Bicker bicker bicker

Either I was being sensitive (not something I’m normally accused of), or last weekend was some sort of two-day festival of bickering.

Bickering is to argument what background radiation is to Chenoyble. It doesn’t take that much energy, which is why it can be sustained for hours. Normally it’s conducted in a low voice. This is so that others cannot hear. The problem is that two people talking in a low voice naturally attracts attention. In addition, people hissssssssss when bickering, and this has the action of clearly enunciating every word. The law of bickering dictates that bickering ends when somebody talks in their normal voice - this is usually to say ‘Oh bloody well do it then, just like you always do!’ and after prolonged whispering the normal voice has the effect of the Voice of God in a sword ‘n’ sandal epic.

So it was good to hear two young chavs doing a bit of freestyle bickering on Sunday. As I wandered down the street behind them, I was treated to a full range of character analysis punctuated by tip-top swearing. Imagine Freud with tourett’s. Then they stopped, turned round and walked all the way back down the street, keeping up their constant argument. The interesting thing was that it showed no sign of peaking or resolving - perhaps this is their base state - I certainly hope so, because it means they’ll never breed and produce an offspring as ugly as they were.

Uncharitable? Moi?

I wanna rock - DJ!

Because my last dinner jacket was destroyed in a fight with terrorists while saving the world* and because I'm off to the Savoy** I need a dinner jacket. Luckily, I have an off-the-peg body and so go to an off-the-peg place to get a DJ***.

Trying it on and checking out the old reflection, it occurs to me there are two sorts of people in this world. The first look at themselves in a DJ and think 'oh Christ, I look a like a waiter.' The second check the reflection and think 'Oh yes, i look like James Bond'.

I looked at myself and though - 'hey, James Bond looks like me!'.

The two challenges are braces and the bow tie.

Braces have two associations. The first is the red-braced city trader, the sort of person who spent the 80's fucking up the country for the rest of us - there's also the whole 'rock-on-Tommy' sort of thing. The second image is of some fat southern-fried fucker in front of a huge pot of Gumbo, the corrupt politician model who has given up on belts, diets and redemption.

Oh, and Mork.

As for the bow tie. There are two sorts of people. People who tie their own bow tie, and scum.

I used to have a bow tie, a really lovely paislely-pattern one. I wore it once. I was going out with this gorgeous girl who took one look at my bow tie, thought 'twat', and dumped me faster and deeper than whale-shit. (Of course it was before we had sex...why do you think I'm still bitter about it!)

After nearly garrotting myself, it's hats off to Youtube who have a clip of a bloke tieing his bow-tie, and this patient woman explaining it all. Took me while but...sorted.

*this may be a lie.
** this is not
***I will of course have it tailored to accommodate Walther PPK and assorted gadgets. Oh, okay, iPod.

Let's Rawk!

The charts ceased to have relevance for me many moons ago...when 've kidz' and I parted company. Sometime in my life I took my eye off of the top ten and suddenly I didn't know any of the records on the top ten.

Listening to them, I did'nt really want to. I think the real watershed moment was when i heard a song by somebody called Nelly - oh my Jesus Christ. I must have been written by somebody with 'special needs' and sounded like it was sung by some twelve year old in their front bedroom. Shit was hardly the word. A new word needed to be invented, to cram many more syllables into the word shit, just like whoever it was that put the song together managed to pack soooooo much shit in one show - it's as if they did it on the surface of Jupiter, where they can compress shit at super-dense gravity.

However - toot-toot-toot revolution has happened. The charts now count downloads. This means that lazy-arsed sods like me buying my music online are now enfranchised again. Listening to the charts now and writing this I've just heard the theme from Casino Royal and will be purchasing it in a moment.

The charts are the people's again. They no longer belong to some twisted coke snorting exec working for Sony BMG or some manufacturer of pop bands.

The James Bond allagory is apt, it's like the Mr Big who had plans for world domination has been thwarted by a lot of super cool people with gadgets - in this case me and a kick-ass powerbook. To complete this process, we need to drop Simon Cowell into a tank of phiranas. Special phiranas. that have been trained to swim in shit. Shit from lepers.

The Big Wind

It could have been a lot worse. Let's face it, my back garden fence sways like a rummy on the late Sunday of a lost weekend in the slightest zepher, so when I saw the tops of trees being bent to the sod, I thought it was going to be game over.

The damage has (so far) been limited to one of the decorative panels that sit atop the fence. To be honest, this is no great loss. In my opinion a fence needs to be topped out with either razor-wire, some sort of laser type thing or, and this is my preference, the spiked heads of the last a) poachers or b) foxes that tried to steal my chickens.*

That's not all the wind has done. Driving to the recycling centre with my Christmas trees, the route, lines with chain-link fence, was adorned with carrier bags from the nearby Tesco. It looked as though a concerted effort had actually been made to tie things to the fence, like the women of Greenham Common used to tie ribbon and so on to the perimiter fence there to try and give an airbase a makeover. What they should have been doing of course if giving the f**king pilots training in how to differentiate between a British squaddie and a terrorist.

It was like somebody had made a concerted effort to turn a chain-link fence into a wall and what it made me think was that I should really start taking a camera everywhere and also - what a load of rubbish there is blowing about. We should be like the Irish and stick an 8p charge on every carrier bag. Then we'd soon see less of them stuck in fences or in my front garden.

Then again, I suppose my sister wouldn't be so ready to use them to pick up and carry around her doggie's doggie do. But would this be a bad thing? Okay, so it means that she's a responsible dog owner - it also means that whenever I'm out for a walk with her and her dog, there will come a point where she scoops poo and then, Christ knows why, doesn't take the most natural option and lob it as far as she can, or into somebody's garden, but instead takes it with her to the next appropriate receptical - but Jesus - does she have to SWING it?

The Big Wind came to a small town. It blew in some stories and blew out some trouble. It took my decorative fence panel and dropped it, I assume, into my neighbour's garden...although they have yet to acknowledge this and I wonder if I'm going to end up buying the damn thing back on eBay.

* don't have any chickens. Yet. I have foxes though.

Premonition of...what?

What’s the difference between a dream and a premonition? Well, primarily, if it comes true, it’s a premonition, if not, it’s a dream. Taking place in the real world - possible premonition, taking place in outer space where you are emperor of the universe - I’m guessing dream - taking place in ten future where you are absolute ruler of the world and have just issues a law about the use of mobile ‘phones on trains - the sort of dream you really really hope is a premonition.

Other guidelines are drawn from your walking life. Do you usually work in an office, go home, eat too much and fall asleep in front of the telly? Then any night time visions you have about, say, a huge lizard attacking Big Ben is probably a dream. If, however, you live in a cave, eat lots of lichen and hallucinate your tits off even when awake, you can pass this dementia off as a vision. Better be sure you write down something pretty ambiguous though.

So, to update my dream diary. Last night I had a dream about folk with rifles stalking around on the top of the flat roofs of the buildings that surround my office, before storming it in a lame but armed way. I then woke up.

This morning there are workers atop the flat roof of the pub at the back of the office, one of which was extending a telescopic something or other just as I arrived this morning.

I know of course that it wasn’t a gun and maybe my dream was because I saw him doing the very same thing yesterday, but that didn’t stop me dropping like a stone and crawling commando style to my desk, which I’m currently underneath and where I plan to remain for the rest of the day.

Okay, so in reality I just though ‘how odd’ and continued on my way. But this morning I was thinking if I could ‘phone in not sick, but with a bad case of the premonitions.

My other dream, about being in bed with a beautiful 17 year old woman and consequently being caught and beaten by her angry father, I am simply putting down to the topping on my pizza.

A pleasure to board

Noteworthy good manners the other morning. After nearly crippling myself in a sprint for the train, I vaulted onto the platform just as the doors had closed. As I stood there wondering whether to sob, swear or sob and swear…they opened again for me! Unknown driver - I salute you!

Sugar rush

Krispy Kreme update - there’s a third type of KK consumer - one that is trotting uncomfortably towards middle age, eats their KK doughnut too quickly and then Googles ‘tachycardia arrhythmia symptoms’ to work out if they are going to have some sort of seizure.

Apparently not.

Should have Googled ‘symptoms of being a fat bastard’ instead.

Gods and monsters

Thanks to a birthday being celebrated in the office, Krispy Kreme doughnuts have made a reappearance. There are two sorts of people that eat KK doughnuts. The first take one and make some remark along the lines of ‘oh, I really shouldn’t’, the second, like me, think ‘my previous best is eating four in a day, although it did make me feel odd. I wonder if I can best that record?’.

The more I think about it, the more I think that the world is made up of dictinct varieties of people. There’s the sort that never really get a chance and end up spooning Pot Noodle into their gobs watching reality telly. Then there are the sort that work hard and do well. Then there are the sort that sort of live on an elevated plane - usually perceived as gifted, these can be anything from obviously talented types to somebody who’s very very good at gardening.

Then there are gods. Churchill, Elvis, Leanardo Da Vinci. These are the people that truly have a spark of the divine about them, who achieve things so breathtaking that you genuinely wonder how the hell they manage it.

This train of thought (a train usually stuck in sidings) was shunted into life when reading the excellent ‘Anansi Boys’ by Neil Gaimen and also watching a telly programme about the NHS, where an administrator tries to sort out a hospital and has run in after run in with the consultants, who’s arrogance is only equalled by their ignorance. Makes one think of the ‘I am a god’ speech from malice.

Truth is, they were shown as not being remarkable, but rather as being so far up themselves that they are in danger of imploding. Okay, so they cut people open and are hence seen as special, but they were also shown as being a lot less special than people who do extraordinary things in an ordinary world, such as gardening really, really well.

My drying out is not going well

There are some people, so I understand, who do not like wine. That is, that have not acquired a taste for it and have another beverage of choice.

This is good news for people like me, who have made it their mission in life, apparently, to drink all of the wine in the world.

Second hangover of 2007

Cause: White wine. Red wine. Champagne left over from Christmas. Beer. Effect: Oh my suffering Christ alive - my head!

It seemed like such a good idea at the time - start drinking early while cooking dinner! This was civilised, this was responsible. This was, of course, an invitation to disaster.

I am now considering what the tofu munching yoga practicing pot-plant talking-to classes might call ‘detoxing’, but what everyone actually knows is called ‘drying out’, for at least a week. This will be aided by the Christmas booze now being gone.

There’s a whole industry dedicated to making people poison themselves with delicious alcohol. There’s also a whole industry targeted at getting people to eat lots of roughage. The result is that over Christmas and on New Year’s Day the suggestible population wake up and scream ‘my head!’ and then, for the month thereafter, wake up, bolt to the loo and scream ‘agggggggggggg, my arse, ahhhhggg, make it stop, make it stop….oh Christ call a doctor, agggg, that’s not right, shit shit shit I can’t get the lavvie window open’ and so on. On the whole I think one is better off with a glass of something.

First hangover of 2007

Cause: Pinot Grigio. Effect: Not unlike flu, that is, nausea, headache and a general feeling that one wants to take the duvet that has been stuffed into one's head and crawl under it for the day. Also, oddly, my mouth tasted almost exactly the same as I imagine a badger's arse does. This is not, of course, a suspicion I ever want to test, but I'm fairly positive that is the closest approximation.

The evening started oh-so promisingly with the suggestion of a brisk walk into the Village to get a kebab. On the way, it was decided to stop in at the Red Lion. Recently refurbished, it was interesting to see that the (low) ceilings were actually cream, rather than a shade of second-hand Benson's that seems popular in pubs. Drinks were bought. Drinks were drunk. At some point there may well have been a packet of peanuts involved.

Suspect that evening got away from me around about the fourth large glass of wine. Remember wandering home in a manner almost exactly like one of those diagrams of bee dances.

The right to privacy

It’s January and, like many other lard-arsed sloths, I’ve made my way back to the gym. My new entertainment is to pound the treadmill in foul temper and think about all the great things I’ll be able to do with the money I save once I cancel my membership.

At least I can now see where that money is going. Previously I thought it was used to fund the vast amounts of make-up used by the receptionists but no, we’ve had a refurbishment.

Indeed one of the reasons I stayed away from the gym during December (well, that and the duvet being a far better option) was that the changing rooms were a building site. During the refurb there were temporary showers. Not an outside area and a garden hose, but not far off. These were the porta-potty equivalent of showers. They were tiny, the size of a telephone box, but without the charm added by the eau-de-tramp piss and the business cards of the local tarts. Instead what you had was a damp upright coffin with a shower curtain that clung to you no matter how far away from it you tried to shuffle.

In comparison, the new showers are palatial. Indeed, they are just like the old showers, but with one important difference - the two cubicles at the end have doors on them.

Doors! Why? Where is the necessity for privacy? A shower in the gym is the one place you can reasonably expect to get away with lathering your genitals in front of other people. Try it in the queue for the Corkscrew at Alton Towers for instance, and there’d be a right old fuss.

Privacy of this sort encourages deviancy and degeneracy. What the hell does one do in a shower that’s so private? Have they got an embarrassing tattoo?

Worst of all, surely somebody using such a facility would draw attention to themselves and be eyed with suspicion. You’d wondered exactly what, and who, was going on in there. Maybe they’re for smokers?

Little Chef shrinks further

(I have to declare an interest here. One of the best meals I ever had, in my life, was in a Little Chef. It was on the return trip of a road-trip to Wales, many years ago, and I had burger and chips. With the chips the waitress brought sauces in little individual paper cup-cake cups. One for tomato sauce, one for mayonnaise, one for mustard. I thought this was the height of sophistication at the time. Looking back I realise…it is the height of sophistication! Fresh sauces to dip your chips in, what luxury! Okay, maybe it had more to do with the circumstances of the trip or how hungry I was, but whenever I dine somewhere that doesn’t meet expectations I think to myself - ‘it’s okay…but it’s no Little Chef’.)

I bloody love ‘The Avengers’. I especially like the ones where eccentric, embittered Old School/Colonial types feel that society is going to the dogs and that the only sane response is to hatch some completely barmy scheme to control the weather or something and so restore a decent way of life. This is normally resolved by Steed and Emma kicking the crap out of the villains. Sometimes champagne is involved, which is always nice.

Lately though, I’ve been starting to see things from the villain’s point of view. It really does seem that society is under attack - from those that are hungry for profit rather than the all-day breakfast. These are the same people who celebrate mediocrity, and who brand excellence as ‘eccentric’ - which means that it’s easier to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Hence the rise of BK and McDs and the decline of the Little Chef.

Nostalgia time: Ah, the golden age of motorway travel, when cars were huge steel boxes with back seats like sofas. A car journey back then was an adventure and a stop at a Little Chef was a treat, not least because the price of the food was roughly equal to the GDP of a developing country. Back then, in-car entertainment was squabbling with siblings and being car-sick. If you didn’t arrive at your destination with bruising all down your arm and chunks in your hair you just weren’t trying. Of course navigation was simpler then too, no need for GPS, just the AA book of the road if you were posh or Dad’s unfailing sense of direction if not. Or you could use a Little Chef map. Cunningly, these showed all the Little Chefs in Britain, even though this meant omitting the occasional detail, like Stonehenge, or Birmingham.

Eating on the road today is a simple choice - you either pack a lunch (advised) or, if you’re stopping on the motorway, you have a BK, McDs or KFC (not to be advised). None of these, by the way, offer the option of ‘flask tea’ as a beverage. It’s all ‘freshly brewed’ - do these people have no idea at all of what travelling should mean?

The Little Chef was a half-way-café between the restaurant and the caravan-in-the-layby. It was where businessmen could break their journey and eat a hearty, artery-clogging meal then wrestling indigestion for the next 200 miles before wowing them at a sales conference in Peterborough.

More than that, it was an oasis. You could imagine poets idly composing as they rested between hitched lifts, or bands resting up as their knackered transit steamed and rusted outside. Can you imagine any of that in a McDs? I can’t imagine poetry being written in McDs, txt mssgs maybe, but not poetry. Nor can I believe it is conducive to romance - I bet many a mistress was met in a Little Chef and many a secretary woo’d by an expense account all day breakfast.

Okay, there has been the occasional fiasco - there was that rather ugly review where it was revealed that Little Chef omelettes came in kit form (rather than an egg, or even just a hen and some patience) but overall it would appear that excellence is once more being traded for mediocrity.

Well screw that, I’m not standing for it. I’m off to the roof of the castle to continue my weather experiments.

Not again!

There are three types of dog owner.

The first type is the Gentleman. A Gentleman will have a gundog, a breed that is noble, right, true and godly. Such a dog will be up at dawn, spend the day chin-deep in fen, bracken, bog or field retrieving the remains of the fowl blasted out of the sky by his master and still have the energy to lie in front of a fire all evening and, as occasion demands, be blamed for the strange smells emanating from any older relatives. A Gentleman may also have hounds. These are, after all, modern times.

The second type is the Player. A Player will have a terrier. Wire-haired or smooth it is principally a rat-catcher with character. Cats are all very well for mice or making the house smell of mad old women but when it comes to country-rats, that have grown to huge proportions eating the oats from the barn and the occasional unlucky sheep, you need something that knows no fear and very little sense.

Finally you have your air-hear heiress. I’m not sure what breed exactly it is that she has but, judging by recent reports, they take all of the hair they’ve removed from her pee-pee place and stick it around a yapping noise to make them.

Even this last variety of owner is better than the sort of people who don’t own dogs but rather just have them, the same way they have a crappy little car with a crappy body-kit and a shocking sound-system in it. Like their ill-spelled tats, they believe that getting a certain kind of dog will make them look hard. For these people (oh, and drug dealers) the animal of choice is the pit-bull terrier. This is because it does make people cross the street to avoid it and this is because it’s well known that the only way to stop a pit-bull is to hit it with something heavy - preferably the 8:20 from Paddington.

Like a man who’s had one sprout too many, I’m in danger of repeating myself when it comes to dangerous dogs (http://gentlemanandplayer.blogspot.com/2006/10/doggies.html) but even worse is when the dangerous dogs go on repeating their behaviour, in this case eating a child. Again.

You can tell a lot about a dog by its arse. Gundogs have an arse usually covered in mud, gorse and a wagging tail. Terriers have a puckered little arse to ensure no water or anything gets up there. Pubewawaws (or whatever) usually have an arse pointed down into a handbag and about to do something catastrophic as a result of their owner putting them on the Atkins. Pit-bulls have their arse-hole on the end of their leash - or usually not, usually strutting alongside.

I’m not advocating cruelty to animals but…

1) All pit-bulls need to be battered to a puree with a length of scaffolding. Now. Period.

2) Same goes for the owners.

3) We’re back to arses again, I suggest that a true test of control would be to shove a dollop of mustard up a pit-bull’s arse (race horse fashion) then lock it in the boot of its owner’s car, with the owner, then turn the stereo on. If the owner can control the dog in such circumstances, all well and good, if not…the boot stays locked.