How Desperate Are You?

Regular readers of this blog will have noticed that I have an unquenchable predilection for fly-on-the-wall type documentary TV shows – an appetite that I indulge solely so that I can exercise my rabid spleen by giving the participants of these shows a bloody good drubbing.

Hey. A nasty spleen is a happy spleen after all.

But watching “How Clean Is Your House?” last night I had to wonder to myself what kind of person actually chooses to willingly debase themselves on national television by appearing on such a show?

Now I realize that there are people out there – damaged, inept and socially inexpert – who through no fault of their own are unable to live conventional lives and carve out a small pocket of existence for themselves which resembles that of a New York bag-lady. There are even people who just choose not to clean their homes regularly and feel perfectly happy mired up to their hips in their own filth and detritus and develop immune systems that can snuff out the after effects of a neutron bomb.

But generally – either through immense shyness bordering on psychological shutdown or a perfectly normal sized sense of shame – these people would rather run a mile through Irish bog than let a strange person into their homes... let alone a film crew fronted by Scottish frost-pot Aggie MacKenzie and blonde beehived behemoth Kim Woodburn.

Which leads me to conclude that the people who apply to participate on this show are, perhaps, a little bit conniving... a little bit scheming... a little bit manipulative and self publicizing.

I have visions of them scrunching up yet another rejection letter from The Weakest Link or Deal Or No Deal and deciding that, "right, that’s it, I’m off to my local landfill site to collect as much dross, crap and bio-muck as I can; I’ll chuck it around my living room and dining room kitchenette and then give those obsessive compulsive cleaners from How Clean Is Your House? a call... it’s a sure-fire way to get on the telly!"

And bingo – it works. Cos every week there’s yet another sad-sack on my TV screen looking theatrically abashed at the sheer volume of killer ecoli spores that are lurking on their welsh dresser and the amount of faecal contaminates that have been liberally scattered around their DFS sofa suite and within the air tight confines of their tupperware lunch boxes by the malfunctions of a scabby toilet bowl that resembles the north face of the Eiger.

Effing hell. Do these people want to get on the telly that badly?

To the point where they’ll risk their own health and well-being as well as that of their family and friends? Do they even have friends? I mean it’s not something you’d boast about in the pub is it?

"Oh yeah, my mate Kev has been on How Clean Is Your House? - yeah, they had to slash and burn his entire living room apparently, it’s been diagnosed a global biohazard... there’s a five-mile exclusion zone around the whole site... but hey at least he gave Kim Woodburn one.... now she really was mucky..."

Urgh. Shudder.

For God’s sale just buy a mop and some Mister Sheen! I mean how difficult can it be? Isn’t there enough crap on the TV these days without encouraging more...?

Odds Bodkins

Forgive the lack of cohesion on this post today but it amply reflects how my mind is not working. Mid-week fatigue. Ah. Dontcha just love it.

So to catch up and round down:

The pregnancy continues well in itself though it’s triggering Karen’s latent IBS. This means she’s in pain when she eats, in pain if she doesn’t and can’t ever guarantee a good night’s sleep... hence she’s permanently exhausted. Thankfully her bosses have agreed to let her reduce her hours: she no longer has to work Friday’s. This has made the working week a lot more manageable for her.

The novel continues apace: I shall post another excerpt soon. I’m sure you can all contain yourselves in the meantime.

And lastly, I was sent a link to the Simpson’s movie site (http://www.simpsonsmovie.com/main.html). It’s great – you can make your own Simpson’s cartoon character/avatar. Mine is above. Apart from a few minor discrepancies it looks a lot like me. On a bad day. Or even a good one. He’ll be the one miserably reading a poetry book and sipping a double whisky at the back of Moe’s Bar.

Hey dudes, eat my short.

The New Romantics

Cracking episode of Rome last night. Lots of gore, bed-based naughtiness and bags of peaches.

A perfect Sunday night-in, in fact.

The whole episode was great fun.

In one fabulous scene weaselly politician Cicero felt the sharp point of a blade expertly wielded by Titus Pullo. Straight in through the shoulder blade, all the way down to the heart. Cue much fountaining of blood. However, I doubt anybody was ever bumped off in such a polite and deferential fashion. “Do you mind if I take some of these peaches? Be nice for the wife...” What could Cicero do but be magnanimous. It’s not like he’d be having much of an appetite later.

There was more gore towards the end. Poor Brutus got turned into a human colander after the allied forces of Mark Anthony and Octavian Caesar wiped the Greek desert with him during the battle of Philippi. I had to feel sorry for Brutus. He was like a public school boy who just couldn’t quite live up to his mother’s or indeed anybody’s expectations. Bloody awful name too. What was his mother thinking? Like Butch or He-Man, it doesn’t leave much room for poetry or origami. Susan would have been far more fitting.

The best bit of last night’s episode for me though was Agrippa finally getting to grips with Octavia, Octavian Caesar’s tasty little sister. Although I think it was more a case of she got to grips with him.

I had to smile at Agrippa’s sense of style. What do you do if you want to impressively woo and romance a daughter of one of the most powerful houses in Rome?

Answer: you rent a room in a gaudy whorehouse and shag her senseless for three hours solid before donning leather armour and going off to battle. I guess in those days the use of such places for this kind of “romantic” activity was the norm. Kind of the equivalent to a cheap hotel off the M5. A convenient passion pad inside which one may plough the odd wild oat in whatever passing furrow pleases you... and Agrippa seemed intent on planting a whole vineyard.

The choice of location was not a great compliment to Octavia though. But then again she’s not averse to a bit of rough. Having got blatted on dope and attending an orgy last week (though Agrippa hoiked her away before things got properly started) she’s hardly a shrinking violet.

She’s more like a Venus Fly-trap.

No wonder Agrippa had such a big smile on his face.

Anybody care for a grape?

Cat Scan

News that Catherine Tate is to be the next “permanent” Doctor Who companion has been causing a fair bit of furore in both the UK national press and the Bloggosphere.

The general response has been a resounding, “Oi, Russell T. Davis – NO!” though whether Russell, Doctor Who’s head writer/writer in charge (or whatever he wants to call himself), will actually listen is a matter of some debate.

I suspect he won’t which leaves us with the worrying prospect of Catherine Tate appearing in all 13 episodes of season 4.

A number of Doctor Who stalwarts have already voiced their concerns most eloquently – TimeWarden being once of them – and it’s not my intention to repeat what has already been said but nevertheless I feel the need to cast my hat into the ring.

I don’t hate Catherine Tate in the slightest. I love her comedy shows and think her a competent actress. I’ll even admit to finding something very attractive about her though she always seems intent on taking a bad photograph. (Karen and I are convinced she has issues regarding her looks but that’s a subject for another post...)

What I didn’t like was the character that Catherine played in last year’s Christmas special, The Runaway Bride. “Donna Noble” was just too shrewish and too fish-wifey to be an effective long-term companion. She grated. She jarred. She was a one-trick pony. Does the Doctor really need a stereotypical, constantly nagging female companion on his travels?

What next? Bernard Manning style mother-in-law jokes?

The trouble with Donna Noble is that her creator has confused volume with depth. The character is irritatingly two-tone and two-dimensional to say the least. And that’s hardly fair on Catherine Tate’s abilities.

But maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe a fantastic back story is even now being composed? Maybe scintillating scripts are even now being prepared and salivated over by Russell T and his crew?

The trouble is I suspect that Russell T has utterly no sense of quality control. He was swooning over the season 3 finale last Saturday for example and, to be frank, “Last Of The Timelords” was complete and utter cack. Ineffably risible.

It doesn’t bode well for the fourth season at all.

The problem is I can see Catherine Tate being turned into a convenient scapegoat and I think – if all does go belly up (though hopefully it’ll remain paws down) – the real blame will actually lie elsewhere...

But is Russell T Davis bovered?

The Wind In The Willows

Yesterday I experienced what can only be described as an anti-Wind-In-The-Willows moment. A dark tale from the river bank if you will. Kenneth Grahame’s story turned on its head and somewhat gothed up.

Imagine the scene.

The lush and verdant river bank that borders one side of the building where I work stretches indolently in the early July monsoon. Within its frond rich confines all manner of river animals frolic and play.

But one is missing.

Where is Ratty? Ratty is missing. Can he be found?

Oh yes. Look, there he is! Lying dead and bloated right outside the area of my workplace that is used to host high-powered dinner parties and corporate events.

Oh dear.

That’s not very good. That’s not very good at all.

And thus I enter the story armed with a cheap shovel and scoop up his suppurating little corpse and toss it unceremoniously into the river. Squish-whoosh-splash. Goodbye Ratty.

Given the juiciness of Ratty’s cadaver and the fact that various components were wont to separate as I manoeuvred him onto the shovel I’d say he’d met his end quite some time ago. So quite how he found his way onto such a prominent part of the building’s footprint is beyond me because he certainly wasn’t there the day before.

I can only assume that Mole and Badger had been disturbed whilst in the process of dragging him elsewhere – perhaps to offer his remains to the river themselves or to inter him somewhere appropriate like the hallowed grounds of Toad Hall – and had dumped his carcass rashly on the forecourt of my workplace.

Or, more darkly, perhaps they were attempting to disguise a heinous crime by getting me to dispose of the body for them? Perhaps Mole and Badger had done Ratty over to get their hands on his boat? Was there some sort of sick love triangle taking place, the ins-and-outs of which really don’t bear thinking about?

Or had the weasels taken Ratty out in a drive-by shooting?

Or had Toad himself finally lost the plot and wiped out the residents of the river bank with a uranium rich dirty bomb?

I guess we’ll just never know.

Oh well. All is peaceful on the river bank once again now.

Sleep well, children. Sleep well.

Hi Jack

Forgive the lack of recent posts – I’ve been up to my eyeballs in work (still finishing off the chauffeur car web site as well as holding down my day job) plus Karen and I also spent Saturday visiting her mother in Cookham. Unfortunately a “nice day visiting granny” tends to be a case of walking on eggshells because she’s so cantankerous and foul tempered. It’s not my intention to go into detail about it here as it wouldn’t be fair but suffice to say she suffers from a genetic illness whose symptoms and treatment only augment her natural disposition to be argumentative.

Hence Karen, the boy and I spent the entire day treading gingerly and bracing ourselves for explosions of irrational belligerence and unjustified antagonism. We all survived but the upshot is we all ended up feeling totally exhausted and wiped out. And it takes us all several days to recover. It’s like having your life momentarily taken over by a bad vibe.

Which is a shame because “visiting granny” should never be like that and Karen and I both feel that the boy misses out by not having a traditional, warm, ever-patient granny to indulge him.

Ho hum. But what can we do? Sigh.

Onto other things. The weekend was redeemed a little for Karen and I by an excellent episode of Jekyll. Nesbitt’s portrayal of both Dr. Jackman/Jekyll and Billy/Mr Hyde gets better and better. The pacing of the episode was first class and beautifully plotted to keep the build up of tension at excruciating levels. Expectations were constantly created, played around with and undercut. It created a relentless pressure-cooker effect and gave me stomach cramps. But hey – maybe I’d just overeaten?

Best of all Benjamin (alias Paterson Joseph) got gorily dispatched about three quarters of the way through. A quick flick of a knife and he’s spewing claret from the second mouth that Mr Hyde has opened up halfway down his throat. Nice. Anything that permanently halts that fake American grin is fine by me.

Nesbitt’s Hyde teeters just on the right side of comic, i.e. blackly humorous but not ridiculous. His grin reminds me of the shark from Finding Nemo which is probably an odd reference point to make but what the hell. There is something likable about Hyde. You want him to win. But you also want Dr Jackman to survive too. With the two being mutually exclusive it’s going to be an interesting final three episodes.

Talking of which... the BBC programming schedule throws a spanner into the works yet again. Jekyll has built itself up to fever pitch, the momentum has been primed and teased to perfection by Steven Moffat’s writing... and the BBC pull the episode of Jekyll next week in favour of the Live Earth music concert. And everything deflates... pzzzzzzzsssst!

Yeah yeah. I’m sure it’s for a good cause. Saving planet earth and all that.

But I hate having my expectations hijacked. It makes me very angry, daddy. Very angry indeed...

MFI

I’m a bit nonplussed by the current MFI advertising campaign.

Not that I particularly care about MFI or their marketing ethos, you understand. I mean, it’s not like I’ve ever shopped at one of their stores or even driven within a 5 mile range of one. I’ve lost count of the number of Boxing Day half price MFI sales that I’ve deliberately avoided over the years. When I’m freshly gutted up on hot turkey the last thing I want to do is shuffle around a mouldy warehouse in Erdington looking at a vast panorama of corner sofa suites and pre-built Devonshire pewter knob handle shelving units.

I mean, come on. I’ve got some taste.

Their new television adverts, however, are impinging on my psyche with some degree of success. Though not in the manner that their marketing experts had hoped for...

The catch line is that an MFI showroom is so expertly put together it’s just like being in your own home. Cue various family groups – all from the scummy end of town – having blazing rows and white trash spats against a backdrop of hastily constructed MFI furniture. The camera then pulls out as Wayne and Waynetta continue their Jerry Springer style dispute to reveal that lo! The couple aren’t in their own home at all but are in fact in an MFI warehouse looking at the wonderful array of suites and design ideas that the store has to offer. Gosh.

So much like home is MFI that the couple have plainly forgotten where they are and are carrying on like they’re in their own kitchen!

Oh ho ho. Chortle chortle.

Unfortunately the advert stops before they start hacking at each other with Stanley knives and then running upstairs to their MFI Kingsize Divan bed to start shagging each other witless like a couple of bit-part actors from Shameless.

Cos that apparently is what the average MFI customer is like.

Hmm.

That’s not exactly selling the store to me.

So it looks like I’ll be spending Boxing Day at home once again this year too.

Half A Sixpence. Mary Poppins. James Bond. It’ll be dire telly but better that than spending the entire afternoon watching Tracey and Kevin gouging out each other’s Marlborough scabbed eyes at MFI...

Stick Witch

Feeling in a malevolent mood I deliberately watched Gillian McKeith’s new show – Three Fat Brides One Thin Dress – yesterday evening with the sole intention of taking it to task on my blog today.

Am I a sad git or what?

Anyway, as always Ms McKeith didn’t disappoint…

The thing with Gillian is… she might do health food. She might do dieting. She might do nutrition. But she sure as hell doesn’t do people. Not unless it’s to do over somebody’s already crumbling self-esteem that is.

Gillian’s emotional blitzkrieg approach gets my goat right on it’s belligerently hairy nelly. I honestly think she is rude, nasty and bitchy for the sheer hell of it. “Being cruel to be kind” is really no kind of excuse at all. Not when you are attacking someone on such a personal level in front of the entire nation. There is no need for it. It is unjustifiable. I bet Gok Wan pulls out his carefully dyed two-tone hair in absolute horror at Gillian’s Cruella antics.

I know that at the end of the day these women have agreed to appear on the programme but I’m sure a lot of their willingness to be televised is down to transient gratitude and inordinate relief when, at the end of Gillian’s 8-week regime, they find they are at last 2 stone and (more importantly) one sabre-toothed Scottish battleaxe lighter. When Gillian disappears back up her drainpipe they must all cheer and break out the stotty cakes in celebration. Awful woman!

She dares to tell them off for not loving themselves enough right after she’s landed the mother of all guilt trips upon them! I need her to see the full horror of what she’s doing to herself, says Gillian, as she presents one of the women with a coffin freshly engraved with her name. Into this she pours trifles, take-away curries and a host of other victual-based crimes that the poor woman has committed. How classy. Next she’s presenting the terrified women with beautifully wrapped mock wedding presents which, when opened, turn out to be diseased livers and clotted up hearts, etc… manky offal fresh from the butcher’s shop. Cue much heaving and gagging. But it’s all for their own good of course…

Surely there are better ways of getting someone to change their way of life than by scaring them and brow beating them into it? Gillian plainly sees herself as a God and these poor overweight women as her unworthy acolytes with which she may do anything in order to achieve the end result. What I see is a megalomaniacal dictator stomping over everybody’s feelings just to score points and ensure that her programme achieves its only selling point…

Weight loss.

Pure and simple.

It’s not about the women accepting themselves or undergoing counselling to deal with the issues that have possibly lead to their unhealthy eating. The goal is weight loss. Nothing more nothing less. Oh look. They’ve all lost 5 inches from their waists in a mere 8 weeks. Job done. Mission achieved. And off Gillian trots like one of those freaky automatons from Bladerunner… onto the next fat target that needs taking down a peg or two as well as a dress size.

What annoys me most about Gillian’s programmes is that the over weight people featured on them stand no chance whatsoever. They’re set up to look fat, gormless, contemptible and infantile. Last night saw three overweight brides-in-waiting struggling to get into wedding dresses that were deliberately chosen to be too small for them. Of course they looked awful. They looked dreadful and were naturally mortified. But if I tried to get into an outfit three sizes too small for me I’d look pretty horrible too! As my wife, Karen, pointed out: if these women had been put into dresses that actually fitted them every one of them would have looked gorgeous. But that, of course, is the Gok Wan approach.

Unfortunately this was Gillian’s show. So instead of beautiful Buddha we got bombastic Beelzebub.

One last thing. Gillian smugly pointed out that obese people live 9 years less than their thinner counterparts. Hmm. But if I have to look like Gillian McKeith to gain an extra 9 years on my lifespan then I’m breaking open the lardy cakes right now…

What’s the difference between Gillian McKeith and a walking corpse?

No. I couldn’t think of anything either.

Sling Yer Hook

I’ve been in the wars again.

Sadly nothing glamorous. No last stand against the howling hordes of evil. No fight to the death with a foe both despicable and admirable.

Tripping over my own feet after a midnight visit to the bathroom saw me earthing myself fingers first and then crunching down hard onto my right shoulder. For a few seconds I’d feared I’d broken some bones and experienced that awful pain that, rather than loosen your vocal chords, actually constricts them fully closed. Thus I was flapping about in silent agony like a freshly caught fish until the pain subsided.

Thankfully no broken bones (that I can tell) and my wife has sent me to work this morning with my arm expertly enfolded in the supporting embrace of a sling.

I’m striking as many heroic gestures as I can and learning to pee with one hand.

Though not at the same time obviously.

Day Of The Jekyll

Saturday nights have become a rare televisual jewel.

I suspect it won’t last long but for the time being at least Saturday nights are a night of perfectly pristine telly.

Doctor Who, Doctor Who Confidential, Jekyll and Would I Lie To You? One after the other. Wow. The Beeb has got my bland demographic neatly tucked up in the dry heart of its performance indicators and I’m more than happy for it to be there.

Doctor Who I will gloss over as I know some of my fellow bloggers will analyse and probe last night’s episode to within an inch of shattering the head of its bulbously glowing laser screwdriver. But suffice to say, the thought that the Master’s screwdriver is much bigger than the Doctor’s causes me much mirth. However, I’m sure it’s what you do with it that counts, eh, Doctor?

Would I Lie To You? sees Angus Deayton back on TV and about time too I say. Yes he’s smug. Yes he’s superior and personally unlikeable but he is funny, professional and polished and is the perfect front man for any satire-based comedy quiz. Who gives a toss who he was screwing or what he was sniffing? He was caught with his pants down, didn’t deny it, apologized and that should have been the end of it. The BBC seems to view its employees the same way that a headmistress at an all girls’ school regards its adolescently burgeoning charges. I’m not sure that’s entirely appropriate.

Hmm. Angus Deayton in a St. Trinian’s uniform…?

No. Let’s not go there.

For me the crowning glory of last night was Jekyll. James Nesbitt, though physically too slight to fill the role of Hyde properly, does however compensate for most of the missing girth with a truly mesmerizing performance. Things got much darker last night – a tangle of sub plots is slowly unravelling itself and Steven Moffat is expert enough to keep the viewer hungrily focused by constantly supplying tiny but elegantly juicy titbits. Just enough to feed the hunger but not quite to sate it… not yet at any rate… not till he’s ready.

Hyde had more screen time last night – which is, of course, exactly what we want. Nesbitt is pacing his portrayal of this enigma just right… animalising and unhinging him more and more by slow degrees as the plot unfolds… but also allowing him to be startlingly intelligent, both instinctively and emotionally. That for me is far more terrifying that the quick cuts of slavering canines protruding from his jaws that the show frequently peppers itself with.

Michelle Ryan is also giving good service as Katherine Reimer – she’s pitched her performance well; a university post-grad vulnerability mixed with a haughty professionalism. She’s a good foil for both Hyde’s mania and Jackman’s victimization… and her good looks add an extra frisson, I’m sure, as most of the male viewers will be half desiring Hyde to get to grips with her just so they can indulge themselves in a spot of vicarious wantonness. Dirty bleeders. This is art for God’s sake. Kindly reign yourselves in, boys. She’s not that kind of girl though Hyde is definitely that kind of boy.

The only disappointment for me is Paterson Joseph playing the part of high rolling business man Benjamin. His American accent is lame and his constant grinning makes him look like Prince’s sidekick, Jerome Benton, from Under The Cherry Moon.

That’s not good. Not good at all.

I really wish he’d just Kiss off.

When In Rome

I like Rome.

I admit the first series took a while to grow on me – it’s hard for any production about Roman life not to fall into the clichéd honey-traps of frequent orgies, bedsheet togas, busty slave girls and butch men wearing sandals but the Beeb’s first outing last year, whilst certainly referencing all of the above, still managed to pack in loads of grit and enough punches for the whole series to successfully impinge on my psyche in a positive way.

Hell. I’m wearing a toga as I type. Tentpole Toga. Hmm. Isn’t that the name of a punk band?

Anyway last night’s episode – the first of series two – kicked off immediately where the story had ended last time. Caesar’s crumpled and knifed body lying in a pool of blood and ordure in the Senate and his followers all running for their lives.

Straight in and no messing. That’s the style I like.

Polly Walker is back as the conniving Atia and although she’s looking far more mumsy around the edges than in the last series (and that’s not a complaint by any means) she still retains enough of a predilection for casual viciousness to make her character one of the most interesting on the screen. Her heaving bosom has absolutely nothing to do with it at all. Honest.

With a pushy mother like that no wonder Octavian went on to become one of Rome’s most successful emperors.

It’s also good to see Kevin McKidd and Ray Stevenson back as Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo respectively. They’re both great characters and generally provide the proactive element of the show. While the Senators and the women plot and scheme Lucius and Titus are the ones who go out sword in hand and with the barest of nods lop off a few heads. Plus a few arms and legs. And feet. And anything else that might be dangling loosely. It’s not a good idea to get on their bad side. Heads will roll. Literally.

Like I said: straight in and no messing is the style I like...

Which is not to say that the artistic side of their performance and dialogue delivery is not uniformly excellent too. There is a surprisingly subtle interplay between the two characters which is oddly affecting. This despite their penchant for thuggery and gory sword work. For me they are the engine of the show. Roaring away (not so quietly) in the background, providing the fuel, the motion and inevitably the spectacular car crashes which frequently punctuate the plot development.

The cast and producers of Rome have managed to both capture the flavour of the period and to modernize it sufficiently that it seems socially and politically relevant to today. An achievement that not everyone can accomplish (the producers and writers of the Beeb’s Robin Hood take note).

Bring on the busty slave girls. I’m ready for more.

Packing Some Heat

Can I just point out that ordinarily I do not belong to a Heat Magazine reading household? It’s just that yesterday, on route to the dentist to sort out her troublesome tooth, Karen stopped off at a newsagents and picked up a copy to help take her mind off the awful ordeal ahead. Then once the magazine was brought into the house and left lying around I just happened – purely by chance – to glance into it.

As expected it was infested with endless drivel about Big Brother, D list celebrities, dieting fads and stories about unfeasibly amoral housewives with a penchant for PVC and bakelite.

Ok. I made up that last bit.

But one thing that did catch my eye and genuinely made me laugh was a Big Brother lookee-likee section.

There were the usual comparisons: Shabnam looking like Ken Dodd, Tracey looking like Sean Bean, etc.

But the best one of all was the revelation that Seany actually looks like Chunk from The Goonies...

Na-ha-ha-ha!

I can’t wait to see his Jabba impression...

Another Novel Update

It occurred to me this morning that I haven't supplied my dear readers with a novel update for a while and people are possibly wondering if the damn thing is still in progress or lying gathering electro-magnetic dust on a hard-drive somewhere.

Well the good news is that it is still very much a work in progress. I'm chugging away at it steadily and am currently up to Chapter 8 - a grand total of 45,116 words to date.

Here, for your dubious delectation, is an extract from Chapter 6:


When I open my eyes the light has changed. The sky is the colour of luminous iron and the car has filled with the tips of long shadows. A blue light pulses somewhere from the back of my head. My eyes are blurry and sting when I rub them. I grimace as the smell of the car comes back to me. Caustic and bitter with an unpleasant twist of organic rot. I breathe in carefully through my mouth trying to bypass my nose. It’s getting dark outside. How long have I been here? I check my watch. 6.30. Christ. Cass will be home and wondering where the hell I am.

Next to me Trevor is unconscious in the driver’s seat. His head is tipped back onto the headrest and his mouth is wide open and loose looking, slightly moist around the edges. He reminds me of a drooling dog. I reach out and shake his shoulder. I’m groggy and move without any finesse. Trevor’s head jolts violently as I rattle his shoulders.

“Trevor. Trevor, it’s late. I’ve got to go.” My voice comes out in a dry rasp. I sound like I’ve spent the afternoon smoking weed. “Trevor!”

“What? What?” Trevor opens his eyes and regards me balefully. His eyes are bloodshot and red around the edges like an albino. He peers at me and frowns. It takes him a second or two to recognize me. “Mike...?” He peers in closer and then sighs. His breath smells like old mould. “Yes...” He nods. “Mike.” He looks exhausted. In the half light I can make out beads of sweat on his forehead and his hair darkened down with moisture. He rubs his face with one hand while the other remains on the book lying across his legs. It looks like a huge chunk of freshly quarried Yorkstone and Trevor a pre-Restoration peasant crushed to death for witchcraft.

“Trevor, I have to go – it’s late.” My head is spinning. How has it got so late? Where has the entire afternoon disappeared to?

Trevor nods vaguely but I see a sharpness returning to his eyes as he regards me. “Yes. Yes, of course. You may go, Mike. I’ll call in on you again soon. You’ll have the proof you need. We can discuss terms later.” He waves me off like a lord releasing a servant but I’m too out of sorts to react to it. “You go, Mike. Get yourself home. You can walk from here, I’m sure.” His head lolls back onto the headrest and I hear his breath hiss unpleasantly in and out of his throat.

“Yeah, whatever. Let’s just leave things for now, shall we?” I turn away from him, eager to be out of his presence, and reach for the door handle. I feel like a drunkard. It takes me three attempts to get the car door open and when I haul myself out I have to cling to the roof of the mini to stop myself dropping straight down onto the tarmac. My breath steams cloud patterns onto the metal roof as I labour to get air into my lungs and blood into my legs. I couldn’t feel worse if I’d sat through a long haul flight to Australia.

I stamp the blood into my feet and make an attempt to let go off the car roof. I wobble precariously for a few seconds but I don’t fall. That’s good enough for me; I’m desperate to be away. God knows what’ll be going through Cassie’s mind. I push the car door closed and without a look backwards push myself off. I aim roughly for the pavement and just about make it, my feet nudging each other like a pair of dodgems. Another drunk wending his way home. Up ahead of me, on the other side of the street, I spot an ambulance and the green and yellow uniforms of paramedics kneeling on the ground. The cold air on my face is wonderfully revitalising and I pause for a minute to suck it deep into my lungs. I feel cleansed by it and inexplicably healed. Slowly I feel the dull pressure of a gross headache lift from off the top of my skull and disappear up into the darkening ether. It’s like having a rotting mask removed by a crane. By the time I walk parallel with the ambulance I feel almost back to normal, just the running panic of being unbelievably late and the distant instinct of approaching trouble because of it.

As I glance over to the other side of the road the crowd of onlookers part briefly and I spot the tramp from earlier this afternoon lying on his back on the pavement. His limbs are strangely twisted as if he’d thrashed violently around him as he fell. Even in the dulling light I can see the whites of his eyes glisten flatly like clammy mushrooms. One of the paramedics is calling a report through on his radio but nobody seems to be in a rush to get him on board. I take that to be a very bad sign. I shake my head dourly but without any sense of true feeling. So long, Fagin... I don’t let it touch me. I’m comfortably numb. Insulated by the after effects of some kind of inebriation. Instead I push onwards through the evening light and navigate the familiar strangeness of the streets, my heart pulsing covetously. Heading home.

Tatered

After an extremely busy weekend I feel absolutely done-in. So apologies to anyone expecting a post sparkling with my usual wit and bonhomie. At the moment my eyes are gummed up with fatigue and my brain powered down with the same.

Not a pretty sight. But then I’m not much cop on a good day either.

An eventful day off on Friday saw Karen and I lunching together at a lovely Thai restaurant in Stratford, watching our boy perform in his school assembly and then hotfooting it to the cinema to see Spiderman 3... which I actually enjoyed. I used to get the Spiderman comic as a kid so Spidey always has appeal – Kirsten Dunst is just an added bonus. Mind you I wasn’t sure about her “jazz club singing” in this particular outing. Still easy on the eye often means deaf to the ear...

Saturday was taken over by a phenomenal bout of pregnancy related toothache that afflicted Karen from the outset. Cue various phone calls to NHS Direct, cue endless waiting for unsympathetic doctors to call back and refer us on somewhere else and then somewhere else and then somewhere else that referred us back to the original number. It was like some kind of tortuous dance. Once we’d jumped through enough hoops we were finally allowed to see a doctor at the hospital (by which time Karen was screaming in agony) to get some industrial strength painkillers which could dull the pain and not harm the baby.

God I love the NHS.

Sunday saw us trying to catch up on all we’d missed on Saturday – house chores, gardening chores, shopping chores and in between I did some work on a web site I’ve been commissioned to build for a local chauffeur company. Once it’s completed I will no doubt post a link to it on this ‘ere blog.

And now here I am at work on Monday wondering where the hell the weekend went.

Work is great fun today. All the bad weather last week resulted in leaks bursting forth everywhere and much warping of wood. Guess who’s having to spearhead the clean up / repair operation?

Yep.

I’m in me galoshes once again.

It’s non stop glamour, my life...

Feline Fine

A “shock” ending to The F Word last night (though not that shocking really given the nature of the industry that Gordon Ramsay works in): one of Gordon’s young lambs was killed and half eaten.

So just an ordinary day at Chez Ramsay then...

Actually to be fair – and because I do actually like Mr Ramsay – poor Gordy was quite cut up about the ad hoc butchery that had befallen his beloved Charlotte (the Welsh bred lambs were named rather fittingly after Charlotte Church and Gavin Whatever-his-name-is-who-got-her-up-the-duff).

And to make matters worse Gordy’s sheep had been paddocked in the extensive and expensive grounds of Beckhingham Palace, the nouveau riche pseudo ancestral home of David Beckham and his clothes-hanger wifelet, Posh (formerly known as Spice).

Geez. If you can’t be safe in the grounds of Posh Towers where can you be?

The carcass (like Posh) was not a pretty sight – everything below the exposed ribcage (like Posh) seemed to have been stripped clean. It was odd to see someone who must be so used to chopping up cuts of meat turn almost green at the spectacle of a freshly eviscerated lamb. I guess context played a big part in it. Maybe if Charlotte had been shoved onto a sparkly white plate and garnished with a bit of parsley and mint Gordon would have been waxing lyrical about the "juicy freshness" and the "moist bloodiness" of the meat.

But maybe not so happy about the teeth marks that were plastered all over it...

Anyway, veterinary investigation didn’t rule out the possibility that Charlotte had been mauled by a “big cat”. Indeed this view was backed up by a big cat expert who just happened to be lying around Hertfordshire waiting for Gordon to call him.

Further investigation (i.e. talking to local people at the nearest watering hole) garnered loads of anecdotal evidence regarding Panther-like beasts slinking over the neighbouring fields and carrying off young bullocks and occupied people carriers in their slavering jaws... never to be seen again.

Ooh! Spooky!

Personally, given the location of Gordy’s lambs, I can think of only one big cat malnourished enough to gobble up half a live sheep and then leave its carcass totally fleeced in the middle of a Hertfordshire field...

And that’s Posh herself.

Miaow!

Porridge

The funniest quote from Paris Hilton over the last few days has been her observation that being in prison is like being trapped “in a cage”.

How remarkably astute.

I look forward to more daringly apt similes from Paris along the lines of: “being in prison is like being stuck behind bars” and “being in prison is like being confined to one room all day and not being allowed out to do any shopping. Or drive my car really fast.”

The one I’d most like to hear from her lips, however, runs along the lines of: “I daren’t take a shower because Vinegar Tits keeps trying to pinch my soap on a rope...”

Ragun Bow

Karen and I availed ourselves of a traditional English street service over the weekend – the good old Rag N Bone man.

After the removal of our palatial greenhouse a couple of weeks ago the garden was left with a few metallic stragglers whose rusty loitering was beginning to make the garden look extremely untidy. Swift action was called for... and it came fleet of foot on a white charger just like in the days of old.

Well. Maybe not exactly like the days of old. Today’s modern Rag N Bone man no longer employs a magnificent dray horse to pull his cart or even wields a mighty wheelbarrow with which to collect household junk. Instead our particular Rag N Bone man turned up with a huge white flatbed truck with which he merrily transported various shelving units, two old broken hoovers and a vast array of assorted mystery metal work back to his yard or wherever it is that he deposits all his hard gotten gains.

He did however have a magnificent horn (please, ladies and gentleman, please!) which sounded his approach from at least two whole blocks away. Once he entered the mouth of our street we could clearly hear the carefully enunciated call of “Ragun Bow! Ra-Bow!” and knew that our saviour was near.

The garden now looks a hell of a lot tidier but there’s still loads of work left to do... weeding, pruning, removing an old water butt....

And the water butt is going to be a job and a half. Turning on the tap to empty the damn thing I was dismayed to see nothing but a pathetic trickle dribbling out onto the path rather than the expected rush of water akin to a damn bursting.

At the current rate it’s going to take 2 weeks before the ruddy thing is empty.

Peering inside the butt I was horrified to see a thick brown soup stodgily glooping up its innards with a surface skin thick enough to land a Cherokee helicopter upon. Administrations with a space merely brought various unwholesome looking bubbles up to the surface... and a slight sense of resistance near the bottom indicated that there was something softly organic submerged somewhere in the depths of the water...

I wasn’t brave enough to find out exactly what.

Rags and bones indeed...

Mind Your Language

It was only a few days ago that I was complaining about how lank and limp the current incarnation of Big Brother was... and then suddenly we have another huge racism row to entertain us!

Well. It was hardly huge and to my mind it was hardly entertaining.

Blonde starlet-wannabe (and self confessed most intelligent person in the house), Emily Parr was ignominiously booted out of the BB house yesterday for using the N word. And I’m not talking about “norks”, “nellies” or “nipple-clamps”.

Or “Nazi”.

Were the BB bosses right to act so harshly – no mercy and no quarter offered?

I’m not sure that they were. I think there is something of the freshly converted puritan in their knee-jerk reaction. Sure the word is offensive and Emily Parr deserves to be punished for her gross stupidity in uttering it... but immediate dismissal from the house?

Surely that’s using a sledge hammer to kill a fly?

Last year we witnessed sustained racially motivated attacks carried out on Shilpa Shetty over a period of several weeks – carried out by people who can said to be media au fait. They certainly should have known better. The BB bosses did very little to remedy the appalling situation that developed – too little too late at the time and, in terms of the begrudging apology that was broadcast at the start of this current series of BB, too little too late now.

The current housemates by comparison, for all they might come over all knowing and media-cool, are in fact grossly naïve and inexperienced both in relation to the fame world and to life itself. I’d argue that their level of culpability is slightly less than that of the likes of Jade Goodey, Jo O’Meara and Danielle Lloyd, the three witches of the last BB series. I’d certainly argue that in the case of Emily Parr.

Some other form of punishment would have more than sufficed. An enforced wet t-shirt contest maybe? Or to be made to re-enact the famous restaurant scene in When Harry Met Sally... but completely naked? Coupled with a very public, very large, very genuine apology of course... and maybe have her up for eviction three weeks in a row? Let the public voice their opinion on the matter.

Her instant dismissal smacks of retrograde muscle flexing. She’s picking up the tab created by the previous racism row queens.

And wiping the Big Brother boss’s shared slate clean in the process.

And that isn’t fair at all.

Demon Barber

I’ve just returned to my computer after getting my hair cut at one of Leamington Spa’s most recommended barbers, Francesco’s, in my lunch break.

Bloody hell but the guy who dealt with my hair was rough (not Francesco himself alas). Sweeney Todd just doesn’t come into it. I feel like my head has been savaged by an irradiated combine harvester driven by a rabid three-legged Alsatian high on turps.

The comb was scraped so hard across my scalp you can plant potato seeds in the furrows and my ears resemble a pair of McCoy’s crinkle cut crisps (cheese and onion flavour, thank you for asking).

Even the fluffy brush thing with which he finished off his follicle artwork was batted about like he was playing Australia in the Ashes. Six!

Wow. A haircut and an Indian head massage all in one go. Now that’s what I call service.

Thankfully his finesse with the scissors was exemplary. Bloody good job as I suspect he could have snipped the gonads off a gnat in mid flight with the ruddy things.

The man barely spoke – which normally doesn’t bother me as I like someone to concentrate when they’re swishing about my head and face with sharpened cutting devices – but he did have a weird penchant for humming the Yankee Doodle Dandy tune. Even weirder his mobile phone rang half way through and he deliberately left it unanswered just so he could listen to the ring tone...

Yes. You’ve guessed it: Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Played on a banjo no less.

As a ring tone...

?!?!

I mean really!

But what about the haircut I hear you ask...

...brutal!

BB Gun

It’s just not grabbing me. Not at all,

God knows I’m not a fan of Big Brother but I admit I enjoy the debate and outrage that it usually inspires in the nation. Whether it’s a worthwhile bona fide social experiment or not is not important. I just think it does the nation good to analyse itself occasionally and pull a few skeletons out of the wardrobe for a good airing. The Shilpa-gate racism row last year was a case in point.

This year though I feel a big fat nothing.

And that’s fat as opposed to phat.

Sure, Charley is getting on everybody’s Charley’s with her constant motor-mouthed bitching and her “I’m all that” ghetto-ho posturing... but compared to other years it barely registers a 1.5 on the old BB Controversy Metre. She’s a D-list wannabe. Her sights are set so low they barely protrude above the shag-pile. Who gives a stuff?

I do find her “famous people are my friends” stance hilariously funny though. No Charley, these people – these footballers – are not your friends. They don’t come to your house or ring you up. You stalk them. You throw yourself at them. You hover, you simper and you hope against hope that your jiggling boobies get you noticed. Personally, I’d find a pair of shin-pads infinitely more interesting to look at...

Even the arrival of Ziggy has done little to up the excitement factor. Ironically, if the BB bosses were hoping to put a pigeon among the cats what they actually got was an indolent, surprisingly socially astute lion who’s incessant urbanity seems to smooth the waves around him rather than crank them up to force 10. He’s like oil on water. Slick. Too slick.

What we need is someone to strike the match.

And worst of all there’s nobody in the house that I unreservedly like. There’s nobody to pitch for or come out fighting for. I really don’t care a brass farthing about any of them.

Either BB is growing stale or I’m growing old.

But. There is hope. As people have pointed out to me, it’s early days yet. The cat fur might yet be flying before the series grinds itself to a lip-glossed halt.

I just hope I can stay awake for that long.

Captain Grim

This is probably an unfair posting but I just can’t help it.

Part of my duties at work involve managing the small team of cleaners that maintain the cleanliness and hygiene of the building. Now before I get accused of snobbery I’d just like to point out that I did such work myself during my twenties. It’s demeaning, thankless, boring and ultimately unrewarding. However, it did allow me the freedom to write to my heart’s content for years and years without my creativity being debilitated by a stressful working life. And cleaning does have some amazing pros: you’re pretty much your own boss, there’s precious little responsibility, it’s not difficult and when your work is done you can go home, forget all about it and concentrate on the stuff that’s really important to you.

I have a tremendous amount of respect and even a little envy for anybody who cleans for a living. I really do.

So why is it that I absolutely can’t stand the cleaner where I work? I shan’t mention his name because that really wouldn’t be fair.

There is something so... spiritually desiccating about the man, it’s unbelievable. He only has to approach me and I feel my life force being sucked out of me and a dark rain cloud of gloom being inserted into the cavity it leaves. He’s a depressed and depressing vampire. Everything this man says is a lament or a tale of mundane woe. Everything. But worst of all it’s also so grovellingly accusing.

• Steve, we’re run out of loo rolls... and it’s your fault.


• Steve, the toilets are blocked... and it’s your fault.


• Steve, vandals have broken the sinks and are running amok with AK-47s... and it’s your fault.

Aaargh!

But what I hate most of all is the simple fact that this man doesn’t EVER listen to whoever he’s having a conversation with. He’ll ask the same question or make the same point eight times in a single conversation without once registering that it was responded to after the first instance. It’s maddeningly infuriating!

Steve, the toilets are blocked.

I know. The plumber is on his way.

Steve, the toilets are blocked.

Yes. The plumber has been called. He’s on his way.

Steve, the toilets are blocked.

Are you listening? The plumber is coming RIGHT NOW to deal with it.

Steve, the toilets are blocked.

Look I’m gonna shove this plunger up where the sun doesn’t shine in a minute!

Steve, the toilets are blocked...

And so on and so forth. Ad bloody infinitum.

Lastly – and this weirds me out big time – he sings to himself.

Nothing strange about that, you may think. But... he sounds like a ruddy Clanger. With a Geordie accent! I kid you not. “Bu-bu-bu-booo-boooo! Boooo-booo-bu-bu-bu-boooooo!” The corridors resound everyday to the ghostly yet faintly melodic wailing of hand-knitted children’s television show puppets from the 1970s. The toilet pans echo to their plaintive cries.

Ha-wey! These bogs are blumin blocked agen, Steve man! Is the plumber comin’..?!

It’s doing my effing head in.

It’s A Boy. Probably.

Karen and I went for the 20 week scan at the hospital yesterday… or rather the 21 week scan in our case.

It was quite a nerve-racking ordeal as this was the point last year that we discovered the baby was dead. Hence we didn’t particularly have good associations with the process.

I’m glad to say, however, that all is very well in womb-land and baby is developing nicely. Good strong heartbeat and everything appears to be in order. Obviously there is still a way to go but so far things are looking good.

They also had a look to see if they could determine the gender (at our request). After a bit of nosying around they were pretty sure that 'baby' is a boy.

We’re dead chuffed. To tell the truth, boy or girl we don’t really care as long as they’re fit and healthy and have a penchant for winning the Lottery. Actually that last part is an optional extra. Fit and healthy will be rich enough for us.

Names… names…! Now that we know the sex we’ve been mulling over a few names.

We’ve unfortunately discounted Napoleon and Ludwig. And Anakin too, much to the chagrin of our boy, Ben.

Instead we’ve pretty much settled on Thomas Arthur. But hey, that could all change between now and October (the due date).

Enjoy the scan above. Tom wishes to say “hi”…

Treble Trouble

This time every year Karen and I risk running into a truly rare thing in our house: a row over the television.

Karen wants to immediately plug herself straight into the Big Brother psycho-idiot Wii device while I come over all sneery eyed and superior and point out how shallow, superficial, trashy and chav-like the whole premise of the show is and demand to watch something more intellectual on the other side – in this case The Apprentice (the other side being another TV channel and not celestial telly from beyond the grave).

Ok so I was straining a bit on the “intellectual” front last night but you get the picture.

And this time every year the problem is resolved in exactly the same way as it always has been:

I give in. We watch Big Brother. And I end far more addicted and wound up about the show than Karen ever could be. To the point where my many opinions about the show start infiltrating my blog...

Oh poo.

Oh who am I kidding? I love it really.

And so on with my first impressions...

My God it’s going to be a cat house this year. At the moment my ears are appalled at the sheer amount of shrieking and screaming that all those teetering, screeching, lip-glossed dolly birds are producing. Especially the twins, Amanda and Sam. “Oh you’re gorgeous!” “NO! You’re gorgeous!” Ooh! Ooh! Eek! Eek! There’s too much treble! My ears can’t take it.

Christ. They sound like the mice from Bagpuss. Put a sock in it please. Or preferably a soggy old cloth cat. Just make it a big one.

My faves at the moment are Tracey “avin it large, yeah come an get sum, I’m well phat” Beaker (or whatever her real surname is) – mainly because she reminds me of a female cross between Prodigy front man, Keith Flint and the Tyres character from Spaced – and glum man-hating Nicky. I think The Nickster will be something of a dark horse.

Most frightening woman in the house is undoubtedly Carole who resembles the Viz character Millie Tant so closely I was also waiting for Mrs Brady Old Lady to appear... I can already foresee a host of BO based explosions rocking the foundations of not only the house itself but also all that caked on twenty-something make-up.

God I’m a bitch.

Channel Four need to get me in the house!

Gut Rot

I’m mystified by the Government’s / Industry’s sudden decision to put health warning labels onto bottles and cans of alcohol. I mean, it’s not as if people aren’t aware of how dangerous alcohol can be when it’s abused. For most people that’s part of the attraction.

Alcohol when abused is a poison. As is nicotine. As is heroin, cocaine, paracetymol, chip fat, petrol, Lego, dog turds, windmills, Victoria Beckham and a great many other things... I just can’t be bothered to compile the complete list.

If people already know all this and still go out binge drinking – still go out on the razz with the full intention of vomiting up both kidneys, their liver and their sphincter muscles in a hot sorbet of assorted lagers, beers and spirits – what good are warning labels going to do? Aside from being a point of comic interest somewhere along the lines of approaching inebriation?

Let’s face it if we’re going to start putting health warnings onto things to warn people of their potentially dangerous properties I can think of a hundred and one other items that warrant health warnings far more urgently that a bottle of Drambuie.

What about cars? What about carving knives. What about salt?

What about humanity per se?

Exam Over!

And boy am I glad.

In the end it wasn’t too bad though having it at 2.00 yesterday afternoon effectively meant the entire day was wiped out: a whole morning of pre-exam stress and then the actual 3 hour exam in the afternoon. After which I was good for nothing at all but food and Doctor Who.

Thankfully I’d been lucky with what I’d selected to revise – there were questions available that covered all the topics I felt most comfortable with so I at least managed to write something fairly sensible for the three hours.

Well. At least I think it was fairly sensible.

I’m now undertaking the traditional post exam post mortem… analysing what I wrote and coming to the conclusion that, actually, the majority of it was an absolute pile of twaddle.

Still, there’s nowt I can do about it now. It’s just a matter of waiting for the results…

Watch this space.

Apologies Expected

I’m not sure how I feel about the recent announcement that Channel 4 is to be forced to apologize no less than three times for last year’s Celebrity Big Brother racism row. Or Shilpa-gate as it’s come to be known.

Sure Channel 4 is culpable in some measure for how the whole debacle spiralled out of hand in the first place. They should have stepped in immediately and given warnings to Jade Goodey, Jo O’Meara and Danielle Lloyd the minute they overstepped the mark. Let’s face it they’re always quick enough to step in when some of the petty BB house rules get broken. Nipping it in the bud early would have avoided the international row that then ensued, saved Shilpa Shetty from having to suffer such an abominable ordeal and (very low down on anyone’s list of priorities) possibly saved Jade, Jo and Danielle from career ruination.

But the people who really should be apologizing in my book are the three witches themselves. I think Channel 4 should get Jade, Jo and Danielle back into the studio to make some very public, very grovelling, very fulsome apologies. Nobody forced them to act the way they did and no matter how manipulative the BB bosses are there’s no evidence that they actively encouraged any of the racist behaviour.

As far as I’m concerned the buck stops with the bullies.

Make them pay!

And then burn them at the stake!

(Tune in next week to read my well articulated arguments to bring back the birch, the stocks, flogging, hanging and Madame Guillotine...)

The Gone-House

Hello and welcome to Gardener’s Corner...

Yes, the wife and I spent the entire weekend playing Charlie Dimmock and Alan Titchmarsh in our many acred garden. I’ll leave it up to you to guess who played which role.

What brought on this sudden splurge on greenfingeredness?

Answer: getting rid of the humungous greenhouse that came with the house when we bought it back in March of this year.

I’d actually put the ruddy thing on eBay for the princely sum of £1 with the proviso that the buyer must collect and dismantle it and I quite expected to get no more than a tenner for it.

Imagine my surprise then when it sold for a whopping £142!

A nice gardening mad couple from Northants bought it and the poor things spent 7 hours on Sunday taking it down. I actually felt quite sorry for them as none of us had any idea it would require quite so much work. It seems the original construction crew had sealed every individual pane of glass so the poor gardeners from eBay had to painstakingly cut every single pane of glass out before they could unscrew the frame. Talk about determination. Amazingly they only broke 4 panes which is pretty good going.

Anyway, we felt so sorry for them we ended up refunding them £40. I know. We’re soft touches but as I said I would have been happy with a tenner provided someone else did all the hard work of taking the greenhouse away.

Not that I’m a complete lazy dog you, understand – I spent most of Saturday and Sunday with my loppers and my trimmers hacking back the Forest of Arden that had sprung up around the greenhouse and its environs and uncovering various lost cities and civilizations that had risen and fallen in the verdant depths of the undergrowth.

I worked up quite a sweat I can tell you.

Now, as you can see from the before-and after photo, our garden feels like it’s gained a couple of extra acres with all the space that has been opened up. The plan is to move the paving slabs nearer the house to make a patio and then to turf over the area where the greenhouse once stood thus extending the lawn even more.

After that who knows? Herbaceous borders. Vegetable gardens. Roman water features.

Whatever. Charlie and I will be sure to fork and trowel our eager little bulbs into the hot earthy beds with fertile abandon...

Oo-er? Or Oh-ar?

Degree

Oh God Oh God Oh God.

It’s exam time again.

I’ve been doing a part time English degree at nearby Warwick University for the last decade (I kid you not) and am facing yet another exam this weekend. Yes. All plans to disappear somewhere green and hilly over the Bank Holiday weekend break have gone boobs up as they’ve placed my exam smack back in the middle of Saturday afternoon. Gits.

3 hours of 18th Century Literature.

Oh goody. Swift, Pope and Johnson. And oodles of Samuel Richardson’s interminable "Pamela".

And do you think I can get my head around the revision?

Uh uh.

No matter how hard I try I just cannot summon up any enthusiasm for any of the works on this year’s module. I’ve found the year to be very heavy going, back breakingly dry and chokingly dusty.

Still. I shouldn’t complain really. Doing the course part time, I only have 1 module to revise for as opposed to 4 like the poor full timers. And in another 2 years I’ll be completely done and (hopefully) degree'd up like a good ‘un.

Next year I’ve got "Poetry: 1945 to the Present". Much more up my street.

Until then, in lieu of a weekend away, it’s back to Gulliver’s Travels...

Oven Ready

Class episode of Doctor Who last night.

My favourite line was Miss Jones panicked comment to the Doctor – “You’re defrosting!”

It made the Doctor sound like a Bernard Matthews’ oven ready meal. Hell, given her constant moocow eyes over the sonic screwdrivered one, I’m sure she’d be quite happy to tuck in to his thick piecrust pastry with or without gravy, hot or cold, any day of the week.

So is Mr Tennant a slice of prime Aberdeen Angus beef steak or just a mouldy old bit of ham from the back of the freezer?

Hmm. I suspect the former. I thought the whole cast were superb last night and Michelle Collins handled the Ripley-esque role of McDonnell excellently.

Now there was a hot dish. I have to say she was looking damn good.

Just a couple of seconds in the microwave and she’d be done...

Ping!

Ready to serve…

Boot Hill

It is today that, with a heavy heart, I say goodbye to a faithful pair of old boots who have stuck by me through thick and thin, carried me up and down ladders, skipped me passed aggressive street vendors and protected my delicate littlie tootsies from the offensive wattle and daub of dog turds for the last 18 months.

Their time has come. Much as I love them I am now too embarrassed to be seen (dead) in them. Click on the photo above and you will see why.

Scuffed. Ripped. Split. Collapsed. The polish corrupted into white streaks. They have had their day.

Instead they are to be replaced by a great stonking pair of toe-tector Cat boots of the highest calibre (above right). We’re talking industrial safety wear here. We’re talking boots that can crush hand grenades beneath their heels. Boots that can kick completely through Kevlar body armour. Boots that would make the American military weep in ecstatic envy.

World, I’m a-coming to get yer.

Booted and suited.

Leathered up like a good ‘un.

Down at heel but up with the best.

You can all kiss my eyeholes.

Electric Boogaloo

I have just survived the maddest two days at work that I’ve ever experienced in my life.

Day One. On Tuesday afternoon a burning smell was reported coming from the main electric metre of the building. Investigation revealed not only an overpowering smell of burning wires but also an inordinate amount of heat emanating from the metre box and the cable housing beneath.

I’m not a trained electrician but even I know that’s not a good sign.

Cue various visits from various electricians and experts who all, to a man, sucked their teeth, nodded, oohed and aahed and basically said there was an imminent risk of fire and/or explosion.

We promptly evacuated. The building that is. Though the public were amazingly nonchalant about getting out of the danger zone. The internet junkies from the Library’s cyber café had to be dragged away twitching and sobbing about their abridged chatroom romances. Old ladies had to go to the loo just to spend that last penny. And we even had a Christian group in the Assembly Room who refused to leave early because God’s work was far more important than saving their own hides – though they were lightening fast at demanding compensation for their lost room hire. God certainly moves in mysterious ways.

As do the electricity board. They turned up around 7.30pm, took a look at the metre and cable intake, isolated it, shrugged their shoulders and said they’d see us in the morning around 9.0am. Ta-ta.

Great.

Except that the building only has battery back-up power for a maximum of 8 hours. Which meant that all the fire alarms, security alarms, heating, IT facilities, and all other essential services all died around 1.0 am the next morning leaving the entire building – including the Art Gallery with an art and object collection worth millions of pounds – completely “unprotected”.

To add to our problems most of the external doors to the building are electronically operated. Without power they all defaulted to open so absolutely anybody could have walked in off the street and helped themselves to whatever was available. Hence my boss, Jeff, and I were stuck at work until 10.30pm getting all the doors secured with a local carpenter. This involved nailing planks of wood across them on the inside so that they couldn’t be opened and swapping the electronic lock on one door with a mechanical lock so that at least staff with a key could get back into the building again the next day.

Day Two. Back at work to find the place in total darkness and quietude. The electricity board arrived at 9.45am (as opposed to 9.0am) and straight away brewed up for a cup of tea. I guess it’s all a question of priorities.

While the building staff milled about in the penumbral atmosphere, reading newspapers by the light of their mobile phones and basically making use of the shadows for whatever nefarious purposes that took their fancy I ran about trying to coordinate the “clean up” operation so that when power was restored at 12.30pm I was able to lead in a team of engineers, alarm experts and IT boffins to restore the full range of exciting services that my place of work usually offers.

By 3.0pm we were back on-line. All systems go. Sorted. Open for business. Hallelujah.

Except at 4.30pm there was yet another reported smell of burning coming from the electricity metre...

Aaaargh! Here we go again. Sigh.

Anyway the current state of play is this: the smell (and this is from the mouths of top-notch high level experts) is merely the new unit “bedding in”. All is kosher. All is well. It’s fine, gov. Have a cup of tea. Praise the Lord. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to worry about at all.

Worry? I’m too effing knackered to worry.

Night-night all.

X Rated

Being a rainy Monday morning and having submitted to the burden of total and utter boredom, I have been lately musing on the way modern movies are certificated.

When I was a kid it was all very austere and straight forward. “12”, “15” and “18” told you all you needed to know and all the really good films were inevitably rated “X”. Hmm. You know, I never saw enough X rated movies as a kid. I feel heartily deprived.

Nowadays though it’s not enough to simply slap an age label onto a film. No. As a tiresome bonus we also get a load of PC-hogswhallop, soft-soap terminology thrown into the mix for free.

Stuff like:

• “May contain mild violence.”


• “Moderate language.”


• “Occasional sexual references.”

Der? What is moderate language anyway? Ecclesiastical Latin?

Anyway, it made me think how infinitely fuller and more rich our lives would be if such gradings were also applied to television programmes.

• Nigella Bites would be rated as “extreme vegetable peril of a sexual nature”.


• How To Look Good Naked would be “may contain immoderate baps and strong baptitular references.”


• Celebrity Big Brother would be “may contain nuts”


• The Apprentice would simply be “contains twats.”


• Deal Or No Deal would be “gratuitous boredom and beard.”

Hmm...

I’m sure you could think up loads more. But only if you’re bored.

Fosters

One of the more "exciting" elements to my job is dealing with complaints from the general public – bless their little white cotton socks – and such complaints usually centre around the state of the toilets in the Art Gallery / Library complex where I work.

The fact that they are PUBLIC toilets and therefore their state is entirely down to the abuse and depravations of the PUBLIC themselves never seems to occur to the officious little tell-tale twits when they come and offload their tale of wee-wee woe upon me, of course.... no; suddenly the situation is entirely my fault and what am I going to do about it?

If the cleaner has knocked off for the day that question is usually answered by me donning a pair of industrial strength rubber gloves and grabbing a plunger the like of which was last scene surmounting a mediaeval lance tip... straight in and no messing, that’s my motto.

Yesterday saw me up to my elbows in Marigolds once more.

Apparently a report had come in of a great pile of beer cans clogging up the gent’s toilets and rendering them utterly unusable.

So off I trotted expecting the worst and what did I find?

A single can of Fosters – surprisingly empty – dropped nonchalantly into the toilet bowl. It wasn’t even wedged into the S bend but just floating like a tuberous blue lily upon the surface of the water.

Wow.

Now that is either one hell of an eloquent lager review or some joker just decided to cut out the middle man.

Or someone was disturbed trying to get a refill...

How To Look Good Naked

What the hell is going on with Channel 4?

Tuesday night’s have suddenly become bap-night. I actually lost count of the number of "hooters" (Gok’s terminology) that filled my TV screen with their curvy hypnotic looks on this week’s episode of How To Look Good Naked.

Gok Wan (his REAL name) is taking the pre 9 O’clock watershed by the scruff of its neck, ripping away its halter neck and exposing it’s sumptuously bouncing breasts to the whole wide world. What a guy!

In fact forget the 9 O’clock watershed: Tuesday nights barely tip over into 8 pm and Gok is bopping us with big boobs a-plenty... all in the name of fashion and reality TV you understand.

Despite the increased number of male viewers that the show is undoubtedly acquiring the whole premise is oddly un-titillating (no pun intended). There’s nothing salacious or unsavoury about Gok’s agenda. He seems a genuinely warm, caring, funny, intelligent guy and scores a major hit on the old gaydar. Maybe that’s part and parcel of how he gets away with it? From a female point of view he is completely unthreatening – his attentions are purely aesthetic as opposed to sexual – and ordinary women are falling all over themselves to celebrate their baptitiousness and get their jugs out on national TV. It’s bloody marvellous.

The best thing about Gok’s school of thought is that no surgery is needed or even endorsed. There are no fantastically expensive hairdos or make-up jobs. What Gok seems to genuinely want to celebrate is the natural beauty inherent in us all. Gok’s major gift is his innate ability to instil confidence in people – even those shy, wilting, wall-flowers among us who can barely look ourselves in the eye let alone anyone else. It’s a refreshingly compassionate feel-good approach and I have to confess to being a big Gok fan.

Gok’s a great guy and will undoubtedly move onto to bigger things.

Meanwhile I have sent my CV to Channel 4. I’m a hands-on kind of guy and I’m ready to take over the post of show compere as soon as he leaves...