Degas at the ballet at the Royal Academy

The first thing you notice when you strap on your audio tour at the Royal Academy's blockbuster autumn exhibition 'Degas at the ballet' is that you have been mispronouncing 'Degas' for years as day-gah. Apparently, if you are qualified enough to record an audio tour for the RA then you are qualified enough to risk pronouncing it 'Digger'. Little did I know that this master of capturing movement and Parisian dancers is apparently the most famous Australian painter since Rolf Harris.

I love audio tours, and in this case, with the subject so often the ballet, the audio tour really lends to the sense of occasion. You have the ballet dancers on the canvas, ballet music in your ears and, by the time you reach the final gallery, every little girl in the place is attempting ballet poses, inspired by the images and dreaming of being the next Darcy Bussell or Angelina Ballerina, depending on cultural reference points or age.

Back on the walls, I was coming to the conclusion that Digger certainly had some chops. His paintings include devices to lead your eye around the picture, with figures and structures vanishing out of frame. My personal favourite was a painting of a night at a ballet about, this being France, naughty nuns. In the foreground of the picture the great and the; good bearded ballet goers sit and chat or watch the nuns whirling, their movements blurred in an uncanny anticipation of trying to capture fast motion on film. One of the patrons is in profile, holding a pair of opera glasses and directing his gaze not to the stage but sideways, out of frame to, one supposes, his mistress's box.

With its capturing of a moment in time, of society, of movement and music, it's a stunning piece of art, but if you had commissioned a painting of a famous ballet that included erotic nuns, and were presented with portraits of a bunch of old blokes, one might feel a little ripped off.

Digger's painting career was taking off at the same time as the development of photography, both still and moving, and the science of photography was just turning into an art. The exhibit was as much about photography as it was about girls in tutus and in terms of informing context, was excellent. What was also clear was the beauty of the cameras back in the early days, little mahogany cameras that were more furniture than something to snap your holiday photographs.

One of the things that most impressed was the 360 degree portrait. Surrounded by cameras, the subject was photographed from all angles simultaneously. It's a pity that they had to wait another hundred years before the technology would exist to animate these and project them as a film, as I reckon the Matrix movies would have been greatly improved if Neo was a portly gentleman wearing a top hat and a beard the size of a cumulus cloud.

The paintings were, though, magnificent. This was the greatest painter of the dancing figure painting at a time where the world of capturing movement was changing forever. Even more wonderful than the paintings were the sculptures, originally created as wax figurines for reference and private contemplation, cast in bronze they were simply stunning.

One could not help but wonder about Digger's sexuality. Luckily, for somebody who spent so much of his time painting young ballet dancers, he appears to have been a confirmed fan of musical theatre. At least I could see no reference to a marriage, then again, if I was famous, and with a flick of a brush make a ballet dancer famous too, why get married? Private in his habits, most of the pictures of him are from his own experiments with photography, showing him and his friends either sitting stiffly for portraits, or clowning around for the camera. The catalogue also has a photograph of him emerging from a gent's loo, the significance of this is not clear and parallels with former Wham! front man George Michael end there as, as far as I am aware, Digger never got out of his skull on weed and decided to drive his horse and carriage at speed into a photo booth or whatever it was.

My one complaint - it was not French enough (there were French people there, enjoying themselves, who had no doubt come by Eurostar to see how a really good exhibit is curated), although the final film, a ten second loop of Digger being papped on his doorstep, was good, the street was full of French people and signs for little bakeries and coffee shops, and it was so Parisian you could almost smell the dog shit, but the Van Gough exhibition was the equivalent of gargling with red wine and rubbing onions underneath your armpits, it was that French.

Pramping in St Paul's

It's Occupied London are, I suppose, protesting about the dire dearth of decent public loos in the capital, and quite right too. It's bad enough that public loos are few and far between, with those super-loo monstrosities dotted around the place like, literally, a shit TARDIS, but one can't even be assured of a decent loo if one employs the popular tactic of dodging into a pub, pretending to be a customer and using the facilities. Even perfectly decent boozers seem seem unable to maintain a perfectly decent gent's. In the case of the place I was in last week, going to the gent's was like wandering into a coastal cave at low tide, it was gloomy, the floor was wet and there was a prominent odour.

Of course, there is also I believe a faction within the protesters who represent Occupy London. Like their hipster brethren across the Atlantic in New York, they are protesting that the banks have all the money and won't give it to people like them to, presumably, buy bigger tents. They are angry, but not as angry as the people who think that the architectural and spiritual magnificence of St Paul's cathedral is really not improved by being surrounded by quite a lot of nylon in jolly primary colours.

The prampers outside St Paul's cathedral are doing a fantastic job of drawing attention to how crap the Church of England are at taking a hard line on using a holy water cannon to wash the protesting scum off the streets, while at the same time neatly deflecting attention away from the bankers down the street who are fucking up the economy through their trademarked working methods of greed, stupidity and spending the afternoon wandering round in a coked-up daze after doing a couple of lines off of a sweaty hookers arse in the company car park during lunch.

The media has made much of the prampers. Apparently they go home in the evening, leaving their tents behind. I trust that the local homeless population are aware that a load of comfy middle class tents, presumably with iPod docks and cool boxes full of sustaining snacks and indifferent wines, are available for occupation at St Paul's. Let's see if the protestors are quite so happy to occupy a tent that has been used overnight by Dosser Dave and his incontinent dog Digger. And I hope that when the protestors do eventually pack up and leave, they check the tents first. Nothing would put a crimp in your first day at the Glastonbury festival quite like shaking out your two-man 'Mountain Master 4000' and discovering a desiccated tramp. And his dog.

Whatever you think of people who camp in the centre of the city, they are bloody irritating. The council, police and church all appear powerless to get rid of the tents. In my experience, the best way to remove campers is to start charging them exorbitant rents for their pitches. All St Paul's needs to do is become a National Trust property and it's problem solved.

The other way to remove tents is of course for the weather to turn bad, although I expect that foul weather in England in November is too much to ask for (and the ongoing mild weather could be taken as a sign that the protest has some sort of higher approval). Maybe they need an act of God. A few days of rain and I don't care how committed the protestors are, they'll soon beat the twat singing Coldplay to death with his own lute and buggered off to the nearest decent pub.

Beer beer beer

Stopping in at the Adnams 'cellar and home' shop at Holkham, I had a revelation. When wandering the 'cellar' part (much more interesting, there is only so much excitement one can summon for napkins, while beer, wine and gin is a source of constant delight) I saw that their idea of preparing for Christmas was to try and flog more beer.

Rather than try the genius marketing trick I have always favoured when justifying loading the supermarket trolly to the point when the back axle is dragging along the floor of wondering aloud 'do I want to be forever remembered as the host of the party where the booze ran out?' (now though, with the 'Shed Red' sitting maturing in a cupboard, I fear being the host who's guests we reduced to drinking the home brew), they go for the straightforward 'a keg and a tray, it's the Adnams party way'.

That's right, a keg and a tray. Not a keg. Not a tray. A keg and a tray! I am now gravely concerned that without a keg and a tray, I won't be able to party the Adnams way, which I presume means falling asleep pissed behind the sofa at some point.

I have always rather liked kegs, one has has that fabulous need to finish the damn thing on the same night that it is tapped, or it loses fizz or turns to slurry or something. I suppose it harks back to when we had sensible licensing hours and drinking against the clock was a real and valued skill.

Also, one can get several kegs and pretend to be a landlord. Is their anything quite so satisfying as barring one of your own mates?

Fat Faced

I have been accused of finding 'Fat Face' 'just in time'. I was going to deny the accusation, but as I sat there in my cargo shorts, tee shirt and hoodie all from the aforementioned shop, I think I would have been short on evidence, even if I was, as always, long on indignation. I decided to sulk instead.

Whoever came up with the Fat Face brand is a marketing genius. The business model is simple - make young persons' clothes in middle-aged persons' sizes, and staff the shop with young people who can keep a straight face when they see their hundredth bloke of the day holding in his gut as he tries on a shirt.

Their slogan is 'it's never too late to become what you've always wanted to be' or something. I hate to argue, but judging by the way I nearly passed out the last time I had to run for my train, it is now too late for me to do anything athletic enough to bring me the sort of success and recognition necessary to get lucrative sponsorship, a video game franchise and a fizzy drink or shoe named after me, so allowing me to stop doing whatever it was that made me sweaty yet wealthy and allow me instead to recline on the sofa, watching DVD box sets and eating cheese.

Let's be clear, cargo pants should not go up to a size forty waist. If you want to dress like a surfer dude, you should be willing to exercise, do crystal meth, or both.

As for me, whether I found it just in time or not, I am just happy that they always seem to have something on the sale rack, and that their clothes are so comfy, even if it means I do look like the shitest surfer ever.

VW camper of delight

Like every normal adult male, the Lego catalogue drops through my door on a regular basis. A slim but gratifyingly glossy publication, it tends to shy away from listing the 99p minifigs and other pocket money sets widely available in the toy shops of the shires and focus more on limited edition monstrosities designed to appeal to dads who think their child could benefit from a Death Star large enough to pose a real crushing hazard to their toddler. These toys are only available in the community of Online, near I believe the settlement of Internet and connected with what I understand is termed a superhighway. Essentially the peak of mankind's technical achievements mean that you can get plastic brick kits that cost two hundred and fifty quid delivered to your door.

Sitting comfortably I flicked through the pages. It was the usual stuff designed to appeal to the adult Lego enthusiast, that is, anyone who is of an age lucky enough to count 'slave Liea' rather than Jar Jar Binks as a formative experience, and then...what's this? A VW camper van, in Lego. For only eighty quid!

http://shop.lego.com/en-GB/Volkswagen-T1-Camper-Van-10220

There is something slightly queasy about the ultimate symbol of anti-establishment freedom (most VW campers come ready spray painted with the CND symbol on the side, a Greenpeace sticker instead of a tax disc and a handy storage compartment to hide your weed) costing eighty quit in Lego form. Surely anyone with eighty quid is better of buying, as Malcolm Tucker put it 'a goat the whole village can fuck', rather than a Lego kit that, once assembled, is at best going to sit there gathering dust (and writing as the owner of a Lego X Wing, I write with authority...and yes, of course I love it, it's a Lego X Wing, when the house is empty I recreate the Death Star trench run in my hallway) and at worst is going to be a constant nagging reminder that you don't own a real one.

Men dream of owning a real VW camper van. It's the ultimate symbol of freedom and of picking up hippy girls and having uninhibited sex with them. Maybe though, the joy of the open road is best experienced as a journey of imagination. On the open road of the mind there are no speed cameras and no BMWs, there are loads of places to pull over and enjoy the view, there are still Little Chefs and there are still happy hippy hitch hikers.

Still want one though.

A bloggable offence - kebab couple

So what goes in a blog? Easy, if you have a themed blog, reviewing sandwiches (especially exciting at seasonal holidays when festive flavours and 'special editions' are on offer, who can forget the 'Sandwich Nook' festive offering from Christmas 2008; the 'Lapland loaf' that, when the filling was discovered, became known as the 'red Rudolph' and known to parents as 'the reason my child cried to the point of dehydration'. Ill advised as it was to use an animal that appears on Christmas cards as a sandwich filling, that was as nothing to the fuss their 'Wind in the willows' triple decker caused. That, and the surprising discovery many made that lots of people are allergic to badger, is the reason you don't see any 'Sandwich Nook' shops on the high street any more) or something where your stimulus is supplied on a regular basis. More problematic where the blog is about as focused as a fog bank, but less of a problem if your supply of happy pills has dried up and you can find something to be articulately outraged about on a daily basis and use the blog as a therapeutic rant which doubles as an economic measure, relieving you of the necessity of purchasing a stamp to mail your paranoid ramblings to the Daily Telegraph, or more likely from the stress-inducing deadlines one faces as a columnist on the Daily Mail.

I like themed blogs. I love those blogs that review things, like toilet roll or instant pot meals, and really love the enthusiasm and delight that the writers convey when, having exhausted the supply of martial on the shelves of national chain supermarkets, they discover regional chains and independents selling different brands, then start buying foreign brands on the internet. I'm not sure what I'd like to review least, an instant pot meal from an unlikely country with a GDP measured in goats that hasn't had an election since the British packed up and left, or toilet roll from the sort of place where the President gets driven around in a stretch tractor and the currency is a root vegetable. All I know is, if I had eaten the former, I'd be grateful for a large supply of the latter.

Ultimately, when not blogging about something; a favourite television show, books, films, comics, chocolates, rabbits, hinges, wigs, shoes, ducks, being left handed in a right handed world, having one of those blogs where you record a something-of-the-day like your poo or your kids' paintings or something else that really, really, really, is only of interest to you and even then should not be of that much interest, or if you just post occasional pictures of kittens, then blogging tends to be about nothing. A random thought, experience or image captured forever and recorded for posterity.

Like the other night, in the kebab shop.

I like my kebab shop. I know the chaps, the chaps know me. We grunt our greetings and at Christmas exchange mumbled compliments of the season. I don't go to the kebab shop for social intercourse, I go to the kebab shop for a kebab, or occasionally a burger, and for chips. The kebabs really are excellent and I should clarify that they are not purchased when I'm drunk or consumed when weaving down the street leaving a trail of dropped onion slices, the snail trail of the kebab consuming inebriated, but rather provide a delightful alternative to cooking ones own dinner and, importantly, bring a touch of that 'going out for dinner' sensation but with the added bonus that one can eat dinner at home (and my idea, Dragons, is for a restaurant chain where the seating is not the traditional table and chair set up, but rather a sofa, a telly and a couple of trays, and which will serve customers who wish to wear pyjama bottoms).

This night the couple ahead of me in the kebab shop looked young, groomed, and in that stage of their relationship where personality kinks are endearing rather than bloody irritating. Giggling like freshly medicated loons and touching each other like a pair of grooming monkeys, they eventually made their choice of supper.

A kebab.

To share.

It was, I think, difficult to decide what it was about their behaviour that I found most contemptible, hence the blog entry, to order my thoughts.

That a man would share his kebab is bad. That any self-respect woman would be seen with a man who would share his kebab is bad. That when faced with the 'let's just order one portion and two spoons' challenge, the bloke folded, is bad - but understandable, he will learn later that it's better to put a stop to that kind of behaviour early on rather than have to explain at some later date that he ordered the cheesecake because he wants a slice of cheesecake, and that if she also wants cheesecake, then please tell the nice man with the order pad that she wants cheesecake, not an extra spoon, unless she intends to help herself from food from a neighbouring table, because she sure as hell isn't getting any cheesecake and...why are you crying?

Written down, I realise that my thoughts were as mean as they were unnecessary. On balance it's better that young couples touch each other in kebab shops and, presumably, feed each other morsels of kebab once home. I expect to find kebabs, burgers, chips, a warm welcome and slightly shameful fellow customers at the kebab shop, I don't expect to find romance. So maybe my reaction was shock.

But I maintain that it's a bad idea to share your kebab.