They're up!

Yea, blood has been let and the great and terrible god of DIY has been appeased until the next time. After some blood, quite a lot of sweat and a few tears, the bookcases are up. Now begins the task of getting all of the crap that's been on my floor and stacking it on the shelves.

More daunting is the idea that I should re-arrange my books. I had them arranged just so, so that a casual visitor would see the most impressive titles first and would have to scrutinise the collection to get to the well thumbed pulp sci-fi and aga sagas. Frankly, I just don't know if I'm up to it. Wonder if any of the girls from the local convent school want to make some money on the side re-stacking my collection of vintage porn?

That's it for the book cases though, I'm out of wall and out of patience. Also, room now smells quite a lot like chipboard. Will take days and maybe weeks before it recovers its usual smell of tea, cigar smoke and desperation.

Hey diddle griddle

It's hot. Even when you're just sitting there, reading Amis and waiting for a deceent hour to break into the booze, the sweat drips and doesn't even get to make a 'plip' noise because it's evaporated before it's hit the ground.

Ideal climatic conditions then for standing over a hot griddle and seeing what can be cooked by barbecue. Take note: prawns, yes; butter, no.

The great thing about the barbeque griddle is the cleaning of it - this is cleaning as it should be done, by taking a wire brush, getting rid any large bits that might cause offence (any vegetable bits that women have placed upon the sacred flame) and then keeping the rest. This is called 'seasoning' and while it might to some simply consist of the hardened fats and juices of the last dozen meals cooked upon the griddle, to the devotee of the griddle it is as much a part of the cooking process as the marinade, the beer or indeed the covert picking up and brushing off of any dropped food items.

Anyhoo, at the start of the process you heat the griddle for a good ten minutes. This produces enough smoke to summon either the fire brigade or a war-party of Commanch, but more importantly, decontaminates any lurking bacteria.

Thickear - evil giant of DIY

Every time, and I mean every -sodding - time, I go to Thickear, I swear - 'never again'.

I thought that I'd be able to handle it this time, going mid-week during the school run would mean that there would be the minimum amount of people there, allowing me to sprint through the store, grab my book cases (well, huff enormous dead weight of flat-pack off of a shelf and lunge towards check out) and make a swift exit.

Naturally, ended up with one or two other quality items. Want to know what's fuelling the planets headlong rush towards environmental melt-down (well, obese SUV driving Americans, obviously, but also...) people who come to furniture superstores and are able to buy a rug for 99p and a table lamp for three quid and don't think this is unusual! This is why every documentary of China you see begins and ends with a smoke stack and a poisoned pool.

China was the obvious choice to make the planet's polluter of choice. their people have a history of expectorating inside, outside and anywhere at all, so nobody thinks it's odd that everybody is spitting, even though they have a lot more wracking coughs than they used to since they built that plastics factory in the village.

True cost of lamp is probably thirteen quid, actual cost is three quid, tenner is subsidised by Ross Ice Shelf breaking off in 2013.

Rest assured that any guilt I may have had about buying the stuff soon evaporated in a fit of bad temper at getting the stuff home (a major achievement given the small nature of my car) and currently having flat pack stretched out, lurking in the hall.

All I need now is some tools, a lot of patience and, of course, my blood sacrifice to Alan, the god of DIY. This last will be made with ease as I have never managed to complete a DIY project without shedding claret at some stage, the last time was, amazingly, getting the sodding stuff out of the box! Self assembly with a sticking plaster is not to be recommended.

That's the last time though, even though their book cases are a bargain I am not going to Thickear again. Anyway, I've finally run out of wall.

Ambrosia

Off the boat, across the road, into the batter, into the frier, onto the plate. Fish and chips, Churchill, Nelson. Fish and chips are England, so it's ironic that the Guardian recommended best fish and chipper in Wells is called French's. The newspaper proved itself worth more than just a wrapping for the fish and chips this time, the fish and whips was fantastic. The tea, too was sublime, you get a polystyrene cup of boiling water, a tea bag and some milk and sugar - a tea kit, meaning you can have it as strong or weak, milky or not and sweet as you like. This, together with a wooden chip fork, is the perfect storm of food, crisps done to perfection, batter crisp as crisp can be and cod whiter than a shark's smile.

This is not a meal, this is an event.

Is it legal?

Driving home saw another quad bike from the Holkham estate on the public road, gun uncovered! When your boss is the local Lord and owner of most of the area, I suppose you can tool around with your rifle ready for action. This means that you are ready to shoot vermin in an instant and you also look cool - but can you have a rifle in each hand and the reins of the quad bike between your teeth? Of course not, not even a Lord can do that - only the Duke!

Flying through the pain barrier

Kite-boarding lesson today. Suffice to say, I believe I seriously underestimated the level of physical fitness required to do this.

No wonder they call it an extreme sport, my fucking arms nearly got pulled out of their sockets!

We had wind. On my way to the lesson I was like a sailor of a hundred years ago, not because I was familiar with scurvy and weevils but because I was watching the tops of trees, flags and windmills (not that sailors could see trees and windmills, but you know what I mean) to see if we were going to get any wind.

We did, others were on the beach too and so it was all systems go for a lesson.

Lesson one, fly the kite. Up it went and it was like trying to steer a stage-coach. Lesson two, dip it into the wind, lesson three, scream in agony. After fifteen minutes of this my arms felt like spaghetti and I was about to throw up when I thankfully crashed the thing.

For the next three hours I flew kites, nearly passed out from pain and listened to my instructor scream 'not in the puddle' at me.

Then I jumped on a board, and the kite filled and powered up and awayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy we went. For about ten glorious seconds. the board went from zero to about MACH 8 and I was so pleased that I nearly fell over.

And that was the end of the lesson. Of course, walking off the beach we say a six year old doing it quite competently. I rather wanted to kick the kid but apparently this is considered to be bad form. Oh well.

In brief, the highlights of kiting are that you are actually supposed to skid down the beach - when you're being dragged and controlling it that's a good thing. Also, when you sit down and plant your arse, you can get better control but when the kite drags you you then get half of the beach inserted into your bottom, shells included. Finally, when you get it al right at once - it's great.

So well done the Cool Air school of kite tuition - experience, expertise and enthusiasm in equal measure, but patience by the bucket load.

Friday - Eeking

One interesting sight in a chi-chi village with two delis was the fruit and veg van pulled up and doing a roaring trade. While BMWs and Discos pulled up outside the deli selling the hand-blown herb and diamond pies, the locals from the village who actually do the work were lined up to the back of the van buying fruit and veg that I guess came from the same farm but cost a hell of a lot less.

Last official day of the holiday and leaving the holiday cottage meant practically prising my fingers off of the door frame. It's a great place to stay, as is evidenced by the other entries in the guest book. There's one family that seems to stay there even more often than mine does. When leaving my comments in the guest book I did think about leaving a message or perhaps setting them some sort of task but stopped myself. This is not what people go on holiday for and it could be perceived as being a bit weird. Even worse, they might do it back. The last thing I need is to get into some sort of escalating intellectual game or treasure hunt with a group of people ho, for all I know might be pathologically competitive, related to Dan Brown or just plain nuts. Worse, they could try and make friends with us!

The stately homes of England

Driving through the Holkham estate, a farting noise to the right of the car reveals itself to be one of the gamekeepers on a quad bike racing along the grass past the car. Slung over the rider's back is a single shot rifle for use in dispatching pests such as squirrels, foxes or any tourists that start acting up or drive their mobility chariots where they are not supposed to.

At last - the interior of Holkham Hall! After many visits in the winter visiting when it's shut, this time it was open and in we went. All very stately home. Flock wallpaper, fireplaces, velvet ropes cordoning off things you're not supposed to fondle and lots of oil paintings of ancestors in wigs of varying hilarity.

Using wheedle, charm and my best 'telephone voice', I managed to get the guide to open up the family room. This is reputed to be one of the most beautiful rooms in England and I had to agree. It was posh, it was lovely and it didn't have any ikea furniture in it. Possibly one can tell how posh a room is by just how much of a bugger it is to dust (though old ladies rooms full of nick-nacks and cats distort this scale) but this one just looked...lovely. The room is three cubes put together, with a fireplace in the middle, sofas and easy chairs dotted around and books lining the walls. I was so much at home I nearly rang for a glass of brandy, pulled down a volume and put my feet up. Indeed, if I were to make any change it would be to replace the books in the room (all printed in 1700 or thereabouts, rare first editions) and get some real family reading in there, a sprinkling of Catherine Cooksons, Stephen Kings, Dickens, Amis, Amis and, to lend tone, Churchill.

On the way out the deer in the park turned their heads en masse to watch our cars pass, like little antlered satellite tracking dishes.

What a difference a season makes

In winter, you can sometimes be the only person on the beach and you're usually the only person who doesn't own a 4x4. In summer - the caravan parks are open. This means that a lot more people are wandering around in replica sports gear. On the one hand, England are currently doing very well in the world cup and so it appears every bugger is wearing a red or white shirt. So you'd think spotting chavs would be harder but not so. Luckily, like the SGX index being a clue to how chavvy an area is (or even a car, current record is three flags, one on ariel and two on windows), tats are your guide to how chavvy a person is and thanks to tee shirts and shorts it's easy to take an audit.

Spotted sitting outside a seaside boozer today were the same family we saw at the world cup game, whom we strongly suspect of staying at the nearby caravan site and whom we have dubbed 'Swiss Family Chav'. This is partly because they are chavvy, partly because it's funny but mostly because I'm a snob.

The caravan park, I should point out, is also the home to 'luxury chalets'. 1. Oxymoron. 2. Some of us have been on caravan holidays as kids and have just about got the smell of the toilet block out of our hair thanks. 3. We've seen the neighbours you'd have, Swiss Family Chav, who would start by thinking their caravan was better than their home and somehow end the week by having outside their caravan two fridges, three pick-up trucks up on blocks, a dozen assorted dogs of the type favoured by drug dealers and, in the end, an armed response unit.

Thursday - Brought to book

Despite being in a chi-chi village, my second favourite second-hand book shop (and by god it just LOOKS like a second hand book-shop should look, it even smells like a second hand book-shop should smell) continues to supply Rumpole and Amis to the masses - and me.

I, apparently, am not the only one who likes to browse the paperbacks in the hope of discovering a book of erotic woodcuts. While leafing through a Dick Barton back number, a small ginger woman with harassment and a nose ring all over her face stomped up to the back of the shop and harangued her husband along the following lines: 'are you coming out because little Gemma is in her push chair screaming for her daddy and I've been standing out there waiting for ten minutes and I don't think that standing outside a shop is a great way to spend my holiday'.

She stomped out of the shop and I nearly bloody well followed her out before I remembered it wasn't me she was shouting at. So what does matey do? He goes upstairs to continue browsing.

Bad move mate. I've upset a lot of women in my time and I recognise the signs. Indeed i was so intimidated I finished browsing, paid for a couple of books and did a runner, passing the women again as she returned.

I believe she grabbed a hard-bound copy of 'Bunty' and beat the shit out of her husband with it and if she didn't she should have.

Wednesday - Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

Norfolk is an interesting place. Some towns or villages are so chi-chi and up their own arse that while you can buy fifteen different types or organic asparagus that's been hand-knitted by lesbians, you can't get a Pot Noodle. Case in point is Burnham Market, which has two delis, selling seaweed flavoured soap and hand knitted prawns and that sort of stuff and also features a queue of locals stretching out of the back of the fruit and veg van that comes round the village. This is a part of England that needs to be protected, the fruit and veg van is a sacred institution. Strangely, it's probably the chi-chi delis that are protecting the vans. I can't really see Tescos being able to survive commercially out here, not when a small store would cost millions to buy, it would mean they'd have to charge a fortune for their blue and white striped shite.

Sheringham though is a seaside town that has somehow managed to pull off an incredible trick. It has rock shops, seaside tat and a a theatre conveying end of the pier show style sensibility without actually having, you know, a pier - but it also has lovely shops, my favourite second hand book shop (staffed by either a lovely chap or his lusty, busty teenage daughter!) and the general air of being up market but not up itself.

Good to know you can get mucky postcards and organic flour from the same shop.

Tuesday - Cry God for Harry, England and St George!

The plucky lads of Enger-land take on those foul Swedes tonight, in a world cup clash of no importance at all. World cup fever has stretched even to these quiet coastal communities and is much in evidence.


It made me proud to see the cross of St George fluttering proudly atop the mobility scooters in the area. These things are bloody everywhere round here, leading me to believe that either there are a lot of infirm ex-fishermen in the area, or that they are lazy and frankly taking the piss.

The two pictured are, I believe, part of the Norfolk Coastal Mobility Scooter Defence Force. If the Germans did invade, these plucky souls would steer their chariots onto the streets and hold up 240 tonnes of panzer tank by meandering at a dawdling bloody pace, giving every indication of being a senile but good-natured buffoon in charge of a battery powered chariot that would have the ankles off you if you're not careful.

A pub in a nearby village had put together a perfect storm of footie entertainment. A big screen, Bud at a quid a bottle and a hog roast. Let's face it, they might as well have just erected a huge sign saying 'chavs welcome' and been done with it.

Stayed for a while but, frankly, when England score and I'm the only person leaping to my feet screaming 'yesssssssssssss' and then I'm told to sit down by somebody behind me, I know it's time to go.

And I don't even LIKE footie. It's not as if I know any of the players or give a toss about the result, but I know a lot about showing support. It's all about passion, and pride and belief and a hell of a lot of other words that have been kidnapped by marketing suits to flog chocolate. Truth is, it's the right thing to do to jump up and down and get excited and, when you're doing something and some tosser behind you says 'the team can't hear you you know', then the alternatives are to finish your beer and go or to burn the word 'traitor' into his forehead with boiling fat from the hog roast. What could be more English than that?

I bet it would have been bloody good fun to watch the war on the big screen. Imagine seeing the pictures of Baghdad being shelled or a warship firing off a tomahawk missile at nigh on a screen six feet wide! Cool. It's wasted on sporting events, it should be kept for wars. Wars and musicals. Next time war is declared, I'm going to mobilise a marquee, a shed-load of bargain beer and a hog roast and set the thing up on Parliament green.

Tuesday - On the beach

Jesus Christ alive! The tide's in! Flabberghastment is not a stage I normally find myself in but usually you park up, walk onto the beach, keep walking, walk some more, walk some more. Lunch. Walk some more and then reach the water. At least you assume it's the water as it's now too dark to see.

No so today. Park, beach water! There's not even a full beach.

Honest to God, the tide is in.

Erect tented village! Sun tent goes up, cool bags and dog go in tent, wind break one goes up, as does wind break two. Family hunker down. Paperbacks are opened and iPods are fired up. The last thing you want to have to do on a family holiday is talk to one another - that's what long car journeys are for.

We came for an hour and stayed all day. this meant that we had neglected to bring enough sandwiches. Luckily the beach kiosk was on hand. I braced myself and ordered bacon sandwiches and chips. Delicious! The chips crisp and firm, the bacon griddled to perfection and the bread - white! This was indeed living, with no wholemeal in sight.

Interesting to see a top inch of groyn peeking up over the sand - does this mean a short groyn or, more likely, four feet of groyn below the sand. Also on the beach - an eerily well maintained pill-box. The bloody thing looks new, I swear I could make out the barrel of a Vickers water-cooled 'fritz-masher', capable of turning an entire coach party of hun into vapour at the pull of a trigger!

Monday - A walk in the woods

It's very different visiting Norfolk in Summer. It's sandals instead of walking boots, sun-cream instead of anoraks and things being open instead of sitting in the car looking at closed signs through a rain-flecked window.

The National Trust gardens are open, Sheringham Park in this case. Park up and decant into park, oohing and aahing appreciation at plants and trees.

Have seen plants and trees before of course, but there's something special about the pines and the sand and the grassland being so close to the coast. Walk across boardwalks raised over the floor of the wood, making one feel as though one is moving through a dream, observing rather than being connected to the amazing sights around one. Of course, they also form a sort of wooded Nerberg Ring for the mobility chariots in use around the place.

There are lots of these. Pensioners use them to get about and to put the fear of god into the rest of us. My particular favourite was the double seater! How cool is that, one person steering, one person navigating - like The Italian Job at 7mph. I think the reason we are seeing more mobile mobility scooters is that Robot Wars has gone off-air and kids aren't stealing the bloody wheelchair batteries any more.

I think they should manufacture an off-road version, we could then be treated to the sight of pensioners shooting around fields of long grass, like that scene in Jurassic Park 3 when the 'raptors are stalking the hunting party, leaving a wake of crushed grass.

Sunday - Village life

It all boils down to how you want to spend your free time. Some might think the day is wasted unless they have composed something, written something, completed the crossword or been to some sort of sporting event, perhaps involving balls, bats, horses, hats or crowd violence.

Or, it might involve sitting on your arse and reading a book for about six hours, occasionally calling for others in the house to fetch tea or rub your calfs in order to stave off cramp.

It also involved getting up off of my fat arse for a visit to the village smoke house. This near the coast, the locals love to smoke things. Sometimes these are things imported from Amsterdam but occasionally it also involves seafood or pork. This proved to be the case as we visited the smoke house to pick up some prawns and some bacon.

Managed to negotiate the various cures, given the choice of traditional cure, maple cure, old fashioned cure or indeed Boys Don't Cry by the Cure. Bottled it and went for traditional cure. They rung up my purchases and told me how much they wanted for a dozen smoked prawns and six rashers of smoked bacon.

'Anything else?'
'Yes please - a defribulator.' How much?

Food was great though. Don't want to upset any vegetarians but meat is okay and there's an end to it. As for eating anything with a face - prawns look otherworldly, alien and, above all - tasty.

Saturday - Come fly with me

The event of the holiday - my kite-boarding lesson. This is when you get a kite that is rather more NASA than Mary Poppins and a skate-board on steroids and use the wind to pull you at high speed along the beach, scattering dogs, sunbathers and caution.

That's the theory. It's application takes skill and wind and I had neither.

In all honesty, my instructor told me I had a natural skill at screaming like a girl when things did get a bit exciting. We did get a puff of wind and, as I was holding on to a six-metre wing of space-age fabric that is designed to fly in just about any conditions, the next thing i knew I was digging in my heels and trying to control what felt like two shire-horses pulling in different directions. A life in the office punctuated by the odd visit to a chi-chi gym does not prepare you for this kind of activity, which is possibly why it felt as if my spine was being pulled out of my throat. Luckily, i managed to crash the kite before I had done too much harm, but not before leaving two six-foot ruts in the sand where my heels had dug in and a trail of wet sand where my bladder control had given up.

As for the board itself - for something so technically sophisticated it's quite impressive that it doesn't have a break, a steering wheel or any kind of safety feature. It's basically a plank and four wheels, so why it's so sodding heavy I have no idea. My instructor made me hop the bloody thing twenty yards down the beach (sweating), then hop back again (sweating and black spots) then hop round in a circle (sweating, blac.... ...oh, passed out for a moment there).

Two hours later I was a physical wreck. Bearing in mind I had not actually been on the board with the kite up, this does not bode well for the future. Because there will be one - kite boarding is gin and crack-cocaine on a waltzer! Next lesson soon!

Norfolk Notes - Friday: House of Horrors!

Hoorah! Hoorah for holidays, sunshine and eating ice-crams until you're sick and the flake pops out of your nose. Load half of house into car, watching it sinking slowly on its axles under the sheer weight of sun-cream, swimming cozzies and thermos flasks full of over-strength tea for frequent pic-nic stops.

After 45 minutes of motorway hell, creeping slowly forward and wondering how hot it has to be before my skin bonds with the back of the car seat, the traffic suddenly - poof - evaporates and we're on our way. Wind in the hair and expectation running wild.

As the light drained from the sky we pulled into Wells harbour for fish and chips. Ambrosia! The batter crisp and golden round the cod, the chips gorgeous and just greasy enough to let you know that they were doing you enough harm to be enjoyable, salted and vinigared to perfection. All this consumed sat on the edge of the harbour wall, being gently menaced by ducks and gulls on the look-out for chips or scraps.

Then on to the holiday cottage.

Found it , opened door. the first thing I saw when I turned on the kitchen light, even before I saw all the filth in the kitchen, was the huge cock on top of the fridge. It had an evil glint in its eye and looked angry enough to spit at having been stuffed. the last thing I want to be confronted with is the spitting eye of a cock, believe me.

Wiped a few ants off of the counter top and wandered through to dining room. Stuffed birds here were an owl - thankfully in a tasteful presentation box - and a very surprised looking duck, with an expression that very much said 'what is that man about to do with that fist full of sawdust! The theme of the dining room was cobwebbed.

The theme of the living room was cobweb with a hint of stained furniture. We didn't unpack but went directly to bed. Surely things would look better in the morning.

So, come Saturday - Relocation Relocation Relocation

What was interesting about this place was that even though Norfolk had just experienced the hottest week on record, the place still stank of damp. In the daylight, all the muck was visible. Then I decided to take a shower.

You know that a place is not fit for you when the soap in the soap dish is, instead of being new, wrapped in tissue paper and bearing the legend 'enjoy washing with me', has instead already obviously been used and has a hair still clinging to it.

The only thing the place had was a mobile signal. 'Phoned up the letting company and explained in reasonable and straightforward terms that our position was desperate on a par with the bloody American Embassy on Hanoi and we wanted immediate dust-off now, otherwise i would pop smoke and, most probably, a gasket.

Relocation was swift and painful. Oh, it had everything. The incompetent staff at the office, the tearful cottage owner (why, I have no idea, the bloody woman currently has my money) and the swift re-packing of the car. Managed to avoid doing a wheelspin as I accelerated out of there. I think I was doing about MACH 3 by the time I was at the end of the drive.

Hammer Time

Rented 'Quatermass and the Pit' on DVD. Top! On DVD the film looks like it was made yesterday, but because it was made in the swinging sixties it looked super-cool. All the men dress like men (tweed and pipes) and all the women dress like women (tweed, cigerettes)(actually mini-skirts and the sort of make up that says 'I know it was tested in animals and I don't care).

What was amazing though was the real sense of menace conveyed in the film. Stroke of genius setting it in and around a tube station. Those places are bloody eerie at the best of times, but when you're unearthing aliens, it's almost as bad as being trapped in a tunnel with a busker, and a cheerful busker at that.

I am tempted to take up a pipe, grow an beard and speak to everyone in an upper class accent that would cut teak - it gets results!

Riding giant skateboards

Excellent telly for the last two nights, Monday saw the screening of ‘Riding Giants’, a documentary about the history of Big Wave surfing. There were floral print shirts, ear-rings and lots and lots of men saying ‘dude’ a lot. Then last night ‘Dogtown and the Z boys’ was on, documenting the rise of a certain school of skateboarding in 1970s California.

This was fantastic stuff and a true document of the counterculture (as opposed to our over-the-counter culture, where the most athletic thing people do is order extra fries with their burger). These were men who surfed/skated alone and shared something, I think, with mountain climbers and others who put themselves in danger in order to get some sense of achievement. Competing against others is easy, you win, you’re great, you lose, you try and do better. Competing with yourself is hard, you do well, you feel you could do better, you screw up and, well, you drown apparently. These chaps were competing against themselves and against nature, or working with it, depending on your opinion.

Underneath all the bleach blond hair and looking past the tan, muscle and use of the word ‘gnarly’ with a straight face by adults, what struck me was their inability to articulate what it was they loved about surfing. The thing is, this was no great issue. These guys spend their days sitting on a board in the ocean waiting for a wave, not staring at a PC wondering how to describe what they are feeling - they’re surfers, not girls.

Ever tried to give complicated directions and simply given up and said ‘fuck it, I’ll draw you a map’. That was what these guys were like, you could see them thinking ‘want to know what’s great about surfing - come with me and I’ll show you’. Luckily, the film did just that, you’d see some guy talking about trying to catch a wave and the next thing you see is the same guy, now a dot on a board riding some monster made of water and surf and fury and the whole lot collapses in on itself and then explodes…and out of it comes the guy, still whole and still smiling. Now that’s surfing.

Naturally I watched both docs about extreme activities performed by natural athletes while stretched on the sofa drinking beer - something I could talk about at length without having to draw a picture.

A streetcar named routemaster

It’s hot and sultry. Cotton sticks to the sweaty backs of thighs, men fan themselves with hats, clothes crumple and wrinkle and it becomes nearly impossible to hold a decent crease. Big girls show damp patches. People who have rushed for their train make ‘plip’ noises as sweat drops from their nose to the floor of the carriage. All we need is alcoholism and homosexuality and it’d be a bloody Tennessee Williams play out there.

The population has divided up into the usual camps. Those who see any variation in temperature as an inconvenience and insist on wearing their vest, shirt, pullover and tweeds summer and winter, those that have a summer wardrobe and a winter wardrobe (the summer wardrobe is the one with the bottle of ‘fakatan’ in the bottom of it) and those who celebrate the mercury going up like a stallion on viagra by removing their shirt.

In response to days of brutal, almost Mediterranean temperatures (how one misses a pool and a bar and somebody to serve beer and salty snacks at these times) I have put away the winter woollies and donned my summer plumage, the lighter linens and cottons being so much easier to wring out after travelling on the train wearing them.

The days of shorts in the office are, sad to report, over. A pity, as my calves have rarely looked better (solid muscle covered with a coarse hair that is not so much pelt as bracken-type undergrowth) but when one gets to a certain age, one is not so much perceived as leading fashion as losing faculties. Added to which the air-con in the office has been turned up so high that it’s rumoured somebody in the canteen had to be treated for frostbite. Rumours of an arse-print being found in a tub of ice-cream remain unconfirmed.

England my England - a Gentleman’s memoir

It was hot. Damned hot. The day started early with the booze delivery, the Pimms tanker stirring up the dust. One just knew that it was going to be a scorcher. Friends were gathering to watch an association football tournament and had to be protected from the brutal rays of the sun, lest they develop tans and so be mistaken for manual workers or, worse, television presenters.

My handyman, Swiftgasket, aided me in the raising of the pavilion on the small lawn. Blessed shade thus achieved. Close examination of the pavilion proved that it was not in fact the Oatbury and Oddfather ‘stormaster 600’ that my grandfather had liberated from Henley many moons ago, but instead a modern erection. It appears that it came from a local DIY superstore. I can only assume that in addition to turning out dogma, repression, noodles and exceptionally gifted concubines, the Chinese have developed gazebo technology far in advance of ours. The resentment your average gazebo manufacturer no doubt feels for the wealthy west was, however, evidenced by the thing being an absolutely bloody fucker to get up and get level without wreaking havoc on the bedding plants.

Up it went though and up it stayed. There’s something civilized about being under large canvas. So different to being in a two man tent up the side of some ghastly mountain with a storm raging unabated outside for three days and the sudden discovery that you’re down to the last of the Bovril. Instead, one has hardly had time to bang the final tent peg into the ground before fizz and fruit are being forced upon you and you’ve no option but to collapse in a chair and wonder if the bloody thing is going to stay up in this breeze?

Stay up it did. I’ve hardly known it so quiet as it was during the match. I was able to read the review section of the paper quite undisturbed and, more importantly, speed-drink all the decent booze brought by guests.

Flying the flag(s)

World cup fever is sweeping the nation like bird flu going through a convention of chicken-fuckers in a sealed environment. The BBC News web-site has some corking photographs from ‘citizen journalists’ (i.e. people with camera phones) of houses or other areas (pubs and work spaces mainly, oh, and Staffordshire bull terriers, and kids) that have been decorated in national colours. These, I think, are the same people that have too many Christmas lights on their house and are now in competition to see how many St George Crosses they can have on their houses and indeed how big they can be.

Not so at chez moi. In an attempt to dodge the footie a select band of intimates have been invited over for canapés. I believe the staff may have a television receiver on, to watch some association football.

The lady of the house has entered into the spirit of the tournament however and, after a visit to the local party shop, has returned with what can only be describes as bunting.

Rather than a string of SGCs, we have a string of 36 flags, one each for each nation competing. The first one on the string…Iran. Oh great, so (among other flags) I shall be flying the Iranian flag, a jaunty little number with a scimitar and a verse from the Koran on it. I only hope that my guests will be able to get past the mob that will form at my door, consisting of neighbours anxious to push dog-shit through the letterbox and police anxious to boot the same door in and look for terrorists. Of course, I also have the Brazilian flag on the bunting, meaning they will shoot first and ask questions later.

Also on the bunting - the stars an stripes. These days, when the stars and stripes is sold outside of the USA it comes pre-impregnated with paraffin to facilitate ease of burning by angry mobs.

Maybe the thing to do is just fly the Swiss flag, thank Christ they’re in the tournament.

End of an era

They preserve eyesores by having English heritage listing them so surely there should be preservations orders on sites of cultural significance. More specifically, there should be preservation orders on places that I have been going to for years, that are woven into my life and the removal of which causes trauma.

For instance, George Lucas should not have made Phantom Menace etc. and he sure as hell should not have re-edited Star Wars - Han fires first goddammit! Tell me George, are there any other areas of my childhood you’d like to piss on. Perhaps you’d like to re-write Wind in the Willows and have Toad as a pleasant character, or introduce Jar Jar fucking Binks into the story.

Out beering in town last night. A quick one in the Sanctuary, then an ill-advised one on the Tattershall Castle (what a bloody stupid idea, putting a bar on a boat, when the floor moves up and down and you feel a little bit sick you have to think ‘is this beer really good, or are we just riding a swell?’

Then meandered towards Poons. For Chinese. Specifically, for a bucket of hot and sour soup, some duck, beef in ginger and chilli sauce and a couple of Ting Taou.

Poons is gone! We pitch up and the restaurant has changed its name and there’s hardly anyone sitting there. The place used to be packed. Okay, staff are the same, let’s give it a go. Order beers. Open menu.

No hot and sour soup. What the hell is going on? Has the world gone mad - you come to Poons and you have your hot and sour soup. Paid for beers, closed menus, drank beers and fucked off to a noodle bar. Which was…nice, but where were the rude waiters? Where was the dishes so good they made your nose run. This place was like a Disneyland version of an Oriental café, by which I guess I mean Japanese instead of Chinese. The staff were young and friendly. No! They should be obvious illegal immigrants that have just made the journey from Canton, sealed in a container for eight weeks been pitched up in Soho and told to start slinging soup to hungry Brits. They should have far too many teeth and no grasp of English apart from ‘you pay now’ or ‘service not included’. There should not be merchandise on sale, there should be mayhem in the kitchen, at least one loo out of order at all times and the certainty that even if you have drunk, for the sake of argument, a little too much, the soup will see you right and so you will avoid what I had this morning, which was a four-piece jazz band tuning up in my head, what appeared to be a square of pub carpet for a tongue and a strong urge never, ever to drink again. Ever.

What hot to wear

It’s hot. You can smell the baking dust even first thing in the morning. But that’s not the only indicator of temperature. I, for instance, am not wearing a tie. I know, I know, amazing. Quite liberating really, but it does make you discover what a tie is actually for - it’s a civilizing influence. Without a tie I feel, and no doubt look, thuggish in the extreme, like James Bond just before everything gets bloody.

There are other indicators. Last year’s linen has been looked out of a lot of cupboards by the look of things. Men are looking awkward in suit trousers but no jacket, you can see them thinking ‘It’s currently Saharan, but will it piss down later’. Shorts are in evidence. Men are just awkward, women appear to go one of two ways, either floaty cotton dresses like something from a flake ad, or something skimpy. Such as the woman who sat opposite me on the train this morning and spent a fair bit of the journey trying to pull her hem line down and the rest of her dress up. It’s going to go one way or the other love, not both.

The readiness is all. I had spoken to my tailor about combating heat and, after soundly cuffing him when he suggested the best way to stay comfortable would be to lose three stone, passed up on the Fremen stillsuit, passed up on the Hinchley and Wardle water-cooled suit with integrated pith helmet and moisture repellent nethergarments and have instead decided simply to sweat like a bastard. It’s natural and it means nobody sits next to you on the train. And if you squelch when you walk, so what?

Rant

Just what is a blog then?

Google it, Wikiwackywoopedia it and you’ll peobably get something along the lines of ‘on-line journal’. But it’s more than that. Everyone has kept a journal at some point in their life and, with luck, we stop before we start writing poetry or ‘dear diary, today I thought about x-e-s’.

The difference between a journal and a blog has to be comments. Can you imagine what it would have been like if you had invited comments on your teenage musings? In popular and unpopular fiction, the reading of a diary by a stranger is normally a trigger for either mortification or ‘hilarious’ consequences, depending on the certificate of the film and whether the teenagers in it listen to pop music or goth tunes and like to drive hot rods or have n enviable collection of guns and hunting knives.

Comments are interesting. They can be turned off, but nobody does. Maybe the blog, certainly the one that details experiences and musings, is some sort of juggernaught confessional that, most horrible of all, assumes that anyone reading would be interested or literate enough to read a comment.

The popularity of blogs means that there are now three blogs for everyone on the planet, so it’s a fair bet that most of them go unread, and this is probably a good thing, as do we really want to know the day in day out life of somebody who lubes cars in Siberia.

Well, probably yes, as fights with bears and wolves can be interesting. Less interesting are the lives of others.

But there’s no excuse for rudeness. What sort of execrable arsehole leaves a disparaging comment on another person’s blog? This is somebody that presumably has enough time to leave a message, no doubt between bouts unsuccessfully masturbating over images of underage garden gnomes while sodomising himself with an increasingly weird variety of kitchen implements and sobbing hysterically. Not the sort or person, you think, who has to take a break from composing symphonies or designing stained glass windows to spread a bit of random abuse.

There is already a two tier web and it’s not about speed and it’s not about access, it’s about fuckwits and everyone else. In that respect, it’s very much like the two tier planet we live on.

The Old Devils

The sky is a clear blue and the weather is warm, the air is scented with petrol fumes and coffee. Just another day. What is noticeably absent (at time of writing) is seas of blood, demons roving the streets, the stench of brimstone and Lucifer in the queue at Starbucks wondering whether to go for a skinny latte or a frappachino.

Today is the 6th day of the 6th month of 2006 and surely is the final nail in the coffin of any argument about omens, portents or associated bollocks in that it’s no different to any other day - indeed, it’s quite pleasant.

Diabolists are a sad lot these days. There was a time when they got respect, or at least their own shelf in the new age section at the local bookshop. Now though, they’ve been deposed by older, better religions. Wicca, paganism and so on - any many of these books offer crystals or cards in the packaging. So, a dusty hardback with a picture of a goat’s head is not going to do it.

Pagans, I reckon, get the best fun. You have solsticeseses, you have your midsummer fires, midwinter fires, Roodmass, candlemass, not to mention car boot sales to raise money for rethatching the wicker man.

When it comes down to it, there’s no point sacrificing anything you can’t pop on the barbeque afterwards.

The smell of the suburbs

Sitting spent and wan under a parasol at the weekend, after sweating away at least a third of my body weight and probably seven units of alcohol mowing the lawn, I took a moment to enjoy the serene peace of…

>sniff sniff<

Somebody was smoking grass. The scent of hashish wafted over the gardens of middle England, bringing a touch of the exotic and the scent of the souk to The Village. Naturally one wanted to seek out the culprit, confiscate his stash and tell him to mend his ways before filling ones pipe with skunk and listening to Pink Floyd.

Actually it was a like a sorbet. The smells of that day had been, in order, mown grass, lighter fluid, firelighters and various other napalm like measures to get barbeques going, then charcoal, then the scent of sizzling meat.

I myself test fired the Barbie, slapping spiced marinated pork onto the bars and watching with satisfaction as the meat buggered itself into inedibility before my very eyes. Tremendous.

Which of my respectable neighbours was it, I wondered, who fired up a ‘jazz cigarette’ in their back garden. My money is on any pensioners living nearby. They always use the excuse that it’s a natural herbal cure for the sort of things that affect old people, like having a taste for biscuits or being fond of cats. More likely it’s something to do with the fact that they honeymooned in Morocco, never got over it and have kids called ‘Moonchild’ and ‘Leaf’ but are now at an age where they have retired and have turned the allotment over to growing some class C shit, no doubt using class A manure.

On mowing

The monsoon has let up long enough for every bloke in the South East to get out his lawnmover. This includes me. Mowing the small lawn puts one in a meditative state. Up and down, empty hopper. Up and down, empty hopper. One’s thoughts turn, naturally, to mowing.

There are two ways to mow ones lawn, the wrong way and the right way. The wrong way is to get some sort of foul, orange, plastic electric powered thing and move it over the grass in a chaotic manner, the scything blade spinning, slashing grass and distributing fox-shit at high speed - a concrete example of what happens when the shit hits the fan. These are the ‘mowers’ favoured by those who consider leisurewear to be a replica sports kit, rather than tweed and a stout brogue.

(There are only three types of replica sports wear it is acceptable to wear, in order to show solidarity with your team. The first is a darts shirt of the Flying Swan team in Brentford. The second is the blazer of the Frimply Gentlemen third eleven and the last is the regimental tie of the 2nd Highland Ardbastards (the ‘thistlers’), on the assumption that bagging Arabs is a sport, but only if you give them a head-start before getting them in the sights of your Hinckly and Fisk water-cooled repeating blastmaster 8000).

Then there’s the right way, my way.

This is of course to get the staff to do it but as I appear to be getting through under gardeners at a rapid rate (the latest, Richards, is laid up after falling out of a tree he was attempting to coppice using the traditional coppicing tool of a fistful of powerful drugs selected at random from the back of Matron’s cabinet and a tin-opener) I had to mow the small lawn myself at the weekend.

Hover movers are a blight. Electric mowers are for scum. Petrol mowers are fine although the pipe-smoking gardener should avoid them. Ride-on mowers are of course essential for mid-sized gardens. But for an estate, only sheep will do. Border Cheviot for the areas away from the house, Shropshire (obviously) for those areas used as paths or for illicit rumpy-pumpy and, of course, Scottish Blackface for the first pass at any lawn where a game might be played.

However, if you intend to use the lawn for any sport where a wager might be made on the outcome, you’re going to have to get your mower out.

A proper mower should be a push-along mower. The metal case should be made from the metal reclaimed from any downed Luftwaffe aircraft you might have. The blades should be from the metal from a Spitfire propeller, sharpened to levels of Wildian wit and blessed during a harvest festival by any priest of the Church of Scotland.

The roller is where many make their most common mistake. Some use granite recovered from a millstone, others use stone reclaimed from a handy nearby monolith. This simply will not do. The best stone is a marble cylinder reclaimed from any pillar (Doric, for preference) from a Roman villa.

So one mows. The whirr of the blades, the smell of new-mown grass, the sweet, sweet nature of honest toil and of course, upon completion, the tipping of the cuttings over ones neighbour’s fence.

Tea and toddies

In an attempt to keep my fluids up, I've set a new record for drinking tea. In an attempt to keep my spirits up, I've had a bash a a hot toddy. According to various recipes you're supposed to use lemon, tea and whatnot. Total crap, I have hot water, Greek honey and a rather lovely single malt. the result is somewhere between having a taste of being on holiday (I can almost smell the sun-block) and having a small peat fire lit on your tongue. The toddy itself is, of course, disgusting, I mean who mixes this sort of stuff up for fun. However, based on received wisdom that medicine only does you good when it tastes revolting, it must be doing me the power of good.

Better yet, i should put the hot water in my tea, put the honey back in the fridge and just reach for the malt. There's something jolly lovely about it though and most importantly of all it means that I can medicate myself rather than hand over a fistful of notes to those bastards at SmithKline Beecham.

I can also proudly state that the medicines are animal friendly, there's no way I'm wasting my good malt on a bloody bunny just to see if it makes his arse drop off or something as a side effect.

>another sip<

Indeed, as far as this clinical trial is going I am pleased to report that the original unpleasant undertaste fades as you take another sip and that you begin to experience an sense of peace and well-being.

>another sip<

Indeed, it's almost as if the water an honey suffuse you, spreading warmth throughout your entire body and contributing to a general sense or relaxation.

>another sip<

The best thing about it is, of course, that on completion of the beverage (always finish the course), the next stage on the recovery process is a sofa, a blanket and a telly remote.

Right after I make one more cup of tea.

Restoration

Obviously, there's some sort of preservation order on my neighbour's lean - to conservatory. The builders were simply replacing the opaque corrugated plastic on the roof with clear corrugated plastic - obviously so much classier. I think the overall effect, although of course beneficial to them, is lessened somewhat from an aesthetic point of view. I want my decrepit outbuildings to look like decrepit outbuildings, not tarted up to pretend to be something they are not. It's like when men wear make-up. Nor right.

Hummn, this, combined with their new fence, means they could possibly be selling? Noting says 'buy me' like transparent corrugated plastic. they should have just stuck a huge amount of cling-film over the roof and had done with it.

I'm sick

And being a man, this of course means that I don't have a cold, but instead probably have some sort of mutated strain of bird flu or have been exposed to something brewed up in a lab in Portland Down.

I know how it happened too - skimmed milk. Every time I drink skimmed milk I come down with a cold. there must be something in the process where they remove all that is good about milk (or as it's commonly known - 'fat' - and replace it with something else - for instance 30cc of common cold culture.

It started yesterday with a sore throat, although 'sore' is simply an abbreviation of 'I believe somebody has been sandpapering my sinuses'. I combated this with two tubes of cough sweets. Bloody useless, worse than useless in fact as I discovered that too many cough sweets make you feel a bit odd, but do not have any real medicinal effect. What you really need is something green with the label faded off that is retrieved from the back of the cupboard. Don't get me started on expiry dates for medicines - how can a string of molecules have an expiery date? Anyway, maybe they are like cheese, they mature with age. So sod sweets, what I'm after is a smoking sticky green stuff that can also be used as horse liniment.

I wonder how many blogs there are out there of sick people, I mean really sick people. the sort of people who stay in their pyjamas all day and never leave the room. What would you find to blog about? describing your symptoms maybe, if you have something interesting enough, finding new descriptions for 'grotty'. Certainly I can say with authority that my sore throat has been joined now by a runny nose which makes me know, just KNOW, that I will have to make a trip to the shops for ultra balm tissue at some point. I suppose if you were ill, really ill, you could blog about that, do a taste test of tissues or something.

Or spy on your neighbours. Mine have decided to remove their old conservatory today by the look of it. A shame really, it was one of those types so rarely seen these days that was simply a wooden frame, glazed, with weathered corrugated plastic on top. More a lean-to than what's considered a conservatory these days (a PVC box that's more like an extra room than what it should bee, a transitional space between home and garden). I'd say the old one had character, any older and it could have got listed status.