Wild About Skinny Dipping

We like Dr Alice Roberts in my house. Or rather, I like Alice Roberts in my house. My wife, I suspect is a little more ambivalent seeing her as yet another addition to the already overlong list of top television totty pin-ups that I adolescently maintain in my mind to mull over on a rainy day.

But you see, Alice Roberts isn’t just eye candy. She’s intelligent and astute and has a soft gentle voice that was just made for television voiceovers. And she’s a doctor. And a scientist. And she sometimes dyes her hair red and she once showed an X ray (or something) of her clitoris on TV. Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking: that’s going the extra mile in the name of science, but for me it was a very direct and very personal come-on – there it is, Steve; I’ve shown you where to find it!

So it was with interest that I noted she’d made a documentary for BBC4 on the subject of Wild Swimming. My mind blazed with images of Dr Alice, face and body painted like a tiger, cavorting in a swimming pool alongside other suitably painted animalized ladies... possibly the top ten from my list of top television totty pin-ups... but as I read the Radio Times review I realized it wasn’t going to be like that at all. It was in fact a documentary about swimming, free and unfettered, in the UK’s rivers and waterways. A televisual homage to Roger Deakin who extolled the virtues of wild swimming in his famous book, Waterlog.

And I have to say it was lovely. Although I am not a great swimmer, I can really see the attraction of wild swimming. You are immersed in the natural environment, part of it rather than just a casual observer, you are seeing the natural life of the river and the riverbank the way the wildlife sees it.

At first Alice did her swims in a wetsuit; her rubber enveloped limbs cutting smoothly through the peaty water, but she soon proclaimed that she was missing out on the full sensory experience. She wanted to feel the water upon her skin, moving across her flesh, tingling her all over... my Bunsen burner suddenly pulsed with an intense flame so blue it cracked my petri dish clean in half.

Could she mean...? Did she mean...? I hardly dare whisper the words skinny dipping... for, ahem, I was taking no vicarious titillation from the intimation only wandering how far Dr Alice could push the envelope of respectability whilst honouring the ethos of wild swimming and being at one with nature. After all, I am not the kind of man who watches TV programmes just to get off on occasional glimpses of flesh and suggestive movement, no; I wish to be edified and educated. My higher ambitions illuminated and excited.

As it was, Dr Alice merely meant losing the thermal protection of her wetsuit and swimming in nowt but a one piece bather. Would she be able to take the cold though? The average river temperature in the UK for the time of year she was filming was something like 15 degrees C. Now that’s damned cold. Would there be pokie action? Some of the more uncouth of you were probably thinking. But not I. No. I was pleased they showed how cold Alice was with nothing more than a nice thermal imaging camera borrowed from a passing thermal imaging camera salesman. Look how blue she’s gone. Oh heavens. That water is cold, isn’t it? I do hope they get her warmed up again soon. Nothing to titillate here, folks. All good science.

But as it was, all was not lost on the skinny dipping (purely for scientific research and artistic integrity) issue, for to honour the memory of Roger Deakin Dr Alice decided to conclude the documentary with... gasp... a real totally naked and unrobed skinny dip in an unnamed pool in the Lake District that has by now, I suspect, been religiously sanctified and dedicated to the memory of this great boobs-out event. (Latest news reports state that votive offerings have been left at rocks near to this sacred tarn and candles lit in the trees to better aid the sight-lines of passing binocular users).

And so, as the denouement of this fabulous documentary neared, Dr Alice, proud and curvy in her geeky boffinness, threw off her white fluffy bathrobe with an almost Old Testament defiance, and plunged full length and body long into the cold clear waters of Wordworth’s birthplace. Back and forth she surged, scarcely causing the surface water to ripple or break, a veritable nymph of the pool awaiting the pen of Tennyson to immortalize her forever... while some inept camera man floundered around behind her doing the doggy paddle and only managed to snatch occasional shots of her legs from the mid-thigh down and her arms barely up to her shoulder tops, I mean, really! What kind of shoddy camera work is this? Is this what I pay my TV license for, BBC? She was skinny dipping, for God’s sake. Bloody skinny dipping! Naked in that there pool and you had a ruddy great professional film crew to capture it. Where were they? Did they shove a couple of apprentices behind the cameras or something? Were the real film crew down the pub playing Sudoku or sinking jars of Riggwelter? Sod respectability and the higher cause of science! I feel really let down.

Damn you, BBC!

P.S. In protest at the BBC’s ineptitude I may have to start a new series on this here blog called Steve’s TV Totty Of The Week. This will be a new feature and will probably not be weekly at all but merely dragged out when I have little or nothing else to waffle on about and will feature – you’ve guessed it – my TV Totty Of The Week. Well done, Dr Alice: you have the honour of being the first in a very long and very shallow line of totally self indulgent, sexually gratifying blog posts about TV totty. A round of applause for this week’s winner, please.

Social Contraction

I’d like to think that this happens to everybody.

Not that I’m wishing bad on you all but I’d hate to think it was just me.

Someone meets you in the street or visits your work place. A work colleague or someone you vaguely know. Not a close friend but you know them well enough to make polite conversation. So you make polite conversation. Talk about this and that. Do your damndest to be entertaining and witty ‘cos, you know, every situation is a selling opportunity, isn’t it?

And they’re listening, this colleague, this person you vaguely know. And they’re participating. Colluding. You’re having a dialogue. And they’ve asked you something – doesn’t matter what: how are the kids, how’s your latest writing project – and you begin to answer because, like, they’ve asked a question that requires a response. You're 40 years old and you’ve got the hang of this conversation thing by now.

And mid answer their eyes sweep away and fasten onto somebody else – possibly the person they had actually come to see when they met you quite by chance going about your business.

And then it happens. The rudeness. The ignorance. The disrespect.

As your voice peters out mid sentence, the words shattering like glass against a wall that nobody else knows exists, this colleague immediately and enthusiastically launches into a brand new conversation with the newcomer. Their words literally railroading yours into silent oblivion. All their attention is on the newcomer. You may as well not be there. So you don’t want to hear about my kids then, or my new novel?

And you shuffle your feet. And you get on with what you were originally doing. And – and this is what really riles me afterwards – you kind of hang around, kind of wait to be dismissed because you don’t want to appear rude by sidling off without saying goodbye to this person.

Like this person deserves a goodbye!

And after it’s all over you feel deflated, worthless and ashamed. Is it something about me? Something I do or say or don’t do or say?

Is it just me?

Is it?

Where’s Wally?

Does overweight really mean overlooked?

According to Paul Yarrow it does.

Forget oil spills and Afghanistan, what caught my eye in the media last week was the story of Mr Yarrow (pictured above). He’s the guy at the back of the picture looking pensive and frustrated as if, to quote Russell Howard, he’s taking a tricky shit.

Apparently he’s been popping up like a pale bulby version of the witch from Chorlton & The Wheelies in a lot of the outdoor news broadcasts that the BBC likes to hurl at our telly’s in their attempts to keep us informed and up-dated about the various news items that make our world such an interesting place to live in.

Shove a camera, a boom mic and an anchorman outside Westminster and there Paul Yarrow will be, floating in the background like the inevitable anomaly in “Picture B” of a Spot The Difference picture competition.

A quick news podcast outside the magistrate’s courts and Paul Yarrow will be dynamically standing still in the background, usually to the left of the guy holding the microphone, not saying anything but ready, Goddammit, for anything.

Now this isn’t a real life Where’s Wally viral. No. This is a campaign. This is a media war. This is the start of a big movement (and no, I’m not talking about Russell Howard’s tricky shit).

Paul Yarrow, in his own words to the Evening Standard, said: "It is a statement about the image conscious media. I am overweight and people like me are treated as unsightly because of the way they look.

"I could have a valid point about something but the microphone is always passed to the person alongside me. The point I am making is that the more you push me aside, the more I'm going to be determined to make my presence known."

Now, while I admire Mr Yarrow’s stance and his campaign to give a voice to the voiceless I can’t help wondering about the effectiveness of his crusade. Because, to be honest, standing at the back of a news reporter who the viewer will be concentrating on so they can ingest the information, is not a particularly good way to get noticed and, more saliently, to get taken seriously – which surely is the true aim of Mr Yarrow’s campaign. As it is he’s become something of an internet joke. He’s in serious danger of truly becoming a real life Where’s Wally.

And is he really doing this on the behalf of all overweight people? Do overweight people really need Paul Yarrow gurning in the background of news reports to make them feel more taken notice of? More to the point, are overweight people really ignored and overlooked in our society in the first place? Are their opinions and their intellect truly counted as worthless?

‘Cos let’s be honest, when you look at most of our MPs, they’re all rather portly to say the least. Being overweight is plainly no bar to political acumen. I suspect also that a good deal of our richest businessmen have supped deep of the fat of the land and have a few spare tyres rolling about the place – usually between the ribcage and the pelvic floor. And does being overweight ever stop you getting on the telly? Of course not. I bet we can all name 5 celebs who could be deemed as being overweight.

In fact here’s 5 for you now straight off the cuff.

1) Ruth Jones (who I’d even say is a bit of a fox)
2) James Corden
3) Dawn French
4) That gingery fella from TimeTeam
5) The annoying opera guy from the GoCompare adverts

OK. So maybe 5 was a bit much. But my point is this: how much is Mr Yarrow’s campaign for the benefit of others and how much is it to satisfy his own personal need for recognition and validation? Because, let’s be honest, we all feel overlooked and ignored sometimes – regardless of our metabolism – but we don’t all throw ourselves under Jon Snow when he’s performing a to-camera monologue for ITN.

Mr Yarrow’s campaign seems a bit... well, shabby and ineffective. There’s nothing to identify his cause – no banners, no sloganeering. He could just as easily be protesting about the fact people with bad hair get ignored by the media. Or people who wear polo-neck sweatshirts.

Let’s hear it loud and proud folks – equal rights for comb-overs who clothes shop at ASDA!

Don’t Talk To Me About My Holiday; I’m Back At Work

So I’m back at work. Slumped in front of the ol’ workstation. Viewing my Tippex and my stapler with the kind of hatred one usually reserves for one’s jailer. How dare they steeple up so smugly from the confines of my desk-tidy? Don’t they know I don’t want to be here? Don’t they know I didn’t want to come back?

One week off. One short-lived beautiful week. Already consigned to the dustbin of memory. Written off by virtue of having been lived and loved and replaced by the present. How can time move so fast?

And my workmates keep asking me about it. How was my week? Did I have a good time? My oh my, I’m looking well.

Torturers the lot of them. Turning the screw. Twisting the thumbnail removers. Gouging the flesh.

I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about my week in the sun now that I’m hip deep in mire and sludge and greyness. I just want to get my head down. Get stuck into the tasks at hand. Grit my teeth and do whatever it is I have to do.

I let it all die away. The goodness. The memory of an alternative lifestyle. Another way of filling my days. I wait for the shiny memories to fall away, to be replaced by dull mundanity. Wait for the blinkers to settle back over my eyes. It’s easier that way, believe me.

I can do it then. Survive. Get stuck into the old routine. The same old same old. Kid myself that this flat-line existence is enough. Is a life.

Live for the weekends. That’s what I’ll do. That’ll get me through it. That’ll give me a toe-hold on the sheer glass-smooth face of utter tedium and desperation. And onwards I’ll climb. Upwards and onwards.

Onwards and upwards to the next holiday. The next week of freedom.

Just 4 weeks away. 4 weeks and then the sun will shine again.

No. No! I mustn’t think of it. Not yet. Not yet.

I have to keep going... have to keep going... have to...

Stuff & Nonsense

Technically this is product placement. Or at the very least free advertizing. And I’m selling it cheaply. It’s not as if I’m being offered free tickets, a lifetime’s supply of Dairy Milk or even access to Keeley Hawes’ bra drawer. No. I’m just being offered the faintest possibility of some extra readers finding their way to my blog, the merest whiff of a little extra exposure.

Am I really such a mediawhore that I’ll bend over backwards for such pallid, watery inducements?

Yes. Quite clearly I am.

I received an email from “Bizhan” who works for a company called Nonsense. No wait. It is genuine. Honest. And Nonsense are currently working with the Science Museum in London “on a fun little project around their new 'Who am I?' gallery - which raises interesting questions about what makes you, you.”

And all Bizhan wants before he’ll advertise my blog on every billboard, flyover and internet discussion forum in the universe is for me to pose one small question to you all.

What makes you smile?

Answering couldn’t be simpler. Answers can be by tweet to @sciencemuseum, posted on the Science Museum Facebook Wall, or even written into the comments field below my blog post.

And get this - “They’d especially welcome any video responses”.

Well, given my recent post on Erin Andrews, a video response from Mr Peephole-Pervert (double barrelled – oh so upper class) could be very interesting indeed, though I’m not sure how the Science Museum’s family oriented demographic would respond to such an interesting piece of avant-garde human biology in action.

But hey – that’s not my problem.

So. Onto the meat. What makes you smile?

For me, it’s a great many things (which in itself is surely smile worthy?).

• My wife and kids.
• Holidays – basically any time of year when I am not at work but especially the times when the shit hits the fan and I’m not there to cop any of it.
• Lego – I just love the stuff.
• Old family photographs – though these sometimes make me sad at the same time.
• My youngest son learning to speak – we’re currently at that halfway stage when his verbal outpourings are half English and half Toddlerese.
• My friends.
• A good book.
• A superb piece of televised or cinematic drama.
• Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.
• Hillwalking or spending time in Wales or anywhere in fact where contact with other human beings is at a minimum.
• A clean house (yes, really).
• An unexpected joke.
• Happy memories.
• Gratuitous pictures of Keeley Hawes.

Ok. Now it’s over to you. Don’t let me down, folks. Keeley Hawes’ bra drawer could be on the line here (I’m hoping Bizhan will come through for me – I’m sure he knows people who could help or pull a few strings). Here are some links that might be of use to you in your sterling endeavours (though I'm hoping you'll show your loyalty to my blog by leaving your responses here).

Science Museum: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/whoami
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/sciencemuseum
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sciencemuseumlondon

Screw You, Google!

Google Earth.

A lot has been written about it.

References made to 1984, Big Brother, The All Seeing Eye, satellite spy networks, burglaries and virtual house-rapes.

Suddenly, with the help of modern photographic technologies, computer aided flight and an online search engine with a god complex, any Tom, Dick or Harriet can take a leisurely stroll across our front lawns, peer up our back passages or peer over our garden fences to see who we’re burying beneath our patios without fear of apprehension, condemnation or even question.

Google Earth has laid bare our castle ramparts and exposed our jakes to the entire universe.

But did they ask our permission to do this? Did they check that it was OK?

No. The hell they did. Don’t make me laugh!

I believe even now you have to jump through several thousand hoops just to win the opportunity to opt out.

Well, enough is enough. It’s time to make a stand. Our privacy has been invaded for the last time. The campaign to end the rule of Google Earth starts here.

See, I’m fed up of living with the feeling that someone is continually watching me over my shoulder, analyzing my every move digitally. Every time an aircraft passes overhead I feel a cold shudder of paranoia rattle through my bones. Is it photographing me? Pixellating the new and slightly illegal loft conversion that I didn’t run past the planning department of my local town council? Is it perving at my wife sunbathing in the back garden? Is some cyber nerd in the Sudan going to be drooling over my herbaceous borders and planning to steal my succulents? Cos thanks to Google Earth anyone can pinpoint my every garden possession and identify the make of my wife’s car. My garden gnomes no longer feel safe.

At first the paranoia made me hunch my shoulders. Made me want to hide my face. It was then – on the very cusp of turning into a hoodie, faced with a fate worse than death – that something snapped and I made my stand. With the buzz of a light aircraft ricocheting through the stratosphere over my head I could suddenly take no more. I turned to face it. I peered upwards and gave that snarling aircraft the bird long and hard. Finger straight, right up its imaginary jacksy.

“Screw you, Google Earth!” I cried, “Take a photo of this!”

And now I do it every time I hear or see a plane. Even hot air balloons and microlights get it. See, I want Google Earth to photograph me now. I want some criminal mastermind in the Dordognes, searching online for an easy hit on mainland Britain, to search my street, take a virtual walk up my garden path and find me there giving him the finger.

But more than that. I want there to be someone on every street, in every town and city, in every county in this great country – hell, even the world – someone brave enough to face the eye in the sky when it flies over and give it the almighty finger of freedom. To yell “Swivel on this!” at the top of their voices! You like technology, Google? Well, it doesn’t get much more digital than this!

So join me, brothers and sisters. Let the revolution begin. Let us take back what belongs to us. When you hear a plane fly overhead you know what to do. Push away your pens; cast aside your keyboards; welly your Wii’s out of the window. Hit the street with me and offer up your finest bird up to those that would deny us our privacy.

You want to have a finger in all of our pies, Google? Well here’s a finger for you!

Raaaargh!

+++ We interrupt this blog for a special service announcement. The author has been rushed into a psychiatric hospital for immediate assessment. It seems that after reaching his 600th post he is beginning to suffer delusions of grandeur. We hope to restore normal service very soon. +++

Eye-Eye

So after a few collisions with the exuberant head of the 2 and a half year old my faithful spectacles had finally lost their innate ability to grip my face the way they were designed to do. The slightest head movement from yours truly and people were wandering it I was doing a bad Eric Morecambe impression.

It was time to venture back through the myopic portals of my family’s favourite optician, Charnley’s.

Me and Charnley’s go way back, right to when I was first diagnosed with astigmatism and was given my first pair of glasses (NHS style – long before Jarvis Cocker ever made them moderately cool) when I was 5 years old. At one time in my pre-teen years I held the town record for the sheer number of spectacle breakages. I was averaging about 7 times a year at one point and though my mum never believed me none of them were ever my fault. During one memorable incident one of the Dugglin boys went for a high ball during the lunchtime footie match and managed a kick worthy of the Moulin Rouge. Unfortunately his Clarkes managed to hoof my spectacles off my face and dislodge the lens which was later found (thanks to the direction of the headmaster) by the entire school being made to form a police line and march the full length of the playing field until we found it. Ah, those were the days.

But those times are long behind me now. It had been 7 years since I’d last graced Charnley’s with my presence and not only new glasses but an eye test was also long overdue.

I was fearing the worst. My dad developed glaucoma a few years back so there’s now a family history (though on the bright side I’m now eligible for free eye tests); I’ve been getting migraine “drop outs” in my eyes when I’m very tired. And removing my glasses in the opticians made me do something I rarely do at home: actually try and look at stuff with the naked eye alone. I was appalled. If I’d been around before glasses were invented I’d have stuck no chance in life at all. I’d’ve been a crap servant and frankly a liability as a farmhand – I can guarantee nobody would have wanted to stand next to me when it came to harvest time. A scythe is a nasty weapon in the wrong hands. Or with the wrong eyes.

So I underwent all the tests. It’s all very high tech now. Computerized. They test eye pressure and depth of field – not just “what’s the smallest row of letters you can read”? Some of the gizmos they use give you the feeling of being plugged into a virtual reality machine or a game station. I was tempted to ask my optician if I’d made it through to the boss level.

She – the optician – was very professional. Opticians are always very quiet and have soothing voices in my experience. It’s probably the result of the enforced intimacy. There’s nothing like having someone’s face so close to your own you can feel their breath on your eyelashes to make you whisper softly. Mind you, the ruddy great super-trooper she was bouncing of my retina spoiled the atmosphere somewhat. Any stronger and she would have scorched a hole through the back of my cranium.

Still, I can’t fault her thoroughness. My sight was put through an army assault course of tests.

At the end of it I was genuinely blinded with exhaustion. And fear.

I felt sure my eyes had deteriorated. I was turning into Mr Magoo. I’d need lenses thicker than Corona bottles. I’m going blind, aren’t I, doc, tell me straight?

*sob*

How wrong could I have been?

My eyes have actually improved! I didn’t know that was even possible. I’m less short sighted than I was. Because – and here’s the clincher – I’m becoming more long sighted. Apparently that’s very common once you hit your 40’s. I’ll have a few years of improvement before the long sightedness fouls up my ability to read a book close-up and then my eyes will be buggered every which way but loose and I’ll need completely different lenses.

Ah well. In the meantime at least I can still try for the work’s darts team.

A new pair of glasses are now on order with – for the time being – weaker lenses to suit my vision. The frames I chose are as close to the ones I have now as I could find – I hate changing my facial furniture. I was tempted by the Dame Edna pink side wings but, frankly, I don’t have the cheek bones to pull it off.

Besides, when did you ever see Eric Morecambe wearing pink glasses?

An Easy Post To Comment On

Friday was the 5th wedding anniversary of yours truly and my good lady wife.

5 years! It feels something of a milestone, this half decade. So much has happened.

• Both my grandparents and my aunt died
• Karen and I lost two babies before succeeding with Tom who’ll be 3 in October
• I finally got my English degree
• Karen finally got her ACCA qualification
• I began this blog
• I wrote a novel
• We bought a house
• Karen totally renovated the garden to the point where we are now growing our own fruit and veg

And through it all Karen and I feel just as close as we always did. The magic is still there. Sure the magic might get buried occasionally under fatigue, work stresses, money worries, ill health, etc, but it’s still there bubbling away.

It’s funny to think that even just 10 years ago I would never have imagined myself as being where I actually am right now. Sure, I haven’t run a marathon, haven’t been into space or made a million with my home web design business but I’m still proud of what has been achieved and what has been survived over the last 5 years.

The ups have been up and the downs have been down.

I’m sure there’ll be challenges aplenty in the next 5 years but I can say with absolute certainly that I hope Karen and I are still together, working our way through them steadily in the not so far off year that is 2015.

And I hope to see all of you there too. Here’s to the next 5!

Bread Crumbs

This week I have quaffed deep of the carafe of crapness. Supped long and hard on the soup-bowl of complete and utter work soddery. It is not an expression I use often on this blog but this week has been a shit sandwich. A shit sandwich of doorstep proportions.

There’s too much to go into here. Too much to discuss that would get me into trouble with my employers were I to share it openly – and you all know how I actively seek to avoid trouble of that nature. So let me satisfy external analysis by providing – for your delectation – one small vignette that not only began this week of work-based woe but also rather neatly sums it up.

Monday morning. We have just opened to the public. The foyer area is sparkling and smelling of pine fresh disinfectant. A contractor turns up to meet me. We exchange pleasantries and head back through the foyer to look at the faulty doors he has come to repair.

There is shit everywhere. Human shit. A trail of man-poo that slithers from the public toilets across the foyer to the library, across their cool blue carpet tiles, back out across the foyer towards the entrance doors and, yes, when I check, leads off across the parkland outside. Without any effort at all I bet I could follow the perpetrator all the way home.

The trail reminds me for some reason of the blood trail left after a seal has been clubbed and dragged back to a fur trading ship. Somebody has obviously clubbed a seal to death with an elephant sized turd.

I am gobsmacked. In fact I smack my gob and keep my hand there to prevent myself from inhaling the ripe aroma of freshly ejected effluvia that floats up from ground level like marsh gas.

In the space of a few brief seconds some scrote has – unfathomably – left the public toilets whilst soiling himself at a constant rate of one plop every third footfall.

Why? How?

How can you do this and not know you are doing it? ‘Cos I’m assuming it was an accident and not deliberate. Or am I wrong? Has the guy in question cut a hole in his trouser pockets like a POW in the Great Escape and carefully and surreptitiously dropped his load in the hope that the Nazi prison guards wouldn't notice what he was doing?

He’s failed. It sticks out a mile. And it smells. And – oh God – other customers are coming into the building and walking through it. As I watch, the wheel of a wheelchair carves a moist furrow in a particularly fetid looking dollop. There are now new shite trails beginning to spread out everywhere.

We get the cleaner. Bless her, she dons her marigolds with the stern expression of a vet about to remove a breach calf from the back end of a cow and gets to work. The clean-up operation has begun.

In the meantime a quick look of the CCTV cameras reveals a lost, confused, heavily bearded man wearing a woollen bobble hat despite the summer heat leaving the loos and wandering across to the library at the right time. Even with the dodgy quality of the CCTV footage you can clearly see that he’s not “all there” (indeed, a lot of him is spread across our floors). The phrase “care in the community” comes to mind. I.E. nobody cares and he’s been left to his own devices.

The cleaner reports that the loos are a bombsite (bum site?). Faeces and toilet paper in all the loos and all over the sinks. It’s going to be a big job (no pun intended).

*Sigh*

And that is how Monday began and – you know what? – the work week hasn’t got any better than that.

Like I said.

A shit sandwich.

You Plumb!

Do people not want work? With the country selling its kidneys for rent money, do people not want to earn a bit of cash?

We have a small list of plumbing jobs in my house. Nothing too onerous: a couple of taps that don’t work properly, a leaky sink and a leaky shower, a wonky shower head that refuses to stay in position (so one must shower doing the Hitler salute to keep it over one’s head)... all stuff that a good plumber could sort out in an hour or two. A nice little earner in fact.

But do you think I can commission someone to do the work?!

The first thing I did was to pose the question on my work’s intranet: can anybody recommend a good, reasonably priced plumber?

The response to this was good. Three recommendations plopped into my inbox. Three likely lads championed by satisfied customers.

I rang all of them. All bar one answered and set a time to come round the ol’ gaffe last weekend, take a look and give a quote. I left a phone message with the third and left it at that.

The weekend came but the two plumbers didn’t. No show. Bleeding great. The third one, however, picked up his phone message and rang me back. This looked more promising. He attended within the hour, quoted £80 (I bit his hand off) and said he’d formalize the quote on Monday and get in touch to make arrangements to come and do the job.

Monday came and went. Nothing. Nadda.

OK. Maybe he was busy. Had a rush job on. A little old lady with her rheumatoid arthritic toe jammed up her combi tap. These things happen.

A week later though and the plumber drought continues. Not a sign. Not a dickie-bird. And I’m not sure I can be bothered to chase any of these jokers up.

If they don’t want the work I’m not sure I want to give them my money in the first place.

They can all go and shove their heads down the nearest toilet. After all, some might say that is an occupational hazard (when they actually do their jobs, that is).

Leamington Is Full Of The Strangest People, No. 2: Pooper-Scoop Pete

And so to continue with this sporadic series of Leamington vignettes (you can read the first one here if you are so minded) may I introduce you to Pooper-Scoop Pete?

I don’t know if Pete is his real name; I chose it purely for alliterative purposes and thought it sounded better than Turd Trowelling Trevor.

I encountered Pete last Friday as I made my way on foot to my employer’s HQ. Despite the day being so hot it would have melted Katie Price’s breast implants down to her ankles Pete was fully togged out in a tweed suit complete with matching waistcoat. And he was wearing a yellow shirt which I suspect (though cannot confirm) was buttoned right up to his Adam’s apple. He was sporting a full beard in a kind of way that said, “Yes, ruffian, even my face is properly dressed despite the excessive balminess of the weather”.

But strange though his appearance may have been it was not his sartorial qualities that attracted my eye... my eye that seeketh the strange and the paranormal in this bizarre worlde of Leamington upon the Spa.

No. It was the fact that he was very painstakingly picking up a large dog poo from the pavement.

And yet he most definitely did not have a dog. He was totally dog-less.

Worst of all his method of turd collecting was the old “stick your hand in a plastic bag and pick it up with your fingers and then turn the bag inside out” technique. Thus through the thin veneer of the plastic one can fully experience both the ambient temperature and the texture of the poo one is handling.

He had an old fashioned brown satchel slung over his right shoulder. I didn’t see him do it but I suspect the bagged up log was deposited within its leather innards.

The actions of this dedicated sausage removal expert have left me perturbed and confused. I mean why collect dog poo from the streets when you patently don’t have a dog in your possession?

Subsequent speculation on this conundrum has resulted in the following theories (do feel free to add your own):

1) he does indeed own a dog and said dog dropped a length earlier in the day but he found himself plastic bag-less and thus, being conscientious and mindful of his public duty, he returned at his next convenience to remove the offending article.

2) the government is funding some bizarre and secret research into the anti-personnel properties of canine faeces and Pete is collecting samples of the stuff to develop an anti aircraft missile that has true dirty bomb attributes.

3) Pete has a dog log fetish that has resulted in an entire backroom of his Edwardian terraced house (there are a lot of these in Leamington Spa) being given over to his personal “walnut whip” collection – all sorted and displayed according to size, bouquet, and canine breed (worked out using a clever algorithm that uses the diameter of the log to calculate the size of the canine rectum and therefore the most likely breed of the dog). This collection has been kept secret from his elderly mother who lives in a rocking chair in his loft and persists in calling Pete Norman.

Needles to say, I left Pete to his scatological endeavours and hastened on my way to Work’s HQ, praying that I would never have cause to see the insides of that buckled brown leather satchel that was visibly weighing down his right shoulder...

Leamington, eh? It’s full of the strangest people.

It’s MY Bloody Bin!

My workstation is a curious thing. When I clock-on on a Monday morning I greet it with a mixture of spleen, bleak acceptance and an odd proprietorial sense of comfort. It’s mine. I might not like the thought of another week at work doing tasks that nature never intended me for but while I’m here by God I’ll make sure my presence is writ large. Me and my desk are as one.

I own it.

Pens. Pencils. PC. Prittstick.

All mine. They may strictly speaking belong to my employer but they’ve been supplied for my use and my use alone and woe betide anyone who borrows my stapler and doesn’t bring it back. Blood has been shed for less.

This sense of ownership extends to my bin.

It’s mine. For my use. For my waste.

And few things irritate me more than arriving at work of a morning, feeling hound-dog miserable that another week will pass without me being employed as a script writer for the BBC, to find that someone – some lazy so-and-so with their own bin – has tossed their detritus into the hallowed plastic bag lined maw of my own personal trash receptacle.

My desk is right near the office door, see. It’s the last workstation people pass on their way to freedom.

So you can see how it happens. Someone scoffs a banana on their way to the door, or takes a last slug on a bottle of tequila, or maybe quaffs down a Müller Crunch Corner that they didn’t quite get round to at lunchtime and, with an arm action worthy of the Harlem Globe Trotters, the offending banana skin / Tequila bottle complete with maggot / yoghurt pot ends up in my bin.

Foodstuffs that I have not had the pleasure of consuming. Foodstuffs that have energized and nourished people other than me.

Their germs and their lipstick – maybe even a few stray nasal hairs – are still around the edges of their cast-off comestibles.

In my bin.

Great. Now the cleaner will think they are mine. Will think that I am the sort of person who discards banana skins in a way that leaves yellow stringy bits decorating the sides of my bin like a cheap Christmas decoration. That I am alcoholic. Worse. That I besmirch the holy temple of my body with a Müller Crunch Corner.

It’s the worst kind of identity theft there is (well, perhaps not as bad as having your credit cards cloned, houses bought in your name, debts run up on your accounts and your family killed by the identity thief and the blame put on you so you have to be investigated by Keeley Hawes – though I can see some positives in that. Note to self: amend that last sentence before the wife reads it).

It’s identity defamation. It’s identity libel.

Or identity... something.

Look. I don’t know what it is OK? It’s just annoying. And I’m fed up with it. And it’s Monday morning. And it’s MY bloody bin!

Pavlov Nods

Why do I do it? Why, when confronted or (as is usually the case) passing someone I know in the street do I automatically nod hello to them? Even when I don’t like them? Some I even actively detest.

Take the other day. The sun was shining. It was lunchtime. My heart was as light and joyous as one of those Kids From Fame who like to leap and pike their well toned legs above the bonnets of stationary cars. I was making my carefree way back to work after a lunch break in the sun. I was mentally miles away. And then suddenly out of the corner of my eye I noticed a car slowing as it past me.

Eye eye, I thought. And indeed I made eye contact with the passenger in the front. The window was wound down and within an instant I could see that it was one of the dodgy, defrauding gobshites who’d got me to build web sites for them a couple of years ago (before I knew they were dodgy I hasten to add). To cut a long story short I eventually found proof of their wrong doing – which they denied – but I was strangely kicked into touch by them soon afterwards. As it was the law caught up with them soon after that and their poxy business was forcibly liquidated. I consider that to be both poetic justice and a lucky escape for me.

Anyway, my opinion of these dudes is lower than a snake’s arse.

So why oh why did I nod to the guy as he drove past? Why? Why did I only think to sneer after he was half way up the bloody road?

It’s like an automatic response. I see someone I recognize and whether I like them or not doesn’t come into it. I am compelled to acknowledge the connection, compelled to semaphore my recognition of them. I nod. Like they’re a mate. Like I’m pleased to see them.

Most of the time I’m not. Most of the time I’d rather ignore them – pointedly and blatantly. Ignore them so hard it’s totally in their face. Some, like dodgy web geezer dude I’d quite like to give the finger to.

Why do I nod like a dog in the back window of a 1980’s family saloon? I hate myself for doing it.

Especially when, as I the case of dodgy web geezer git, he turns away and ignores me in return.

Effing shithead!

We Can Do This The Easy Way Or I Can Waterboard The Lot Of You

It’s been a while since someone has hit me with a meme. And a lot longer since I’ve opened the sash window on my ivory tower, looked out and deigned to reply. Today then is a special day.

For this meme, I have Tim to thank over at Bringing Up Charlie. I’ve been set 10 questions which I have to answer or a stern school mistress will spank my bottom to within an inch of snapping the elasticated waistband of my Y-fronts. I must then set my own questions and pass them on to some other poor unsuspecting blogger who will have to take a break from composing their current blogging manifesto to answer them.

Here then are Tim’s questions and my answers:

1. If Hitler had won, Goebbels had none and Franz Joseph was blessed with three, what was the score after extra time after the match had gone to penalties?

A. 4-1 to Germany and the English football team sent home in disgrace to be pilloried on the streets of every major UK city before having their legs broken, sawn off and used as golf clubs by fat, retired London Palladium comedians.

2. How is it that a calendar - which had no moving parts - can, unlike a stopped clock, still record the passage of time?

A. It doesn’t. It merely represents graphically a set number of days which require a human agency to interpret as the passing of time. Also, may I remind you, that a stopped clock is correct twice a day? More pertinently why won’t my knackered old VCR record the dodgy German channels on Cable?

3. Is the King of France bald?

A. Possibly not as research seems to suggest that human hair is one of the last things to decompose. It is unknown whether he sported a Brazilian.

4. Seaside or countryside?

A. Countryside – green lushness, shimmering grasses, rolling mountains, cool valleys, birdsong, foxes and deer; no penny arcades, amusement parks or misogynist comedians. Enough said.

5. Why is the sky blue?

A. Oxygen. Pure and simple. Oxygen filters or reflects blue light or something. Google it.

6. Does God exist?

A. In the minds of the faithful, yes. The question should be: does God exist as an independent, omniscient entity? To answer that question I may have to die. How badly do you want me to complete this meme?

7. What is the meaning of life?

A. To evolve both physically, mentally and spiritually both as a race and as individuals.

8. Why do flies always find a way through the smallest of gaps even though they've got the entire WORLD to fly around, yet find it impossible to find their way out once they're in your house?

A. They are lonely and just want a quick kiss and a cuddle before they leave. No tongues please.

9. Do bees have ears?

Not as we know them but they can sense vibrations. Stick a dildo into a bee’s nest and they’ll think it’s a rave.

10. Are blogs the future?

A. No, blogs are now. Only tomorrow is the future.

Well, I consider that exam well and truly passed. Now for my ten questions – and I am going to tag the following: Gappy @ Single Parenthood, Fran @ Being Me, Heather @ Notes From Lapland and Kelloggsville.

1. God gives you a free ticket to spend the night with absolutely anybody in the world and the entirety of history – whom do you choose?

2. Frankie Howard or Frankie Boyle? (This is a separate question and is not related to no. 1 above.)

3. What life skill or ability do you wish you possessed?

4. If it takes Johnny three hours to fill a bath with water using a colander and a train travelling at 90mph takes 2 hours to reach its destination why does Britain no longer have the right to call itself Great?

5. Have you ever genuinely wished to be a member of the opposite sex (or are you that already)?

6. Do you have any embarrassingly weird interests or hobbies – and if so please explain in detail?

7. Dance, Punk, Goth, Metal, Grunge, Pop, Country, Folk or Classical? The choice is yours.

8. If you could change anything about your current lifestyle / life situation, what would it be? And what would you keep?

9. If you were a packet of crisps what flavour would you be?

10. Describe the sandwich of the gods.

And just to prove that I never ask people to do something I wouldn’t do myself here are my own answers to the above:

1. Cheryl Ladd circa 1980 (see picture above).

2. Tough one this. I like both (ooh! Nay, nay and thrice nay!). Mr Howard definitely in my coy youth but Boyle takes the biscuit now that I am cynical and politicised.

3. I wish I could sword fight. I’m talking claymore’s here, not girly fencing foils.

4. (A) We were ruined by Thatcher. (B) The dismantling of the NHS. (C) The growing cult of celebrity for celebrity’s sake and (D) No proper discipline in our schools.

5. Only when I was 15 and desperate to know what a pair of breasts felt like.

6. Y’all probably know this already. I am a dedicated fan / collector of Lego and have a collection worth over £10k.

7. A bit of Pop, a bit of Metal, quite a lot of Goth, never ever Dance.

8. More income, less outcome. I’d keep the wife and kids. And the Lego.

9. Barbecued Beef.

10. Chips (proper chip shop chips), curry sauce, roast chicken, mushy peas, red onion and garlic. On white.

Right, over to you! If anyone else fancies having a go... go ahead and fill yer boots!

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.

Bampap

I don’t think the name Bampap is one that is used universally. In fact I’m pretty sure it was created and remained within the confines of my family. My mother, as a toddler, referred to her grandfather as “Bampap” – a young child’s attempt to say “granddad” perhaps – and the name kind of stuck. When I and my sisters were born 20 years later the title was passed onto us as if it were the norm. So our granddad, my mother’s father, was always known as Bampap. Not being a particularly observant child it was years before I realized that other families didn’t have a Bampap.

You may disagree but I think that they missed out.

This first photo was taken in 1942. The place is obvious. My granddad – Bampap – and his mates are plainly on shore leave, a few precious days on land before returning to sea and the war. In the years before he died Bampap spoke almost wistfully of his war years. His memories of Cairo seemed to revolve around the street names where all the best whorehouses were and the advice given to all the men by the ship’s doctor. If you’ve been with one of the girls go and see a one of the city doctors before you come back to the ship – their medical supplies were extremely limited and if you came on board with the clap you were liable to be stuck with it for months until you struck land again.

He never said if he’d indulged and I didn’t ask. It wouldn’t have been the gentlemanly thing to do.

I apologize for the quality of the photo – but, hey, it is over 50 years old and the camera would have been rough and ready. Here is a blown up shot of my granddad. He’s the guy in the middle with the fabulous nose. He kept that nose and that body shape for all of his life. Always remaining trim and with a beak that somehow didn’t mar his looks.

Years later in 1999 I made my own journey to Egypt and here is a photo of me standing in roughly the same place as my granddad over 50 years later. I don’t cut a dash in the same way, do I? I’m thankful that he was able to see this photo before macular degeneration robbed him of 90% of his eyesight a few years later.

My one regret is not writing down the names of Bampap’s war mates. He had many and there are lots of photos of them. Photos of young boys who look cheery, chirpy and cheeky despite being in the middle of a war. If you believe the mood of the photos they are on holiday; a foreign cruise; out on the pull. That so wasn’t the case. I think my granddad was the only one of his little group who made it home again. I once made the comment that I bet he knew who his mates were in those tough times. He only nodded and said “yes, and I lost them all.” There’s not much you can say to that.

This last photo was taken in 1975. And yes, the boy in the picture with the NHS glasses is me. The girl is my oldest sister. I have no idea where this photo was taken or by whom. It can’t have been my Nan because our heads are all in shot. She’d have cut them off or else chopped off our feet instead.

This is how I like to remember him. The sharp beak which protruded from eyes that were always mischievous and kind. The smart blazer with the naval insignia he was so proud of sewn onto the breast pocket. The awkward love and protectiveness that he always exuded.

His presence always made us feel safe as kids. I think that comes over in the photo. Wherever we are, we’re more than happy to be there.

He’d have been 90 today.

Detective Sergeant Lite

As a belated birthday treat for our eldest boy, Ben, we took him and 4 of his school mates to a well known pizza establishment yesterday lunchtime.

I must admit I’d been looking on it with a mixture of pre-event exhaustion and extreme trepidation ever since the plan was hatched and the invitations sent out. Ben on his own can be a hand[grenade]ful. But with 4 mates along as well? Plus our 2 and a half year old, Tom? Were we totally crazy?!

For the best part of a week I’ve been plagued with visions of food fights of National Lampoon’s Animal House proportions. Pizza’s flung like Frisbees. Lightsaber fights with the pepper mills. The disapproving looks from the other diners as the banter reaches atomic bomb sound levels.

But I had reckoned without modern technology. I had not taken into account the personality nullifier that is the Nintendo DS Lite.

When I was a kid a DS was a Detective Sergeant on The Sweeney. Nowadays it’s a portable electronic gagging device.

Our dining table consisted of the wife and I and Tom at one end, chatting quietly and enjoying the ambience. And the older boys at the other end; heads bowed to a man over their Nintendo DS’s. Ironically we had not allowed Ben to bring his, preferring him to make some attempt at playing the perfect host to his guests – you know the type of thing, making introductions, instigating polite conversation, ensuring all ran smoothly. Plainly the parents of his mates had decided we needed all the help we could get and so had issued their sons and heirs with various pacifiers that went by the names of My Sims, Sonic and Mario.

And it worked. They were as good as the proverbial gold. They even took turns sharing their DS’s with the birthday boy so he wouldn’t feel left out. Conversation seemed to revolve around stage levels and monsters and bosses.

Were they speaking in code? Were there bonds of loyalty being forged between the lines of game strategy and talk of power-ups? Their conversations seemed so unlike the ones I had with my mates as kid.

Or are they? What did I talk about but cartoons and Star Wars... realities as fake as those on those little electronic screens the boys held in their mitts for the duration of the meal.

But part of me can’t help thinking they were missing out.

It’s all very well having an electronic policeman in your pocket to keep your kids quiet in public places but isn’t it better for them to deal with the reality of their surroundings? To learn how to behave properly in the real world? Aside from the food I don’t think they were aware of their environment at all. We could have taken them absolutely anywhere – a landfill site – and it wouldn’t have made any difference to them.

Convenient in a way, I suppose.

But convenience sometimes short–circuits the learning of important lessons and life skills. Doesn’t it?

Don’t get me wrong; I was thankful it was all so easy.

It just didn’t feel right.

Fudge It

I don’t consider myself a political animal.

And hey, I’m proclaiming that like it’s something to be proud of; in today’s world I suspect it’s probably not. But it is the truth. Sure I have opinions and gripes and an all encompassing faith that all politicians – despite the idealism they cherish in their youth – are essentially self serving, hardnosed, money grabbing staticians who have little or no understanding of the true nature of the common man’s reality. But essentially my understanding of politics is limited to what I see on the telly (Mock The Week, etc).

So with this piebald worldview in mind I soaked up the new UK budget with the usual sense of sourness and then some.

Due to all the scaremongering in the newspapers (entirely deliberate, I’m sure) this budget had taken on a real “do or die” feel. Deal or no deal. Some fat banker calling the shots while Uncle Noel pretended to be concerned and on your side.

Would they lower the threshold on child tax credits? Would the money Karen and I rely on to keep Tom at nursery and therefore both of us out at work still be there or would we be looking at one of us having to become a stay at home parent and still not earning enough money to pay all the bills?

Yes and no. We got a reprieve but the reprieve, the more I think about it, is going to be short-lived. I don’t profess to understand all the ins and outs, all the pie-charts and venn diagrams of who has lost what fortune and gained what pittance... but it seems to me (and this is backed up by common consent) that the cuts over the next few years are going to be disastrous for a lot of people. And my sector of local government is liable to be one of the ones hardest hit.

As usual it seems to me that the people at the bottom of the heap or those that are at the end of their tether are the ones who have been smited the most.

On a personal note, I’m not surprised but certainly not happy about them raising the retirement age. It little affects me but my father is desperately awaiting a knee-cap replacement operation – however, they won’t operate until after he has retired. This is due to be next year. He’ll hopefully squeak under the bar before the retirement age is changed. Otherwise he might find an extra 12 months tacked onto the end of his – already painful – wait. There’s bound to be other people in a similar position. I’ve long reconciled myself to probably having to work until I was 70 – and for many people that is the ideal; staying active is far healthier for you. But you know what? It’s always nice to have the choice. I think the choices for us all are going to become more and more limited as the next few years roll out.

All this is small fry, I know. Cuts have to be made. The debt must be shared. But as others have pointed out, if you cut a tree back too much you risk stopping it growing altogether.

And it seems to me that the trouble with the Tory’s is they’ve always been a little too free with their machetes when faced with the prospect of other people’s trees.

Chop chop. Slash slash. Do you like our new army helicopters?

Hmm.

I’m now wondering whether it’s worth my while planting any acorns at all.

Leamington Peace Festival: A Load Of Old Cock

You’d think with me working in the building that is situated right next to where Leamington’s Peace Festival is annually held I’d be a Peace Festival veteran. That I must surely go to it every year. That I must positively sweat scented joss sticks and have a Matrix style overcoat made entirely from hand-woven friendship bracelets.

You’d think that with the weather good for once plus the possibility of meeting a fellow blogger I’d make more of an effort to go this year.

Negative on all counts (sorry, Laura).

What with the eldest boy’s 9th birthday, Father’s Day and a top secret meeting at work that I had to take the minutes for but can’t talk about here my Peace Festival weekend was effectively kiboshed.

However, I must confess that even if all of the above hadn’t been hitting the fan this weekend it would have taken a wild horse indeed to get me to the Peace Festival (though I daresay a combination of my wife who is rather partial to the Peace Festival and the opportunity for a blogger meet on my very own doorstep may have dragged me there kicking and screaming. Not – and do quote me on this – that either my wife or Laura are horses).

So what is it that I don’t like about the Peace Festival?

a) Although I was never one of the cool people in my youth I was also never quite alternative enough to be alternative. I was the diet Coke of Goth. Not quite suicidal enough.

b) Despite a passing interest in Wicca, hippydom and all things “yeah man, let’s have a bong and talk about it (or rather slump onto our backs in a totally incommunicative state and not talk about anything),“ I soon grew out of it and started having baths again.

c) Crusty festival goers selling cheap tat annoy the bejasus out of me.

So to save myself an attack of the spleen I usually avoid the Peace Festival, immerse myself in my own cynicism and become rather jolly in my solitude.

This attitude has not changed with the passing of this year’s Peace Festival due to the Peace Festival residue that was spread around the building when I returned to work, bushy eyed and bright tailed, on Monday morning.

Some enterprising hippy had decided to dump a horribly chintzy yellow sofa in the skip that I had hired last week to offload some of the detritus that was clogging up the building’s storerooms. It’s horrible. Urine yellow and with horrible tassely bits furring the seams of the sofa cushions. It’s plainly obvious that on the hottest day of the year this example of 1970’s bad taste was not hoofed down from the outskirts of town. Instead some crusty stall holder had decided to free up some bong space in the back of his camper van by offloading his granny’s old divan into my skip. Git. Still, at least they put it into the skip and didn’t sail it down the river.

But worst of all – worst, worst of all – some moonfaced yoghurt weaver had obviously set up a stall selling chalk in order to encourage the kids to express themselves graphically on the paving stones right outside the building. Among the traditional icons of flowers and love hearts (I do hope Baz & Shaz will be happy together) there were 7 – count them – 7 depictions of cocks complete with monumentally hairy balls. Cocks of every different colour and persuasion. Most of a size so eye-watering that they cannoned their way across 5 or 6 paving slabs at a time.

Ah bless. A phallocentric mating ritual had evidently taken place outside the auspices of Leamington’s defunct Tourist Information Centre (yes, it is still closed).

These new additions to the world of pavement art meant that yours truly had to patrol the building with a bucket of water and a broom on a day when he had far too many other things to do in order to rid the town of its unwanted chalk cock-dom.

Give peace a chance?

Peace off!

Is Disqus Any Good? Discuss:

I’m a weird kind of tech-head. The type that is ever on the lookout for the latest gadget or widget but then gets cold feet about using them and breaking the clean lines of my blog.

Over the last few months I’ve noticed a great number of my favourite blogs switching their comment moderation over to Disqus.

Hmm.

Since then I’ve been eyeing it up. Trying to work our whether it has any advantages over Blogger’s own comment moderation. Is it quicker? Does it give you more options in terms of editing (being able to go back and correct typos rather than having to delete and type everything in again would be marvellous)?

Hmm. Or is it more complicated? An extra fuss in a world already stuffed to the gills with fuss and bothersomeness.

Because I have to say here (hand on heart) – and this is not meant to be a criticism at all on what other people do with their own blogs – I find I have a helluva lot of trouble trying to leave comments on blogs that utilize Disqus.

It seems to take ages to load the comment box. Sometimes it refuses to load at all. Sometimes it will load but only if I refresh the page 6 or 7 times. Then when it has loaded it is completely arbitrary as to whether it will allow me to log-in and publish a comment. Sometimes I have to try several times before, hello, my comment – my sparkling jewel of wisdom – is published.

Now as I said this is not meant to be a criticism or even a product review because my experience of using Disqus is purely from the front end as opposed to the back. If anything, those of you who use Disqus should now be basking in the knowledge that I love your blog so much that I am prepared to run this gamut of daily irritation every time I want to leave you a little bit of myself on your newest post.

Love is… accepting minor irritations with a fond heart. See, that should be on a T-shirt featuring those naked boy and girl cartoon characters from the 1970’s.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is just to say that, upon balance, Disqus is not selling itself to me. Am I missing something? What’s the deal?

Disqusion welcome.

Go And Flush Your Head Down The Loo, Yahoo!

So I’m checking my Yahoo email account and there it is staring me in the face. Right next to the “What are you doing right now?” text box is a flag. The English flag.

Yahoo, using its clever technological know-how, has taken it upon itself to assign me a team to support in the World Cup.

Now, some of you – if you’d read between the lines of my previous post – will have picked up on the fact that essentially I am a non-participant in the great national sport of watching the World Cup. Over the next few weeks it is my sole ambition to not watch a single match of the WC (oh how I love acronyms). I am supporting nobody. I don’t give a fig who wins and, more to the point, I couldn’t give a rat’s arse who loses.

Sod the lot of them (great overpaid, over pampered, over merchandized jessies, etc, etc).

So I am incandescent with transient irritation to have found myself forcibly allocated an England flag in my own sodding email box!

Oi, Yahoo – NO! Ask my permission please!

But it gets worse. You click an arrow next to the flag and you get a large drop-down pane that features all the flags of the teams currently running themselves ragged in the WC. I could choose Cameroon if I wanted. Or Uruguay. Or even Germany.

What I don’t have though is the option to opt out. For a flag that states “none of the above”. For a flag that says “I don’t have to play and I won’t play”.

Everybody – and I mean everybody – who has a Yahoo email account will either have to live with their default flag setting or give-in and deliberately choose a team; to throw their twopenneth-worth [virtually] into the WC.

Am I the only person who is offended by this massive assumption that everybody is happy to participate? That we are all willing to be WC fodder?

All I want is to keep my head out of the WC but the more I try to do that the more it is forced down there, my nose pressed right up close to the ball action.

And I don’t want it, people!

I want a WC free existence! I don’t want to be confronted with the WC every time I turn my head or open my mouth.

It stinks!

Yahoo, this is your mess; either mop it up or piss off.

Ingland Expects

I hereby announce that this blog is going to be a World Cup free zone. The World Cup is not going to be written about or discussed.

Except when I feel the need the moan about the World Cup.

See, what annoys me about the World Cup (apart from those stupid flags that everyone is prittsticking to the side windows of their cars - do read Rol's excellent It's Coming Home post to discover what to do about them) is this tacit expectation that everyone - especially if you're male - is going to be "into" the World Cup.

Suddenly it is the topic of conversation. And you're expected to have an opinion. You're expected to support a team. You're expected to care. You're even expected to face the "so are you watching the World Cup or are you going to be a World Cup free household?" question.

It has to be yes or no. Black or white. One or the other. The absence of the World Cup defined by its very existence.

But I don't care about the World Cup. I really don't. I don't even know the score of last night's match. I'm not bothered about knowing. I know it would be the easiest thing in the world to look it up online but I just can't be bothered. I'd rather be here writing about not caring to know. And please don't tell me the score. It's useless information. What am I going to do with it? Go outside and talk to someone about the match? I didn't watch it. Who won and who lost are so far outside my sphere of worries and concerns the match may as well have been played on Alpha Centauri. [If only.]

My world does not revolve around the World Cup. It is unimportant. It is a money-making, media blitzing, marketeer's wet-dream that benefits only the very few.

But that's fine. If you're into it, if you enjoy it, I'm pleased for you.

Just don't foist it onto me.

And, worse still, don't look at me like I'm a criminal / insane / deliberately perverse just because I'm not into it. There is nothing deliberate about my disinterest.

I have just never liked football. Not watching it or playing it. It doesn't make me unpatriotic just because I am not supporting England in the World Cup. I am supporting nobody in the World Cup. Nobody at all.

I don't care about any of them. Really.

Which is why this blog is going to be a World Cup free zone.

OK?

With Apologies To Robert Downey Jr’s Sherlock Holmes

(Or "How To Deal With A Snotty Email".)

Emotion mustn’t enter into this.

Refute base accusation in first paragraph with a stiff rejoinder. Rain down a quick succession of facts to head and face region. Body blow to chest containing the full weight of incontrovertible proof. Steel it with fine grammatical turns of phrase – iron fist in velvet glove.

Second phase. Duck and weave. Quick jabs to the ribs: times and dates of previous infractions. Keep sarcasm low – aim for diaphragm. But don’t overdo it. This must be controlled. Precision bombing not carpet. Follow through with patronizing elbow – crack third and fourth ribs. Warning: another infraction will not be tolerated.

Third. The calm before the storm. The false dawn. Offer the dog a bone. Something positive and offhand about matters relating. The fake handshake to confuse. Discombobulation.

Finally, the end game. Fait accompli. Haymaker to right jaw – copy in the big chiefs. Attach a hefty word document featuring full log of events. Finger jab to gizzard. Copy in recipient’s own boss. Right-hook to jaw – a single but well placed exclamation mark – hear satisfying crack as jaw dislocates. Lastly, heel kick to sternum – quote cost of recharging future mop-up operations to recipient’s own employer. Opponent reeling on the ropes; teetering on the edge of the abyss.

Calmly hit Send.

Result: opponent’s ability to piss down neck and tell me it’s raining... neutralized.

Poetry In Motion

So it’s home time (funny that I think of it as “home time” – like I’m still at school – rather than “clocking off time” from work). A glad escape from another miserable day at Fractious Towers. And I’m pounding the oven hot streets at the bottom end of town with of all things ELO’s “Mr Blue Sky” tickling the upper register of my hearing on the good old trusty MP3 player. My spirits are slowly rising after a tough day but suddenly I can hear other unwholesome, unwelcome, extraneous noise.

Running down the avenue...

Oi! Go on then!

See how the sun shines brightly...

Na ha ha ha!

I turn my head slightly and notice a gang of lolloping, long armed, long legged (long goolied, given the gutter height crotches on their trousers) hoodies flapping their Nike’s over the pavement on the other side of the road. One of them, the one wearing a pale blue vest about 5 sizes too big for his cadaverous frame, is riding a chopper.

Now I haven’t seen one of those in years and I can almost forgive this stain of brash hoodiedom on my home patch for the brief glimpse of this most classic and characterful of all bikes. It catches the sunlight so evocatively as Mr Blue Vest (Oh Mr Blue Sky / Please tell us why / You had to hide away / For so long, so long...) peddles his merry little way the wrong way up the bike lane.

He meanders up and down the curbstones. He wheelies in and out of the shop fronts. He cuts up pedestrians with pushchairs. And all the time he’s giving it some jaw. I can’t hear what he’s saying because the choral bit at the end has kicked in and ELO are chugging their guitars with gusto but I can tell that it is inane, arrogant and annoying by the fact his mates think it’s hilarious and every other passerby is stifling a barely concealed sneer.

And then it happens. The inevitable veer into the middle of the road.

Someone in a black Peugeot has to pull wide and slow down. They roll past him slowly and must say something. Something not complimentary but something that I warrant is true.

Mr Blue Vest gives him the finger. Long and hard. His mates cheer. Emboldened he chances his other arm. Literally. The double fingered salute is proffered to the driver of the black Peugeot. The last symphonic notes of Mr Blue Sky die away...

...and Mr Blue Vest upends the bike onto his own arse and the non applause of the tar macadam.

Cue even louder cheers from his mates. Or are they indeed jeers? ‘Cos they’re showing their true colours now. Despite the rush hour traffic they sound almost disappointed that the car immediately behind their fallen comrade has slowed down with plenty of room to spare.

He gets up. Arms raised and chin held high in that what-the-hell-I-meant-to-do-that fashion that all social retards adopt when they want to brazen out their palpable and unmistakable public humiliation.

He gets back onto his chopper, back into the saddle and rides off more sedately – dare I suggest even chastened – in the midst of his mates. Hidden away and shielded by a thin wall of baseball caps and spotty chins. Away down the oven hot street they mooch, ignoring the smirks and knowing smiles that light up the faces of every single person that they pass. The drivers, the shopkeepers, the people going home, all these witnesses to one of life’s more poetic moments.

I nudge my MP3 player gently. You know, I just might listen to Mr Blue Sky again...

Summertime Reds

Another staycation this week but one when we have definitely not "stayed" in. For once (and this is a true rarity) we have had (a) good weather and (b) good health - usually one or more of the kids are ill or else Karen and I come down with some unnamed lurgy which prevents us capitalizing on our paid annual leave from Grindstone Inc. So. Lots of "day trips". Remember those? I did loads when I was a kid and looking back on them now I can see it was because my parents didn't have the money for a proper going away holiday. But you know what? They were just as enjoyable with the added advantage that the food was always decent and you got to sleep in your own bed at night.

So. Kenilworth Castle (twice). Chesterton Windmill (and a second visit lined up today, it being a favourite of Tom's). Out for a meal. A scamp around the park. And yesterday a day in Great Malvern introducing Tom to his first proper experience of hillwalking. He did well. We've had a few tantrums from him this week (and from the older boy as well but that's another story); as his language skills develop so does his capacity to try and exert his will upon all around him with varying degrees of success. That burgeoning personality is beginning to stamp itself all over the world like a mini Godzilla in a Mickey Mouse T-shirt. Only much, much cuter.

But I digress. The subject for today's post is... Sun block. Sun Screen. Sun Tan Lotion. Factor 999. Whatever you want to call it. Karen and I both try and be sane and responsible about applying it. We want our boys to catch a few rays - 'cos a few are good for you and build up your skin's natural resistance / tolerance. But we do not want to go down the boiled lobster root. I'm probably more neurotic about it than Karen and reach for the Factor 30 spray shield as soon as the sun strikes its midday position. Arms, legs, neck, face - all get blurred in a fine mist of sun protection chemicals. Adults as well as children. I read a story in the paper the other week about a bloke who got sunburnt once - just once - playing cricket and within a year had developed skin cancer. Forget my neuroses; it just ain't worth the risk with my little chickadees.

Despite that, arms and faces had gone a nice gentle brown colour. We've all caught the sun but haven't been branded by it.

So we were aghast when nipping into Sainsbury's after one of our little day excursions to see two mum's chatting over their wonkily parked trolleys while two beetroot coloured youngsters in nothing more than swimming trunks played on the tiled floor at their feet. Their backs were varying shades of purple and red. Scorched. Braised. Chargrilled. Positively napalmed.

You could see that a whole welter of agony and crying was only a few hours away.

Now, I know it's none of my business but if Little Miss Let's-Toast-The-Kids can afford copies of Heat, Marie-Claire and Chav Scum magazine she can afford some decent sun block. Hell, even some cheap sun block. Protect your kids for God's sake woman! Now, I'm against a nanny interventionist state along with the best maverick renegade but, really, some people plainly need a few things spelt out to them.

M-e-l-o-n-o-m-a...

Wake up and smell the impromptu barbecue, you stupid cow!

Or am I just getting hot under the collar about nothing?

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.