Hard Currency

Sooz and I are going to Dorset for the weekend, to visit our friends Dave and Diana who moved to a village called Winterborne Stickland a couple of years ago(thatched cottages, local inn full of colourful rustic types, slight but all-pervading smell of cow-shit, that sort of thing.)

Dave is a cartoon animator by profession, and at the height of his success he worked on Yellow Submarine and Watership Down , amongst other things. He is small, Scottish and a fully paid-up manic-depressive, and as he plays tenor saxophone he has acquired the nickname "Toots", which he bears with dignity and grace. In common with many people who have decided to move to the country, Dave now makes a living doing just about anything he can, including painting cutesy-wootsie murals in kids' bedrooms, teaching saxophone, building work and so on. As he says, "Everyone has their price and at the moment mine is two bob and a pickled egg*."

Diana is bright, sparky, and looks a lot like a Disney fairy godmother (in fact for a while I thought that Dave might have drawn and animated her rather than go out and get a real girlfriend.) She has a tendency to sing Frank Zappa numbers after a few drinks and works as an Anti-Social Behaviour Officer, which means her job is to try and help dissaffected youth(s) to moderate their behaviour before they end up dead or in jail. It's the sort of job that most of us could probably stick at for about fifteen seconds before punching someone in the mouth, so in my book she's as fine a person as Mother Teresa, and a lot more cuddly.

The other reason that I'm going to Dorset is that my guitar-player son Matt has a couple of gigs there, and I've volunteered to drive him. Sooz and I have booked a room at the inn Matt's playing at tonight, so this evening we can have dinner, watch a young white boy playing the blues like an old black man, have a few drinks and crawl straight up to bed. I'm taking my bass with me, so at tomorrow night's gig, after Matt's finished his acoustic blues and ragtime set, Dave and I, plus a few local musicians, will join him for what is likely to turn into a lengthy and drunken jam session.

It promises to be a a good weekend.



* For the benefit of overseas visitors and young people, this is an archaic expression which refers to pre-decimal U.K. currency. Any attempt to explain pre-1971 British currency to a foreigner or even to a Brit born after about 1965 will lead to an embarrassing amount of ribaldry and disbelief, but here goes...

Before we had a system with one pound being equal to one hundred pence, British currency was made up of pounds, shillings and pence, which was naturally abbreviated to "L.S.D." Huh? I know, I know. It gets worse...

There were twenty shillings in a pound and twelve pennies in a shilling and therefore two hundred and forty pence in a pound. In addition there were coins worth a quarter of a penny (known as "farthings"), half a penny (pronounced "haypenny", don't ask me why), three pence (called a "thruppenny bit"), six pence, twelve pence (a shilling), two shillings (called a "florin"), and a coin which was worth two shillings and six pence and called a "half-crown". The "crown" coin, worth five shillings (or a quarter of a pound) was no longer in general circulation even when I was a child, although special occasions sometimes warranted commemorative issues. Paper money started at the ten shilling note which represented serious spending power when I was five years old.

Considering all of the above, the indigenous population of the British isles got along okay with the complexities of the currency, although arithmetic lessons sometimes got a bit tricky, as I recall. We didn't have so many tourists back then and we hated the ones we did have, so the fact that our money system rendered foreigners confused and tearful was regarded as a bonus. The old advertising trick of showing something costing £10 as £9.99 came out in those days as £9 19s 11d. There was also an imaginary unit (no notes or coins)called a "guinea", which was worth one pound and one shilling and was somehow considered to be slightly more upper-class than mere pounds, and used by expensive tailors and the like.

As well as all the above, there were slang words for some of the coins. A sixpence was a "tanner", and (getting perilously close to the point of all this), a shilling was known as a "bob". Like the "quid" for some reason it was always singular, as in "Can you lend me ten bob?" (Poking fun at Americans who say "It cost me fifty quids" remains one of the few pleasures left to the British, so don't tell your friends any of this.)

So...bearing all of the above in mind you will realise that Dave (remember Dave?) is suggesting that he is prepared to work for a very small amount of money indeed. And a pickled egg, of course, which is always worth having.

Singing Mice And Stuff

Scientists have discovered that mice have a much wider vocabulary than previously suspected. Not that they could take a philosophy class or anything, but apparently when you record their squeaking (the mice, not the scientists) using microphones sensitive to very high frequencies and then play the noises back four octaves lower, you get a series of sounds not unlike birdsong. (Why do people say "not unlike", instead of "like"? Is "not unlike" as like "like" as "quite like"? I heard someone say "not unfond" recently, and almost managed to stuff him into a sack with a dozen ravening weasels, but, alas he was oily and wriggled free.

I was surprised that the fact that mice can sing is considered to be newsworthy; after all, they did a perfectly workmanlike job in Disney movies back in the fifties and sixties. I know they had a tendency to pronounce "Cinderella" as "Cinderelly", but I have to say that's really just nitpicking considering that they probably worked for cheese, and being able to persuade your cast and crew to work for dairy products instead of hard cash has always been key to bringing a movie in under budget.

Oh, and the other item of news this week is that David Blunkett has resigned from Tony's Cabinet. Blunkett might be considered to be unfortunate because he's blind, but for the same reason he probably doesn't know how terrifyingly fucking ugly he is, so it balances out.

The News

One of the things that's noticeable when you go to the U.S.A. for the first time, apart from the fact that everything seems familiar because you've already seen it in films and on television, is that your home country ceases to exist as far as news broadcasts are concerned. When I spent a few weeks in upstate New York I quite enjoyed the U.K. news blackout, but I know people who are enraged by Americans' apparent ignorance of and lack of interest in anything outside the U.S. To tell you the truth I'm quite happy for Americans to remain blissfully ignorant about the rest of the world, because when they do decide sit up and take an interest it seems to end in tears. Or carpet-bombing. Or both.

Anyway, despite being innately grumpy I'm a reasonably fair-minded man, and I don't think the average Brit is much more interested in or better informed about the outside world than the average Yank. We don't even really care what happens in France and it's only thirty miles away, and despite paying lip service to all that European Union stuff, the rest of Europe is still, well, just too foreign.

Other Europeans aren't like us, though. We had a German couple (guests at a friend's wedding) staying with us at the weekend; her English was very good. His English was better than mine. They were highly intelligent, well informed about just about everything, and confounded national stereotyping by having a passably decent sense of humour. I don't speak any German, and all I know about the Germans is that they came second in World War Two and in the 1966 World Cup Final and that they've just elected as Chancellor a lady called Angela Merkel. (The "g" is hard, as in "angle".) I've been to Frankfurt once, but it was a business trip, meaning that rather than seeing any of the city I just saw the inside of an airport, a hotel and an office, interspersed with cab rides. All I remember is that Frankfurt airport is a dull place in which to be delayed for four hours and that the cable channel in the hotel had the most disturbingly gynaecological porn movie I've ever seen, which was about as sexually arousing as watching a cow give birth to a two-headed calf. (And if that's your favourite thing please don't tell me.)

Anyhow, back to the news. In case anyone's interested, the U.K. news items on the radio this morning included the following:

- The Government has announced plans to introduce a partial ban on cigarette smoking in public places but has chickened out of a total ban, despite its success in the Republic of Ireland, where tobacco sales have fallen by almost ten percent as a result. In England smoking will not be permitted in pubs which serve food, but will be allowed in premises which don't serve food and in private clubs, so in all likelihood tobacco consumption will not actually reduce but just move from one place to another. Parliamentary opponents of a complete ban have unexpectedly found themselves possessed of a fierce desire to protect the rights and freedoms of the individual. And an equally heart-felt and noble reluctance to place in jeopardy the £8 billion a year the Government collects in tax on cigarettes.

- Ex-Manchester United footballer George Best, famed for his phenomenal talent on the pitch (and enthusiam for alcohol, partying and long-legged blonde ladies off it) is in hospital and at death's door. George had a liver transplant a few years back but due to an oversight was fitted with only one new liver rather than the four or five connected in parallel which he needed to cope adequately with his prodigious consumption of hard liquor.

- Chris Moyles, breakfast-time radio presenter and self-styled "saviour of Radio One" now "attracts" 6.5 million listeners every day. Moyles is a pointless potato-faced twat who, unpleasant even by disc jockey standards, has managed to confound critics by being even more irritating than his Breakfast Show predecessor Sara Cox, herself responsible for more radios being flung through more windows than any other presenter since the birth of public broadcasting. Moyles is famed for being rude to and about just about everyone and everything, and manages to achieve this without once displaying a single spark of empathy, humour, or humanity. It is of course a simple matter to turn off the radio to avoid Moyles; at the time of writing, universal access to a switch which would subject him to a series of excruciatingly painful and ultimately lethal electric shocks remains, disappointingly, just a dream.

- Five hundred years after becoming extinct in the U.K., European beavers are once again living wild in Gloucestershire. Six Bavarian beavers have been released on a five-hundred acre site in the hope that they will breed and establish a self-sufficient colony. Apparently the animals were originally hunted to extinction for their fur and also, to quote the BBC, "for the pain-relieving properties of their anal-gland secretions." I don't really want to speculate on who first discovered these properties or indeed under what circumstances, but if you happen to be walking in the Gloucestershire countryside and see someone with a beaver's arse clamped to his face, give me the benefit of the doubt and assume I've got toothache.

For Tif

I haven't got much time to write just now, but I knew Tif would be keen to see a photo of the band...

Smells

Thy say the Queen thinks the whole world smells of paint because every time she goes anywhere they redecorate a couple of days before the visit.

I think that the Queen always smells of wee, firstly because she's an old lady and secondly because nobody would ever have the nerve to tell her.

Organ Donors

There was an item on the radio last night concerning the shortage of organs available for transplant; apparently we're not keen on carrying donor cards ourselves and we're also a bit squeamish about the thought of our loved-ones' squidgy bits ending up inside some total stranger. There was a lot of discussion about how to change things, but no conclusion was reached. I have a suggestion.

In exchange for a signature on an organ donor card we give every seventeen-year-old boy in the country a motorbike and just enough tuition to make him over-confident.

"You need a liver? Come into the store-room with me, I'll pick you out a nice one."

Turre

I hadn't been to Turre before, but Sooz had, and apparently it used to be a pleasant little town. Times change.

There's a lot of new building construction in Turre and as buildings going up look a lot like buildings coming down the first impression is that the town's been subjected to sporadic and inaccurate shellfire in the recent past. The air is hot and full of dust, and the skyline is ragged and unfinished and cross-hatched with cranes. Even half-finished, you can tell that the buildings aren't going to be pretty, although compared with most of the others along the Avenida de Almeria they don't have much to beat.

The supermarket shelves are stacked with HP sauce and Cup-a-Soup (although Sugar Puffs have been renamed "Globs", which is cheering for some reason I can't quite put my finger on.) Trolleys are being sulkily pushed round by grumpy fat blokes wearing Arsenal tops or by scrawny blondes with Croydon Facelifts*, big hoop earrings and those thong-height spinal tattoos which seem to be compulsory on stupid ugly loudmouthed women. One has a tattoo of a Smurf: classy. They communicate with each other by gobbling in a Sahf Lahndun dialect so untroubled by consonants that it could almost be Chinese, as in "I goh'ah noo tah'oo." They communicate with the checkout operators through a series of gestures and grunts. The Spaniards are poker-faced and surly, and who can blame them?

Some of these people are tourists, but most are expatriates who have sold up back home and have moved to Turre because property's cheap, it doesn't rain much and because there are so many other Brits you could spend the rest of your life without ever having to speak a single word of Spanish. Believe me, there is no other reason for wanting to live in Turre.

Our apartment is a couple of miles out of town and has a nice view of the Sierra Cabrera (on the far side of the inevitable golf course.) You can sit on the terrace with a beer and watch the moon come up over the hills, oblivious to the fact that Eastern European crooks have broken into an apartment at the other end of the block and are stripping it bare.

*For the benefit of my occasional Transatlantic visitors it is perhaps necessary to explain that a "Croydon Facelift" is the term used to describe the facial expression caused by wearing the hair in a dangerously tight ponytail, leading to the appearance of inexpertly performed cosmetic surgery and popularised by women in Croydon, a town in the South of England a visit to which is guaranteed to make you feel a surge of affection for your own town, no matter where you live. I would venture to suggest that a weekend in Croydon would even make Libertybob feel a measure of warmth towards Chicago.

Holiday Reading

I probably shouldn't confess to this, but on the basis that I may save someone from wasting time, I have to confess that last week, in a spirit of curiosity, I tried to read The Da Vinci Code. I'd already heard that it was poorly written, and while I'm nowhere near well enough educated to aspire to being a literary snob I have trouble with stuff that's clumsily put together. I'd also heard that it was worth persevering because of the "interesting" revelations and all that bollocks, so I thought I'd give it a go.

I was uneasy from the start, because any novel which introduces the character of a masochistic red-eyed albino assassin monk in the first chapter is unlikely to turn out to be Great Literature. By the time I got to the discussion of the multitude of significant hidden references to female spirituality in the work of Walt Disney my main regret was that the copy I was reading belonged to someone else so I couldn't throw it in the pool.

So for what it's worth, my opinion is pretty much as follows: clumsy prose, laughable one-dimensional characters, superficial research, complete lack of any wit or humour, predictable "revelations". On the plus side, uhhh, no, there isn't a plus side. To sum up in the words of the late Bill Hicks, "Piece of shit. Walk away."

I walked away. I didn't finish it. I neither know nor care What Happens At The End, nor do I want anyone to tell me the identity of The Teacher. Someone commented on a radio book programme that Dan Brown has "succeeded in lowering the bar when it comes to writing a novel", and that means that Suzie Creamcheese will probably now be encouraged to finish her book and find a publisher, and quite honestly a world where that can happen isn't one I want to live in.

The Flight

As you probably know, these days the police in London are allowed to shoot you in the head for just looking a bit shifty, so when they made the usual announcement about turning off mobile phones before the flight I didn't argue, particularly as it's not that long since most terrorists had accents like mine, and also because a few minutes before, the X-ray machine had spotted that my step-daughter was trying to smuggle a weapon onto the plane, in the form of a corkscrew with a little knife-blade attachment. Fortunately she's young, white, blonde and posh, so the authorities felt it wasn't necessary to kill any of us.

I don't really understand the concern over mobiles; airlines are always reassuring us about safety, to the extent that I firmly believe that the systems are so sophisticated that pilots are only really there to tell jokes and flirt with the cabin crew. Navigation? Plane steers itself. Forget all that following railway lines stuff, type in "Almeria" and you can do the Guardian crossword and then doze off for a couple of hours. Landings in poor visibility? No problem, computers do all that. I'll bet if I had a tenner for every pilot who's "landed" a plane with a stewardess sitting on his face I'd be a wealthy man. Or at least I'd have several tenners.

Get a phone call from your mother, however, and within seconds you'll be plummeting towards the Pyrenees wishing that know-all friend of yours hadn't explained to you that the "brace" position is only used because it's easier to identify bodies that have still got their heads on.

Uneventful flight, though. No drunks, no screaming babies, no praying nuns. Being Easyjet of course there was also no legroom, no in-flight movie and no free meal. On balance, though, I'm happy to pay five Euros for a slightly sweaty chicken baguette as long as they spend the profits on basic maintenance.

A Whole Month

It's been over a month since I wrote anything on here, partly because I've been on holiday in Spain for two weeks and partly because to take two weeks holiday requires me to work like a five-year-old in a Nike factory for two weeks before that.

But Spain was an interesting mixture of good, bad and ok and I'll tell you about it within the next couple of days.

The Deal

As an Northern Irishman myself I have always felt entitled to indulge in what I would describe as "forthright" comment on the behaviour of my lying, cruel, cowardly, secretive, self-pitying, ungrateful, whining, greedy, backward, whey-faced, morally bereft fellow-countrymen, but today, the day after the I.R.A.'s announcement that it has given up murdering people in cold blood, I can only wish them well.

I wonder what has led this bunch of roguish, rosy-cheeked, twinkly-eyed assassins to arrive at their momentous decision? I can't see that there's been any real progress in terms of Ulster politics, although as it's a place where "progress" translates as "not going backwards as fast as usual", I might be failing to pick up on some of the subtleties of the situation.

Many times over the last couple of years I've tried to work out Tony Blair's rationale for supporting Bush in Vietraq; Bush's agenda was crystal-clear - after the September 11th attacks Someone Had To Be Seen To Pay, and although nobody believed Saddam was involved he was unpopular, virtually unarmed and not quite white. I don't go for the Iraqi Oil conspiracy theory - it ascribes to the U.S. administration far more guile than I believe them capable of.

But what was in it for Blair? The decision to take the country to war made him deeply unpopular at home and in the rest of Europe. Surely he must have made A Deal?

So that's it, I reckon. "George, old chum, we'll back you up in Iraq if you stop funding the I.R.A. and if they step out of line you have to let us fuck 'em up. We might even have to give Dublin a bit of a seeing-to. A sort of slight carpet bombing kind of thingy. How's that sound? All right with you, that's great. And can you make sure they know we've made this deal? That'd be lovely. Thanks, mate."

Could be completely wrong, of course. Anyway, apparently the lads are going to "de-commission" their weapons (whatever that means) although apparently they won't allow the process to be filmed or photographed because that would be "humilating", and of course it would be.

Their spokesman declined to comment on whether it would be more or less humiliating than having to hire someone to wipe your arse for you because your hands have been blown off by an I.R.A. bomb.

July 27th 2005

If my Dad hadn't had a dodgy ticker which dropped him in his tracks for good way back in 1986, he'd have been ninety years old today, probably still drinking too much whisky and wandering about singing "Minnie The Moocher". I'm absolutely sure that I was the only five-year-old in the village of Saintfield, County Down, Northern Ireland who'd heard of Cab Calloway, and much good it did me.

My Dad was an intelligent, kind and strikingly ugly man, who looked a lot like Quentin Blake's drawings of Roald Dahl's Big Friendly Giant, although he wasn't thirty feet tall, which was fortunate as it would have made his career as a teacher pretty much impossible. Before going into teaching he had served in the Middle East and Africa in the Pioneer Corps, which left him with admiration for the African tribes of Basutoland, a profound dislike of Egyptians and the ability to swear in Arabic, which came in handy when stray dogs got into the garden and crapped in the flowerbeds.

I'd only just grown out of thinking my Dad was a buffoon when he went and died, and I have a lot of regret that I know so little about his life as a child and as a young man. He was a teenager during the Depression of the thirties and the family moved from the North of England to London to try to find work. On the outbreak of war he joined the Army, reaching the rank of Captain and meeting Sergeant Sarah McMillan of the ATS, who ended up as my mother, was eighty-five years old last month, and is also, I know, thinking about him today.

Happy Birthday, Dad. We miss you.

Bent u zekere Greta bent geen travestiet?

You know I wouldn't lie to you, so I know you'll believe me when I tell you that I spent last weekend at the U.K.'s First International Boogie-Woogie Piano Festival. As it's a bit of a minority interest here, musicians and audience could be crammed into the village hall at Fontnell Magna, Dorset, later spilling over into the local pub, where much Woogie-ing and consumption of foaming ale continued into the early hours.

I've never had much time for the piano, believing that musical instruments should be things that you can pick up and cuddle; playing the piano has always seemed to me too much like sitting at a machine and pushing buttons. (The fact that it's a lot harder to play than the bass guitar might also have something to do with my inability to get to grips with it.) Were it not for the fact that my friend Matthew is a keyboard player and was keen to go to check out the opposition I'd probably have given the festival a miss.

Anyway, I can tell you that those Boogie-Woogie chaps are fiercely competitive and one of them was pretty damned funny for a German. They also show off almost as much as rock musicians, although playing the piano with your teeth or behind your head is not really an option. You could set it on fire, of course, but you'd need a lot of lighter-fluid to get a really satisfying blaze going.

Interestingly, apart from one Brit most of the performers were from the European mainland; two pianists from the Netherlands, one from Germany ("Now I vill tell you ze joke about ze muzzer of my vife, yes?"), and one from (I think) Belgium, plus a Dutch vocalist called Greta, who was so tall, so blonde, so pretty, with such big hair and such a sparkly frock that I assumed she was a transvestite until I got up close and took a good look at the hands and the adam's-apple. I'm fairly sure she was a girl.

After a couple of hours of Boogie-Woogie I had to suppress a desire to leap onto the stage and slam the piano lid down on the wrists of the musician, but by downing many pints of muscle relaxant and breathing deeply I was able to recover my sang-froid.

A little of that stuff goes a hell of a long way.

Tailgating

There were traffic delays last night on the way home, caused by three out of four lanes being blocked by a multiple pile-up involving a truck and at least five cars. The damage didn't look that bad; the cars appeared to have been shortened rather than wrecked, so I had the luxury of being able to get angry without having to feel really sorry for anyone.

As some of you already know, tailgating is one of my pet hates. It's worse than purely aggressive driving, somehow, although I'm not all that keen on that kind of stuff either. It's the sheer bloody stupidity of it that gets to me. Sometimes I watch cars in the next lane travelling twenty feet apart at ninety and my scrotum takes on the texture of corduroy.

How can they drive so close, so fast, and yet be so relaxed? What goes through their heads, I wonder? (Apart from the tailgate of the car in front, potentially.) I need Libertybob's Mindiacs to get behind the prominent eyebrow-ridges of those pointed little skulls and let me know how they think, but in the meantime I can only guess:

(1) "I'm driving a BMW M3, and not only have I been blessed with great teeth and fairly large genitalia, I also have reflexes on a par with a cross between a striking cobra and Ralph Schumacher. And my car has great brakes. And if I drop back any further then another car will cut in front and I'll have to drop back even more which means that I'll actually be going backwards. Probably.

(2) "I'm driving a Volvo, which as everyone knows is not constructed out of Coke cans flattened out like ordinary cars, but rather from the stuff they use to make flight recorders in aeroplanes, and therefore capable of withstanding an impact equivalent to hitting the ground at six hundred miles an hour, so rear-ending a Fiat Uno at eighty is no big deal. For me, at least."

(3) "I'm driving a Range Rover, which means that I'm an imbecilic thirty-year-old blonde with nice tits and the ability to suck the chrome off a trailer-hitch, which is why my husband has rewarded me with this huge vehicle. As it's twice as high and three times as heavy as anything I'm likely to hit I'll probably be safe. So far this year I've already been involved in four serious accidents all of which were my fault, but due to my husband's immense wealth I'm immune to prosecution."

Anyway, these people are obviously far too stupid to work out that they're driving dangerously without help. Obviously if I had my way then ideally I'd like to have them killed, because let's face it, nobody's going to miss them. However, I'm all too aware that, due to my childhood being spent in Belfast, many of my views are seen as inhumane, so I'd compromise and settle for a forward-facing speed-sensitive distance sensor which makes an irritating noise when you're driving too close for the speed you're doing. (Some people might argue that many cars are already equipped with such a device, but not everyone has a wife or girlfriend.)

Oh, hi Soozie. Ow.

Wah-ooo! Squirrels Of Surrey (2)

We have to give some thought to both positioning and timing. Lily The West Highland Terrier is a dog whose grip on reality is fragile at the best of times, as she demonstrates each time she tries to bite an aeroplane on its way into Gatwick, believing it to be Small, Slow and Near rather than Big, Fast and Far Away. If she's confronted with a helpless squirrel in a wire cage she'll have some sort of excitement-induced seizure, particularly if Soozie and I are both at work and unable to intervene. We decide that if we position the trap on the (flat) garage roof then Lily may not notice.

The other thing is that I don't like the thought of the squirrel being trapped in the cage from eight-thirty in the morning until six-thirty in the evening while we're away from the house, even if the little bastard almost killed my wife, so we agree that we won't set the trap until Monday morning, because I'm working at home then so I'll be able to give the captive rodent my immediate attention. (Note to self: check if squirrels are rodents. They're definitely not fish, insects, birds or lizards. And not marsupials either. After that it gets trickier.)

Seven a.m. on Monday morning I bait the trap with peanut butter and pistachio nuts and put it on the garage roof. I go up to my office and start working. After about half an hour Soozie comes in. "We've got one," she says. "and he's not happy."

I don't know what I expected, really. I suppose I thought that the animal would be sitting quietly looking sulky and waiting to be allowed a phone call to its lawyer or something, but what I see when I go down and look at the cage is this frantic ball of fury hurling itself against the wire mesh, and attacking it with its teeth. It's already covered with blood and getting more hysterical by the minute. I decide I have to let it go straight away, but I'm determined to get at least some value for the £15.99 I paid for the trap, so I put on a pair of gardening gloves in case the squirrel tries to maul me, and put the cage in the car.

I drive to Redhill Common and park. Parents and young children are walking past the car on their way to St. John's school, and I have to stand in front of the car boot so that they don't see that I have a blood-soaked animal in a trap. The sight of a burly bald bearded man with a guilty expression loitering near a school causes the parents to look at me with deep suspicion. When they've gone I hurriedly grab the trap and walk into to the edge of the woods, open the door and watch the squirrel streak off into the trees without a backward glance.

I get back to the house. Soozie's just about to leave for work. She looks at the empty trap which still has blood and pieces of squirrel-lip all over the wire. She looks at me. We can't use the trap again, can we?" she says. "No, Soozie," I reply, "we can't."

Wah-ooo! Squirrels Of Surrey.

We've been having trouble with squirrels recently. Actually it's Soozie who's having the problem, as she's the real gardener in the relationship. I only like the kind of gardening that consists entirely of reclining on a sun-lounger with a beer, while Soozie embraces what I have come to call Full Contact Gardening, which involves a lot of heaving heavy sacks about, digging and nurturing things. She loves the little plants she raises and gets upset if they fail to flourish.

Anyway, due to some mysterious shift in the balance of nature in the Redhill area, this year we have lots more squirrels than usual and they have become emboldened to the point of insolence. At some point I fear they may begin to feast on human flesh, but so far the little bastards have merely developed a taste for running along our fence and flinging themselves onto the hanging baskets, where they wreak havoc.

(Interesting word, "wreak". It only gets used together with the word "havoc", and "havoc" only gets used with "wreak". You don't say "where they do havoc." The only other time we use "wreak" is in its past tense, as in "wrought-iron". But I digress.)

Back to the squirrels. I don't know why they like the baskets, but the end result is that they dig up all Soozie's baby petunias, exposing their little infant roots and killing them. In principle Soozie's kind to animals, but in practice if those squirrels were a fraction slower there'd be a pile of furry carcasses from one end of the garden to the other. We can't get them. Nobody I know owns a gun, and actually Im not sure I could do it - a clean kill would be all right, I suppose, but the thought of winging one and having to listen to its whimpering death-throes doesn't do a lot for me. In any case I have a strong Belfast accent and people who sound like me have ended up in a police cell with a black bag over their heads for a lot less than waving a shotgun about.

One morning a couple of weeks ago I was at work and Soozie phoned. "They've done it again." she squealed piteously. "And I had an idea and I thought that if I put chilli powder round the baskets it would make the squirrels sneeze and put them off so I sprinkled the powder but I was so upset about my dead petunias that I was crying and I rubbed my eyes and I had chilli powder on my hands and it went in my eyes and it really hurt and my eyes were watering on top of the tears and I had to drive to work and I couldn't see properly and I could have been killed." She paused to take a breath. "I COULD HAVE DIED BECAUSE OF A FUCKING SQUIRREL!"

So at the weekend we buy a "humane" squirrel trap. It's a wire mesh box with a spring-loaded door connected to a little plate inside where you put the bait, the idea being that the squirrel's weight trips the spring and the door shuts. Then you take the trapped squirrel for a long car ride and release it indignant but unharmed. This assumes that the average squirrel has a poor homing instinct and therefore will be unable to hitchhike back to your garden in a couple of days. Anyway, who'd stop their car for a squirrel? Nobody, that's who, not even if it was heavily pregnant.

to be continued...

Old Bass Players Never Die. Right?

After many long weeks I have a little spare time to write something. I feel under a little pressure to make it good, not having written anything on here for so long, but I'm not going to let it worry me too much.

It's about 6:40pm, and I'm in the office. I'm still here because I'm going to meet up with a friend for a beer at 8:00pm and I live too far from the office for it to be sensible to go home first. I could fill the intervening time with corporate warrior stuff, but bollocks to that, frankly.

I'm meeting Joe (the friend) at The Red Lion. Joe's an interesting person. He's a great guitar player. He plays left-handed, and for a reason. Joe used to play right-handed. Did everything right-handed I suppose, although I did't know him then. Then, when he was in his early twenties, Joe suffered a severe brain hemorrhage, severe enough to significantly affect the motor function on the left side of his body. He recovered, but the dexterity of his left hand was permanently impaired, and he could no longer play the guitar. Rather than decide to give up playing, Joe taught himself to play left-handed, which I think is interesting because it proves that the skill is not in your fingers, but in your head.

There's a band playing at The Red Lion tonight, the Grapevine Blues Band. A few years back, when I was between bands and they were looking for a bass player, Grapevine were quite keen for me to join them. It didn't get as far as the audition stage, so they might not have hired me anyway, but I told them I wasn't interested. The reason was that Grapevine are quite a successful outfit. They all have day-jobs, but they quite often do mini-tours, when they head off to Italy or Holland for a few days, playing in blues clubs.

The realisation that after years of wanting to do that kind of stuff I had reached a stage in my life where I found the very idea of it exhausting made me profoundly depressed, but then, as some of you know, I am of a melancholy disposition.

Hey ho.

Soon

Very soon. I'll write something very soon...

Types

The company I work for has two offices I visit from time to time. One is full of sales people, the other full of design engineers. They are, unsurprisingly, very different types of people, and I've summarised them as follows.

Design people:
- Sandals
- Facial hair
- Asperger's Syndrome
- Dungeons & Dragons

Sales people:
- Aftershave
- Cufflinks
- Overconfidence
- Snowboarding holidays

Feel free to add to this list should you wish.

Soon...

Not dead, only sleeping.

Dormant, in fact. And that's started a whole train of thought as to whether a dormant is like a dormouse, but an ant.

Someone help me.

Things That Make Me Realise I Need To Get Out More

Thing Number One:
Someone told me that you should always cut up those plastic things that join four cans of beer together because otherwise when you throw out the plastic things that join four cans of beer together, wild animals can get their cute little paws and noses caught in the loops and die. With the amount of beer I drink I could unwittingly be responsible for wiping out the entire badger population of the Home Counties, so I religiously cut up the plastic things that join four cans of beer together before I put them in the bin.

That's not the worrying part. The worrying part is that I've become obsessed with cutting through all of the loops with one deft stroke of the scissors. There are up to nine loops to deal with; the four large rings which hold the beer cans plus four triangular holes and one sort of lozenge-shaped one in the middle. My technique is to twist the plastic thing that joins four cans of beer together into a strange and other-worldly shape and then cut. So far the best I've managed is two cuts. But I will prevail.


Thing Number Two
I've just been considering going onto Google and trying to find out the official name for plastic things that join four cans of beer together. There must be one, in a catalogue or somewhere. When salesmen gather at beer conventions it must come up in conversation all the time. Fortunes have no doubt been made and lost during the race to develop a lighter, cheaper and altogether sexier plastic thing that joins four cans of beer together. Beer magnates probably have different words for the variants in the way that Inuits have for snow or people who live in the country have for animal poo.

Thing Number Three
I find I'm sitting here in the house on my own sniggering to myself at the way "beer can" sounds like a Rastafarian saying "bacon".


I have to go now. Nurse says it's time for my nap.

Pillow Talk

In this week's local paper there's an article about a "Christian" group which has organised a petition to try to close down "Pillow Talk", a sex shop in my town. I've never been in the shop but it's not far from where I live and I drive past it quite often. I suppose it's just possible that inside the shop is the stuff of nightmare. There may be things on sale in there that would either make you chew off your own head in disgust or cause you to fall to the floor in a paroxysm of uncontrollable self-pleasuring, I have no way of knowing. I can say, though, that the window display is about as obscene as Marks and Spencer's underwear department. There are a couple of dummies wearing negligees (I admit the panties may well be split-crotch; it's a difficult thing to check out while driving at forty miles an hour, unless of course they're worn by your front-seat passenger. Ah, the memories.)

Anyway, it seems the axe the "church group" has to grind is that this shop window can be seen from the Y.M.C.A. across the road, and that "the presence of the store would cause distress to already vulnerable people living there." So, explain the "distress" thing to me, would you? I can see that if you're living in the Y.M.C.A. and not having sex with anyone except yourself the sight of a mannequin in a nightie might serve to remind you of your plight, but speaking from personal experience, if you've been unwillingly celibate for a while you don't actually need anything to remind you because you never think about anything else anyway. And if these people are worried that young people will be enflamed by the window display I would like to remind them that masturbation is unarguably unique amongst life's pleasures in that there is absolutely no downside so long as you've plenty of Kleenex; let's face it, if it was possible to wank yourself to death most of us wouldn't have made it past fifteen.

What really enrages me is that this church group, like so many others, are hijacking Christianity for their own purposes. They may well all have accepted the Lord Jesus into their lives, but what defines and unites them is not that they are Christians, but that they are joyless bigots with little black piggy eyes and mouths like dogs' arseholes. They are unnerved by sexual activity (although I suspect they have a secret leaning towards sado-masochism) and they regard the sight of their ugly twitching socially inadequate children as proof that no good can come of sexual congress.

They cling to a strange logic all their own: it goes "I believe this thing to be wrong; I believe in Jesus Christ. Therefore Jesus Christ believes this thing to be wrong." To which I respond lightly "I believe I hate bigots. Fuck you. And I believe if Jesus returned to Earth tomorrow he'd say "Fuck you" too."

Thankfully I can tell you, based on experience, that there are Christians who are enthusiastic in embracing the knowledge that being a Christian is entirely compatible with rock 'n' roll music, occasional mild and non-violent drunkenness, saying "fuck" quite a lot and shagging like a demon. I can tell you this because I'm married to one, and while there are things that cause her moral outrage, the fact that shops selling amusingly-shaped things made out of flesh-coloured latex continue to trade unmolested is not one of them.

Praise the Lord.

Sorry

The last time I apologised on here I got a comment from someone (whose name escapes me, thankfully) berating me for not apologising for being European and also for not being grateful enough to the U.S. for protecting my:

life
wife
sexual orientation
arse (see above)
children (real and step-)
freedom to vote in democratic elections and worship at the church of my choice
currency
house
job
car
domestic animals
precious bodily fluids

So I apologise again with more than a little trepidation.

It's been weeks since I wrote anything on here, partly because I usually write most of my stuff at work, and considering that my job's about as meaningful and rewarding as nailing jelly to a plank, it's been strangely busy. The company I work for is going through a tough time, so the perceived wisdom is to run about squealing and doing lots of stuff. Any stuff. (To borrow the Titanic analogy, "Well, we tried rearranging the deckchairs but we're still sinking. Hey, let's paint the funnels a different colour, see if that helps.")

Also, most of my spare time has been spent trying to help my older son with his career in music, as he finishes at university this year and has belatedly realised that in June he'll be on the streets clutching a second-class degree in philosophy and staring a day-job in the face, so I'm doing a lot of mailing, CD-burning (copying, not fundamentalist protesting), going to gigs and so on.

Anyway, that's why the Zone's been quiet lately. Sorry.

Decisions, decisions...

There's so much good stuff in the news at the moment it's hard to know where to start.

We've got Disgusting Michael Howard, leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, shamelessly sucking up to crime-obsessed Daily Mail readers and campaigning for a change in the law so that it will be legal for righteous homeowners to overpower burglars and feed them into their blenders, or something.

We've got Prince Harry, the charmless half-witted younger son of Chuck and Dopey Di, dressing as a Nazi at a fancy-dress party and being pilloried in the press for his "insensitivity". (Good job his Bin Laden outfit was in the wash.)

We've got Tony Blair and his Chancellor Gordon Brown engaged in a weird little hissy whispering campaign against each other, which is, frankly, no way to win an election, even if your opponent is the aforementioned and thankfully unelectable Disgusting Michael Howard.

And we've had real weather for the last couple of days, with flooding and winds of up to 120 miles per hour, which makes for great television, especially as it's happening in places like Northern Ireland and Scotland which we Home Counties types don't really care about.

And it was with great satisfaction that I listened to the report about the luxury cruise liner Aurora which developed engine trouble a few miles out of Southampton, which meant that a bunch of rich people have spent forty thousand quid apiece to sit staring at the Isle of Wight for a week.

Yay!

I shall expand on some or all of these in due course...

Goosebumps

I don't know what to make of this, but it's all true...

If I wake up during the night and have to go downstairs to get a drink of water, the instant my foot hits the third stair from the bottom, what hair I have on the back of my neck stands up, and my skin crawls. It doesn't get any worse, and I don't see or hear anything spooky-wooky-wooky, but it happens every time, and now if I wake during the night I usually decide to stay thirsty. (Yes, I know I could bring a glass of water up with me when I go to bed, but that's not the point, and you know it.)

And there's more: I was working at my computer a couple of weeks ago. It was about five pm, so it was dark outside. I had headphones on, so I was a little isolated from the world, as it were, but out of the corner of my eye I saw my step-daughter Cassie come into the office. What was strange, though, was that she ducked down under the desk behind me (there are two desks in my home office.) I turned around, thinking that she was fooling around, and (you've probably guessed this one already) there was nobody there.

Now here's the thing. I DON'T BELIEVE IN THIS STUFF! AND I WANT TO BE ABLE TO GET TO MY KITCHEN AT NIGHT WITHOUT FEELING LIKE A SCARED FOUR-YEAR-OLD!

Maybe it's acid flashbacks from the 70s. And I thought I'd got away with it.

David's medication had successfully reduced his cholestrol levels; however there were one or two side-effects the drug company had neglected to list on the box. 

A very Merry Christmas from David and and his shy, retiring new bride. 

Season's Beatings

This isn't at all seasonal, but at work this morning somebody with a strange accent in the next pod used the word "summarised" and I heard it as "Samuraised." It took me back to my martial arts days...

I took up Shotokan karate in my early thirties because somebody told me it was a good way of keeping fit and I was bored with just running and going to the gym. At the time I was working out at least three times a week and running a lot (maybe twenty miles a week) so I thought I was in pretty good shape, but after my first session of karate training I had blisters on my feet and was so tired I went outside and threw up.

I persevered, though, and over the next while my feet hardened up, my stamina and coordination improved, and at one point I was 180lbs of solid muscle, as opposed to "before" (150lbs of ribs and teeth), and "now" (200lbs of lard). I reached 4th kyu - to put it in perspective the first grade (where you swap the white belt that came with the pyjamas for a red one) is 9th kyu, and if I'd continued, my next grade, 3rd kyu, would have been brown belt. Shotokan is a traditional style of karate, which means there's a lot of emphasis on set-piece attack and defence stuff and kata. It's not a full-contact discipline, but it's tough enough, and over the years I managed to pick up plenty of bruises, a few cuts, a broken toe and cracked ribs, and a back problem when someone unexpectedly kicked me so hard it lifted me off my feet and landed me heavily on my arse. You should have seen the other guy. He was laughing like a drain, as was every other rotten bastard in the dojo. Overall, as a way of getting physically fit I think it was second to none - in terms of self-defence the story's a little different. Of course if nothing else you get to learn some Japanese, which is useful in case you ever get the crap beaten out of you while you're on holiday in Tokyo, because you'll be able to tell the police what they did to you. "Well, officer, I think it was probably a kizama-zuki that broke my nose, and it was definitely a mawashi-geri that knocked me out."

Some of my conclusions on the subject of self-defence and street violence are as follows:

- You can get used to being hit. People laugh when I tell them this, but I think it's the most important thing I learnt. The first time someone hits you hard it shocks you, but when it happens to you a couple of times a week, although it still hurts, you don't just hop about with your hand over your eye going "Ow!", you decide to check it out later and start thinking about how you stop it happening again (which usually involves hitting your opponent as hard as possible.) In a real fight situation it's quite likely that you'll be taken by surprise and have to take a punch, but if you can survive the first one you have a chance to stop the second. Of course if there are knives, guns or blunt objects involved it's a different story; on balance I think it's undesirable that you try to get used to being stabbed, shot or beaten with a baseball bat, and if you ever get to actually like it, then you're just weird. Each to his own, of course.

- "The bigger they are the harder they fall."? No, the bigger they are the harder they hit. They also have long legs which they can use to kick you up in the air from a distance (see paragraph three). My strategy for dealing with big opponents in the dojo was to get in close so their longer reach wasn't such an advantage (point one, "getting used to being hit" tended to come into play quite a lot when using this approach, but I was never able to think of anything else.) In a street situation the best strategies are probably running away and outnumbering, if practical. Faking a heart attack may well prove effective, but you'll probably get your wallet stolen while you're concentrating on being still and blue.

- If there's more than one attacker you're probably a goner, unless you're carrying a sidearm. Two-to-one is bad. Three-to-one means you're definitely going to get a beating. Trying to be their friend, giving them all your money and starting to cry are all worth trying if the old standby of running away isn't practical. You could also offer one or more blowjobs; not an attractive proposition if you're a straight male, I'll grant you, but I say if it saves you from a pounding then get on your knees, boy. Get some mouthwash, gargle and get over it. It'll probably make you appreciate your girlfriend all the more, although she may not want to kiss you for a day or two. It might be as well not to tell her about it. If they're not impressed with your pretty mouth and you have to fight, rather than trying anything complcated try and get hold of a brittle part of one of your attackers and break it. Try to stay on your feet; if you end up on the ground curled up in a ball they may well keep on kicking until they get bored, and that could be a long time in Redhill, where people aren't that bright and there isn't much else to do after the pubs have shut.

- Unless you're a Mean Motherfucker you'll always be at a HUGE disadvantage when it comes to street violence. Always always. They want to hurt you and you don't really want to hurt them back. There's absolutely nothing you can do about this except be aware of it as a fact. Stay away from public places where you know people like to hurt other people. Seems quite simple, really. If you have to go to those places and you have a sports bag stencilled with the words "Seishinkai Karate - Striking Cobra Dojo", leave it in the car - the fastest gun syndrome didn't die with Doc Holliday. If you think you're likely to get drunk and go up to complete strangers and challenge them to hit you in the stomach as hard as they can, then I don't want to go drinking with you. I've seen it and it can only end one way.

- And finally, although I'm prepared to consider alternatives, in my opinion there is no doubt that the scariest words in the English language, especially delivered in a quiet voice, are "Are you calling me a liar, pal?"

Merry Christmas...

I've just realised that it's nearly a month since I posted anything on here (and that was a short and slightly depressing poem). I've been busy at work and my free time has been taken up with things which are time-consuming but not necessarily interesting to write about, and I'm reluctant to post stuff about not having anything to say. Although I seem to be doing it now. Ahem.

Disappointingly my Jehovah's Witnesses haven't been round to try to get me to cancel Christmas, disappointing because I enjoy my annual doorstep opportunity to pretend to be wildly enthusiastic about Paganism.

There's a fair amount of stupidity in the news at the moment; I hope to write about some of it over the holidays, although I fully intend to be too drunk to write for at least part of the time. (I feel that as it's a religious festival, offering up my liver to The Lord is probably the least I can do.)

Anyway, thanks to all of you who have called in and left comments, encouraging or otherwise, especially Libertybob, who has been a consistent supporter of my ranting since I started this back in March this year. Check his site out - sanity, humour and quite often dreadful poetry.

Merry Christmas.

Love (in a manly way of course)

David

The Diver

Forward, backward, reverse,
That's the way.
Always inward, sometimes twisting,
Seldom straight or free.

I will raise my arms and soar
Above their pale excited faces.
Tuck, pike, and wonder
If I can enter the concrete
Without a splash.

Definition of the Word "Rant"...

I haven't had time to do anything on here for a while, but this is just to make sure you link through to this site. Makes my occasional tirade look laid-back...

Thank The Lord

I'm not usually an overtly religious man, but I said my prayers last night. I got down on my knees to give thanks to Almighty God that the American people had listened to His Holy Word and re-elected His Champion, George W. Bush.

President Bush (how reassuring that phrase sounds to all right-thinking people) now has another four years in which to make not only America, but ultimately the entire planet, safe from terrorists. Following his triumphant victory in Iraq and the liberation of its people, the President, with the backing of not only the American People, but also the Almighty Himself, can now don his Shining Breastplate of Righteousness, mount his Charger of Truth, and ride out to take the Holy Word of the American Way of Life to the other benighted lands which are secretly crying out for Enlightenment.

Many of these people have lived under such oppression for so long that they believe themselves to be content, absurd though it may seem to us. It's America's Sacred Duty to help them, using carpet bombing if necessary. After Iraq will come Iran. Then, on the basis that it starts with the same letters and has some terrorists in it, Ireland, although there may be pressure on the government to just reinstate the old U.S. policy of getting rid of some kinds of terrorist by giving them money.

The War on Terror at home will not be so easily won. Terrorists are everywhere, and can take on many forms. We all know that homosexuals are just as much terrorists as brown people with big bombs. In fact they're worse, for they threaten not only our way of life but also our bottoms. Who knows when one of these disgusting sodomites will leap out from the shadows, rip off our trousers and inflict unspeakable indignities on our cat-flaps? That's something I think about all the time, as I'm sure you all do.

As the Good Lord Himself might well have said had I been writing His material, "Thou shalt use thy bottom only for doing poos. And also thy willy only for wees. Unless thou art joined in matrimony. And even then it's a bit of a gray area. To be honest I haven't really thought the sex thing through. Apart from homos; they definitely need smiting."

That's the kind of thing God would say, if I did his stuff.

I'd like to close with a hymn by Randy Newman. It just sums up everything that's right with American foreign policy.


Political Science by Randy Newman

No one likes us-I don't know why
We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
But all around, even our old friends put us down
Let's drop the big one and see what happens

We give them money-but are they grateful?
No, they're spiteful and they're hateful
They don't respect us-so let's surprise them
We'll drop the big one and pulverize them

Asia's crowded and Europe's too old
Africa is far too hot
And Canada's too cold
And South America stole our name
Let's drop the big one
There'll be no one left to blame us

We'll save Australia
Don't wanna hurt no kangaroo
We'll build an All American amusement park there
They got surfin', too

Boom goes London and boom Paree
More room for you and more room for me
And every city the whole world round
Will just be another American town
Oh, how peaceful it will be
We'll set everybody free
You'll wear a Japanese kimono
And there'll be Italian shoes for me

They all hate us anyhow
So let's drop the big one now
Let's drop the big one now

God bless you all.

God bless America.

Anxious

I was driving through Reigate on Saturday and there was a road sign which read "Caution. Change in priorities ahead!".

Now I'm anxious.

Election Time!

I got into a bit of rant over at Susie's and I enjoyed it so much I thought I'd post it here...

As an outsider what surprises me about the U.S. media (and also the electorate) is that they appear to have some measure of respect for the candidates, whereas here in the U.K. we recognise that politicians, particularly those seeking the highest office, are in fact vermin who should be hunted down, captured, tortured and then killed. If they have reproduced then their entire families should be sterilised. (Don't try and tell me that Michael Howard can't be accurately defined as a sexually transmitted disease)

Anyway, it may seem ludicrous that the only candidates for the job of Most Powerful Man in the World are a half-witted monkey and an empty suit, and laughable that the people entrusted with choosing between them are Americans, for fuck's sake, but that's, as they say, life.

Hey ho.

Horribly Wrong

My graphic designer (who also happens to be my Final Wife) says that the light-on dark template I'm using is difficult to read and that I should change it to something a bit more sensible. As I am monumentally stupid when it comes to this stuff there may be a terrible accident. If it all goes horribly wrong, please bear with me.

I fear from experience that even if it goes right I'll lose the any comments posted on here, which is a shame.

Maybe I'll leave things the way they are.

The Power Of The Bugbear

Guess what, chaps! A couple of days after my unkind words about him, Norman Wisdom has announced that he's retiring from showbiz. Okay, he's ninety years old, so he might have been considering it anyway, but you have to admit it looks like I managed to push him over the edge.

Apparently Norman was a big star in Albania, where he was known as "Pitkin". Films like "Pitkin Goes To The Workers' Collective Summer Picnic" were immensely popular under the regime of King Zog, where the only other permitted form of recreation was the fiercely competitive "Growing Root Vegetables Into Slightly Amusing Shapes" League.

According to the news reports Norman was famous for his catchphrase "Mr. Grimsdale.", which, let's be honest, is not that clever a catchphrase. I'm not a comedy writer, but I'd put money on being able to come up with something a little more witty and urbane than that.

Anyway, now that I've seen what the power of the Bugbear can accomplish I'm going off to concentrate on visiting a plague of pubic hornets on Giles Brandreth. I realise you Americans don't know who Giles Brandreth is, but trust me on this one, if you knew him you'd thank me.

Malnourished Goat-Faced Dikes #1

I'm not proud of this. In fact, frankly, there's a good deal of shame attached to it all. In hope of mitigation I have to put it to you that I was in Cornwall on holiday and it was raining quite a lot, but I did it. I watched a makeover programme on TV. I take a small degree of solace from the fact that I've never seen this particular programme before and would rather have my worst enemy take charge of tightening a razor-wire tourniquet round my scrotum than ever watch it again.

In this case it was hosted by a pair of visually interchangeable malnourished goat-faced dikes (hereinafter referred to as "GFD1" and "GFD2" because my lawyer advised me not to use their real names.) Believe me, no matter how civilised and even-tempered you believe yourself to be, if you had to spend more than half an hour in their company there would be no option but to pour a pint of beer over their expensively coiffured but noisily vacant heads.

The concept is that the GFDs, apparently famous for being Real Stylin' Bitches or something, take two Real Girls and do fashion stuff to them, which gives them greater confidence, total fulfilment, etc, etc. To start with of course there are more than two Real Girls, because on this kind of show the humilation can't start early enough and so to begin with the cannon fodder count is around ten. There are little cameos of all the RGs, giving them an opportunity to tell the camera why they should be chosen, and we pan back to the GFDs while they invent spurious reasons for their final selection (spurious becuse the only purpose of the selection process is to arrive at the RGs who are most likely to allow themselves to be humilated on national television without either slashing their wrists or punching one or other of the GFDs in the mouth.)

The entire group then stands in a room while the GFDs toy with them clumsily for a few minutes until the tension builds. The decision is announced, the Rejected Real Girls skulk off into the night to abuse their stunted children and get fat while the Chosen Real Girls do that winning thing which involves temporarily adopting the motor functions of a cerebral palsy victim at a Stevie Wonder gig while squealing "OhmyGod. OhmyGod. Oh. My. God. OhmyGod." The Almighty is unmoved by their supplication - after thirty seconds or so they're both still ugly. Hey ho.

The next phase is to visit the homes of the Chosen Real Girls, whose names escape me, thankfully, but Karen and Sharon will do. The GFDs examine the contents of the Girls' wardrobes, retching quietly as they use laundry tongs to drop the offending garments onto a blazing bonfire. Karen's stuff is boring but inoffensive, while Sharon's looks like it was chosen by her guide dog.

Then we meet the husbands. Karen's spouse is a colourless corporate git who is disappointed at what he perceives to be her lack of confidence at company picnics, or something like that. Now I don't even know the woman, but it's blindingly obvious to me that the poor hapless bitch's real problem at these events is the palpable wave of pity she feels coming off all the other wives when they realise that her husband is indeed the plum-faced robotic little twat standing beside her.

At first I think Sharon's husband is doing an impression of Norman Wisdom in one of those inexplicably revered but entirely fucking awful 1950s Ealing comedies where he has a speech problem, wears his cap sideways and gets hit on the head with a large shovel every five minutes. (For the benefit of young people or American visitors who don't know who Norman Wisdom is, think Jim Carrey at his most annoying and double it. Now stick a needle in your eye. There, you've got it.) Sharon's old man is for real, though - there's no mention of what he does for a living. I give it some thought, but apart from organ donor I just can't visualise a role for him.

It's quite apparent that a fashion makeover is completely futile. Call me sentimental if you like, but I begin to think that what would improve these girls' lives beyond recognition would be to take their husbands outside and put a bullet in the back of each pointed little head.

And we're still only halfway through the show! Boy am I having fun!

Do! Do! Do The Selfish Monkey!

It must be catching; Ed (The Selfish Monkey)packed in the blogthing a couple of months back.

I'm going to Cornwall on holiday for a week with no internet access and so won't be posting anything, nor will I be able to read and comment on anyone else's stuff, and anyway, to tell you the truth, I'm a little tired with the whole blogbusiness at the moment. There seem to be too many other things to worry about, and not nearly enough things to poke fun at, so I think I'm going to put what energy I have into other stuff, like getting fit and playing bass.

So...thanks to you all for dropping by over the months and giving support, advice and the benefit of your skewed sense(s) of humour. I'll still read your stuff and comment from time to time, but for the time being at least, the Bear's hanging up his, errrm, paws.

Batman and Robin - a response

Of all the U.K. news stories that make it through the U.S.A.'s "Not America Or Eye-Rack, So We Don't Care" filter, the one that Libertybob's asked me to comment on is "Batman and Robin Meet The Queen." I'm not an expert on either the disgusting Windsor family or the forces that drive people to dress up as super-heroes, but I'm prepared to give it a go, particularly as Bob is the only person who visits this site (apart from Susie Creamcheese, who disappointingly turns out to be a big Welsh bloke rather than the moist, pouting nymphet I had in mind).

Anyway, there are a number of different points raised by this news story, and I'll give it my best shot:

Dressing as superheroes; hmmm, tricky one. "I'm an estranged father being treated like shit and it's not fair because fathers are really uhhh, heroes. And super." Okay, got it. But the bloke who did Spiderman had more cred. Marvel beats DC any time.

I you're a protestor, dressing up in any kind of funny costume not only attracts attention from the media but is supposed to make it less likely that you'll be shot dead by the security forces. In this country that strategy still works pretty well. As a rule, if you're found in the grounds of Buckingham Place wearing a balaclava helmet, combats with side-arm-sized bulges and a sack marked "anthrax" there's a strong probability that even the Metropolitan Police will decide to take you out, although even then you're not necessarily a goner unless they can see that you're black.

As terrorists are quite smart these days it's only a matter of time before they're all dressing like Biffo the Bear and running round doing terrorist stuff unchallenged, so my own view is that just to be on the safe side anyone dressed in any kind of "humorous" costume should be shot dead, unless they can prove they're on their way to a fancy-dress party. Actually, due to the difficulty in telling the difference between a genuine fancy-dress party and a cell of merciless terrorist assassins we should probably target the partygoers as well. People involved in street theatre are most likely innocent of serious crime but let's face it, they need to be wiped out more than anybody.

I'd also like to draw the attention of the authorities to the people who run the fancy-dress shop in Merstham. They didn't laugh at my joke about the trucks that deliver helium canisters floating away.

Frances, Gaston, Hermine, Ivan...

The East coast of America, and Florida in particular, seems to get a lot of hurricanes. (We hear more about the storms that hit Florida than all the others partly because they're of greater severity than the others and partly because Florida is populated entirely by tiny dried-up husks of old people who weigh so little that they often get sucked up into the slipstreams of trucks and end up miles from home, so hundred-mile-an-hour winds are more of a problem for them than for the rest of us.)

It doesn't happen in England, or at least, not often. We certainly don't have to give them names to tell one from the other. When we talk about "The Hurricane", we mean the one we had back in 1987, which peaked at a relatively puny 94 miles per hour. At the time I was living in a part of rural Cambridgeshire where there were three houses, five trees and nothing else from one horizon to the other except fields full of brussel sprouts, so the storm damage was limited. (They can withstand a lot of damage, can sprouts, which is good, because it means that after World War Three the cockroaches will still have something to eat.) Anyway, back to hurricanes; if we're up to "Ivan" already that means there have been nine hurricanes this year already, and it's only September.

Bearing that in mind, what I don't understand is this: why do Floridians continue to build ordinary houses? There would seem to be only two sensible approaches:

1 - Dig a large hole. Turn it into a spacious and well-equipped cellar. Live in it. If you feel the need to live above ground during the summer months, make sure that the dwelling you construct is made out of the cheapest, flimsiest materials available, then when it blows away while you're hiding in the cellar, not only won't you care, but if it lands on somebody it won't squash them. Part of the roof of the cellar (or floor of the house, depending on whether you're up or down) would of course be a sort of electric trapdoor thing to allow you to quickly move televisions, stereo systems and stuff up and down as required.

2 - Rather than build a normal house, build a windowless (CCTV cameras could take the place of windows) reinforced concrete pyramid, with walls at least two metres thick and deep foundations. No hurricane's going to move that motherfucker. The pyramid concept could prove immensely popular in Florida, with most of the population looking like a triumph of the embalmer's art already. On the death of the occupant, no need for a costly funeral, merely seal the doors and walk away.

You know it makes sense.

NB: "The Flimsy", and "The Cheops" are registered trademarks of The Bugbear Construction Company Ltd.

Not realising his favourite "special"restaurant was wired for sound, Michael asked for "a roast child, about this big" 

"Why don't they trust me?" thought Michael. 

Michael Who? Oh, Him...

I've been away for a while, and I was going to post some stuff on here about my honeymoon (no, not that sort of stuff), but there are some wonderful things going on that I have to talk about.

You may already know how I feel about Michael Howard, the leader of the Conservative party. In a way I'm delighted that the Tories have once again chosen a leader who may well have it in him to grow to be genuinely deserving of the nation's hatred. Admittedly, compared with the deranged and malevolent Margaret Thatcher he's a minor player in the loathing stakes; a film clip of the Thatch can still bring on the adrenalin rush and the red mist, while with Mike it's a more subtle flesh-crawling thing, but it's a lot better than John Major (Grey, dull, nerdy voice), William Haig (Young, bald, looks like a baby), and Ian Duncan-Smith. (Who? Exactly.)

Michael has a decidedly scary smile, particularly when he's trying to fake sincerity. I wouldn't for one moment suggest that he might have a taste for human flesh, but you can never tell. He also has a weird speech impediment which renders him unable to pronounce words which end in "ble", so you get "possibill" "peopill" and, ultimately, "unelectabill".

Anyway, Mike's in trouble with the White House. Yay! As I understand it, it goes like this. As Leader of the Opposition, Mike's job is to try and embarrass Tony Blair and generally fuck up the Government of the day. (I have a niggling feeling that this might well be treason, for which he should be arrested and killed, but I might be wrong). It's difficult for Mike to attack Tony on domestic policy, because it's pretty much the same as Mike's policy. The most controversial policy issue in the U.K. is the Iraq war, (Tony lied to us, made errors of judgement, etc, etc). Mike has tried to use this to attack Tony.

George isn't too sure who the hell Mike is, but he knows that someone's being unkind about his bestest friend outside the U.S. and this makes him really cross. Mike wants to visit the U.S. and meet GWB. The White House says "We're not too sure who the hell you are, but you've made our friend Tony very sad. We don't want to talk to you. And we know where you live."

Fighting back tears, Mike pretends not to care, but in reality spends most of his waking moments trying to figure out how to get out of this one, because with an election in the U.K. next year he has enough to worry about without the prospect of being hunted down by the C.I.A.'s finest assassins.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha!

My heart soars like a hawk.

Even after months of intensive coaching, the Tub of Lard still had some way to go before fully mastering the "winning smile".  

Let Me Through, I'm A Tub Of Lard

There's been a flood in Boscastle, Cornwall. Two inches of rain in an hour and a steep and narrow river valley combined to produce a wall of water ten feet high travelling at forty miles an hour. The last I heard there were still fifteen people missing. That's not the kind of thing we're used to in England; our weather, like our wildlife, is rarely dangerous, and hardly ever lethal. (To humans, at any rate. I believe shrews are known to die of stress during thunderstorms, which is ridiculous and makes a shrew a pretty sorry excuse for a predator, if you ask me.)

I've been to Boscastle. Long ago a man must have said "Look, everybody! A steep and narrow valley with three rivers running through it! In a part of England where it rains a lot! Let's build our flimsy little primitive dwellings right here!" That man was probably the First High King of All Boscastle. Right up until the first time it rained heavily.

It's a pretty village in the slightly warty, scruffy way Cornish villages are pretty, a bit like a young witch. I remember standing on the cliff-top there and thinking that if I ever got depressed enough to Do It, this would be as good a place as any. Anyway, I've long since moved on from the urge to fling myself from high places, (although I did have slightly dodgy moment at the top of the Duomo in Florence a few years back) which is just as well because the residents of Boscastle have enough to worry about without fat dead Irishmen washing up on the beach every five minutes.

For a start they've had to put up with a visit from the appalling John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister. Nobody really knows what Prescott's for, being ugly, obese, Northern and too aggressive to be allowed out much in case he starts punching people. Why the hell anyone thought that the mood of the Boscastlians would be lightened by the arrival of the Tub o'Lard beats me.

I can see that it might been effective if he'd been lowered from a helicopter during the rainstorm so that his enormous buttocks wedged themselves into the river valley, thereby creating an effective dam and saving the village, but to arrive the morning after the tragedy is, frankly, a case of "too little, too late", which strangely enough is the kind of remark Michael Howard makes about almost any aspect of Labour policy, seeming inexplicably to believe that seven years is long enough for us to have forgotten what a repellent little fuck he was when he was Home Secretary. He may actually be quite tall, come to think of it. He looks small on my telly. But then Prescott looks HUGE on the same telly, so who's to know? But I digress.

Anyway, if anyone in the government reads this, from a purely personal perspective, if there's an unexpected natural disaster in my part of Surrey and you think I need to be cheered up, please don't send John. Send me Charlotte Rampling.

Debate

With an election due sometime next year, it's fun watching the party leaders circling each other. Now that Labour's stolen most of the Tories' clothes, it's become increasingly difficult for Blair and Howard to claim any policies as their own. As they want to do pretty much the same stuff they can only say "If they do it, we'll do it more.", unless it involves public spending, in which case they have to say "If they do it, we'll do it less." The latest area for skirmishing is the Civil Service. Goes a bit like this.

Tony Blair: We will cut back on wasteful expenditure in the Civil Service by sacking 1,500 civil servants!

Michael Howard: Pah! We will cut back on wasteful expenditure even further by sacking 4,000 civil servants!

T.B.: Pah! We will also kill the civil servants we've sacked so that we'll save on unemployment benefit!

M.H.: Pah! We will kill the civil servants to save on unemployment benefit and make them into pies to feed poor people!

T.B.: Hang on a minute! I've got a good one! (Clears throat) Under a Labour government there will be no poor people!

M.H.: Bastard! (Shouting hysterically) Tony Blair's got a Fender Stratocaster but he only knows two chords!

T.B.: (Shrilly) Michael Howard's a lizard from Outer Space!

M.H.: (Sobbing) You love George Bush! You want to kiss him on the lips! With tongues!

T.B.: Aaaargh! You used to snog Margaret Thatcher! And she's old! Eeeeew!

(They start to claw feebly at each other while a crowd of M.P.s form a circle, chanting "Fight! Fight! Fight!".)

As a footnote, it occurs to me that as the Civil Service is the organisation which actually runs the country while politicians spend their time shouting, jumping up and down and flicking spit at each other, it's probably safer not to piss them off too much, as I would imagine that they have the ability, information, infrastructure and potentially the motive to fuck up the government of the day in more ways than it's possible to imagine.

Just a thought, lads.

"My God, it's a pack of feral bridesmaids!" hissed Smedley. "I'll try to kill the leader and when the little ones start to eat me, run for the Jeep. You might just stand a chance."

With their preternaturally keen eyesight Emma and Robin were alone in finding the bridegroom's version of "Puppetry of the Penis" entertaining.
 

Last to recognise the ugly mood of the crowd, Robin turned to find himself alone on stage and in mortal danger.

The beer and drugs having kicked in, David was unaware that his bride had run off and he was now trying to tango with a Fender Jazz

Distracted by the proximity of his hand to Soo's left breast, David stabs a photographer in the head. 

Yay! (2)

So, what did you do at the weekend, Davy? Oh, the usual. Had a few beers. Played a bit of guitar. Got married. Again. Yay!

Blessing and BIG party on Saturday...more later.

In case I was a little hard on Northern Ireland, here's a nice picture of The Giant's Causeway.

Surprise!

Northern Ireland has joyously discovered racism, seemingly embraced by "Loyalists", who have links with white supremacist groups on the mainland. I shouldn't be surprised, but I am.

I shouldn't be surprised because in N.I. we're dealing with people who wear the colours of the Israelis ("Loyalist" morons) or the Palestinians ("Republican" morons) just in case it proves difficult to start a fight any other way.

I shouldn't be surprised because during last week (as in many other weeks) a fire-engine putting out a house fire was attacked by a mob of stone-throwing monkeys.

And I shouldn't be surprised because as a primitive piece of social engineering, encouraging the migration of a bunch of murderous Scottish psychopaths to a cold and unpleasant island already populated by tree-dwelling cannibals was always going to be a tricky one to pull off. (I know that was a long time ago, but let's not forget the old joke: "You are about to land in Northern Ireland. Please put your watches back four hundred years.")

I'm just surprised because it seemed to me that there was still a lot of mileage to be had in the traditional kind of bigoted idiocy. Attacking and killing people because they have different political aspirations is what N.I.'s always been about, not looking for brown people to beat up. Let's face it, the only two things N.I. ever had going for it were low house prices and no racism, so now there's absolutely no point to the place. That's what really pisses me off. They should be greatful that anyone of any ethnic background other than pure bogtrotter wants to come anywhere near the ghastly place. The weather's lousy, the people are grey and miserable, the economy's built on sand, and if it wasn't for £4 billion a year in government subsidies they'd all have eaten each other by now. With Easyjet flights out of Belfast as cheap as they are I'm surprised the sodden hell-hole isn't empty.

I had this faint hope that as the piggy-eyed, potato-faced denizens of the place struggled to shift their social and political thinking from the 1600s to the twenty-first century, they might set their sights a little higher up the evolutionary ladder than 1920s Mississippi.

Fat fucking chance.

There's No Business...

There's loads of Serious Stuff I should be worrying and/or writing about, but I'm working on the basis that as Parliament's in recess at the moment (which means that the disgusting unscrupulous toadies we sarcastically refer to as Our Elected Representatives have all slimed off, leaving little silvery trails, to their Tuscan villas for a month) so obviously the Serious Stuff isn't as Serious as I thought.

So I'd rather talk about the death threats received by the appalling Catherine Zeta Jones. I must say that I felt the threat to murder and dismember the little Welsh minx was a bit harsh; I've been quite irritated by La Zeta in the past, but I've never once felt moved to commit horrible violence upon her person, nor indeed have I wished that someone else would do it, except maybe once or twice. I've always felt that marriage to little wrinkled old Michael Douglas was punishment enough, and, let's face it it must have been scary for the poor girl.

"I've never in my life had anything or had anyone say anything to me so satanic," said Zeta Jones, 35, ably demonstrating why they won't let her write her own lines. Douglas commented, "She was hysterical... she was fainting. She could not get any air. She showed all the signs of having a nervous breakdown." Mike was taking it seriously, obviously having forgotten that CZJ went into a similar mental and emotional crisis over a set of wedding photos not long ago.

Ah, showbiz, that wacky world where a bottle of wine arriving at the wrong temperature can result in a year-long lawsuit and two months recuperating in an expensive clinic.

The Best of Irish Lonely Hearts

(Yes, I know it's cheating, but I haven't had time to do anything on here for weeks and someone just sent me this. Anyway, made me laugh.)


>Grossly overweight Louth turfcutter, 42 years old and 23 stone, Gemini,
>seeks nimble sexpot, preferably South American, for tango sessions,
>candlelit dinners and humid nights of screaming passion. Must have own
>car and be willing to travel.
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------
>Following a sad recent loss, teetotal Tipperary man, 53, seeks
>replacement mammy. Must like biscuits and answer to the name Minnie.
>Thurles area.
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>Wexford man, 50, in desperate need of a ride. Anything considered.
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>Heavy drinker, 35, Cork area, seeks gorgeous sex addict interested in
>pints, fags, Glasgow Celtic football club and starting scraps on
>Patrick Street at three in the morning.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------
>Bitter, disillusioned Kerryman lately rejected by long-time fiancée
>seeks decent, honest, reliable woman, if such a thing still exists in
>this cruel world of hatchet-faced bitches.
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------
>Ginger-haired Galwegian trouble-maker, gets slit-eyed and shirty after
>a few scoops, seeks attractive, wealthy lady for bail purposes, maybe
>more.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------
>Artistic Clare woman, 53, petite, loves rainy walks on the beach,
>writing poetry, unusual sea-shells and interesting brown rice dishes,
>seeks mystic dreamer for companionship, back rubs and more as we bounce
>along like little tumbling clouds on life's beautiful crazy journey.
>Strong stomach essential.
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>Chartered accountant, 42, seeks female for marriage. Duties will
>include cooking, light cleaning and accompanying me to office social
>functions. References required. No timewasters.
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>Bad-tempered, foul-mouthed old bastard living in a damp cottage in the
>arse end of Roscommon seeks attractive 21 year old blonde lady with big
>chest.
>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>Devil-worshiper, Offaly area, seeks like minded lady for wining and
>dining, good conversation, dancing, romantic walks and slaughtering
>cats in cemeteries at midnight under the flinty light of a pale moon.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------
>Attractive brunette, Macroom area, winner of Miss Wrangler competition
>at Jolenes Nightclub, Macroom, in September 1978, seeks nostalgic man
>who's not afraid to cry for long nights spent comfort drinking and
>listening to old Abba records. Please, Please!
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------------
>Limerick man, 27, medium build, brown hair, blue eyes, seeks alibi for
>the night of February 27 between 8pm and 11.30pm.
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>Optimistic Mayo man 35, seeks blonde 20 year old double-jointed
>supermodel who owns her own brewery and has an open-minded twin sister.
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Belfast man, 30ish, beer gut and grim breath, desperately seeks
>companion. Must like Billy Ray Cyrus, Telecoms equipment, Tarmac and
>won't mind rogering me with my 12 inch strap on whilst wearing cowboy
>boots and humming Bryan Adams hits. No time wasters.

The Hunger

Although we're now officially married, the big party and religious blessing is still to come in August, so on Saturday Soo and I went to See A Man About The Rings. It was a very civilised outing - Roger's (the goldsmith) workshop is in a converted stable block in Nutfield village. We sat on a comfy sofa and chatted languidly about gold and diamonds and D-shaped profiles. Quite an education, actually; we now know that diamonds are coded in quality from D to Z, where D has to be viewed through a welder's mask to avoid temporary blindness and Z looks like the sediment at the bottom of a wine bottle. Roger told us that A-, B-, and C-quality diamonds don't exist, but I don't believe him. I think it's just that they're so expensive that ordinary people can't afford to even talk about them.

He then unfolded little paper packets and showed us some seriously nice rocks. Soo, who I thought had vowed to eschew all material wealth in favour of personal spiritual development, was seized by The Hunger. "I want them. Overpower him and bring them to me." she hissed, doing a pretty fair impression of Gollum, though with much nicer hair.

When the red glow had faded from Soo's eyes we discussed designs and decided on rings with five diamonds on each (one for each of our communal children). We're now waiting for Roger to give us an estimate - Soo's determined that the rings have to cost more than the toilets we're hiring for August 7th (which seems fair), but if there are too many zeros we may have to revert to plan B - Redhill Market (I still don't know how they can do those big diamonds for ten quid, even if they are stolen.)


And finally, overheard recently:
Q: "How do you tell if pearls are genuine?"
A: "The old ladies don't struggle so much if they're fake.")

Word For The Day

Angoraphobia n an abnormal intense and irrational fear of fluffiness

(I'm the one with the unconvincing little beard) 

Yay!

So, what did you do at the weekend, Davy? Oh, the usual. Had a few beers. Played a bit of guitar. Got married. Yay!

Changes

There are a few things I have to change. I'm not happy with this "comments" set-up. I'm not happy that I can't figure out how to add links to other sites on my header. And I'm not happy with that crappy counter thing. All of this will have to be sorted out, and with my level of competence being as low as that of a person who's not very competent, it'll all probably go disturbingly wrong. So if I disappear, don't just walk away and forget me, damn you. For I shall return.

Cromer

And another thing about Norfolk. Cromer. If ever a town deserved the title "God's Waiting Room" this is it. The streets are crammed with more old people than you thought existed outside Florida, and at the speed they move those streets stay crammed for a long time, believe me. It's eerily quiet, (because the poor old souls don't have the energy to talk and walk at the same time), except when the ambulances race by, woo-woos going. (What's the urgency, for fuck's sake? It's old age that's toppling 'em. Tell me what good getting them to hospital in a hurry's going to do.)

At first you quite enjoy it. I was around forty-five the first (and last) time I went to Cromer, and looking around me I felt young, energetic and vital. If I'd been with the right person I might even have felt a bit sexy (Rolls eyes and snorfles.) After an hour of trying to negotiate my way through streets packed tight with Zimmers and redolent with a miasma of wee, I started to see My Future staring me in the face. (Staring up into my face, 'cos those old people are really small.) All I could do was go back to my hotel, think of age, illness and death, and listen to those sirens wail.

Then I had a couple of beers and felt just fine. Thankfully I've never been over-troubled by sensitivity.

Ah-ooo! Hippos in Norfolk.

There was an item on the news this morning about, believe it or not, hippos in a gravel-pit in Norfolk. Not right now of course, but apparently around 750000 years ago ice-age Norfolk was home to these big buggers, twice the size of today's hippos. Which is one big fucking hippo. The scientist being interviewed said the technique used to determine the age of the bones they'd found was "Palaeo-Magnetic Dating", which gave me a brief Larsonesque vision of little fur-clad blokes with a bunch of flowers in one hand and a big club in the other, but I'm determined not to take that one any further. He also said that the bones hadn't moved very far after the hippos' death, which didn't really surprise me. I shouldn't think they were exactly light on their feet when they were alive; they're hardly likely to have done much scampering about when deceased. (Okay, I know he was probably thinking about tectonic plates wiggling about or some other kind of scientist stuff.)

Norfolk has always struck me as a weird kind of place. There seems to be something about England's flat bits (Norfolk, Lincolnshire, the Cambridgeshire Fens) that produces people who could move to rural Kentucky and blend in pretty seamlessly apart from the odd "Uhhhhhh, you guys talk real funny." comment. Maybe they're genetically predisposed to agoraphobia, and the fact that you can stand on a phonebook and see the whole county drives them nuts.

The last time I was there I had what politicians call "a frank exchange of views" with someone who not only believed that shooting burglars was fine as long as you remembered to feed the bodies to the pigs, but that the Saudis have the right idea, and it it "isn't brutal any more because they don't actually chop the hands off now, they just cut the tendons" so that they have these things flopping around like gloves hanging from a child's coatsleeves. I shut up after a while. I just had this feeling that I wouldn't have been the first visitor whose fancy ideas had caused him to end up inside a sausage.