Black Friday

I rarely indulge in “reality shopping” these days – if I can call it that – preferring instead the one-click delights of the virtual shopping basket that allows me to specifically search for a desired item without being distracted by other items on the shelf and without having to immerse myself in the body odour zone of the other shoppers at the check-out till. In truth I’ve become so conditioned to armchair shopping that I have forgotten how to physically browse for goods. I doubt I could even orientate myself around an alphabetized DVD display these days so used am I to typing in the first four letters of a movie title and then choosing the correct one from a drop-down menu.

But at this time of year I break with my usual habits and find myself wandering aimlessly through shopping malls at lunchtime looking for that flash of inspiration that will transmogrify into the perfect present for Auntie Doreen or Uncle Engelbert – basically forcing myself to think outside the tick-box.

I’m happy to report that my fellow shoppers have been polite and courteous to the point of not obstructing me or fighting me for the goods. I’d go so far as to say they’ve largely ignored me, so engrossed are they in their own lives and their own retail forays. This is how it should be,

Today, of course, is Black Friday. Yet another American tradition that has crossed the Atlantic to infect these shores with its salacious money-grubbing ways. Apparently it has something to do with Thanksgiving*, something we Brits don’t as yet celebrate but let’s give our American brethren time (*and not a reference to the way the Ferguson Police Department celebrate the commencement of the weekend). The excuse, of course, is that we are all immersed in the global market these days so ‘special shopping days’ like Black Friday are no longer confined to their country of origin. Whatever. I must confess I have partaken of some Black Friday deals online but the thought of queuing up for real outside a store akin to a rehearsal for the Boxing Day Sales does not float my mercantile boat. I just don’t want to be jostled by a crowd. It’s never enjoyable. And it’s worse when you are fuelled with the stress of trying to beat your fellow shoppers to the last turkey in the butcher’s shop window.

Apparently the police have had to be called out today to various supermarkets up and down the UK to exercise calming measures on the ferociously competitive crowds and there have even been injuries and some arrests. People have been knocked to the floor and trampled for the sake of a Terry’s Chocolate Orange and others have been kneecapped for the prize of the last Frozen sing-a-long robotic doll. That’s not strictly true but although the details are fiction the overall picture is fact.

I can’t help feeling a sneering sense of despair that we – us normal, everyday, average consumers – can resort to such bestial behaviour for the sake of a few bargains. How quickly the thin veneer of social order is scraped away when someone waves a cheap box of mince pies our way. The pictures of the various online debacles resemble wildebeest fighting over the best place at the watering hole, not caring if their neighbour is spilled into the mouth of a patiently waiting crocodile.

It is appalling behaviour. But sadly not uncommon. I can recall a friend of mine once telling me of a furniture warehouse that was closing down in town. On the last day they gave away the remaining stock for free. A great opportunity, you’d think, for poorer families to benefit from some rare business largesse. Not so. The poor families were elbowed – literally – out of the way to enable entrepreneurs with vans to load up as many freebies as they could to resell at a later date at 100% profit. My friend was so disgusted by the behaviour of those around him he walked away empty handed by choice.

It’s the same kind of mind-set at play at these Black Friday riots. Screw thy neighbour in the manner you suspect he is going to screw you.

I’ve heard people theorize that shopping is a modern extension of the hunter / gatherer skills that are deeply imbedded within our psyche. I think this kind of behaviour disproves that theory. Hunter / gatherers were successful only because the activity was cooperative. Kicking an old lady to the floor for a tin of spam is uncooperative to the point of psychopathic behaviour.

At least when I shop on-line and buy the last item in stock I’m only being antisocial and unknowingly selfish.

Positive virtues by comparison.

Nativity

I must have been in the nativity play every year that I was in infants’ school but the only single recollection I have is of being a sheep one year and having to wear a cardboard sheep mask that I’d made at school especially for the purpose. The role wasn’t demanding. I think I just had to sit at the side of the stage and not upstage the toy doll in the crib. I didn’t even get to baa. The speaking parts were always allocated elsewhere – to the more confident, gobbier kids who could project their voices loud enough to be heard at the back of the hall. Never once did the classic line, “There is no room at the Inn!” pass my boyhood lips.

And now it never shall. Unless I suddenly take up a career as a hotelier in a very small building.

There seems little chance it will happen vicariously either as in this year’s school nativity play my youngest boy pushed for and won the role of a star.

Literally a star.

As in twinkle twinkle.

And not even The Star, i.e. the main celestial protagonist in the nativity story. No, he was one of six generic stars that performed a dance routine in front of the manger about half way through this year’s school nativity production. You know, I swear to God these teachers take massive liberties with Bible interpretation these days. I’m amazed their photos are not publically burnt by American Mid-West Evangelists at gospel rallies more often… you know, the kind of thing these God botherers do to spread the ethos of loving thy neighbour and encouraging people to value religion as a unifying and harmonizing force in the world?

Anyway, he was very cute and I was impressed that he’d learnt what was quite a complicated dance routine – he plainly has a mind for choreography. He seemed chuffed to see his mum and dad in the audience and bestowed upon us a couple of waves. No more than that; he was very focused on his role and threw himself into it with all seriousness. A great acting career is bound to follow. Or at least a decent career as an extra. I look forward to seeing him in Downton Abbey next year as chief urchin.

And you’ll be glad to know that the Virgin birth went off without a hitch for another year though I couldn’t help but notice the complete dearth of sheep.

That was a huge oversight in my opinion. You can’t have a stable and shepherds without sheep. Do these teachers know nothing about the Bible?

If I’d had more notice I would have rummaged around in the loft beforehand. I’m sure I still have that mask stashed about the place in a box somewhere.

And I bet you a night’s stay in a five star hotel room it will still fit me.

If Music Be The Food

I was woken up this morning by my youngest boy strumming the fret-board of my acoustic guitar and loudly intoning his ABC (he only got as far as G which musically is rather apt). I'm ashamed to say there isn't much of a story behind that guitar.

It hasn't accompanied me on the road in my teens as a I travelled across America on a Dylan-esque pilgrimage of self discovery. It wasn't used as a shield to fend off piss filled beer bottles as I belted out anti-establishment tunes in some punk dive in East London. It has never been strapped to my back like a samurai sword as I rode my hog to some Hell's Angel's meet out in the back of nowhere.

I bought it in Birmingham, brought it home to Leamington Spa and that's pretty much about it.

In my teens me and my best mate, Dave, decided we were going to learn to play the guitar. Just like that we were going to acquire the skill, form a band, make world changing music and overnight improve our chances of getting laid more regularly. Or, in my case, just getting laid.

Such optimism.

I was a complete failure. My excuse has always been that I was more into my writing than anything else and it is not possible to truly commit yourself to more than one discipline; music was always going to take second place. The truth is I was just lazy. I was unrealistic. I didn't put in the time so therefore didn't get anything out of it other than 3 clumsy chords and blistered fingers. Because I wasn't instantly and instinctively playing like a rock axe-man I got demoralized and invested less and less of my time and effort. I would rather dream the dream than live it.

Dave faired slightly better. At the time I just thought he had more natural ability (he could sing pretty well too where my efforts were, at best, suited to comedy) but I can see now that that dismissal was an insult to Dave. He put in more effort, more time. He worked harder. He stuck with it despite the blisters and pushed on until his fingertips hardened. He learnt to play songs. He learnt to play and sing at the same time. For a while his guitar became an extension of himself.

And yet ultimately we both failed to do anything with the dream. We didn't join a band. We didn't even think to form our own. I bought a cheap 4 track recording device and, sure, we laid down a few tracks but mostly we messed around, ad libbed and felt we were unsung (unsinging) comedy heroes. Ultimately we did nothing with that dream too.

We both got older. Settled down. Had kids. Got sucked into the rat race. Our guitars were put down, lay still and attracted dust. In fact I have no idea if Dave even still has his guitar. I'm not sure why I even kept mine. Certainly not as a permanent accusation; I've long reconciled myself to the fact that I am not a rock god. I think mostly I keep it as a memento to those wild, crazy days of my youth when I dared to dream an impossible dream.

I'm glad I've kept it. I'm glad my boys have passive access to a musical instrument - even if they never pick it up and ask to learn how to play it properly. If nothing else it will save them wasting money buying their own when they hit their teens. And there is a slim chance - a very slim chance - that maybe, just maybe, they will find a virtuoso talent lying dormant within their genes and then that train ticket to Birmingham all those years ago will finally have been money well spent.

Prince Harry To Lead Native Americans In Open Revolt

The great thing about the modern world and social networking is that news can be delivered instantaneously in sound-bite form so that it is quickly and immediately digestible. I no longer need to wade through hours and hours of news channels or column inches of newsprint to get the gist of what is going down out there in the big wide world.

Some news today has had me smiling wryly and inflating with slightly irreverent pride for the latest achievement of one member of our Royal Family.

It seems that Prince Harry has qualified to become an Apache Commander.

I'm assuming that sometime over the last year he befriended a descendent of Cochise - maybe saved his life in a bizarre bingo accident on a reservation somewhere in America's mid-west - and that the relationship developed to that slightly awkward point where it was necessary for them both to nick the palms of their hands with a sharp knife and rub the wounds together so that they became blood brothers.

I guess after that it was just a small leap of ideology to thoughts of uniting all of America's scattered  Native American tribes. How Prince Harry managed to fit that into his Las Vegas itinerary without the world finding out, I don't know, but clearly the ginger Prince conceals many hidden abilities and skills the like of which his brother can only dream of. And by brother I mean, William, not his new brother Cochise who by now must surely be aware that Harry has heap strong medicine.

Once the First Nations were again re-established and as one behind their new leader, He Whose Hair Dances With Fire, the next step was quite naturally declaring war on the white European usurpers and taking back the lands and buffalo that they had stolen from their ancestors. I'm assuming that at this point traditional ties with Prince Harry's Germano-British family back home in the UK may have become strained unless Prince Charles has developed a sudden yen to sell Ye Olde Duchy Buffalo Mozzarella but Harry is plainly a man who likes to push his envelope out as far as it will go. And after all, blood is thicker than the monarchy especially when your palm is itching like buggery.

In the absence of John Wayne to act as an honourable counterpoint to the glory-hungry appetites of the US I fear this latest career move by the young Prince can only lead to bloody conflict and strife. The war on terror may have to take a backseat and bingo may have to be outlawed. It is unknown at this point whether Johnny Depp has abandoned his moderately successful movie career and his frequent on-screen liaisons with Helena Bonham-Carter to honour his Native American heritage and join the confederacy of First American tribes in their fight for emancipation under the gingery auspices of He Whose Hair Dances With Fire but it is certain that most of the cast members of Last Of The Mohicans are already paid-up blood brothers.

The tomahawk of war has been thrown, Obama. Or to paraphrase Shakespeare: the bow has been bent and drawn. It is time to make from the shaft of the ginger Prince.

You Have No Defence Output, Earthling!

Just in: shock news that will have America's mid-West sleeping even more frequently with loaded shotguns (and see David Bowie preparing for a good probing) - The Ministry of Defence has closed down its UFO desk because it feels its Pluto Population Investigation unit is serving no purpose at all and is diverting valuable resources from more important defence purposes.

In layman's terms that should mean less annoying PPI texts for us all and more coffee for other desks in the MoD. Ha ha ha!

Actually. I made that bit up about the Pluto Population Investigation unit for the sake of a lame PPI joke. And in truth, it sounds like there really wasn't any kind of a "unit" at all.

Just a desk. Probably at the back of a huge open-plan office. Right near the photocopier. Manned by some poor guy in a seventies bomber jacket who never ever got invited to join the office lottery syndicate.

And actually it's only the UK MoD. So probably the USA is totally unaffected by this decision and is still in a state of high paranoia. So no change on the sleeping-with-shotguns front then.

That aside, it is sobering news though. When you think about it.

The UFO desk offers "no valuable defence output". Their exact words.

Now that either means the person manning the desk is so inept at collating the tonnes of information he must undoubtedly receive every year that the entire system was just unworkable or - and this is entirely my interpretation - the MoD has admitted to itself that it just cannot defend us against alien invasion.

They are in fact, even as I type, diverting funds to make alien proof Anderson Shelters to save their own scrawny military arses whilst selling the rest of us down the river. "Look, Mr Alien, we freely give you 99% of the human race without any kind of resistance at all, just leave us poor whimpering guys in uniform alone and please don't probe us for unobtainium because we haven't got any."

I think this is a tacit confession from the MoD that as far as "life out there" is concerned we are probably outgunned, out-thought and totally outed in both a gay and non gay way and there is absolutely no point in throwing anymore money at Star Wars defence programmes or sending Chuck Berry records into outer space.

We are ripe for the taking. We may as well all offer our naked arses to the sky right now.

Go on. Just pull down your kecks, bend over and submit to the will of Emperor Ming. It may take some time but just remember there's a lot of us on this planet and it'll take a while for his probe to reach us all. Sure, the unbelievers are going to moan and may even call the authorities... but who's going to stop you?

The MoD?

No chance.

Those wussies have gone to ground. It's just you and me and we've got to accommodate ET's glowing finger as best we can.

Good luck, people. Live long and prosper.

LOL. ROFL. AFK. ETC.

Language is the preserve of everybody and yet I often find myself falling into the trap my elders made before me: denigrating and sneering at the language of teenagers.

Teen-speak is an oddly fluid, cyclical, ever-changing, totally unpredictable thing. Now I recognize that all language is that to a point but teen-speak seems to evolve in ways that are counterintuitive to the way most changes occur to a language.

Teen-speak does not evolve through any obvious source of necessity – unless you count the necessity to be as different and “individual” as possible. Different in this case invariably mean different from all the grown-ups that teenagers secretly wish they were and individual in the sense that you fit in with your peers who are all speaking exactly the same lingo as you so that you feel part of a group or a gang or, that most wonderful of entities, a movement.

When I was a kid we had our own set of cool words.  “Cool” was one of them having made a post-modern ironic resurgence from the 60’s. I also recall “gnarly” was doing the rounds thanks to Bill & Ted and “no way / way” was popular thanks to Wayne’s World. We also had words like “eppy” for someone who was flipping out in today’s vernacular; “pleb”, “dickwad” and my own personal favourite “buttock-brain”. Of course, most of our special words were insults and a host of them survive today and have merely been added to by later generations. All were inspired by movies and TV, without a doubt.

Now “cool” is one of those strange epithets that has accrued a meaning beyond that of the original one. I’m sure it was as annoying to the older generation as “sick” now is to me. Lord knows I had enough trouble reconciling myself with “wicked” without having to take on board that “sick” now means “cool” which ultimately means something good and desirable.

I’ve noticed, however, that the internet and computing is now having a direct influence on the language of our young people.

My eldest boy, whilst chatting (read that as SHOUTING) with his mates via head-mic on X-Box Live continually refers to annoying players as “hackers”. It annoys the hell out of me because the activity of these people invariably does not involve them penetrating the mainframe of Skynet and bringing about the end of humanity and the rise of the machines.

And don’t even get me started on “LOL”. My boy says it constantly. And not even in an ironic sense either. I could cope with it if he said “LOL” drily in a situation or at a joke that was meant to be funny but plainly wasn’t. A “humour fail” (see, I can still get teen-speak) situation would be appropriate for someone to deadpan and say “LOL” as if they were speaking to an idiot who’d recited the same joke 50 times in the hope of cracking your reserve and finally making you laugh. Instead, “LOL” genuinely seems to stand in for actually laughing at something that is genuinely amusing. Albeit the kind of something that the rest of us would just crack a wry smile at or nod at bemusedly. It is in fact the kind of situation that does not require one ever to laugh out loud but just to feel amusement in a small quiet way. “LOL” now acts as a stand-in for a normal low-level humour response. What actually happens is that the use of the word “LOL” (is it actually a word?) strips the humour away completely from the situation whilst at the same time acknowledging that the speaker did actually get the joke. What is that? Ironic irony?

I’m just waiting for the inevitable development when the audience at a comedy gig no longer laughs out loud but merely utters “ROLF” under their breath every time their favourite comedian delivers a killer punch-line.

That will be the moment that teen-speak finally kills irony and humour and all intelligence forever.

You probably think there is no way that this could ever happen.

Well, I’m here to tell you:

Way.

Quick On The Draw

It’s too easy to make snide comments these days. To throw a disparaging remark into someone’s path. To toss a hand grenade of insult over the shield wall of “constructive criticism” and watch it explode from a safe distance.

 

The people that sow such barbs with impunity rarely seem to fear reprisals or even the possibility of being taken out by their own shrapnel. Of course, cowards that they are, they stand too far back. They stand fully enveloped in their Kevlar suits of “only being helpful”.

 

Don’t get me wrong. This post hasn’t been inspired by anyone or anything specific. People have taken so many pops at me and this blog recently I have got completely used to the detonations.

 

And it is that which has inspired this post.

 

You see, it’s too easy to take pot-shots these days. We all do it without thinking. We all do it as natural as breathing. Open our mouths, type something, and let the sting fly to its target. Bang. Gotcha. Onto the next one.

 

Why has abuse become such common currency?

 

The internet, the workplace, the press are all rife with it. Comedians take cheap shots at anyone who has fallen foul of the law or public morality just to get a laugh – people they have probably never met or had any personal dealings with. Our colleagues assassinate each other in whispering huddles that may or may not include you… and you are damned either way.

 

And this is just the way it is.

 

I find myself wondering if people were politer in (paradoxically) less enlightened times and places? In the Dark Ages, say? Or Mediaeval Europe? The Wild Wild West? Times when the common man went about armed and tooled up and ready to answer even the slightest insult with a red smile or an invasion of steel to the gut?

 

Did people watch their P’s and Q’s more? Dot their I’s and cross their T’s? Save their insults and barbs for under the breath mutterings that harmed no one and kept the water source from which we all drink free from poison and contagion?

 

Or did that length of steel at their side or that iron strapped round their waist make them feel they had the right to sneer even more? Make them feel they could say what the hell they liked and if the target didn’t like it, well, they could choose between swallowing it or sleeping the sleep you never wake from?

 

I suspect weaponry merely separated the truly arrogant from those who only pose. The true bastards from those merely trying to be. And at the end of the day too, there would have been polite, peacable men who kept their mastery of the martial arts under their hats until pushed to extremis. Maybe, sometimes, justice was done? Maybe for every insult made grosser with violence there was an insult met with a righteous meting out of pain that made some cocky loudmouth think twice before opening his mouth again?

 

I can’t work out which is better or which is worse.

 

Only that while sticks and stones may break my bones, a bullet to someone’s crust is going to shut them up forever. In which case, insults suddenly become completely unnecessary.

 

 

Amish Country

On occasion I feel a yen to adopt the Amish way of life.

These occasions usually coincide with a BBC documentary about Amish people being broadcast on TV but it is precisely this battle against my more superficial tendencies that gives the desire such weight in the first place. I get sucked in. I get immersed. For the space of an hour I believe that I too can lead a simpler, plainer, more Godly existence. That I too could raise a barn.

The thought of doing away with gadgets and electronics and the world wide web, I confess, has an appeal.

No more mobile phones. No more slavish umbilical-like connection to the internet. No more Facebook. No more Twitter. No more Viagra emails. No more links to nude photos of Keeley Hawes that at best don’t work and at worst install Trojans onto my hard-drive.

Life could be so much easier. So much cleaner.

Not that it would be totally without its complications. The documentary I watched last week stuck in my mind because of Mr Amish’s (I forget his name) admission that he had to fight constant internal battles to keep control of his own lust. For that reason he had imposed the desire upon his wife that she did not wear low cut or revealing tops. And by low cut or revealing tops we are talking about a single button being undone at the top as opposed to a V-slit that plunged all the way down to her barn-raisin’ vajazzle.

This was the man’s own wife, for Heaven’s sake. Surely you’re allowed to feel a little lust for your own wife? Surely it is a prerequisite to the marriage contract in the first place?

It was at this point in the documentary that my fantasy broke down. It was at this point that I realized I just didn’t possess the necessary spiritual and physical dichotomy to love someone but to consider any kind of physical expression of that love as being at odds with my spiritual development.

I guess I’m just too steeped in sin and the ways of the sinful world. Curse me and my irredeemable libido!

Giving up the internet and games consoles is easy. Any fool can do that. The real test is plainly cultivating a desire not to shag the person you’ve fallen in love with even though having kids is, spiritually, a good thing.

I know, I know. I’m over simplifying. And I truly don’t want to be glibly denigrating the Amish way of life because part of it definitely does attract me.

Back in 1996, during a whistle-stop tour of America and Canada’s East Coast, I actually visited a real life Amish town. Intercourse, it was called. And without a drop of irony too.

I kid you not.

I can remember we were allowed inside one of the houses though told not to speak to the occupants and to behave with a quiet sobriety  at all times. I felt extremely self conscious. We’d been informed that the Amish frowned upon any kind of adornment or needless decoration on their clothes and there was I, dressed in a leather biker’s jacket with tassels down the arms and a painted design on the back, and my lapels literally festooned in badges. Hey, I was in my twenties, OK, and more tasteless than I am now.

I remember feeling ashamed as the Amish woman went about her chores – putting a pile of freshly washed clothes through a mangle much the way my Nan did when I was a kid. I daresay she didn’t give me a second look – Lord knows how many tour parties had marched over her porch that week alone – but I felt petty, stupid and of no consequence. I felt foolish, vain and, paradoxically, deeply shallow.

It left a lasting impression on me and I stopped wearing the jacket and badges soon after.

And now whenever I read about or watch programmes about the Amish way of life I feel a small internal tug, a slight beckoning towards the ideal. And Lord knows there’s enough about modern life that repels me so I have a force driving me from behind too.

But I can’t quite reconcile myself to the complete Amish lifestyle. Not really.

I have a tendency to rather enjoy low cut and revealing tops. Alas, that internal battle is lost before it is even begun.

My mother always used to say I was born in a barn (because I’d never close a door behind me as a kid).

Sadly, I very much doubt I shall die in one.


P.S. Just as an aside: this is my 900th post...!

Take Me To Your Leader

Bucking the space-time-continuum the wife and I finally got round to watching the BBC’s Stargazing Live this week – nearly 3 months after it was originally broadcast and thus punching a Higgs Boson sized hole through the very nature of it being “live”.

Professor Brian Cox and non-professor Dara Ó Briain make for a surprisingly coherent presenting team (Dara having a physics degree of all things for a stand-up comedian) though I suspect the person who types up the opening and closing credits to the show must experience a brain supernova if they happen to be dyslexic... an event that, I don’t know about you, I would love to see picked up by the Hubble space telescope and pored over by UFO conspiracy theorists the world over.

Which brings me neatly onto the subject of my post.

UFOs. Aliens.

Do they really exist?

Lord knows there’s enough crap written about them.

Professor Brian answered these questions and more with a down-to-earthness which, for an astronomer bod, was most refreshing.

Is there life out there in the universe? Yes. The universe is practically infinite therefore there has to be other life somewhere.

Do aliens come here and partially mind-wipe American mid-West farmers and probe their bottoms with periscopes fuelled by crystolic fusion? No. Absolutely not. And the logic to this is simple. The distances that aliens would have to cover are unimaginably vast. To the point of impossibility. We, as a species, have been spoiled somewhat by Hollywood (actually, we as a species have been absolutely wrecked and had our innate intelligence completely compromised by Hollywood). We imagine space travel as being somehow easy. You build the Millennium Falcon and – hey presto – you can not only travel to Tatooine at the furthest rim of the galaxy but you can also spend months if not years in deep space playing holo-chess with Chewbacca (better let the Wookie win) and playing space frottage with Princess Leia in the cargo hold.

The reality though is that space is completely, fundamentally inimical to life. Zero gravity is inimical to creatures whose DNA has built itself around the idea of gravity being present. The most continuous time a man has spent in space is, I think, 18 months and that left him pretty much wrecked when he landed back on earth. Even short missions in zero gravity tend to lead to ill health. Most astronauts, when they return to earth, tend to throw up their first meal and find their muscles have become noticeably weaker.

To overcome all this then is going to require technology so far beyond our own it would be like asking Cro-Magnon man to play Angry Birds on your iPhone.

So any aliens that do make it here to take photos of Mid-West farmers "getting it on" with their cattle are not going to be so stupid as to leave their spaceship’s tail-lights on, leave indentations of their landing gear in fields of corn or botch up a mind wipe on Zeke and Jethro. If they really, genuinely want to make their presence known I’m pretty sure they’ll go through the proper channels (i.e. take out a High Court superinjunction and then Tweet about it on Twitter).

And I have to say I totally agree with Professor Brian’s synopsis of the situation. I certainly agree there is life somewhere else in the universe – our species would have to be stupidly arrogant to think otherwise – but they ain’t saying hello, folks. Not to ordinary folk like you and me. And not to super-geeks who spend their Friday nights masturbating over the Spider Nebula. If they’re visiting us, they’re not letting on. Not at all.

All these UFO sightings and alien abduction stories are just twaddle. The results of over-imagination, unfulfilling lifestyles and a hidden desire to be probed by something which is not human. To be honest these people would be better off allowing themselves to be caught smuggling internally ingested packets of heroin through German customs.

Oh. And one last thing. One last thing to cheese off the conspiracy lovers and the doubting Thomas’s.

The moon landings DID take place.

You can go into Jessops, buy a decent telescope over the counter and see the footprints and the moon buggy tracks for yourself. They’re still there.

Live long and prosper, people. Live long and prosper.

I've Been To Paradise But I've Never Been To Binley Mega Chippy

I've been to some posh places in my time. Poked my nose around some hi-falutin' gaffs.

The National Statuary Hall in Washington D.C. The Boboli Gardens in Florence. Abu Simbel in Southern Egypt.

But last Saturday, on a drive back from Coombe Abbey, I passed a building whose sheer majesty and triumphal ambience put all these other places to shame. A palace of ruby and gold wherein must surely reside ancient gods of high renown. It sent shivers down my spine as if a strange wind had blown across my face. Indeed the air seemed to thicken as if with the odour of some hot exotic oil.

Binley Mega Chippy.

42 years living in the Midlands and I never knew that such a thing existed on my doorstep.

I've frequented all kinds of chip shops in my time. High street chippys. Drive-thru burger and fry joints. Hell, we've even got a Pete's Plaice just up the road from my house - a chip shop seller who understands the importance of a well placed pun.

But I have never in my life been to a mega chippy.

As we drove past my hands scrubbed at the car window and I drooled in a manner reminiscent of that famous scene from Midnight Express when Billy tries insanely to paw at the breasts of his girlfriend, Susan, through a sheet of bullet-proof glass. Well. I don't actually know if it was bullet-proof but it was certainly pokey-proof despite Susan's best attempt to punch a couple of ten pence sized holes through the glass.

A mega chippy!

I'll say that again just in case the significance has past you by.

A mega chippy!

Surely the counter and the friers would be made of solid gold! Exotic fish would feature on the extensive menu - dolphin, killer whale, Daryl Hannah - all battered and served with a choice of Bar-B-Q or curry sauce! The chips would be the size of articulated lorries and gloriously cripsy on the outside whilst remaining soft and fluffy on the inside! The countertops would overspill with jars of pickled ostrich eggs and vats of mushy peas so green they must surely have melted emeralds into the mix! And the serving girls! The serving girls would be bouyant Atlantians replete with clamshell bras and silver tridents and voices that could drive a man to dash himself to death on the kebab grills!

Alas I will never know for sure.

We were in the middle lane in heavy traffic and my wife had no intention of stopping, cold hearted harridan that she is!

So we continued on our way along the Brandon Road, my wife ignoring my stangulated cries of new love lost, and Binley Mega Chippy seemed to shrink before my eyes until it was nothing more than a faint pinkish blush on the horizon.

But I know where it is now. Google has furnished me with the map reference. X marks the spot. By accident I have stumbled upon a town that Kings and Queens would give their eye teeth to live in. A place of class and culture. A place where important people live. Big people. People who have "made it" big and like to have it large.

All hail Binley Mega Chippy!

The Olympian chip shop of the gods!

Aliens Are Not The Only Fruit

I am fast coming to the conclusion that my youngest son has a special relationship with food. A special relationship akin to the one the UK has with the US, whereby the US says jump, bend over, take it any which way but loose and we say dash it all old bean, you’re rather rough but we like it.

Tom has always had a good appetite. He eats well and he’s a solid, sturdy little boy. Not a bruiser, not a Fatty Arbuckle. Just solid.

But this isn’t where the special relationship lies.

It lies somewhere in the part of his brain that deals with vocabulary. In particular with the naming of things.

Let me explain by way of an example.

Whilst recently playing on Lego Batman Tom very excitedly jumped up and down and said he was fighting the melons. This caused puzzled looks and consternation all round. Melons? There are no melons in the game (even if you include Catwoman). What on earth was he on about?

Eventually we worked out that what he meant was ‘villains’. He was fighting the villains.

Melons = villains.

Since then we have clocked up other nouns that he has transposed with food items.

Onions = aliens.
Garlic = Darlek.
Ginger = Ninja.

I’m sure any child psychologist reading this will deduce that my boy is obsessed with food, sci-fi, Lego Ninjago and fighting crime. And not necessarily in that order.

Is this normal? Is it?

Or am I just waffling on about nothing? Exaggerating a mere trifle? Being both a bit of a pudding and a silly sausage?

Answers on the back of a menu to the normal address please.

Touching Wood

+++ MINORITY INTEREST POST +++

(But hey - aren't they all?)

So. Onto pastures new.

Torchwood has moved to the US of A. It has eschewed the bright lights and broad vowels of Cardiff and gone for the clipped and curled accents of, er, somewhere in America.

And this is the problem. They may have said exactly where in America the action is taking place but if they did I didn't take it in. And neither can I figure it out for myself by trying to eyeball any landmarks in the establishing shots. It appears to be somewhere in "TV America". That mythical place that seemed to come into being sometime over the 50's and 60's and then solidified into a place in the hearts and minds of kids the world over in the 70's and 80's.

TV America is how the rest of the world believes America to be. Michael Knight lives next door to B.A Baracus. Charlie's Angels sell Avon products to Jody from The Fall Guy.

It isn't real.

And this is why I am having a hard time getting my head around the current series of Torchwood. The plot is interesting. The ideas are good. The action is glossy, slick and movie quality. Clearly a lot of moolah has been spent on the show. £10,000,000 from what I've read. Though possibly that's in dollars rather than pounds. There's been some heavy-ish investment from an American TV channel / producer. A cash injection that would make even Captain Jack's eyes water.

And this, I suspect, explains everything.

The show is angling itself toward the American market. It has transformed itself into an American-ready chicken. Notice I didn't say turkey. Because it isn't that bad.

It's just the American thing... Don't get me wrong, I like America. I loved all those American action shows as a kid; they fed my young imagination. But it doesn't work with Torchwood. It doesn't work for me.

It feels too glossy. Too generic. Too Eighties pastiche. Rather than emulating modern American action shows it feels like they're emulating American action shows from 20 years ago. It clashes and it grinds. And not in a good way.

The American actors give it their all. They're reliable; they're competent. It's damning them with faint praise but it's true. Eve Myles as Gwen Cooper acts them all off the screen. Maybe it's the quirky Welsh thing? Maybe she seems more believable simply through familiarity? But I don't think so. Her acting and her emotional responses are streets ahead of everybody else. A couple of weeks ago she did a scene at the bedside of her on-screen father. He was ill in hospital. Her performance was brilliant. Real, gritty, restrained and yet emotionally full at the same time.

Everybody else behaves like a cartoon character in comparison. It's like the American contingent are just going through the motions. Possibly seeing their outing on Torchwood as merely a way to be noticed by one of the bigger TV channels, who knows?

John Barrowman too is pretty good but his character feels like it has been emotionally dumbed down. There's no range or even much scope for range at the moment. Maybe that will change as the series progresses? I hope so.

In the meantime I will stick with it. The plot has enough hooks in it that I want to see what happens next. This isn't a bad piece of TV.

It's just that after the previous Torchwood outing it feels like they've lost something. A little heart. A little soul.

I suspect there is a little demon running around somewhere thinking that's it's got itself a good deal.

And that's fine, believe me - as long as we, the viewers, are not ultimately short-changed.

Nerf Gas

Don’t mistake me. I hate those Nerf gun adverts on TV.

You know the ones. A group of all American teens (the wrong side of 16) who aren’t quite emotionally mature enough to dispense with the fantasy of being Bruce Willis in Die Hard, who rampage over an unbelievably clean urban landscape playing Nerf tag with their pump-action, fast loading Nerf guns and speaking like movie trailer voice-overs.

“You’re going down!”

“I’m locked and loaded!”

“Take that with my Nerf telescopic sniper rifle!”

“Eat foam Velcro-tipped dart, towel-head!”

Yeah. That kind of thing. I hate those adverts. Really hate them. And the kids in them. Nerdy jocks with too much testosterone but not enough to put away their toy guns and get themselves a proper girlfriend. They really get on my Nerfs.

So it was with much trepidation that we bought a couple of Nerf dart guns for the boys. The eldest was going to a Nerf dart tag party and hence had to be appropriately tooled up. So my wife, Karen, who’s knowledge of toy weaponry is worryingly superior to my own did the deed via Amazon and within a couple of days we were the proud owners of two gleaming green and orange pump action Nerf assault rifles.

The boys – including the youngest – have barely stopped playing with them.

It is disconcerting to see a 3 year old wearing eye goggles and operating the pump action on his Nerf gun like a ‘Nam vet. More worrying to discover that he got his eye in very quickly and, though is content to fire at everything and nothing most of the time, can still shoot the balls off a gnat when he wants to. Even the eldest boy – usually capable at missing a barn door whilst inside the barn – has discovered hitherto untapped reserves of accuracy.

The guns feel and look... er, good. They make the holder feel instantly macho and empowered. And I hate to say that. Because I like to think of myself as a pacific kind of guy. Not particularly marshal. But even I took great delight in bouncing a Nerf dart off the back of my wife’s head at 8 metres. It was a fine shot and took account of gravity and wind speed and the erratic movement of my target.

Technically it was friendly fire but, hey, with those credentials maybe I could get a job with the UN?

Joking aside though, I can’t help but see this affinity that we have with weaponry as deeply sad. And troubling. I’d like to put it down to the sportsman’s simple joy of launching an object through the air and hitting an aimed for target – a test of skill, accuracy and judgement.

But it isn’t, is it?

It’s about power and prowess and machismo. And even 3 year olds get it. Even when half an hour later they’re snuggled up in front of the TV watching Waybuloo.

It makes me feel like Sarah Connor’s son in Terminator 2 when he sees kids playing with guns in the desert and says, “We’re not going to make it, are we?”

‘Cos even if you don’t buy toy guns and toy swords for your kids they’ll go out and find an appropriately shaped stick and pretend one into being. What do you do? Place a limit on their imagination?

Denying our affinity for violence and aggressive is dangerous. The way I see it, it needs to be confronted. Marshalled, controlled, given a safe and constructive outlet.

And I guess this is where products like the Nerf guns come in. And believe me this is not an endorsement or a review – just my observations.

The darts are foam and relatively harmless. The guns come with protective goggles and vests. The vests have target areas on them. The competitive element has been ramped up rather than the murderous (though you can never expunge it completely).It’s just a game with a capital G.

So maybe those all American teens will grow up to be balanced individuals who channel their aggression into paint balling weekends or clay pigeon shooting precisely because they embraced their aggression in controlled play?

It’s certainly better that than them going on the rampage at a school or a town centre somewhere near you with an Uzi and a shotgun.

But ultimately, who knows?

I just feel like I have hypothetical blood on my hands this morning and it doesn’t feel too nice.

Jessica Alba, Leona Lewis And Me

It seems that some people just can’t take no for an answer.

It seems that some people who have everything – fame, riches, pneumatic boobs and easy access to a plastic surgeon – just can’t accept that a little person like me can say no to them and mean it.

But I’m really not interested. I’ve been blanking their emails for months and months but still they keep coming.

But now they’re getting devious. Now they’re offering me weird deals on meds and pharmaceuticals. Things to improve my performance in bed.

I ask you – is there anything less attractive than someone trying to get you into bed by selling you 5000 blister packs of Viagra? I mean, come on? If I need that many why you trying to get me into bed in the first place?

But it seems people like Jessica Alba and Leona Lewis think that normal rules don’t apply to them. They think that volume will blind me to context and I’ll go along with it.

Not so. I’m not interested.

I’ve tried emailing them back. Tried saying I don’t want to hear from them ever again. But all that happens is that I get even more emails – all from different email addresses but all plainly from Jessica and Leona and other famous starlets ‘cos it clearly says so in the subject line. How many email addresses to these girls have? Do they spend all their time creating them? How do they find time to do all their singing and acting and shit like that when they’re emailing me every day trying to sell me condoms and sex toys and drugs with names I’ve never even heard off? If it was Charlie Sheen I could understand it – but Paris Hilton? Britney Spears?

It’s like they’re all spamming me.

Spamming me for sex.

And that just ain’t right. Its skanky and nasty and not in a good way either.

I confess I don’t know what to do about it. I’ve tried writing firm but polite letters to the agents of these famous people but all I get back is abuse and loads of legal bullshit from Greenberg Glusker. The gist of it is, Jessica Alba and Leona Lewis are all denying having anything to do with it.

They’re denying all knowledge.

Well, that’s plainly just a lame cop out.

They just don’t want the world to know that I’m rejecting their advances.

Well, screw you, Jessica [or rather, not]. I’m telling the world right here right now.

I do not want to have sex with you! Stop hassling me with your weird sex-drug emails! Get a life, girlfriend!

You ain’t all that. Talk to the hand.

P.S. But we could still do a deal on the Viagra if you were prepared to ship it in smaller amounts. Purely for experimental use, you understand? Ciao.

Boycott Stupid Blogs

Most of us accept spam now like we do litter on the street. We don’t like it. We wish it wasn’t there. We wish we knew who the people were who scatter it all around so we could rip off their heads and piss down their necks (or is that just me?) – but by and large we put up with it. We grit our teeth and accept that it is the natural consequence of sharing the world with inconsiderate, lazy, self serving idiots.

We get used to it. The offers of cheap Viagra. The invitations to join casino syndicates. Those “hello darlink, I want to be your love-woman from the Ukraine” emails from people who speak to us with an intimacy lifted straight out of a 1970’s top shelf magazine.

I turn a blind eye. I hit delete. I wash & go.

But occasionally, just occasionally, one gets my goat (or gets right up my goat if you’re of an Australian persuasion). I bet as soon as I type the title of this insidious piece of blogging spam at least 50% of you are going to put your hand up and say, “Ooh, I’ve had one of those too”. The other 50% of you will put your hand up and ask to go to the toilet. Well tough. You should have gone before you came in here, shouldn’t you?

Boycott American Women.

Or as the perpetrator writes it: BOYCOTT AMERICAN WOMEN. ‘Cos those capitals make all the difference, don’t they? You wouldn’t notice it otherwise. The entire message would get lost in the mindless, knee-jerk invective that swirls around this piece of blogging spam like a particularly nasty huey in a centrifuge.

I’ve lost count now of how many times I’ve had this “comment” suddenly leap out of nowhere at me for moderation. Plainly a cut and paste job, it doesn’t change at all.

But bizarrely it does actually link back to a bona fide blog / web site. It is not some yank-phobic computer trying to sell me Viagra. Behind this one-track publicity campaign is a real person. A real person who not only is vociferously swearing off American women himself but feels so passionate about the ill-health effects of dating American women that he wants us all to swear off them too.

Why should we boycott American women? Well, visit this guy’s web site and allow him to count the ways. No, I am not going to link to it – a basic Google search will no doubt encourage this particular floater to rise to the top of the toilet – and I suspect I am merely asking for trouble just by giving this dope free publicity by writing about it on my blog.

I just want him to stop proselytizing his [frankly] bigoted, sexist, chauvinistic, primitive creed on my blog. Not that he reads my blog, you understand, he just sees it as a gratis advertising platform for his own ego-rotting vendetta against the female members of his own community. And I object to that. To be honest, I’d much rather collude in the selling of fake Viagra or Russian mail order brides than participate is this guy’s “I’ve got a really small dick” smokescreen. And no that isn’t an invitation to the Viagra companies and the Kremlin to get me to play business footsie with them under the table.

Now, as it is, I have never dated an American woman and am not ever likely too (when I was in the market for Cheryl Ladd I was only 10 years old and now that I’m old enough I suspect she is too old to care for the idea). I am a happily married man. But every time I get one of Mr Boycott’s missives (is his first name Geoff? I’d love it if it was) I feel an almost overwhelming desire to go out and speed date Sigourney Weaver, Natalie Portman and Heather Graham all in one night. Just to be bloody perverse.

‘Cos this guy’s campaign is just not working. It is risible. It is sad. It speaks volumes about this guy’s inevitable loss of esteem, secret low self worth and perhaps a doomed date with a busty Valley Girl who took one look at this guy’s shrivelled Empire State Building and laughed so hard her retainer shot out of her mouth and performed an impromptu vasectomy.

This to me is the only explanation for this guy’s bizarre standpoint. Given enough time and money I could probably prove it empirically.

So to be short, my plan is to boycott Boycott American Women. And I’d like to invite you all to do the same. Not by infecting your blog with my manifesto but by using my own blog to exercise my own freedom of speech. Just as this guy is entitled to do on his own blog. Because, at the end of the day, he can write what the hell he likes on his blog. I just don’t want it on mine. I don’t want it foisted on me to the point where I have to take action to remove it again and again and again.

And to all you American women out there... I’m sure it would have worked. The sex would have been great (once I’d got you properly trained), the good times they would have rolled and we would have made beautiful non-Justin Bieber-music together... but the fact is, I’m married.

This isn’t a boycott. I’m just honouring the precepts of true love.

And as for reasons not to date American women go, that’s possibly the best reason there is.

Debt Collection

I knew this day would come. The great post-Christmas reckoning. The revenge of the great gods Commerce and Credit.

I’ve tried putting it off. Tried locking myself in that little room called Denial whose built in tannoy system plays that curious brand of muzak that goes “blah blah blah” very loudly every time somebody knocks at the door with a bank statement in their hand.

Nope. Can’t hear you. Come back later. No, it’s no good posting it under the door; I have stabbed my eyes out with the hoover attachments.

But eventually, just like those poor German soldiers in Raiders Of The Lost Ark, you look even though you know you mustn’t. And then the lightning bolts of remuneration hit you and pierce you straight to the heart and you are transported up into a huge whirlwind of self recrimination and regret and the only person who survives is Indiana Jones and to be honest, he’s looking damned ropey these days.

Every year this happens. You run and you run and then you hit the wall of financial accountability. It’s time to face the facts. Face the music. And not the blah blah blah kind.

I think what annoys me most (about me, ‘cos let’s be honest, this is me we’re talking about) is that I kind of bumble my way into this position. I’m reasonably good all year round and then Christmas comes along and, well, I just can’t handle it.

(Cue Jack Nicholson in a US Army uniform shouting, “You can’t handle the Christmas!”)

I think it’s the releasing of the purse strings. The sudden opening of the flood gates. The unlocking of the chastity belt. You get the picture.

Months of abstinence come to an end and suddenly you find you are hopelessly incontinent. Money is pissed up the wall, higher and higher, a little further and you’ll get it clean over the top, go on, keep trying, keep straining, nearly there and...

Oh. It’s run out. It’s stopped.

I’m running on empty.

I’m running on empty and all the little plants in the garden now need watering.

Bugger.

But I’ve come up with a solution. See, I can’t handle the all or nothing nature of my finances. The long desert and then the brief flowering period. I need to even out the scales. Balance things and thus balance my approach to my expenditure.

And it’s so simple.

I just need to spend all year round so that the madness never builds up and overwhelms me. I need to acclimatize myself to spending money constantly.

Isn’t that just sheer genius?!

I bet you could build entire global economies on such a foolproof ethos.

Erin Bloody Andrews!

Erin bloody Andrews? Erin bloody Andrews?

Who the hell is she?

OK. I’ve Googled her.

Oh.

Is that all? An American sportscaster on ESPN. Ah. And there’s the “peephole” story. Right. Now it all begins to makes sense...

See, all this began about 2 weeks ago. Due to employing comment moderation I – like many of you, I suspect – get emailed whenever anyone leaves a comment on my blog. A fortnight ago I began to receive anonymous comments – quite lengthy ones – about Erin Andrews. Virtually gobbledygook. Cut and paste jobs with a couple of links to “her peephole” video clumsily thrown in.

The first two I deleted without a second thought. They weren’t even on a new post; they were on one I wrote last year about Torchwood of all things (you can read it here if you are so minded). Not sure why that post should attract the attentions of Mr Peephole Video Salesman but plainly it did.

And then I got the same comment again.

And again.

And again.

So many agains in fact that again must now be capitalized. Again, Again and yet Again.

I’ve lost count of how many I’ve received now. Always the same. Always on the same post. The same text entirely.

Dealing with it is easy enough. Reject. Reject. Reject.

But after the first 12 times it begins to get tiresome. It begins to get annoying. So I leave a comment on the post in question addressed to Mr Anonymous.

Please stop leaving comments on my blog about Erin Andrews. I’m not going to publish any of them so it’s a complete waste of your time and my time trying. Please desist and eff off.

I’ve had 4 more attempts since then. The same comment. On the same post. I can guarantee there’ll be another one tomorrow.

My goat has now well and truly been got. It’s irritating. I check my emails and look – I’ve got mail! A new comment on my blog! Hoorah! My spirits soar. Only it’s not a new comment. It’s the same old one. The same old one that I’m never ever going to publish. Doh!

Who is this guy? He most definitely can’t be working for Erin Andrews, the poor cow. Is he working for Mr Peephole? Is he indeed Mr Peephole in person? I doubt it very much but what the hell then is he getting out of his repeated attempts to sell the whole tawdry little affair on my rather superlative blog?

Up until his comments I’d never even heard of Erin Andrews! If it had been Erin Gray from Buck Rogers' fame he might have piqued my interest a little but a sportscaster from a channel I can’t even get here in the UK and wouldn’t watch anyway because I absolutely hate effing sports programmes?!

It’s hardly a useful public service announcement, is it?

So what do I do about it? Any ideas? Anyone?

P.S. If any of you have any peephole videos that you want to advertize on my blog please ask my permission first.

P.P.S. And please make them of better quality than Mr Peephole’s; his really hurt my eyes.

Toodle-pip.

Bad Boy

It's not my intention to offend people with this post or start an e-war. I also fully recognize that for those military experts among you I probably don't know what the hell I'm talking about. But hey, I can only think about this from a moral point of view. And I don't see why that should make my argument deficient.

I'm not sure why the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been on my mind. Possibly I caught the end of a documentary last week. Certainly my family has always had a brief (and admittedly tenuous) link with Hiroshima in that my mother used to have a penfriend there. Sadly, she died of leukemia some years ago. And yes, it was as a result of the bombings. I'm not sure of the state of play now but back when my mother was a teen in the 60's people were still dying as a result of illnesses caused by radiation and the fall-out (literally) from the bomb.

Now, I can remember talking to an old war horse about ten years ago who'd fought in WWII. Back then, just before I'd met him, well into his retirement, he had taken a trip to Japan and undertaken a tour of the islands that took in the old military installations. He came home totally convinced that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were absolutely justified. "They were completely dug in," was his evaluation, "There was no way we'd ever have got them out; the war would have dragged on for years and years with thousands of lives lost. The A bomb was the only way."

I kind of quashed my misgivings at the time and let it go. He'd fought in the war and lost friends; I hadn't. What the hell did I know? Was it for me to say he should have given more? More blood? More years?

Now though, isolated in my own thoughts and my own 21st century world I can look back on it and feel a little braver.

It was wrong. Totally wrong.

To bomb innocent civilians - women, children, babies, the poor, the rich, doctors, plumbers, thieves, dentists, whatever - was wrong. Their only misfortune was to be Japanese at a time when the allied forces were at war with Japan. They were as loyal to their country as our countrymen were to ours. There is no crime or blame in this.

To kill these civilians was unjustified. Just as the Blitz in the UK was wrong. Just as our firebombing of Germany was wrong. I can understand why it was done. But it was wrong. There is something truly heinous about bombing the very people that all those soldiers were fighting and dying to protect and preserve.

And don't we all agree now in this modern world of ours? Isn't that why we voice such outrage when terrorists target innocent civilians? Civilians who are as innocent as those who lived in Hiroshima, or Coventry, or Dresden? Isn't that why our militaries now have to be so damned careful in choosing only military targets to hit? Why they have to show footage of their bombing campaigns on TV to prove to us that, look, we're only hitting military installations, not civilians?

This isn't squeamishness. It's the modern world at last showing some signs of being answerable to a popular moral outlook even in the face of dirty, bloody war. Well, things don't suddenly become immoral. They either are or they're not. Period.

I don't doubt that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki hastened an end to the war. I don't doubt that the soldiers at the time were relieved and thanking God for delivering them from a campaign that had become hell on earth. But - and I don't mean to sound callous when I say this - they were soldiers. They'd in some way agreed to fight. To partake in that hell. Civilians, by their very definition do not do that. They were just trying to live.

They should not have been used as political collateral.

It was wrong.

Hello? Is That The Marines?

So. My new mobile phone. The shiny new Nokia 5230. It has GPS. It comes fitted as standard. It wasn’t a selling point (or rather a buying point) for me but I feel kind of chuffed to have it.

Even though I can’t ever see me seriously having to use it.

I mean, in over 40 years of existence on this earth I have never ever got myself so lost that I needed a satellite to give me some idea of where I was. I don’t as a rule allow myself to be parachuted into the heart of the Hindu Kush for example. Or take rogue camel rides into the Kalahari.

I might occasionally take a wrong turning on a B road but that’s about it.

But the GPS is kind of nice to have. It’s kind of cool. It’s a new toy with which I can play. And I have played with it. I launched it the other night and waited. Waited for the US satellite several miles up above me to triangulate my position (on the sofa, in my living room, watching The One Show) and report back via a little red dot on a map where the hell it thought I was

It got pretty close. My town, My street. But not my house number. No. It placed me in next door’s living room on their beer can strewn couch (they’re students). Or possibly in the upstairs bathroom. I’m sure all this was news to my wife but possibly explains why I was so incommunicative.

And it got me thinking. See, if I was ever taken hostage in my own house by terrorists (look, it could happen, OK?), held at gun / knife point and my house booby trapped, the phone lines cut, internet access blocked and my ability to hail my next-door neighbour over the garden fence neutralized... my only chance of raising the alarm might be my mobile phone. Quite how I’d operate the touch screen with any degree of accuracy with my hands handcuffed behind my back (steady, ladies) is something I haven’t yet worked out... but there I’d be, smugly silent while the US satellite above me slowly sought me out. Beep-beep. Locked on target. On a military computer monitor in the back of an armoured truck at the top of the street thermal imaging suddenly colourizes my home’s illegal occupants an angry red.

“There’s three, blue leader – one in the upstairs john, two downstairs with the hostage...”

“Copy. Tell the men we go in hard. Shoot to kill. Save the hostage (save the world)...”

A couple of hand signals like they do in modern war films and with a crack of boot leather on asphalt in would charge the marines (yes, yes, I know it would be the local constabulary or, if I was lucky, Warwick District’s armed response team – if they have one - don’t spoil it for me).

Crash! The front door caves in under a strike from a battering ram. The stair rods ping away as steel toe-capped commando boots hurl themselves up the stairs. Red laser gun sights strafe the downstairs living room, cutting through the haze of nicotine and cheap cannabis...

No, wait... cheap cannabis? Nicotine? Oh shit, they’ve got the...

Blam! Blam! Blam!

A couple of desultory cans of Special Brew ricochet off the walls as three dead students (looking much as they did in life) slump to the floor dribbling profusely.

Meanwhile, next door, a swarthy looking man lowers his Afghan scarf from his face to whisper intimately into my ear... “So... you think to get rescued, huh? You think to use your infidel Western technology against us? Tch. Very bad idea, my friend. Very bad. Maybe your smart-phone is not so smart, huh? Just like you...”

Click. Click.

*Sigh*

Bloody GPS, US satellites, Nokia smart-phones, etc.

The Mormon Invasion

So we'd made it to Friday evening. The kids were in bed. The washing up had been done. All the chores were out of the way.

It was Quality Time at last. Curled up on the sofa. Big bar of choc. Jasmine Harman on TV shaking her impressive decolletage over various locations in the South of France.

And naturally the doorbell rings.

Cold callers.

Pains in the effing A.

I did the net curtain twitch and took a quick deco.

Two young guys. White shirts. One in a blazer. Both with neat little back-packs hung from their broad shoulders like turtle shells. Even before I'd heard the American accent I knew they were Mormons.

Here to spread to Word of God and save me from myself.

Well sorry. I was too tired to be saved so I ignored the doorbell.

It went again. A second time.

OK. OK. They were being persisent. But in my house that doesn't always pay. I was more determined than ever to ignore them.

Doorbell chimed for a third time.

Jesus!

(Though I kept my voice down when I said that.)

When are these guys going to get the message? Tom was asleep in bed and I really didn't want him woken up by two well-meaning God-botherers. I resolved that if they tried a fourth time I was going to march out there and give them a piece of my mind.

Then we heard a strange jangling sound. The sound of keys being pushed through our letterbox. The Mormons then headed over to next-door's house.

I went into the hall to investigate.

Sure enough, there was a bunch of keys lying on the mat. Not the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven I might add but our own house keys. Seems Karen had accidentally left them in the front door keyhole when she'd arrived home an hour or two earlier.

Boy did I feel guilty.

I'd been mentally slagging off these pure-hearts in my head and then they go and save me and my family from burglary and God knows what else.

Shame on me.

Thank God I hadn't answered the door though. I'd have felt even worse if, mid slag-off, they'd handed me the keys personally with a cheery, "There you go, sir." Their halos would have blinded me. I would have had to listen to them then. My guilt would have had me honour-bound to repay their kindness by listening to a sermon or two and maybe even admitting to the fact that I do own at least one Osmond record (admittedly it's "Crazy Horses", the one they released when they were desperately trying to raunch themselves up to increase falling record sales). I know how guilt makes me behave. I may even have invited them inside and offered them a cup of tea and a biscuit whilst chastely switching Jasmine off in favour of the The Chelsea Flower Show.

But thinking about it some more... maybe the way it happened was the right way?

I mean, I suffer a little post-irritation guilt and learn a lesson or two about the kindness of strangers... and they continue on their rounds taking pride in the fact that they've perfomed a Godly act of kindness in the face of total heathen ignorance.

Everybody's happy.

Isn't that how religion is supposed to work...?