Radio daze

There’s a very good chance that this entry will contain even more eccentricities of spelling, grammar and reason than is normally the case. This is because I have been decorating, painting the kitchen to be precise and this has involved gloss paint. Not the new, environmentally friendly gloss paint that is water based and is, essentially, skimmed milk, no; I’m using oil based gloss that I’m pretty sure is the thing they paint on tanks to make them bomb proof. Painting with this stuff is the closest you can get to solvent abuse without getting a bag of glue stuck to your nose.

But while the fumes are strong enough to make you hallucinate vapour-trails being left by your finger when you wave it in front of your own face, it’s not enough to offset the horror of listening to the radio.

Listening to the radio is essential while decorating, and a good tune can really up the tempo of the swish of the roller and gloop of the brush being dipped in the paint pot. However, there’s only so much commercial radio one can listen to – the problem being the commercials. I’m not sure what the demographic of commercial radio is, but whoever listens appears to need a lot of adverts about debt consolidation services.

In an attempt to find some fresh toons, I tuned into Radio 1. Luckily, using gloss paint means that I had plenty of white spirit to hand to clean the brushes with. Highly flammable, it was most useful for dousing the radio with before setting it on fire and hurling it out of the window. Over reaction? Then you haven’t heard Jo Wiley’s show. Now I know that DJs are hardly likely to land weekend jobs at CERN, but are they not supposed to make up for the lack of smarts with personality? And if all fails, can they at least not pick some good tunes? It would appear that air play at the moment is granted to a song that starts normally, then has an angry man shouting over the top of the lyrics. Unfortunately, he’s not shouting ‘turn that down’.

Did you know that somebody has sampled the guitar lick from ‘need you tonight’ by INXS? They then shout over the top of it. I suspect it is somebody from an energy starved part of the world intent on using Michael Hutchins spinning in his grave at 8,000 rps as some sort of grotesque turbine.

Manoflage

Sat on the train this morning next to a woman who was, as occasionally happens, putting on her make-up.

You never see a bloke doing this, do you? Possibly this is because blokes, as a rule, don’t wear make-up. On the occasions that they do, you don’t want to be sitting next to them. Could you, for instance, stay sitting next to somebody who started applying green, black and brown stripes to their face? Possibly, but only if they were not also muttering under their breath.

I suppose a chap may be putting on his make up for work – although this only applies if you are a) a clown or b) in a KISS tribute band.

e Day + 1

Oh God…is it not over yet. Right, that’s it, I’m going into media black out mode. If I hear one more opinion from the ‘experts’ who predicted that this was a ‘three horse race’ and, oblivious to the fact that all the polls were wrong and all their opinions were wrong, are STILL spouting into camera, I shall have to double my regular breakfast tipple of horse tranquilisers and brasso.

e Day - tally ho!

Nigel Farage, standing as a parliamentary candidate for UKIP and so a Europhobe of the first water, has been hurt when the small aeroplane he was travelling in crashed. The pilot was also pretty badly hurt.

Exciting rumours that it had been shot down by a Fokker proved to be unfounded. Apparently the ‘vote UKIP’ banner it was trailing wrapped round it on landing.

Hoisted by his own petard?

e Day - on the box

In normal society, whenever somebody begins a sentence with ‘I’m not a racist, but…’ two things happen: the first is that the air is filled with the sound you get when you rub a balloon between your hands, as everyone in listening distance cringes i8n anticipation of what’s coming next, and the second is that some arsehole shares views that have been out of fashion longer than rah-rah skirts.

So how anyone campaigning on being a racist was ever going to work I’m not sure; but that doesn’t stop the BNP, who were out on the streets yesterday assaulting the voters. That’s right, a BNP councillor had a fight with some of his constituents. On camera. Nice.

There is a proud tradition of pugilism and politics merging though – well, there’s the Prescott incident, when Prezza battered some oink who was guilty of a) egg throwing and b) possession of an offensive haircut.

At least Prescott had some style though, and a rather excellent left hook I seem to recall.

e Day

It’s election day! Thank Christ. The election has been described variously as ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ for ugly people (which is odd, because I thought that’s what ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ was) or Eurovision for straight people. Whatever, it means that after tonight, there’s a chance that the media won’t be saturated with politicians and pundits the way a mattress at a crime scene is saturated with an undiscovered corpse.

So while schoolchildren roam the streets because some schools are closed to become polling stations, there is some excitement that it’s all finally happening. This is, I think, despite, rather than because of, the media frantically trying to whip up excitement in the election in exactly the same way that somebody tries to convince an unwilling participant that bondage really is good fun.

Meanwhile, life goes on normally for everyone not voting. Case in point are the tourists taking photographs of the telephone box outside my office. It must feature in tens of thousands of photographs, no doubt all of some smiling tourist standing in or beside it. Of course, for total authenticity, the telephone box should contain a urinating tramp and be festooned with business cards for prostitutes.