrs Irene Graham of Thorpe Avenue, Boscombe, delighted the audience with her reminiscence of the German prisoner of war who was sent each week to do her garden. He was repatriated at the end of 1945, she
recalled. "He'd always seemed a nice friendly chap, but when the crocuses came up in the middle of our lawn in February 1946, they spelt out Heil Hitler".
(Bournemouth Evening Echo)
5. I work in local government, and with its liberal dress codes, I haven't found myself wearing a suit to work since my third day there. No-one does, and because we are traffic engineers and so never seen, we are left to it. I wear jeans most days. One man in my office wears shorts every day of the year. Eat it, private sector types. Anyway, the one time I did wear a suit, apart from my interview, was for a photo for some award we tried to win for bus lanes and stuff. And if you look closely, one of the people pictured has forgotten he has a pencil behind his ear. I am definately not a suit person.
6. I have been poisoned by tapas every time I have eaten it. It seems that the more expensive the tapas, the worse it has been. A dive bar in Malaga just made me throw up afterwards. The posh place on Queens Road in Leicester left me laid up for three days and I lost a stone.
7. A quote from a national newspaper this time: A young girl who was blown out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth was rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster. A coastguard spokesman commented, "this sort of thing is all too common". (The Times)
8. No-one else I know can cut a deck of cards with one hand, but I can. I learnt it from a man on a train in Devon; I don't know if any of my friends have been on trains in Devon. Perhaps that's why. He called himself a grifter. How cool is that?
How am I supposed to keep those to myself?
Good Night, and Good Luck
Dougal
Duck Egg Blue
'Lo
So this is my first entry written in my new house. The BT man arrived yesterday at 7:30 am with two (count 'em) modems so I am now connected again. Lovely. The computer chair is comfy and I am in easy reach of the fridge for carrots sticks and houmous. I could get used to this.
In fact, it is now possible for me to never leave the house again. I can use the internet to order food from Asda and my digital TV to order pizza from Domino's. They are now selling a World Cup special edition pizza (plugged with every ad break in The Simpsons on Sky) with special meatballs that look a bit like footballs. I do not find myslef drawn to it. No part of any animal is that spherical, at least, no part you'd want on a pizza. It looks like a meaty Simnel cake.
Still, I have been out today. Town heaves with shoppers and at least four seperate evangelical choirs outside each door to each shopping centre singing about how much Jesus loves us. I know he does, he sent me a letter. It's true. It came care of the Unifcation Church of Woodgate, Anstey, but I know it was from the big man himself. He seemed very upset at how I was not letting him into my life. He said he made a beautiful rainbow but I was too busy to notice, and lo, he wept for me. Hey, don't try so hard, mate. Just come to the pub and we'll see how we get along. The last rainbow I saw was over the motorway I was driving on so don't take it personally. I was busy.
I am unreligious, myself. I was raised nominally in the Church of England which no greater thinker than Nick Cave describes as the "instant coffee of religion". This is true. We do not so much lose our faith as leave it somewhere. Most C of E dogma is based on lemon curd and Victoria sponge. But those who are stronger in the Lord have made it their business to approach me several times today. First came the letter from Jesus, then a copy of Good News carrying the immortal headline "Radar From M*A*S*H Finds Happiness In God", the Jehova's Witnesses next and finally a pair of pale young men with name badges in slip on shoes from the Mormons this afternoon outside Caffe Nero. I'd forgotten that bit of living in a city. That and the infinate numbers of leaflets for delivery pizza.
Went to see X-Men 3. It's OK, but hardly Citizen Kane. It's clearly been subject to a heavy edit and several characters are either killed off almost immediately or simply don't appear at all. Plus Anna Paquin was in it for all of five minutes. Scandalous. Still, everyone was impressed by the blue woman, whatsername, turning into a human with no clothes on. It was bady written, unimaginatively directed and very very noisy. Typical Summer blovkbuster, really. It will do its job, i.e. make Marvel many many millions of dollars and sell millions more DVDs and Happy Meals.
I was so enthused about the cinema at the beginning of the year. We had Brokeback Mountain, Jarhead, Walk The Line, The Constant Gardener, all good films. Now it's all about the explosions. Boom. I mean, they've even resorted to a remake of The Posiedon Adventure which I mainly remember for the only time I have ever seen Leslie Nielsen in a serious role. As far as I remember, he is the captain of the SS Poseidon. "It's a bit windy," says his first officer. "Yes," says Leslie. Then a wave sweeps across the bath where the model boat is being filmed, everything turns upside down, Gene Hackman takes over and I watched something else.
A bit depressing, but it was that or The Da Vinci Code. Some choice. It's like an old joke I heard about Irish politics - What's the difference between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael? Well, that's the difference between shit and shite. I am personally waiting for the release of The Constable Code, where Tom Hanks has to find God's email address from codes hidden in restful watecolours of hayricks and windmills.
Good Night, and Good Luck
Dougal
So this is my first entry written in my new house. The BT man arrived yesterday at 7:30 am with two (count 'em) modems so I am now connected again. Lovely. The computer chair is comfy and I am in easy reach of the fridge for carrots sticks and houmous. I could get used to this.
In fact, it is now possible for me to never leave the house again. I can use the internet to order food from Asda and my digital TV to order pizza from Domino's. They are now selling a World Cup special edition pizza (plugged with every ad break in The Simpsons on Sky) with special meatballs that look a bit like footballs. I do not find myslef drawn to it. No part of any animal is that spherical, at least, no part you'd want on a pizza. It looks like a meaty Simnel cake.
Still, I have been out today. Town heaves with shoppers and at least four seperate evangelical choirs outside each door to each shopping centre singing about how much Jesus loves us. I know he does, he sent me a letter. It's true. It came care of the Unifcation Church of Woodgate, Anstey, but I know it was from the big man himself. He seemed very upset at how I was not letting him into my life. He said he made a beautiful rainbow but I was too busy to notice, and lo, he wept for me. Hey, don't try so hard, mate. Just come to the pub and we'll see how we get along. The last rainbow I saw was over the motorway I was driving on so don't take it personally. I was busy.
I am unreligious, myself. I was raised nominally in the Church of England which no greater thinker than Nick Cave describes as the "instant coffee of religion". This is true. We do not so much lose our faith as leave it somewhere. Most C of E dogma is based on lemon curd and Victoria sponge. But those who are stronger in the Lord have made it their business to approach me several times today. First came the letter from Jesus, then a copy of Good News carrying the immortal headline "Radar From M*A*S*H Finds Happiness In God", the Jehova's Witnesses next and finally a pair of pale young men with name badges in slip on shoes from the Mormons this afternoon outside Caffe Nero. I'd forgotten that bit of living in a city. That and the infinate numbers of leaflets for delivery pizza.
Went to see X-Men 3. It's OK, but hardly Citizen Kane. It's clearly been subject to a heavy edit and several characters are either killed off almost immediately or simply don't appear at all. Plus Anna Paquin was in it for all of five minutes. Scandalous. Still, everyone was impressed by the blue woman, whatsername, turning into a human with no clothes on. It was bady written, unimaginatively directed and very very noisy. Typical Summer blovkbuster, really. It will do its job, i.e. make Marvel many many millions of dollars and sell millions more DVDs and Happy Meals.
I was so enthused about the cinema at the beginning of the year. We had Brokeback Mountain, Jarhead, Walk The Line, The Constant Gardener, all good films. Now it's all about the explosions. Boom. I mean, they've even resorted to a remake of The Posiedon Adventure which I mainly remember for the only time I have ever seen Leslie Nielsen in a serious role. As far as I remember, he is the captain of the SS Poseidon. "It's a bit windy," says his first officer. "Yes," says Leslie. Then a wave sweeps across the bath where the model boat is being filmed, everything turns upside down, Gene Hackman takes over and I watched something else.
A bit depressing, but it was that or The Da Vinci Code. Some choice. It's like an old joke I heard about Irish politics - What's the difference between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael? Well, that's the difference between shit and shite. I am personally waiting for the release of The Constable Code, where Tom Hanks has to find God's email address from codes hidden in restful watecolours of hayricks and windmills.
Good Night, and Good Luck
Dougal
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