fish face

That’s a tired little face.

I’ve got used to the wrinkles, I call them laughter lines because I’m vain enough not to want to want people to think that a passing rhino slept on my face. Besides the puffiness of the bags under my eyes works in my favour, a natural balancing effect.

The company I work for is a publishing company and PR agency, and a large part of my life is involved with our own PR. That is entertaining the poor devils who apparently seem to think we know what we are doing and provide us with the money to do it. Actually that’s unfair, we’re good and we give a damn, every single person who works in that company will go the extra yard…in my case the extra gin & tonic. It’s something that’s just evolved, I seem to have a knack for it, even if that knack often simply comprises staying conscious long enough to pay the bill.

We work in the shipping industry and most of our clients are – well, it’s like an old boy s club, you know, one of those dreadful stone age industries full of moustaches and secret handshakes, entourages, dull ties and nepotism. It’s also full of Scandinavians, Greeks and Japanese, who like to visit London and enjoy them selves on a rather grand scale.

Today, for lunch it was the Danes, our Viking friends, who appear to think it’s quite suitable to drink eight pints of Guinness from midday to three, although I’m guessing, just guessing mind, that they are fast asleep in their hotel rooms by now.

It’s not that I had any intention of keeping up with them you know, but you have to at least show willing even if a few of mine ended up in the potted plant in the corner.

So I’m sorry, if when I returned to the office and you were the recipient of an email, it seemed a little dull witted.

As we say were I come from, “I’m goosed”.

when the bee stings

Soup is great isn’t it?

Soup is comfort food, nourishing and warm, there’s nothing better on a cold winter night.

I make great soup. Freshly chopped leaks and spring onions, sweet potatoes and yams, borlotti beans, chick peas and chopped fine beans and a handful of spinach towards the end, just to blanch it.

Then I add a can of soup, because I haven’t worked out how to actually add flavour yet.

But it’s scrummy with a big hunk of fresh bread.

Soup is good. Hot toasty dogs in front of an open fire are good. The tops of babies heads are good, fresh towels, crisp laundered bed sheets, a glass of rioja, hot buttered toast and tea…well, you get the picture. These are a few of my favourite things.

Lower down on my list of things to do when it’s raining outside is sitting in the middle of an astroturf pitch trying to bite back tears. Whoever it was that was charged with designing the soles of astro shoes was definitely overqualified. Make them grip they told him or her, and they did. If they’d told this person to design a condom the finished product would have been a microscopic mesh of carbon fibre and ruthenium capable of withstanding twelve atmospheres, deep space and being fired through a toilet wall without spilling a single tadpole.

Unfortunately this particular savant got astro soles instead. So when my meagre body decided to change direction with all of the feeble acceleration that I can muster, it was glued to the floor with the same coefficient of friction as a formula 1 tyre. Something had to give and it was my knee with an audible clunk.

On the bright side, I’ve found a comfortable way to sleep with it, but it does involve a lot of pillows and contortions, a sort of page 27 of the single man’s guide to the kama sutra…last night the covers rode right up over my head while I was asleep.

Maybe the soup was a bad idea on reflection

what the...

I woke up this morning, crumpled and stiff on the sofa, panicky and breathless due to the large panting, idiotically happy spaniel on my chest...and my first cohesive thought was - "Tippi Hedren"

Wha..?

Suggestions on a postcard please.

caveat emptor

I have no idea what Kristie was looking for when she found this but I read it yesterday, and I still don’t know whether to be horrified, or laugh, so I’m going to settle for doing both.

At least I got a new word out of it, the “navus”, navel to ass.

All I’m saying is be very wary of what you sign.

anyone for a food fight?

Getting older was never a thing that occured to me to worry about. Let's be frank here, I never expected it to be an issue.....

If some reason it did ever cross my mind I then I'd think it might be rather fun. From what I've seen one's autumnal years are filled with a whole host of opportunities for mischief. There's endless scope for frightening small children; getting too close and shouting at them v.e.r.y s.l.o.w.l.y as if they were deaf or hard of uderstanding, poking them with bony, liver spotted fingers, or demanding to know if they've seen your glasses when you are quite clearly wearing them. For engaging very busy looking business people in futile conversation on street corners, or chatting to the ticket sales person at the local train station about train times on a Wednesday afternoon three months hence of a service to Belgium out of Waterloo, while a queue of rush- hour suits mewl and tap dance behind me. I might wear a hat. Or better still wear a hat and drive. And I will certainly purchase a pair of fawn trousers to which I will add a damp stain to the crotch for when I travel on the bus. I will purchase a bottle of "eau de urine", I've never actually spotted it in a shop, but I'm sure it exists.

One thing I shall not be doing is eating "convenience" food.

I like to cook, in fact I thoroughly enjoy it. The very act of preparing something that I will find good to eat is relaxing and fulfilling. There's a sense of anticipation, and a glass of wine, maybe a few olives, and some music all add to the occasion...because that's how I feel about it, that dinner, even dinner alone on a weekday evening, if provided with a soupcon of tlc, should be a small but worthwhile occasion.

Conversely sometimes I just can't be arsed.

When the washing needs hanging and the dog's are wet through after a walk in the rain, or the bed needs changing, it's open the bills day, or I've just had a particularly long day at work - then I succumb to the celophane wrapped allure of something from the chiller cabinet. Something bland but microwavable, warm and quick.

Well, that's the theory anyway. The reality is that convience food is anything but convenient. After I've pierced the cellophane cover on my "pasta a la slop", it goes into the microwave for 4 minutes. I'm instructed to stir it at this point, and then return to the microwave it for a further 2 minutes. I'm not instructed to remove the lid so stirring seems to be out of the question, unless I'm supposed to stir it with a toothpick through one of the tiny perforations - so I shake it instead. It's hot, so I yelp and drop it onto the kitchen floor. Still, that seems to have done the trick, the contents have certainly been rearranged. When I turn my meal the right way up only a tiny amount of the liquid has escaped and I can see that some of the caramalised edges are now in the middle - good enough. During it's second spell in the microwave I open my packet of 'ready prepared' caesar salad...in order to prepare it. There's a knack to these bags, a knack that I don't possess. I pinch two folds of bag on either side of the serrated top and pull, gently at first and then with more force - it splits unexpectedly an inch to the left of the seam, all the way down to the bottom spilling my lettuce and a smaller bag of croutons on the floor. I step back looking for the croutons and find them - with my foot, they're actually quite large and very sharp, it's like finding a 3 - pin plug in a stockinged foot. My lettuce is now hairy and I find a colander to wash it. In the meantime the microwave has gone "bing"so my pasta must be fully cremated by now.

There's another, separate sachet of caesar sauce, with an indent where I am supposed to tear. Do they think I'm stupid, naive in the way of the sauce sachet? I approach it with scissors and take off the corner with a satisfying snip, and then as I squeeze it over the lettuce and croutons the indent gives way in any case, covering my thumb in white, sticky sauce as if I had taken a time out to masturbate before opening the wine.

My meal is fused to the inside of the carton. There's a tiny flap on the cellophane lid which, presumably, I am to use to tear it off. The carton is too hot too hold so I place it down on the counter and scald two fingers trying to grasp the tiny lip on lid - eventually, bored with the whole thing I simply slash at it with a knife and pour the contents into a bowl I should have warmed while I was distracted by the enchantment of arielly inclined lettuce.

I did eventually sit down with a glass of wine, hunk of bread, hairy caesar salad and a bowl of rapidly cooling pasta gloop with added fragments of cellophane. I enjoyed the bread.

So my question is: What will happen when I get older. Will I have to prepare every single meal from it's basic ingredients, or eat out every day of my life? Actually scrub that, it's more wide ranging than just food. So, so many packets and packages of household goods seem to be deigned with scant regard to the end user. My fingers are not in the best shape I know, but god forefend an elderly person faced with a "resealable" bag of dog biscuits. "Pull tab tear here" my arse, what with - a pair of pliers? "Reseal by pressing and running fingers along red line", not in a month of Sundays!! I've buggered it completely already trying to open it. Or something as simple as pulling open the ring pull on a can of beans, the instruction should say, "flip up ring and pull, and then bleed into contents".

Somebody, somewhere is obviously charged with the responsibility of designing these packages, and one might have thought their brief would include terms like "ergonomic", "ease of use" and "user friendly". Are they impish, derelict or just simply divorced from the real world? I'm beginning to think that they sit in offices, where they are fed, toileted and put into bed at night - to lead gay, playful and creative lives free of the clutter of any preconceptions about how their products will actually be used. Certainly none of them have grandparents.

If there is a hell then I hope that there is a room full of starving packaging designers and shelves upon shelves of beautiful fresh food - they wouldn't have a f#cking clue.....

of tantrums and tents

Last night Aeolus stalked the skies of suburban London.

To lie in bed in the early hours of the morning as the god of the winds plays havoc amongst the trees and garden gates along the street, rattling roof tiles and ripping clouds from their moorings to scud across the sky.

To lie in the dark as moonlight, like steam, billows across the walls. To hear the wind turn the corner of the house, and feel it draw its fingers across the window panes…

Is, strangely, comforting I’ve always thought. To be cosy in bed when wild, wild elemental fury unleashes itself on the ordinary world outside is a feeling of being cocooned, safe, warm and glad. It’s the perfect time to roll and find a warm drowsy figure next to you, and perhaps make some love in the joy of sharing a nest in the storm…

…alternatively you could do what I did, and open the bedroom door, and let the dogs in. And so we lay, at 3.30 this morning, by candlelight, hairy bottoms and wet noses (not me!!), and a glass of wine and listened to the storm swell and rise, to driven hail and the manic clang and clatter of Aeolus’ chariot passing by.

I’ve had trouble sleeping recently. I’m late to bed anyway, but this past week, even when I’ve made it abed by midnight I’ve still been wide awake at 2. It probably happens to us all periodically, and I know better than to fight it now, so I’ll try to regard it as a chance to catch up on some reading. I’m perilously close to finishing Mason & Dixon which has defeated me for years.

The alarm will go at 6.30 come what may so there’s very little point in getting anxious? And, since it has happened many times in the past I refuse to lie there and let my mind run riot while my body tries to find a comfortable cool spot in a bed that is beginning to resemble a sack of seed potatoes. Trust me, unless you have nary a care world, never lie in bed in the dead, dread hours of the night and take stock of your life.

So I’m sure it was 4 or 4.30 this morning when I finally slid back and closed my eyes on Toffee’s rump.

It’s like the storm, it will pass, I know it will in a childlike way - because it always does. So it’s comfortable, my bed is like the thick walls of the house, a place of shelter.

And hopefully, when it does, I won’t wake up in the office with drool on my shirt…

May I use your dictaphone?

No, use your finger like everyone else.


I feel that apologies are in order.

I’ve been remiss, there have been so many people here to say hello and share things, and so many places that I would normally go to, to share your fun and wisdom, but I’ve just not made it of late. It’s just that I’ve been a bit pre occupied – and if you had the view that I have right now you’d see two sets of eyes staring reproachfully at me from the corner of the room, so I’m constantly reminded that I have priorities too.

Some time ago I stopped blogging. It hadn’t been what I thought it would be. I thought it was simply a place where I could have a rant and rave, to let out some of the bile anonymously and then simply walk away, sated. On reflection, perhaps it is, in fact it probably serves whatever purpose we choose – which leaves me floundering in a way. Because what I’ve found is that I’ve made friends here, really, genuine friends.

This is a matter of no small amazement to me since I’m incredibly selfish in that respect. I’m a user, I have any number of casual acquaintances that I can go have fun with and then, when it suits me, ignore. But here I’ve found people that I’ve come to genuinely care for, and I feel an obligation to, the responsibility of friendship. (Am I alone in this? Is this some anomaly in me, or is it a delusion that separation – the not really knowing the other – causes?). Or am I simply being up-my-bum?

So apology, part two (don’t worry, it’s only a two part series), is that I find I am almost congenitally unable to write what I think most of the time. Not when I’m doing this, but when I’m speaking directly to A N Other of you out there who’s decided that it was worth saying hello. I’m not sure whether it’s a simple lack of vocabulary, or concentration, but I find it difficult to reply to even the simplest message with any clarity. I look back and wince at some of the replies I’ve written when I think of how many ways it’s possible to interpret them, when a few simple words would have done. I believe I should sign messages Terry Fuckwit from now on, as a disclaimer.

So, you should know, that I still do come and read, more often than not in the early hours of the morning, but don’t always comment – as much for me as you, in case I come across one of my own comments and go into spasm.



On a different note, thank you for all of the offers of helmets. I do in fact have a perfectly respectable motorcycle helmet that I wear when I’m out on the bike, robbing a bank and taking a shower (I’m lying about the bank). By the way, did you know that a “helmet” in the UK is also slang for an idiot (wally, plonker, dipstick, helmet etc), and also the bulbous bit on the end of the willy that stops your hand from sliding off? No?...I thought not).

I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more though, because although I spoke to the consultant before the examination I didn’t see him afterwards, I have to wait for a letter. We did chat for a while though and it was reassuring that he didn’t look at me as if I had a large piece of broccoli growing out of my ear, or ask me if I was insured.

But – whether it was because it was Valentine’s day, whether it was a because she held my hand, or the uniform, or the fact that she laughed when I said “Goodbye Mr Bond” when my head disappeared into the scanner – I don’t know. All I know is that, embarrassingly, I had an outrageous dose of the hots for the nurse. It’s a very good job that they didn’t scan my whole body or they’d have found a very strange phenomenon below the belly button. (Golly it was warm in there!).

I can't be sure

but I think they would have enjoyed Valentine's day..

I'm off to see the wizard...

You can generally tell by the other players reactions. You’re sitting on the pitch looking dazed and stupid and the first people to arrive will tell you, just by the looks on their faces, whether you’re off to casualty again.

“Do you want someone to come with you?”

“No, I’ll be fine….do I really need to go?”

“Yes. It’s small, but it’s quite deep and it’s bleeding like a bugger”. (We really need to consider playing in something other than white).

I have a book in the car anyway, which is good because you know you’re in for a long wait. Casualty staff regard sports injuries as tantamount to self inflicted wounds, which I can understand, they work long hours and see some awful things so my little knock is less than urgent……I’ll sit there for several hours behind little Johnny’s be-panned head and the nervous looking man with the vacuum cleaner attachment up his bottom….for a few more stitches.

This time though I’m feeling particularly stupid. There’s no denying it, I really am a bit of an ass.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with a neurologist and a scanner for precisely the reason that I’m back in casualty, cumulative damage to the noggin. Over the years I have treated my head in much the same way that other people treat a favourite mallet or coal scuttle. I’ve tenderised it, to the extent where my fingers have been clumsy and numb at times, my left eye is a kaleidoscope and I wear a headache like a knitted cap.

The problem is that almost everything I enjoy doing, playing hockey, riding the motorbike, even just generally having a laugh with friends, involves some potential for further cranial abuse.

And I know (truly, I do) that I’m an ass for caring sufficiently to try to get something done about it –whilst at the same time putting myself in a position where I use my head to redirect hockey balls.

I just think it’s going to be embarrassing tomorrow when the consultant finds a neat line of stitches above my left ear.

I’ll lie of course, I’ll tell him I got a pot stuck on my head…

yes, you are in the right place, really....

...don't touch that mouse.

I once lay in bed and watched an episode of "dude, pimp my ride", (tipsy and too lazy to turn over). Have you seen it? Some poor girl was relying on her clapped out vehicle to ferry her clapped out Granny to and from her clinic appointments. The car was an embarrassment, body panels were held on with chewing gum and string, it was clunky, rusty and generally a mess - people who saw it would point and laugh, and think "poor girl".

And then some kind hearted soul took pity on her and took her decrepit rust bucket and transformed it into a thing of beauty (at least in the eyes of the girl).

When she saw her new transport for the first time she laughed, she screamed, she peed herself a little and generally had hysterics.....and I thought "what a pratt".

Well, you see that girl - that's me that is!!

I went to sleep last night with my rust bucket safely parked in it's normal state of decrepitude, and woke up this morning to This!! The blog elf visited me while I was asleep.

Thank you Ginger, I have to go change my trousers, I've had a little accident....

HNT news flash from the past

Apparently they've been having a spring clean at Newbury hockey club, and decided to throw away a few less tasteful momentos. This was going in the rubbish until some one there rescued it, and returned it to it's rightful owner, me.

Now that's how to celebrate a goal....

HELP!

Does any one out there in the US know an entrepreneurial spirit, with a sense of humour and preferably interested in web based sales....I'll make us all rich, I promise.

a dog's life

There are new licensing laws here in the UK, which mean that many places are open until later. It’s not without opposition, we have something of a binge drinking culture here, so it’s not sufficient to assume that if places are open for longer that we will be in less of a rush to drink ourselves into a destructive frenzy....but that’s not really why I’m writing. It just suits me.

I want to come home from work, relax for a little while - let the day wash away, take the dogs for a walk, have a shower and maybe a glass or two of wine and then go out later, maybe 10’ish for some fun with friends. I don’t want to rush.

Which is precisely what I did on Friday. I’m sure that any of the people out there that I irresponsibly corresponded with in the early hours of Saturday morning will give testament to the fact that I’d “had a good time”. (Sorry, I promise I’ll try to find something else for my tipsy digits to do from now on).

If only you knew. If only you knew what a rotten sod I’d been you would have erased me.

I came in, filled a glass and switched on the fire in the living room, and lay and stretched. Charlie came to say hello, and sat on my bum in front of the fire. We watched the goggle box like that for a little while, I have no idea what, just blurry moving figures, police sirens and people shouting “wada wada, woomba” at each other. Until eventually I’d cooked nicely on one side (stick a fork in me, I’m done), and went for a refill.

It occurred to me that the chaps might need a wee, so I called and Charlie appeared and I opened the back door….and there sitting on the top step of the stairs into the yard was the most soulful looking Spaniel I’ve ever seen in my life.

Five hours.

Five miserable, freezing cold, lonely hours.

The last thing I had done before I went out was let them out for a wee, like any responsible ‘parent’. Unlike any responsible parent I hadn’t made sure that they were both back in doors before I went out.

He stared at me with hazel brown eyes the size of dinner plates, shivered and stood up. He slunk past me and I could feel the cold radiate off him, like the antithesis of a radiator, into the living room to sit on the hearth with his bum nearly in the fire. Charlie looked down into the yard and then up at me as if to say “I’m not falling for that” and I shut the door.

Spaniels don’t sulk, they can’t, it’s simply not in their nature -but there was a definite air of “have I not been good?” about him, and it took a lot of biscuits and hugs before we saw even a tiny little wag.

(A girl did a similar thing to me once and I sulked for a week).

business as usual

It's been an odd day. Apropos of absolutely nothing, my...the love of my life...called me and all of my internal organs went flippety flop, climbing over each other to reach a high point in my chest. "How are the boys" she said, "argle-bargle-morble-whoosh" I said.

Tonight I went back, to the pub, and played with my friends. 'She' was there, and nothing whatsoever happened, I was just a big hole in the room where a person should have been. It's a lucky escape I suppose, for one of us at least.

Why the f#ck I'm writing this tripe I'll never know....

four play

Oo, look at me, I've been tagged!!

First time for everything I suppose. I was ordered to do this by Kristie who has been in a lot of pain recently poor girl, and taking some top notch drugs for it too, so please feel free to go and get your own back on her for having to read this...four things thingy:

Four Jobs I've Had:
1. Farm labourer. During the school summer holidays I was packed off with sandwiches and flask everyday to the local farm as a serf. I hacked down miles upon miles of thistles with a scythe, jumped up and down in a giant sack compressing freshly sheared wool, baled hay, mucked out the stables…and generally had a wonderfully healthy, bloody awful time. (It would have helped if I could have understood one single word that the local farmers said to me).

2. Analytical Chemist. Approximately as fun packed as having your willy caught in a revolving door. I mixed mud and fish oil – really. Then I would go home…smelling of mud and fish oil. I have very few good memories.

3. Least Valuable Player. For a company that installed intensive care units and operating theatres. Actually I was supposedly a project manager and I worked with the nursing staff to make sure that they didn’t kill any of the patients with the equipment we had installed. I was succesful occasionally. It didn’t help that the units that we installed were in some quite hostile places, Beirut, Johannesburg, the Golan Heights (really), Belfast, Algiers…I spent weeks in these places, wearing nappies and trembling....while other people doing exactly the same job worked in hospitals in Brighton and Cambridge.

4. Director of the least succesful medical sundries manufacturer in the histor of manufacturing medical sundries. Four million £’s worth of private investors money, two weeks trading, and four years in court. Even now, many years later, I look right and left when I leave the house before I commit to closing my front door behind me in case there’s a raggety arsed ex investor with a rusty knife in the bushes.

Four Movies I Can Watch Over and Over:
(the censored version – I know you wouldn’t know the others anyway)
1. Underworld (come on, Kate Beckinsale + leather = complete attention)
2. To Kill a Mocking Bird
3. The Shawshank Redemption – pass the tissues (I have something in my eye okay!!)
4. Platoon – Rhaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrr!!

Four Places I've Lived:
1. Salford (Manchester)
2. Scotland – no town but coordinates available
3. Oxford
4. London

Four TV Shows I Love: (these probably mean nothing to most of you)
1. Soccer am
2. University Challenge
3. Will & Grace (yes I do!!)
4. Shameless – I so hope that you get the unabridged version of this in the US, it’s so outrageously, disgustingly, appallingly true – about life in Manchester, it makes me home sick.

Four Places I've Vacationed:
1. Vermont – I tried the Appalachian way
2. Greek Islands with a back pack
3. the Camargue
4. Marrakech

Four Favorite Dishes:
1. Riocha, on a dish, with some olives (the olives are optional)
2. Cheese on toast, with baked beans on the top, and sprinkled with parmesan (don’t knock it ‘til you try it)
3. Fresh grilled sardines with a lump of olive bread (and a cold, cold Frascati)
4. Fresh dates – eating a fresh date is the most sexually provocative thing you can do in public without being arrested. It’s like fruitilingus.

Four Sites I Visit Daily:
I wouldn’t lie if I said that I vist all of the sites I link to daily, please don’t make me choose?

Oh sod it, I have to have my daily dose of:
1.Wendy Wendy's World
2. Kristie and Melissa (it’s the way they are so obviously such good friends, they make each other laugh all of the time) Kristie and Spoke in the Wheel
3. Aims "Aims"
4. Sandra Not that Desperate

They’re all up there on the right, go take a look


Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now:
1. in bed with Kate Beckinsale

or do I have to be semi sensible?

2. in bed with the girl from No. 27 (just down the road, I have said hello every day for two years, and every day she has ignored me)
3. Venice
4. on a beach, on a warm night, under the moon

And last but not least, four people who I would like to do this….

mmmm, it’s late, I’m going to sleep on it, nite nite, sweet dreams....

news flash

Oh ye of little faith - Laura is currently making a round of tea for everyone, and nobody has said a word about yesterday's trouser cough.

There's a charge in the air though, potential mass hysteria, woe betide the first person to giggle....

and for my next trick

Laura is a pretty, conscientious, twenty-one year old working with us at the moment. She is on a work placement as part of her media studies degree. She is as middle class as it is possible to be. Proper without being prim, polite, presentable, bright as button, a little shy at first – a thoroughly nice girl.

Laura is concerned with her well being without being in any way obsessive about it, I know she enjoys her fair share of boozy nights out with her friends. But, sensibly, she also looks after herself.

So, because she’s been feeling a little tired recently (as most of do at this time of year?), Laura has spent the past ten days on a propriety de-tox course. It’s full of potions that need to be added to the gallon of water she has to drink each day, and a whole rainbow of pills she takes in fistfuls at seemingly hourly intervals. She doesn’t appear to have any actual ‘food’ in her diet anymore.

We have a busy office and it’s often very noisy but sometimes, for the odd luxurious moment, a brief calm descends.

This afternoon Laura filled one of these small oases of peace with a fart so loud, so deliciously throaty and protracted, that time momentarily stood still. Pens hovered, fingers wavered over keyboards and muted conversation dwindled into silence, a single telephone rang but nobody answered it.

Laura sat for a long moment in the dreadful hiatus following her anal exclamation mark - then, very calmly under the circumstances, picked up her purse and jacket and looking neither right nor left walked the length of the office and out of the door. As the door closed somebody began to applaud....

She’s switched off her mobile phone, do you think she will be back tomorrow?

fuzzy wuzzy doodle all the day

Modesta, Modesta,
The moment I saw you, I knew I adored you,
Naked and drunk as I was,

Your dirty brown hair and the fire in your eye,
Candid cool stare and the bruise on your thigh,
Have altered the clay of my life.

See me, ignore me, turn your slim neck and walk by,
I cannot forget you, regret you, respect you,
But please, with me, just once will you lie?

Add a verse if you like, the metre is all over the place anyway and if I carry on I’m just going to get dirty…..


I feel like this today, fuzzy, and a little wild. (Yes, I wake up to this head every day).




Is January a time for retrospection, a time to take stock, see if one is going in the right direction –any direction? I think that perhaps it’s linked to the dreaded “New Year’s Resolution” syndrome, the great anal-centric, annual self-experiment of ‘what is wrong with my life’, and how will I break the mould this year?

I’m told I should have goals. A smug man on the tv told me. He says if I write my goals down and concentrate on them, I am more likely to achieve them. I told him to “fuck off” and changed channels. A victory of positive action over positive thought.

Part of my reluctance to indulge in this is that, in truth, I’m ashamed of my goals. I’d like to move….

No really, that’s it.

Today I looked at a house in Devizes, in Wiltshire. A run down old cottage with an acre of land in the middle of nowhere, and my heart leapt, it’s a refuge, a hermitage, perfect. The only trouble being that the act of moving there would render me immediately unemployed and consequently unable to afford to live there…which is a bit of a rudimentary spanner in a well formulated plan?

Anyway, let me tell you about Friday night, it’s more exciting. A girl paid me some attention.

Ah “Fish”, I can hear you say, “again?”. “Tch, tch, you Lothario”, how well you know me. Yes of course it’s always happening to me I am, after all, physically and spiritually magnetic – as I walk through crowded rooms cruet, knives and forks, pens and paper clips detach themselves from people’s hands and stick to my forehead. Yes, there’s a queue of delightful women holding £20 notes waiting in line to spend just a few moments with me…which is just about where I stumble, full of regret and backward glances, out of my dream and into cold reality each morning.

Truth is I’m a tic. Like Suskind’s horrid creation in his book “Perfume”, I can lie low and survive on the barest minimum of contact, for years, and years….and years. I’ve actually noticed a correlation between the amount of time I spend with someone I love, and the amount of time I will spend in ‘hibernation’ when she is no longer there. My recovery period generally equates to one and a half years for each year I spent with that special someone. Which is a bit of a bugger really because on that scale, I am equidistant between the end and the beginning of another ridiculous fragment of this debacle I call a “love life”.

But I digress. Friday night in the pub. It was local pub, with friends, a busy night, a “school disco” theme, hot, sweaty, loud and full of people I know a little, to nod at and say “hi” to. We stood in a group, laughing and joking and dancing together, getting drunk and having fun. And then, at the bar while I’m buying drinks, the girl beside me said “hello”. She’s small and pretty, with her hair in pigtails with pencilled freckles. She seems to know me, and we laugh and joke for a few moments, until my drinks arrive.

I took them back to my friends and we carried on as we were. But now I have a little lump in my throat. She was pretty, I liked her, and I can see her talking to her friends.

Now, this is the difference, I walked back, and asked her if she knew me, and how, and she explained…and the difference being that it was wonderful, not forced. For the rest of the evening we laughed and joked, danced together and with our respective friends and…this is going to sound rather stupid I know, but she touched me. She played with my hair, at one point when I was at the bar she came and put her arms around me from behind. It seemed unconscious, just fun, but I could feel small breasts and her tummy against my back, achingly warm and intensely tactile through our two cotton ‘school’ shirts.

Silly I know, no big deal. Much, much later we sat in the bar as it began to clear, she sat on the table behind me as I chatted to a friend, and massaged my shoulders, seemingly without thought….I asked her to stop, and when she asked why I said “because I could get used to it”.

And she smiled because she thought I was joking.

I think I may be improving. In my previous incarnation as a born again single man I was much more “needy”. I had to remind myself that I ‘could’, if I wanted to, and I think in my selfishness that I hurt people.

But somehow this seems like another extreme.

Does anyone know how long it takes before your virginity grows back?

there's more

Judging from the number and nature of some of the comments on my last post, it touched a nerve.

I was invited by one person, Rick, to follow him back to his ‘home’ where he had expanded on what I had written. I’m very glad that I did, and if it something that genuinely interests you then I would urge you to pay him a visit. I’m grateful to him because he reminded me that at some point in our lives we all need to take stock, we all have choice….but I’ll let you read what he says.

the opiate of the masses?

I think, in fact I know, that the little diatribe I am about to embark on will probably upset some people who read it. I don’t want to apologise, it’s how I feel, but neither do I wish to offend people arbitrarily. I was simply shocked, and it all came flooding back after reading recent posts by Sandra and Melissa

If you’ve been reading this jibber waffle for a while you might remember that I spent three weeks last year fulfilling an ambition, which was to cross the northern United States by car. I went to a friend’s wedding in Toronto and then dropped down through the Great Lakes and drove from Michigan to Oregon, avoiding the freeways - and all the way back.

You’d better believe it was tedious in the extreme at times, and full of days where travelling seemed to be the objective rather reaching anywhere in particular. But I’m lucky in that respect, I’m generally too thick to get bored and I take a particular pleasure in ‘crumbs’ of comfort, a rest stop, a song on the radio, a cold beer in the evening and the eventual, obligatory “you’re not from these parts are you buddy”.

Some states are relentless in their ‘sameness’. Miles upon hundreds of miles across Wisconsin through dense forest. Great oceans of pasture under limitless skies following a shimmering ribbon of road through North Dakota. At times I felt dwarfed by the scenery, like a dust mote feathered along by the same breeze that bent the corn, vastly alone, wonderfully free of any compulsion to be do anything but go on.

I listened to the radio, it was fascinating, so very local, obviously speaking to the community in their own language about their interests. I listened to music shows, talk shows, discussions on farming, a wonderful phone in where people described items that they had for sale including hay bailers, horses, tractors, just about anything you could imagine. On a couple of occasions I spotted buildings on high spots in the landscape with enormous ariels beside them and it dawned on me that I was actually looking at where the program I was listening to was being broadcast from. I could have knocked on the door and said hello. This is intriguing because we have nothing like that in the UK.

There is a vast tract across the central northern States where it is possible, without making any real effort, to travel for an entire day without seeing another solitary soul. In almost inverse proportion to the dwindling proportion I found myself tuning in to more and more ‘Christian’ radio. Quite often it was the only thing I could find to listen to. And I enjoyed it! I missed my Radio 4, I missed my Archers, and the afternoon play, and ‘Women’s Hour’ - it won’t mean much to you, but it’s good quality, spoken radio.

There’s a calming quality to the well trained human voice, and many of the speakers on the radio were excellent presenters. I listened, rapt, to bible stories and experts unravelling the messages hidden in the arcane language of the gospels. I listened because they were knowledgeable, and unwrapped their messages slowly like expert story tellers, modern day evangelistic jongleurs .

One day I found myself listening to a program hosted by a young couple, they were conducting a phone in and helping people with practical problems in a matter of fact, common sense way. It was very sensible and good radio too, albeit all of the advice was liberally sprinkled with Christian virtue, each to their own. And it was obvious that they were speaking to their own too, this was community radio, and these people were good, solid country folk, the salt of the earth.

And then a young lady called in to the show. She was nervous, and evidently she found it very difficult to say what the true nature of her problem was. In retrospect I can’t still can’t comprehend the courage it must have taken for her to pick up the phone and dial, and in front of such a small community that some listeners must have had a very good idea who she was - slowly, painfully reveal the nature of her problem.

She was young, in her late teens, perhaps early twenties. She was devout, and was following a path that would save her immortal soul. She believed - and for my part I felt strangely warmed by her belief, even though I don’t share, because she was so incredibly sincere. Eventually and with much hesitation and some tears and with a low voice of shame she revealed the crux of her conundrum. She was attracted to other women. She knew this, although she had done nothing about it. She didn’t mean just in a physical way, but emotionally too, sex she said was not the issue, but companionship, the strength that comes from knowing that you love someone and are loved in return.

She thought it was wrong, un Christian, but she couldn’t deny what she knew to be true about her own sexuality, and because it was so important, her faith in apparent conflict with her mind and body, she NEEDED to know - was it possible to be who she was and still go to heaven.

The couple on the radio listened stolidly to her, coaxing and gentling her when she hesitated until eventually she revealed the nature of her ‘problem’. Then they asked her if she was sure, whether it was perhaps “just a phase”, a period of temptation, something she might speak to a trusted confidante about in a Christian environment, perhaps her pastor or her parents.

The girl replied to these suggestion quietly, almost timidly, that she was sure, that this was her nature.

And then they conferred. The young couple on the radio effectively went off air to deliberate for an unfeasibly long time - until eventually they returned to pass verdict. “No” they said, “impossible” to be a homosexual and a good Christian. There is no compromise, the path is the path, my way or the highway.

The girl was distressed, distraught, reduced to tears, and left the air sobbing thank you and so sorry in equal measure .

I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO ANGRY IN MY LIFE. I stopped the car and got out, I felt physically sick, my stomach knotted. I wanted to find them and rail at them, “how fucking dare you!”, I wanted to slap them and take an axe to their buttons and slides and telephones to stop them from perpetrating such sanctimonious, well meaning, bloody evil ever again. To send a good girl in every way, away to make a choice that would condemn her to such loneliness and guilt for the rest of her life….

After that I spent most of my time driving in silence.

dimples on wheels

I know it's boring, and I know it's lazy....and I do have things I want to write about. Deep, meaningful, contemplative, soul-searching conversations I want to explore with you.

But at the moment I feel as limp as a wet Spaniel's ear. So far this evening I have arrived home late from work, walked the dogs, emptied the washing machine, changed the bed and refilled the washing machine, cleaned the carpet of some particularly nasty spluff and splunder that was formerly attached to Charlie's feet, showered, cooked dinner (to the consistency of a comet), thrown it away and started again....and given the dust on the blinds a look so fierce that Paddington Bear would have winced.

And it takes 30 seconds to scan a photo.

So, do you think I like my new skates? DO YOU?!!!!!

what's in a name?

I don’t want to be unduly vulgar, but this is particularly funny to us Brits (well at least sewer rats like me) as “fanny” has a different connotation here.

“Fanny Batter” being a lady’s erm, front bottom’s own natural, organic moisturiser.

my family - and other species

My family is not like your family.

Trust me, while your family was mingling, merging and developing the DNA that finally culminated in the spectacular human that is you, my family took a different road.

Eschewing Darwin's principles for a parallel path, my antecedents were happy to lay fallow for epoch after epoch whilst the rest of humanity developed. We didn’t follow you out of the sea when crawled ashore and gulped in your first breath of sulphurous air. We hung back and goggled at you with large, uncurious eyes.

When you climbed trees, we hid under rocks and burrowed holes in the shale.

When you stood upright, we curled into foetal balls in the undergrowth and licked our bottoms.

You led and we followed, very, very slowly.

Until eventually, in the soot and smoky splume of the industrial revolution we finally found our place in the species. In the mills and work houses and the steam and cherry red glow of industry, in the monotony and the back breaking labour, we caught you up, even overtook you – because we were dim witted, and we’d do anything for a turnip and a glass of beer.













Meet my great, great, great "Aunt" Gunther. Who arrived on a schooner from St Petersburg, coincidentally at precisely the same time as news of Arch Duke Ferdinand's murder broke in Great Britain. My uncle Ginge (short for Gingivitis) was immediately taken by her monocle and moustache, although as you can see from the photo she lost these when they settled down to a life of domestic propriety in Salford.



On the left is another great, great, great Aunt, Dyptheria (right), and her friend, Mrs Mildew.

They were never seen without their coats and hats. Dyptheria was sewn into her underwear on her fifteenth birthday and never left it until the day she died. Apparently Aunt Dyptheria and Mrs Mildew were very much like a crusading army, in as much as you could smell them coming for three miles.

It's a little known fact but Aunt Mildew was instrumental in women being granted the right to vote in the UK. Contrary to popular belief Emily Davison did not selflessly throw herself before the Queen's horse in the that fateful Derby in 1913. She was in fact hurled bodily out of the crowd by Aunt Dyptheria who had bet a large sum on the second favourite. She was heard to mutter "suffrage my arse" as poor Emily was trampled to death.



My mother was kidnapped and held captive with a troupe of circus monkeys in a caravan in Wales until she agreed to marry my father. My mother is the rather obvious human in the photograph.



This is my mother, who was undeniably the most beautiful woman of her generation, in body and spirit.
With my brother, who was born a chubby, cissy, bastard (and I'm using that word as it is described in the Oxford English Dictionary).



And this is the consequence of the havoc wreaked on that that chubby child by scarlet fever, measles, rickets, whooping cough, cholera, dysentry and poor dental care.



My father (third from the left), is seen here regaling his army chums with tales of our magnificent house in the country, the stables, lands and servants....



But not about our bath time antics.














My mother would always hold my hand when we crossed the road.....but often she would leave me in the middle.

One poor man ran me over three times, (how we laughed!) but I always got nice presents when I was in hospital.



And we could afford nice new clothes with the insurance money.

what you can do with a box brownie

A little while ago I wrote this

And finally I've managed to go through the contents, not the letters though...please don't think this is too odd, but I have a favourite place, and I've bought a little wooden chest, and, well, given the letters a decent burial with all of the gravitas I could muster.

But - would you like to see some of the contents of the box? I've been toying with the idea of buying a scanner, I just need an ickle 'push'...

a rat's tale

This dreadful image is brought to you courtesy of Karla of the Babble fame. Who suggested that I shouldn't mutilate my hair, but arrange in 21 little pig tails.

I didn't have hair clips, and I'm too bloody mean to buy any, so I stole some paper clips from the office.

Et voila! A 21 rat-tail salute.

Who's next?

"Charlie, oh Charlie, com'here boy...."

don't get mad, get even

I'm the middle one of three brothers, twenty two years apart in total and my older brother and I are the only surviving members of our family.

Having a brother who is ten years older than you is more like having an uncle when you are young. It doesn't matter how old I become, while he's still around I will always be "our kid".

When we were younger, considerably younger, before he had left home, I was, variously, a pain in the backside for him, an idiot confidente, and a toy.

He would put me in goal and blast a football at me from short range. At his behest I once jumped out of his bedroom window into the garden hedge below, "just to see what would happen". He sat me on my tricycle and pushed it down the stairs....he had no need for an action man while I was around.

At sixteen my brother was a weasel faced, long haired, acne-ridden, stick insect - I do him no injustice - with colossal lapels so big he couldn't ride a bicycle (see, I can spell it if I try) for fear of taking off like ET. (I idolised him). For some strange reason he had several girlfriends, I don't remember them having golden Labradors with harnesses, or leaving white sticks in the hall with the umbrellas, so I have to presume that they were mentally deficient rather than blind. And he would confide in me (!), comparing and contrasting physical features and personalities, Melissa apparently had big breasts, but wouldn't let you touch them, Sandra would but she wasn't as good a kisser as Beverly, but Caroline had shown him her lilly behind the bike sheds in school. I was six, I found the whole thing bewildering and abhorrent, for all I knew girls kept bad tempered gerbils in their shorts, (and I'm still not convinced that some of them don't).

So we would sit on his bed and listen to his music, and try to find a solution to the turmoil in his bell bottomed trousers. (Which is probably why I have such an affinity for Bread, Cream - no it's not a recipe - the Animals, the Kinks, Rolling Stones et al, even though it's not my era).

Usually his door was locked, even when he was in the room. When I wasn't invited, then I simply wasn't welcome. Except one day, when I heard no music and tried the door and it opened. He wasn't there, he must have been out with a tape measure and note book, with a questionnaire, trying to optimise his sex life. Everything looked quite normal, a tip as usual, a bomb site of what would now be antique underwear and stripy tank tops, cuban heels and music magazines. The record player sat on his chest of drawers and all of his albums were actually stacked in the bottom of his wardrobe, open end inwards, I guessed so that the records wouldn't slip out. I was only six but quite capable of using the record player. If you are of a certain age you would recognize it immediately - a box 3 feet on each side with a hinged lid and carry handle, two-tone in cream and pink. You could stack around 12 singles on the spike, or play an individual LP and there was a penny attached to the arm with sticky tape to stop the needle from skipping.

I mooched around inside his wardrobe, not reading the album covers but picking out my favourites from the artwork on the sleeve, throwing them on the bed, not just one or two but a whole pile. It was odd, but some of them felt thicker than others, and finally when I'd finished ruining my brother's vinyl filing system I found out why. I sat on the bed and shook one of the records out of it's sleeve.

It fell on the bed, accompanied by a copy of Playboy. I shook another and another, and another, and each of the thicker album sleeves disgorged an album and a magazine until I had a whole jumble sale of porn on the bed. By today's standards they were extremely tame, semi naked ladies that would look quite at home on a shampoo commercial in these enlightened (?) times (oh god please, can't we go back to the time when we understood that the promise of a naked bottom is actually sexier than open heart gynaecology?). I was rapt. Not aroused of course, I had no idea what I was looking at for the most part, but I knew I shouldn't be looking at it. There was the occasional naked booby, and skimpy underwear that did nothing to dispel my theory about small furry animals nesting between girl’s thighs....and then our front door opened, and closed with a snick.

I did the only thing possible. I raced across the room, and out of my brother’s bedroom window, to the right hand side, and on to the kitchen roof, and then down the drainpipe into the garden.

As it turned out, I wasn't in any imminent danger. It was my father who had come home. I saw him through the window, pottering around by the kettle, and I waved at him from the garden....and then he went upstairs.

My brother's stash was erm..."confiscated" by my father, who no doubt hid it elsewhere.

Big brother never said anything to me. As far as I'm aware my father never said anything to him.




A few days later, I was standing shrieking in the kitchen while my father pulled a .22 feathered dart out my forehead with a pair of pliers. My brother had shot me right between the eyes while I stood against the shed door with an empty baked bean can on my head.

"Why on earth did you let him do it?", my father said.

"He had a gun!" I wailed.

sing me a rainbow

I’ve got a thing about colour (yes c o l o u r).

A childlike delight in great swags of blues and reds, primary colours on the biggest canvasses I can find, my walls. It’s probably an indicator of a lack of sophistication on my behalf, or of nuance, style and subtlety, but I can’t do pastels. I have no affinity with lilac. Beige, rose, lavender and peach are anathema to me.

My decorating skills are as unsophisticated as my taste. The colour I’ve chosen goes on to the wall without preparation with a splish, splash, splosh. I can’t be bothered with fiddly bits, the corners, or staying in the lines. I’ve painted round wardrobes in the past just to hurry the moment where I can step back and enjoy the overall effect.

Nothing’s safe, there’s generally as much paint on me as there is on the walls. I’ve had purple hands, bright yellow hair and on one occasion a pillar box red dog when Charlie pushed the bathroom door open and fell sleep under the radiator in there. I had to literally tear him off the wall in the morning.

On a different note or a sloppy segue, I finally have a appointment to see the neurologist for my scan. February the 14th, how’s that for a Valentine’s day? Perhaps they’ll discover what the problem is – or perhaps I’ll take photo’s of my home and I won’t need surgery after all, just 20 gallons of insipid paint….

the living room

no, it's not a fire, it's my bed linen

the "parlour" (junk shop, reading room, falling asleep in a chair room)

the bathroom

and in the hall

by the fridge

hair today.....goon tomorrow

Do you recognise the feeling, yesterday your hair was fine, and today, suddenly it’s an unruly tangle of rat’s tails and jungle flora?

Time for some remodelling?

At moments like these does anyone else reach for the scissors and cut off the most obviously unkempt clumps?

I thought not…

I’m sorry if I’ve been a little reclusive recently…

I’m sitting curled up in the corner of the sofa at the moment, with a spaniel’s head for a slipper and a Charlie gently snoring on one of the cushions. About as close to spiritual equilibrium as it gets in our house.

Dog’s recuperative powers are amazing. Toff was up and about and being a thorough pain in the bot within days. I’m writing this so you don’t think that I’m an utter cad for going away at new year. I had intended, in fact booked, to bugger off to Riga for ten days, but of course I cancelled that, and took a flight to Spain, at short notice, instead.

I whiled away six unrepentant days of lazy, languid, unfocussed fuzziness in the villages of the Sierra Nevada. Avoiding company like a hermit, going local and being entirely self absorbed. It was marvellous.

On the whole I don’t really like people. It’s not a particularly endearing trait in someone who works at the client bridge in a publishing company – but I’m a jolly good liar and can put up with a lot for the money. Still, it’s so bloody good to get away from the yammering, gibbering crowd, the stupid faces and the bedlam for just a few days and immerse oneself up to the belly button in anonymity.

The photograph at the top is the Alhambra, the “Red Castle”, a Moorish palace in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada overlooking the city of Grenada. It’s an incredible mixture of Moorish, Renaissance and Baroque. It reeks of age and form and verse like metre, an architectural continuation of the golden stone of the hills. I’m NOT a romantic I swear. I’m a fish. But despite it’s antiquity and evident purpose as a fortress, my overwhelming impression was of tranquillity. Whatever else the Moors may have been, (and I simply mean that I don’t know), they had an appreciation of geometry and the trickle, burble of water.

The ambience wasn’t even spoilt by the ubiquitous American couple.

“Jeez, it’s big ain’t it honey”
“Yeah, I guess, but kinda run down you know?”
“Well the Spanish are awful lazy…”

Which probably had something to do with my appreciation of the bottled late summer that the Spaniards call Rioja. Without any allusion to wine-buffdom it’s my best friend. It’s September in a glass, fruit too long on the tree or vine, slightly rakish, heavy, round and decadent, blackberries beyond their initial sharpness, wood smoke, vanilla….a self satisfied, middle aged man of a wine, with a twinkle in his eye, who’s not too old to suggest an affair to a pretty Chianti.

The lifestyle is easy, it involves a long, long, late lunch, perhaps 3 hours worth. With a book, or simply watching the world go by, and then a nap, and a shower, and a few hours gentle nothingness, and then off out into the night at 11pm, for tapas and wine and bars and clubs, until 4 or 5 in the morning……and repeat. It really is very easy.

And the girls. I am now recovering from whiplash, and at least several hundred broken hearts.

And now, here, at home, did I mention, that we were evacuated tonight? Apparently someone just a few doors down from me had a headache, and a grenade. I expect it will be on the news tomorrow.

(Would someone like to marry me please, just in a social way. I’m no trouble at all really, and I’m sure I could find work?)

the green eyed god - jealousy is a terrible thing

all better

Christmas cheer

Toffee has asked me to cut out the histrionics and give you an update.

He ran out of the park gates in front of a car, the car braked, skidded and clipped his behind. I thought he was a goner, but in fact there wasn’t so much as a broken bone, although he didn’t recover the use of his back legs for many hours after the accident.

He has a badly bruised bottom and, quite literally, his arse in a sling.

Thanks so much for your well wishes, and thanks too – to a friend, for putting up with my panic attack.

I hope you all have a wonderful, joyful Christmas, whatever is perfect for you. We are going to sing and celebrate all the more, the lads will “wee on it”, and we’ll have a jolly old time!!

don't you ever run out of the park again...

there's no more sickening moment than the screech sqwall of brakes and a dull thud....

...nothing so terrifying as looking down at your dog, who's petrified, broken and shivering in the road....rolling a big bown eye at you and whimpering because his legs don't work

or standing in the surgery waiting for news..I'd change places with you gladly if I only could...

and then waking up to the same big stupid eye, lolling in the same big stupid, beautiful face, with a silly bandaged bum, lying in your bed.

Thank you providence.

We so have to get out of this f#cking city.

We don't belong here.

the ghost of Christmas past

I’ve spent the evening wrapping presents, listening to the choir of St Martins in the Field singing Christmas carols and drinking mulled wine.

Generally getting in the mood and beginning to feel that frisson of excitement that all children recognise as Christmas gets closer.

When I was a child Christmas was always exciting, not only because of the presents and the tree, and the staying up late and all the fun that surrounds the holiday…but because of the antics of my family. Somewhere along the line one ours would manage, with a moment of ineptitude or tactlessness or simple unadulterated gormlessness, to turn the sublime to the ridiculous.

My first clear memory of Christmas is horrifying and had the potential to ruin all of the succeeding ones had I not been so gullible. I think I was four years old, and a normal inquisitive child. My parents had taken pains to hide all of the presents away so that prying eyes wouldn’t spoil any surprises, and had stayed up late on Christmas eve to wrap them. I’d gone to bed very excited after leaving Santa (and Rudolf) a glass of sherry and a mince pie each.

Unfortunately “Santa” and “Rudolph” must have worked up quite a thirst wrapping all of the presents and they’d fallen asleep in the living room amongst yards of paper and ribbon.

When I woke up it was dark and quiet in the house. I was watchless but it was definitely early in the morning (in fact it was 4 am), and I was even more excited than when I went to bed. I crept out of my room, down the stairs and joy on joy, there was a crack of light under the living room door, so my parents must be up already, Santa had been and yippee!!! I opened the door to a child’s vision of Dante’s inferno, my parents slumped on the living room floor amongst a mound of presents which they had apparently been ripping open in a frenzy before suddenly being struck by some righteous festive narcolepsy. And they were toys, they were MY presents, how could they!!!

It took quite a while to calm me down, and very well done to my Dad, in a befuddled state for spinning the yarn of Santa’s sleigh crashing in the garden and spilling my presents and them volunteering to re-wrap them so that he wouldn’t be delayed…

On a different occasion we’d sat at least a dozen people around the table, waiting expectantly for Christmas dinner. I should say that my mum was an amazing woman. We always had extra people for Christmas, they weren’t by any means all family, quite often people I didn’t know, especially children. It was only later in life that I learned that they were people that she knew of, or worked for my father who might not be enjoying Christmas as well as we were that she had invited, very humbly, to come and “make” our Christmas day. She was 4 feet 10, beautiful, and mild mannered. And on this particular Christmas day slightly flustered and stretched by cooking for so many people. My father was a jolly, gregarious dipsomaniac who would have given Oliver Reed a headache.

We sat around the table expectantly, a little shyly, because my Dad was the battery off which everything ran. We could hear them talking and crashing about in the kitchen, just noises at first but then the conversation as their voices rose:

“Not like that Jean”
“Just put the plates out Harold”
“Your doing it wrong”
“I’m doing it as well as I can”
“Look, it’s falling apart”
“Harold, do something else!!”
“Look, let me show you…”
“Oh you bloody do it then” this from my mother, a swear word!! Followed by a sodden thump.

My father appeared at the door, to address the concerned throng. He had a big grease mark across his forehead and crackling in his eyebrows. “Pork’s off” he said.

Actually the pork was “on” and very delicious too, even if it was a little crumbly.

Old Pa Deed had a knack for acquiring things too. Somehow, if somebody said that they’d really like a particular thing, then my father would “know a man” who had one, or could find one. Which is why we had one of the first television sets that anyone had seen. And we had it for Christmas.

But we didn’t have an ariel. In fact never realised that we needed one. So I sat with the friends that I had invited watching hour after hour of static believing that it was Lapland, it was snowing, but we might catch a glimpse of Santa or Rudolph’s red nose if we concentrated. He was a lying sod too.

One year we had a dartboard in the kitchen, and then later a smell of gas, which my father traced to a pinhole in the kitchen wall where a dart had missed the board and pierced a gas pipe….he found it by dint of tracing his lighter across the wall. We all went to bed that night with a two foot flame jetting out of kitchen wall.

I remember sitting down to Christmas dinner around a full size billiard table that my father had “rescued” and persuaded his friends to help him bring into the house. I seem to remember also my grandmother laughing so hard at something that her teeth fell into the centre pocket.

And one priceless occasion when we lived in Scotland, when Lord and Lady Ferguson (who were my Fathers employers at the time) stopped by on Boxing Day. They’d brought us a goose. A live one, and the gilly was busy trying manfully to unload it from the back of the Land Rover without losing fingers or an eye, so they popped in for a cup tea. We had the most badly trained Golden Retriever in the world. This maniacal hound had been banished from the kennels, in fact left to his own devices the game keeper would have happily shot it, but my mother would have none of it, so we inherited the mutt instead. It was clinically stupid and one of it’s less endearing traits was uncontrollable and indiscriminate randiness every time it ate something.

My father opened the door of the parlour for the Fergussons, to be greeted by the sight of my 3 year old brother being vigorously humped by the dog on the carpet, while my Gran sat asleep and unconcerned in the armchair in the corner.

I think they would have taken the goose back, if they could.

being Oliver Malkovich

I've been compelled by Sandra who is compelling by the way, to share 5 items of my weirdness with the world. The only problem I have is narrowing it down, and keeping it within sensible bounds. (Sometimes weirdness is like a dog whistle, when it's just so very weird that only other weirdo's can recognise it?):

I’m the worst friend in the world. I have two friends, but hundreds of acquaintances and it always makes me feel slightly uneasy when I hear other people describe me as their friend. I know what they mean, but I just wish there was another recognised, alternative word that we all understood the meaning of, for "nearly friend" - we could use “mate” for example and then I’d be happy. Because if I were their “friend” I would return their calls, or at least give a toss that they were upset when I didn’t?

I’m not normally nervous at all, I’ll speak with anyone about almost anything. But put me in front of a girl who I really, really like and suddenly I can’t find a single thing to say. (Unless I’ve had too much to drink, in which case a stream of utter jibberwaffle comes out of my mouth).

I’ve fallen in love on the tube train. In the course of a fifteen minute journey, I’ve been enchanted and enthralled, plighted my troth and had my bleeding heart ripped from bosom as she got off at Edgeware Road. Of course I’ve done this all on my own, she’s completely unaware that the eyes and mop of hair poking out over the newspaper belong to a man who is busy conjuring names for our children….

My middle name is Oliver…and I twist.

I bought the dogs a pet, a kitten, a tiny ginger tom called “Alfie”. It ripped them to shreds, ate their dinner, slept under their ears and generally made their lives hell. As soon as it was old enough it called a cab to the airport and is now terrorising a large area of Madagascan jungle.

I'm not going t tag anyone in particular....I'd like to hear 5 bits of weirdness from all of you please (that's above and beyond your usual weirdness please).

I'm the king of the castle..

and I'm a dirty rascal

through a glass darkly

I can see from people’s posts of late that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has caused a stir by denying the holocaust. It’s not strange at all that one word in three syllables ^holocaust” is instantly recognisable for the series of events that for most of us is one of the foulest passages of modern history.

We do not need any additional proof other than the images that we have seen of the pain and anguish of the people on whom Hitler’s progrom was inflicted. In fact for most of us, we simply couldn’t stay sane if we were able to comprehend the real scope of the suffering involved.

So, for someone to say that it is a myth or invention is the most dreadful affrontary to any rational sensibility.

Then why did he say it? What does he possibly have to gain?

May I introduce two distractions from what the papers say please?, they are called politics and perspective. As a whole they may be summed up as discernment.

When will we ever stop to report on what people say, and add spin from our own perspective to meet our own political ends and try, instead, to analyse motivation?

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending the statement, I despise the sentiment unequivocally, I despise the simple departure from an evident truth. But what interests me is motivation…this man is, whether you like it or not, the spokesperson for an ancient, well disciplined and cultured society. To what end would he utter such fallacy?

Religion or politics? It seems to be a pertinent question. Certainly here in Europe it is more often simply a matter of politics, trust me, we seldom vote with our feet en route to any particular church. It’s a simple truth. In the US I believe that religion has a much stronger influence on people’s daily lives, here less so. (and I understand that each of these statements that I am making at the moment are arguable for decades between dipolar exponents of either side of the argument, this is simply my perspective which in its way is a case in point). But that influence has a cost too. For every moment we step towards any religious idealism, we take a step away from perspective at exactly the same rate. We lose the capacity to see it from another’s perspective. We become fundamentalists.

Or politicians? Or even worse just mules.

Why Iraq, why are our troops dying in Iraq? Why has there been no political analysis of what would happen without Iraq? It’s really very simple. Iran is the single most populace, (and arguably best armed and most cohesive of the all of Arab nations). It’s a nation state like all others, that envys power, and nearby the oil rich sates of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates hold the promise of incredible wealth – hence power – hence influence.

And what was in the way? Our dear Saddam. We invaded once and tried pass along the message. Stay real, stay within bounds, don’t draw too much attention attention to yourself and you can be as despotic as you like – because you serve a purpose, you are the no man’s land between Iran and the South. But unfortunately he, as is the wont of puppets, forgot who was pulling his strings. He was safe, it would have taken Iran so long to fight their way through Iraq that we would have been there in numbers before they could pose a real threat on Saudi Arabia, bui he made such headlines as no longer could be ignored.

And so we invented WOMD and now we have to be there instead. And we can never leave in the foreseeable future because the threat will not abate, and we need the compliance of the oil rich states for our political future.

So why would M. Ahmadinejad say the things he does?

Let’s not discount the possibility that he is a religious fanatic, though Islam does not teach the brutality of mind that he is cultivating at present. But it’s not likely is it? Anybody capable of ruling a nation is generally quite capable of rational thought and ipso facto, self preservation, which implies a sophisticated knowledge of politics.

Islam and Christianity are not so far apart (there’s another one of those statements, go and do you own research). Neither advocates violence or intolerance. But either in the right conditions may be used to political ends. It’s a matter of strategy, in a way it is exactly what Hitler did. Take a people who feel down trodden, done to, whilst those around them are enjoying great riches (the Saudi’s, the UAE), and inculcate in them a belief that they are chosen, being tested somehow….fundamental religious constructs are more powerful in this respect than Hitler’s arianism but the mechanism is the same.

That through belief all things are possible. These are good people, honest god fearing people, who simply believe that they have not reached their equilibrium on earth (or will in heaven) because they have been beguiled by the skills of a politician during hard circumstances.

And then all you require is a common enemy. Zion. To provide the possibility of self righteous indignation from any crowd that you speak to.

(Israel is not perfect, as often the aggressor as the recipient. It IS a false state too, it is a political whim to sate the guilt of all of those nations who had the opportunity to decide the boundaries of the new world following the war. Palestinians WERE displaced, and a completely incongruous religion-that-was -not-beforehand-ever-a-nation was seated astride the single most diversely revered city on earth, Jerusalem. And then defended, paternally and politically, by those who had made that decision – you and me folks. Just some perspective, none of us a free of guilt.

There is a historical parallel in the creation of Yugoslavia after at the end of the first World War. Where Croatians and Bosnians had lived in harmony facing each other and trading at the point where the Holy Roman Empire met the Eastern Roman Empire, albeit with empirically different cultures and beliefs….until the moment that they were forced to become a nation, at the behest of a politically ‘neater Europe’. And we all know the atrocities that were conducted there under the auspices of "racial cleansing" and the personal influence of Slobodan Milosovic).

And there we have the entire recipe. A disenchanted people who’s better understanding of their own religious precepts has been undermined by political machination, given a common enemy – Israel – that they will fight to the point of war to drive home this obvious truth to their neighbours of the same faith. And an Israel supported by the US and ourselves, further demonised because we are religious and power mad interlopers is too much to bear. We have news papers and are stupid enough to believe them - but tell me where their alternate opinion might find any kind of congress?

They would drive down into Saudi Arabia full of religious fervour, as saviours of the faith to open the Saudi’s eyes – to drive out the Infidel, to cast out the shadows from their eyes, and thus fulfil the political objectives of those few who perverted the soul of reasonable and peaceful people.

In my opinion….

Please don't misunderstnad, I am not against the war in Iraq, I'm simply trying to understand the reason why our soldiers are dying there along with those who wish to live their daily lives and practice their religion peacefully. I refuse to believe the simplistic and sensatioalist fodder that we are offered by the media. In it's own way it is as subversive as the poison being spread by Iranian fundamentalists. We are intelligent, we can make sophisticated decisions and form our own opinions and I find it grotesque that we are fed with a diet that is tantamount to propaganda.

We're blessed with the ability to openly discuss this, unlike our counterparts who live in less liberal societies. Let us not waste the opportunity, provide us with historical and political background so that we can better understand the principle that takes us to war - let us all be clear that we desire to combat tyranny, not subvert the religious beliefs of another nation. Because if we don't do this, if we continue to write what we write in the press and say in the news - which is accessible to the political spin doctors of the would be tyrants, then our words and naive opinions will be used against us, and we will be made to appear as oppressors and overzealous children with guns but no understanding.

Our politicians and media need to treat us with the respect that our intelligence and democracy deserve. We are perilously close to aiding and abetting the political aims of dictators, not by doing the wrong thing - but by doing the right thing but appearing to do it for the wrong reasons.

Please, please ask questions of anything that you read in the news

what's in a word?

I’m in a very good mood for some obscure reason, a random good mood. It’s been like this all day, not even the gimp (my idiot colleague) could spoil it. He is still networking all over the place, machinating, climbing and obsequiously conniving to make his way up the ladder. We sit only a few feet away and in these few months I have learnt the signals that prelude one of his little assaults on my sensibilities…there’s a sigh, and he’ll push back on his chair, lean backwards and stare at me. I’ll carry on doing whatever it is that I’m doing until he begins his little well rehearsed speech. It’s almost always an idea, almost always in a loud voice when one of the partners is passing by, and it almost always involves him forming a little team, a posse, to investigate the potential. And it’s not the outcome that matters, it’s his apparent leadership that is an objective in itself…

Which is absolutely fine, except that I don’t particularly relish being one of his stepping stones. And we are a small company, two partners, myself, my gimp and several sales people and half a dozen other employees. We discuss our ideas openly, we develop them as we work, it’s not a deliberate act, it’s a simple way of life, the good ideas are incorporated, the rest are chaff…

The gimp has brought himself to a battle woefully under armed, but he does have guile and stamina, sufficient to make him an utter pain in the arse.

But today it was all water of duck’s back, and I’m sorry to say that I simply couldn’t resist calling to the partners “are you busy?, #### has an idea!!” as soon as gimp said to me, “I have an idea….”. And we all gathered round to listen to some half baked plan. It wasn’t a moment to relish, in fact it was really quite embarrassing, but it might keep him quiet for a few days…..so that I can enjoy my good mood.

On a completely different note, serendipity, how odd that I should be in bed at the moment, writing this and watching “The Thomas Crown Affair” in the background on tv. I know that won’t mean much to any of you but trust me, it is very odd. (That’s an excellent love scene by the way, Rene Russo really is incredibly (I want to say toey for some reason) sexy?).

So, in the spirit of good moods, a game you might want to play: The idea is really very simple, you just come up with an alternative meaning for an existing word. We (friends) have a little email circle that we send these to occasionally on an ad hoc basis when something occurs to one of us. They include:

Patio Doors - an Irish Carpenter’s wife
Mastiff - a lot of boys at a Brittany Spears concert (think about it)
Hullabaloo - correct way to greet a cartoon bear
Custard - what you say when you step in some
Proctor - a religious bottom doctor
Loophole - a very long lavatory brush
Geranium! - the war cry of a gay red Indian war party
Dilatory - sexually assault a conservative member of parliament
Epoxy - bad news for your friend at the genito-urinary clinic
Speculate - contemplate a visit to the gynaecologist

If you think you’d like to play, just pass on the idea and an invitation to others (with a mention if you are inclined), and ten more ‘new’ words on your web site, and let me know you've put them there please - so I can share them with my friends.

some enchanted evening

It’s been a very strange few days…

Do you ever get those little cataclysmic periods that convince you that it would be a lot safer to make a flask of tea and some sandwiches and retire to bed for the week? (I would have considered that as a viable option at one point but you will find out why it wasn’t such a good idea in a moment or two).

It all started out quite gaily enough. I’ve started to play hockey again, I’m okay so long as I concentrate and feel better for the exercise. I never could just sit there and wait to feel better….I feel so bloody, sedentary, potato like, I’d much rather see if I can do something.

And after playing the beer always tastes better, and in the evening, after the game, I went to a birthday party. It had a cowboy theme, and a lot of the guests had actually made the effort to turn up in chaps and Stetsons, spurs and lots of leather….and some of the men dressed up too! (it looked rather like a Village People video). But la piece de resistance was the mechanical bull. Bulls in any form are not a thing we see very often in our neck of the woods…unless it’s being discreetly slaughtered in the car park of the Halal butcher on Bounces Road, but I digress.

It had to be done, didn’t it? No self respecting man can see his friends being liberally tossed at a party without wanting to join in?

My 43 seconds of madness came to an abrupt end in the corner of the room, under a half collapsed table, who’s legs, mercifully, were intended to fold under for storage. As is my wont, I’m sure it has something to do with streamlining, I flew arrow like and head first to meet my destiny with said table legs. We all agreed that I was lucky to only chip a tooth.

Have you ever wondered where the phrase “don’t you have any bloody homes to go to”? came from? I know I do. It’s going to be my catch phrase for a while. I’m not sure what it is about my place, perhaps it’s the fact my friends feel comfortable here in the belief that they can’t possibly make a mess, or the fact that I become lugubrious and relatively philanthropic with my wine after I’ve had a few drinks…but we always seem to decant to chez zoo if they feel that there’s more party to squeeze out of the night.

Which would be fine, well not fine –but not too awful, except that it’s such a clutter in the morning. Stepping over dead bodies, and fighting for a little quality bathroom time. Trying to find the dogs amongst the human detritus and separating them from pizza boxes and whatever else your friends decided they might like to eat after you dozed off.

Having said that it’s usually quite civilised. Everyone muck’s in and helps to tidy up, and to be honest by the time they’ve finished my friend’s wives and girlfriends have usually given the place something tantamount to a spring clean. Except for this weekend, it seemed as if a kind of viral, almost Biblical, plague of bodily dysfunction had visited us while we slept.

We are grown ups, we have fun and we get, occasionally rather drunk. Then we sit and play silly games, good humouredly, en masse and then we fall down and go to sleep.

On this Saturday two people felt it necessary to vomit. One of them was apparently busy missing the toilet by a full yard when the other entered the bathroom and was left with no alternative but to utilise the bath. They must have kept each other company honking and hooting for quite a while (from the sheer quantity of technicolour yawn that they produced….and left behind!!) before shaking hands on a job well done and taking themselves off to their eventual repose on the sofa or floor…they wouldn’t fit in the bed, they don’t know how lucky they were.

The bed was occupied quite early on by, we will call them Lightweight and the Waterboy to save face, though goodness knows why, I actually considered having posters made on Sunday morning. Lightweight tells me that Waterboy sometimes gets a little disoriented when he sleeps in a strange bed. Now I’ve known this particular ‘Aquarian’ for a lot longer than Lightweight even though they have been married for 2 years, I know for a fact that “disoriented” is an inadequate term for what Waterboy gets when he’s had too much to drink….hence “you’re welcome to use my bed” seemed like a good idea at 3am.

Not so at 9am the following day. It appears that Lightweight suffers from chronic spontaneous combustion, and that Waterboy selflessly tried to extinguish her by using the only liquid to hand (literally)…or he’d had that “thank God I made it to the toilet dream”….or, he had indeed made it to the toilet only to find it occupied by regurgitating were-geese, and decided in a drunken stupor that the bed was a viable option.

To be fair to the girl, Lightweight did her very best to cover for him, some dreadfully half arsed story about making a cup of tea and then spilling it….and to be fair to Waterboy too, he came clean, as it were, when I asked him if he had peed in the kettle as well.

But, as I said we are all friends, and we all mucked in, some more sheepishly than others, to clean the debris out of the loo and the “tea” stains off the bedding…and then we all went out to breakfast.

Where, incidentally, we found out that we had slept through the largest explosion in Europe since the second world war. We were 10 miles away, and it woke people up in Holland.

Which is nice?

turning tea into wine...

This is my winter coat. Not the overcoat, the Shirley Temple and facial hair, it protects my delicate skin from the ravages of winter.









Home sweet home. I managed to get a flight back that allowed me to pick up the boys from the kennels, so we've walked and chatted about what they got up to over the last few days, "ruffle scruffle, gggggrrrrreowww" said Charlie. I've no bloody idea what it all means but he seemed pleased. The overwhelming impression I get is that they did their best to find anything that was rotting, or unusually foul smelling and roll around in it.

Apart from the general wellbeing of having a personal bum shaped dent in the sofa, and knowing how to work the shower controls the whole coming home thing was a bit lack luster . Two wet, smelly dogs, luggage, a dark landing an inordinate amount of post for just a few days. I've just found another reason to celebrate too, not only am I a zoo keeper, I'm a museum curate too.

I swore ages ago that every time I bought a new article of clothing I would throw one away. Somebody once described to me a very sensible rule, if you haven't worn it for twelve months, then it's unlikely that you will ever wear it again. It's true, but I am a hoarder. I was really hoping that those stripey nylon tank tops would come back into fashion.....but the beans certainly won't. I should have applied a similar rule to my kitchen cupboards you see. I've been a bit negligent on the shopping front, and while I remembered to pick up the bare essentials like bread and milk on the way home, I forgot that my place was in a state of victular negligence that would have shocked Old Mother Hubbard.

There was however a tin of beans in the cupboard, behind a rather tatty and ancient looking packet of Ryvita. Actually lets discuss the contents of the cupboard, just for context: Ryvita, coffee, tea, lemon tea, green tea, Lea & Perrins sauce, a torch, a can of chick peas, two tins of tuna, tomato ketchup, a roll of tin foil, a packet of soluble aspirin and some vitamin C tablets that are now welded into one very large vitamin C tablet that is too big to exit the container....and a can of baked beans. And I have bread, and butter in the fridge, and a very passable bottle of Valpolicella, in other words...the gastronomic world is my oyster.

On the first crank of the can opener the bean tin let out an audible sigh, the sigh associated with the opening of ancient sarcophagi, or perhaps Pandora's box. I bent down to take a closer look which was a huge mistake, trust me, as it brought my olfactory senses in to play as well. Try to imagine conducting a post mortem on a large animal whose staple diet is cabbage, that died three or four weeks ago, and has lain in a nice sunny spot ever since....your first incision into the gut will give you some idea of the fug that escaped the tin. The fact that I needed to use the can opener in the first place probably should have been an indicator - most tins are 'conveniently' fitted with a stiff little ring pull now that allow you to open the jugular of anyone standing behind you as the lid suddenly gives way with a flourish?

But there, on the lid was a date stamp, which ended in "93". Lummee!! twelve year old beans, Lawks a mercy!!

(Sorry I'm going to stop for a moment to laugh at Toffee, he's absolutely zonked out on their sofa, obviously chasing something in his dreams. His legs are going and his nose is twitching, and he's grumbling and hooting....so much so that he's given me a real fit of the giggles).

Anyway, to my shame, I held the offending can at arms length, not daring to breath in and opened the back door and flung it as far as I could....into the bushes around the garages at the end of the garden. If I see a fox with dysentery over the next few days I will be filled with remorse.

On an entirely different note, I think I may have decided what to do with New Year. Riga, Latvia, to be precise. Why?

Why not?

A brief trip to Berlin reminded me how much I like to party. It's my party trick, as it were. And if nothing else Berlin is full of the most outlandish night clubs. There appear to be more gay people than pigeons, cross dressing and bondage is almost de rigeur, "Cabaret" really does still exist from smokey jazz bars to art decco and poetry appreciation societies sipping coffee and absinthe...something for everyone, including voyeurs and private dancers like me. (I like to dance, but I don't want to embarrass anyone else by association, so I just get on with it on my own - actually, put like that, it resembles my sex life).

Now a word to the wise. It's cold, very, very chilly, chillier than a polar bears bottom in a cold snap, icy in fact. Take a cab. Don't do what I did. Don't have a shower and then immediately walk out of the hotel into the night to look for a good time and the warm lights of the basement bars and clubs in the alleys and back streets...

...or you will arrive like I did, unable to make any facial expression other than surprise because your hair is frozen solid on your head.

infamy, infamy....

they've all got it infamy.

Two days in seasonally soggy, desperately festive, manic Berlin.

With an internet connection as useful as a wireless lettuce leaf.

Deep joy, ho bloody ho.....