Mine's a cup of sausage

A first today, have brought thermos of home-made soup for lunch. ‘Home-made’ is perhaps stretching the definition a bit, as it calls to mind a country kitchen and copper pans and chopped vegetables while the truth was somewhat different - decanting the semi-liquid and certainly past their best contents of the vegetable draw in the bottom of the fridge into a pan, adding a shed-load of stock, boiling to buggery and then whizzing beyond the point of buggery in my blender, which usually has nothing more strenuous to do than blitz ice for my banana daiquiris.

The result is now standing on my desk in a full sized steel thermos that looks like it should have the biohazard symbol on the side. There’s something wholesome about soup though and even better, it’s incredibly convenient to eat. Now that I’ve tried it, I’m tinkering with reducing all of my food to a liquid form. Those smoothie things really took off and after all they are basically just fruit that’s been blitzed - might not I apply the same principal to say, the full English breakfast? Scrambled eggs are half way there anyway. I reckon there’s money to be made here, the full English and a cup of tea in a commuter cup.

There's always the sun

Crisp wintry weather is upon us and with it the sort of sunlight that would shame the tropics. If it wasn’t for a wind coming apparently directly from the Urals, things would be quite pleasant.

As it is, despite not seeing the sun at all last week, the reaction is to pull the blinds in the office. That’s because with all the glass around outside cladding office buildings, we tend to get more than our fair share of sunlight and as a consequence can’t see the porn we’re downloading properly. This means that come mid-morning, it’s like the opening scene from Blade-Runner round here with blinds dropping and gloom descending in every sense.

We’re like vampires, exposure to sunlight results in crumbling to dust and pallid office-workers hiss and snarl as they drop the blinds and shake coffin dirt out of their hair.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4644630.stm

Abolish the Radio 4 theme? I don’t bloody think so. Why not build an Asda in Trafalgar Square while you’re at it!

The thing about the Radio 4 theme is that it’s broadcast at 5:30 in the morning. I’ve never hard it, I don’t want to hear it and I have no intention of ever hearing it. Indeed until moves were made to scrap it, I’d never heard of it. But until I was six or seven I was unaware of the existence of ‘gravity’ as a concept, but I was bloody glad it was there.

Retaining things that are not appreciated and never used is a fine British tradition, we take comfort in things that are there, even if we don’t even know they are there, like parish halls or corsets. These things matter.

Certainly they matter to the insomniacs and farmers that are the only people who listen to the damn thing. If they replace it, they should replace it with a medley of things that are quintessentially Radio 4: a woman with a breathy voice whispering the shipping forecast (listened to by trawler captains everywhere, tossing on the high seas and knowing that relief will soon be upon them), a snatch of cricket commentary, Humph Littleton making a remark about Samantha in ‘just a minute’, Barry Cryer’s laugh at same, then end on some birdsong, a choice moment from ‘farming today’ and John Peel signing off from ‘Home Truths’. Sod music, people listen to R4 for voices.

Down the drain

Drains update - I’m now fairly certain that the mystery puddle is the result of my neighbour’s drain rather than mine. This is the result of careful forensic testing and observation…not least of which is a trail of soapy water lading from her drain to the puddle. Obviously the thing to do is to nail a sternly worded notice to her door and await the inevitable kicking she would later give me for being so cheeky.

Or I may just poke through the leaf litter clogging her drains with a stick.

Regarding litter of all types, I am hatching my plans for securing the garden from the foul pest of animal crap for the coming year. As well as the ‘cat-b-gone’ cream I’ve rubbed into every rock and fencepost, I think netting is the answer, raised on little sticks. These sticks can also be used, sharpened and smeared with excrement in the style of Charlie, as basic traps for unwary felines. Also, I am currently bidding on laser-tripped mines to deter cats on eBay and have feelers out to acquire a retired pack of hounds from either a hunt or a vivisection lab facing closure because some animal lover has strapped on a balaclava and 50 sticks of dynamite and threatened violence - that should deter the f**king foxes.

What did you do during the peace?

Currently reading the excellent 'Whicker's War' http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/
0007205074/026-8023263-6412403
and I wouldn’t be so crass as to say he had ‘a good war’ (being shelled by jerry can’t have been much fun), there are times when it seems he had a bloody GREAT war. Not only does he get to tool about in jeeps and liberate wine cellars while requisitioning villas, but he does it all while apparently smoking a pipe. Class!

Reading it at my peeling desk beneath the juice-sucking lights of the office, I’m tempted to wonder if I’m not just wasting a little the life that many fought so bravely for (while Whicker photographed them before riding back to his villa for cocktails and light shelling by the 88s in the hills). I’m not saying that war is any substitute for excitement, especially modern warfare, where a roadside mine in the goolies is a real possibility, but there is a kind of awful contrast between an afternoon taking pictures of Churchill (Whicker) or an afternoon trying to digest lunch (me - overdid it on the filling again) and fighting off sleep.

Goulishly, I’m immensely proud that the book is signed by AW. After seeing him on the telly programme of the book I wondered if he was going to be around for much longer…couldn’t wait until the paperback, obviously.

Obviously more excitement is required, or just some sunshine.

Bloody hell it's cold

The frost was as thick and the air freezing this morning, meaning that when I finally exited the house, swathed in hat, balaclava, scarf, coat, jacket, fleece, cardigan, sweater, winter tweed suit, woollen undergarments and llama fur nether-warmers, I was dressed for the elements. This does not stop others wandering around in their shirts or, like the chap I saw last night, shorts. I was surprised not to see a couple of blokes in white coats chasing after him with the regulation oversized butterfly nets and dart gun loaded with elephant tranquiliser.

A whale of a time

A genuine icon of the city, fantastic design, easy to use and fun, fun, fun. There’s not much that can improve on a trip on the Eye. You get into a glass capsule and slowly rotate your way to the top of the wheel, all around you the city is laid out and the view is spectacular. As you climb familiar landmarks take shape and as you go higher, the streets turn into the familiar A-Z representation.

Indeed, the only thing that improves the experience is alcohol. A pity then that when you board the Eye they confiscate the stuff, but there you go. In our capsule we were four in a little group, with a couple of tourists who were no doubt entertained by our drunken ramblings while, in the capsule below, some corporate ho’s got corporate ho’spitality with fizzy wine and no doubt larks’ tongues and swans neck on toast. They, however, were squeeeeeezed into their capsule like sardines.

During our night ride (seemed like a great idea after a few post-work beers, actually WAS a great idea too!) we kept an eye out for the whale. This was the whale that had dominated the news by deciding to swim up the Thames. A crack team of vets had been dispatched to offer assistance and a crack team of sushi chefs were stalking the poor thing, if the worst should come to the worst. Rumours of a Japanese whaling fleet steaming past Tower Bridge were disregarded but I noted that the police were keeping a careful eye on bridge parapets, just in case any whale f**kers might be lurking and awaiting an opportunity.

Renovation

Got excited the other day when I saw the windows of a nearby Burger King boarded up. Had the local population rejected fast food and taken up instead fresh soups in thermos flasks, bringing an end to brash neon and that revolting scent of frying mechanically recovered fat that clings to your clothes long after you’ve bolted past the place? Not a bit of it, they’re renovating!

One would hope that behind the chipboard they are turning what was a pretty soulless example of a fast food place into some oasis of culinary calm.

What was so wrong with Wimpy? When I was a kid and you went to Wimpy you sat at your table, looked at your stiffened, laminated menu (with photographs of each enticing choice), ordered from a waitress and got served your food at your table on plates, with cutlery and, best of all, a tomato sauce dispenser that looked like a big tomato!

God knows what kids would do if they were offered cutlery in a fast food place these days, probably knife one another. Given the evolution of food from a meal best eaten with knife, fork and occasionally a special spatula to food you consume from a cardboard tray with your fingers (a great saving in dishwasher tablets for the fast food pushers - but where’s the bowls of water with little slices of lemon in them for us to wash our fingers afterwards? I always love those when presented with them in posh restaurants, despite the fact that on numerous occasions I’ve mistook it for very thin soup and started drinking the stuff). So what’s the next leap forward? Food we don’t even have to eat? Nutritional tablets?

It’s unlikely to be anything as swish as a drip filled with essence of burger and chips stuck in your arm. More likely they just blitz up your meal and then pour it into one of those enormous syringes they use to artificially inseminate whales or something, then ask you to open wide if you’re lucky and bend over if you’re not.

Whatever the inside will look like, and I bet it’s almost exactly the same, but with most of the grease removed from the walls, I expect that when the place opens it will have the standard issue sad character slumped at a table making a cup of coffee last for three hours. I used to consider such fixtures depressing, thinking how empty must be the life of somebody who sits there, looking miserable and making one cup of coffee last all afternoon. What sort of person, I wondered, did that?

I’ll tell you, it’s any poor sod who’s ordered coffee in one of those places, where they serve it so hot that it’s official state as it comes out of the coffee maker is plasma. The three hour wait is mandatory, it’s that long before it merely scalds your mouth, as opposed to being so hot you drop it and it burns a hole all the way to the centre of the planet.

As a committed carnivore who loves to flip a burger on his grill while sucking back a long-necked bad boy, I know that what the public really want is to go into the place and find it turfed, with a few picnic benches and a bloke in the centre of the room with a barbeque and a cool-box full of beef and pork products slowly coming to room temperature and - next to it - a bath tub full of beer on ice.

Alternatively, I hope for a three for one deal on re-opening day.

Soup - but not as we know it

What is it about cup-a-soup? It's certainly the devil's brew - like necromancy, calling up a solid (okay, liquid) form from something made of powder smacks of black magic and leaves a nasty taste in the mouth (that'll be the e numbers).

I dead to think how they make the stuff. Something tells me that it's not a cottage industry of thousands of white haired old grannies brewing up vast copper kettles of nourishing broth and then microwaving it to the point of buggery to reduce it to a dehydrated state. More likely it's a bloke in wellies backing up several tankers of chemicals from drab industrial estates and mixing the stuff in a pile with a spade.

Then they add crutons*.

Before you drink it you feel guilty because, let's face it, adding boiling water to a powder does not constitute preparation.

When you drink it it's fantastic, because the stuff is so hot it burns your mouth. Luckily, the people who make it are aware of this and have packed their broth with artificial flavours more intense than those found in nature. It's like crack soup.

Afterwards though, you feel a bit dirty. Then the come-down begins with an aftertaste that becomes more chemical by the moment as you realise that they have also packed in some flavours not found in nature. It's like some scientist though to himself 'what would the feeling you get when you see a limping child with a built-up shoe taste like? Either that, or 'what does cat taste like?'

Enough, I shall remove the sludge from the bottom of my mug and swear off for good.

* Crutons only available with 'luxury' cup-a-soups. Bit of an oxymoron there.

Charlie is a darling

The Lib Dems unofficial slogan appears to have changed from 'he may be a ginger, but give him a go' to 'he's drunk and a ginger and he's got to go!'.

Looking at the news, you'd be forgiven for thinking that witch-hunting and persecution were all the fashion (when in fact the last official 'wychfinder' - Sir Lemuel Lagume, chief wychfinder, hag-hunter and sheep tormentor of East Anglia - died in 1764) and that the puritans were not all kicked out of Parliament during the Reformation.

Who the bloody hell cares if the leader of the third party had a 'drinking problem'? More importantly, what the hell is a 'problem' in this context anyway. Personally, I think a drinking problem is when I run out of ice, or worse…booze! Unless the guy spent every parliamentary day passed out in soiled-suited stupor spread-eagled on the floor of the debating chamber of the House of Commons…who cares?

If I was leader of the Lib Dems, I'd drink. Labour led the UK to war because of WMD that turned out to be, at best, actually made from balloons twisted together to form images of ICBMs and the tories are so evil that they actually explode on contact with holy water and both parties still outdid the Libs at the last election.

So who cares if he takes a drink? Churchill used to drink like a fish and smoke like a fiend, but he still saved the free world. Surely it's better to be a good man who likes a drink than a psychopath who's stone cold sober.

For instance, the other evening when friends came round, I did half a bottle of Glenfiddech, and while I was hardly up to debating the ins and out of monetary policy, crucially I did not think 'let's invade somewhere'.

In addition, he's Scots. A bottle in the hand is practically part of the national costume.

Who cares what people do out of hours. I bet in an average workspace there are people with all sorts of interesting, off-hours, interests. Or even on-hours. If somebody came to work wearing a suit made from severed donkey ears sewn together and with a small candelabra shoved up their bum but wore a shirt and trousers over the top - who'd notice?

Of course the best thing about the story is that you get the media talking about drink as if people who do get pissed are incapable of doing a job. That one buried the hypocrisy needle.

Bad luck making the announcement the same day as the story about cirrhosis of the liver being a problem nationally though. Still, who wants a vice-free leader to represent them? Wouldn't it be better to have somebody who knows about weakness and fallibility? So he's got issues with booze? It's not as if he smokes, because if he did, he'd probably just be shot on sight.

News, views, opinions...rants!

When I started this blog I tried hard to avoid blogging about news of current events. The problem is that limiting the blog to personal experiences does just that…limits it. Especially when my personal experiences tend to consist of sleep, having a scratch, work and Nintendo. News blogging can be a thin end of the wedge though. You start off with a blog about a news item because it touches on something near to your heart, like booze or donkey sanctuaries and before you know it you are venturing opinions about the news. Never mind that the BBC has people who actually go and find things out and have a background in the issues and have worked hard at developing a way to present them clearly, surely some blogger knows better. This is why you end up posting something like 'why it's right that people who hunt should be fed to wolves' and ranting so hard that when you finish typing the post you're bleeding from the ears.

Worse still, you might attract a comment from other people who agree with you.

Then, weeks later, when you come off your medication, you realise that you've posted a load of uninformed tosh.

Having considered that, I think it's time to post about current events. Just for a while. I can handle it. I'll be restrained. Ish.

Say what you like about drugs...

Change in sleep patterns (no longer staying up late freeing a galaxy far, far away from imperial stormtroopers) and mine pie withdrawal has combined to leave me lethargic as a lizard left on a hot rock while at my desk.

I actually think that rather than sleep, it's all down to eating patterns. Over the festive season, I was eating every half hour, whether I liked it or not because, hey, you have to have something to soak up all that booze. Also, aren't nuts fruit? Even when salted? And isn't the coca bean a vegetable? So surely the product of the bean, combined with refined sugar must be great for me! Obviously can not stretch definition of vegetables to include sausages, but believe me it wasn't for want of trying.

Trying to get energy boost by eating fruit. Tip: don't bother. Anyone who tells you that a banana is nature's battery pack is either mad, or a vegetarian, or both. It's a comedy prop and it tastes great when blitzed with rum but that's the extent of its usefulness. If you want to wake yourself up with a banana my advice is to stick it up your bottom.

In attempt to stay awake then have turned to our old friend caffeine.

Drama! Forgot hand-knitted fair-trade tea bags and so had to buy M&S tea bags. Box tells me that they are 'ethically sourced'. What the hell does that mean? Maybe they are only ripping off farmers who pollute their crops with lethal doses of pesticides? I don't want a moral dilemma, I just want a cuppa.

And frankly they are terrible. I've checked the box 127 times for the word 'decaffeinated' as I'm sure that's what they are.

I am now utterly convinced that the farmers in Bolivia or wherever they make tea are so pleased to actually get a decent price for their product that they give over the good stuff to the fair trade bods, as opposed to the stuff they used as bedding to keep the donkey warm that time it had food poisoning, which goes to the corporate thugs.

Back to work

I have a pounding headache which I strongly suspect has something to do with mince pie withdrawal. Tea, I have discovered, just does not taste the same without a small mince pie, and some cream, and maybe a sandwich, and the last of the chocolates, and a small bowl of nuts, and a snooze.

If you could convert grim bad tempers into an energy source, you could power China well into the next century from the seething resentment coming from my train carriage alone. You could just TELL that the majority of people would rather be under the duvet than sitting next to me. This is cheering, as it means that their home lives are not so grim that they are happy to escape domestic hell to get back to the office and dull routine.

I'm also suffering from console withdrawal. I was just getting to the interesting bit of 'Jedi Knight II', storm troopers were falling like nine-pins and I'd finally mastered how to use autofire on my sodding blaster. Now I have to sit here, surfing the internet and pretending to work instead of mopping up Imperial forces and making the galaxy safe for the Republic. Sheesh.

I suppose there is an element of a let down when you come back to work. I still rather like the idea of a new year meaning a new start and so was naturally a little disappointed to find all the outstanding e mails I had left undone before Christmas still awaiting my attention. Still, one can take positive steps, and I decided that this will be the year I learn to kite-surf and, possible, learn rudimentary first aid, something along the lines of how to set fractures and remove kite-boards from tender portions of the anatomy.

Only thing I have surfed so far is the net. Looking for tuition as strongly suspect that not knowing what you are doing could lead to ramming equipment into a tree at 70,ph, closely followed by ramming self into same tree, or variety of trees if one is really tanking.

Rather like thought of self as cool, extreme sport type person instead of, for instance, overweight, out of condition office drone. Could though just be opportunity to dress in baggy trousers that I believe are a) fashionable among the extreme sport set and b) are really comfy for lazing about the house in.

Doubt anything will come of it but, hey, one never knows.