Cute

Stan is three and my impression is that his elder sister took to English better than him when she was his age, maybe it's a "boy" thing.
Be that as it may, I do try to maintain at least my half of the dialogue with him in English. However, sometimes it is too easy to lapse into French, as I did this morning when he wanted to know what the alarm clock was called, although I do try to redeem myself afterwards:
"C'est quoi, ça?"
"C'est un radio-reveil."
Without hesitation he repeats it in order to commit it to memory: "Radio-réveil".
Whoops, come on now: "In English it's called an 'alarm clock'. Can you say that."
"Non."
"Go on. 'Alarm clock'."
Maybe it's because we'll soon be visiting the folks in England who don't speak a word of French. But a brief look of contemplation flashes over his features and he utters tentatively:
"Alarm plop?"
Gotta love 'em.

Kismet

As the rains come to the aid of a desperate(ly bad) England side in a Sri Lankan town that is as used to shipping water as the England bowling attack, the wags on the message board are passing the time indulging in speculation about Nelson's last words. According to one, it was not "Kiss me" that the Admiral said to Hardy but "Kismet", the Turkish word for "Fate".
Well I personally have it on the authority of Christopher Ecclestone, who used to go for trips through time in the Tardis while working as Doctor Who outside of official filming (perk of the job), that he personally witnessed the final moments of the dying seafarer, and the whispered words were actually: "Kiss it". He had his fly undone and his trouser snake hanging out as he breathed his last.
This kind of behaviour was not considered "gay" at the time since, for one thing, the term had not been coined and, for another, such boisterousness (even for a dying man) would have been considered normal practice among men of the navy, absent at sea for so long and left to their own devices.
These kinds of practices have been picked up in modern times by extremely heterosexual rugby players. A friend of mine, former scrum half and captain of the first eleven of an Oxford University college team, has regaled me with tales of the shenanigans they get up to. I also knew a guy who played for Bedford RU while doing teacher training, and he liked to cup mens' tackle to see what he was dealing with. It was more a case of "fronts to the wall" with him. He had a girlfriend, but he never let you see what was inside his closet.

Xmas spirit

They just turned on the Xmas lights on The Archers. Marvellous radio!

Balmy army

Despite a stalwart show of last ditch resistance, some dodgy umpiring and the home team's secret weapons of Malinga and Murali finally did for the English cricket team in the first test against Sri Lanka.
Looking beyond the possible inclusion of cricket in the Olympics, its inclusion in the Paralympics would surely be synoymous with golden glory for Sri Lanka, as they already have two world-class "differently-able" competitors in their able-bodied national team. That's right, "Slinger" Malinga and Muralitheran, both of whom have had the rule books re-written to accommodate their dubious bowling techniques, caused it is said by physiological defects.
That's the bowling side taken care of, and the latest news on the grapevine is that they're about to introduce another freakish prodigy into the batting line-up: a young man with the birth defect of a three-foot-wide bat sprouting from his wrist.

Credit card fraud

I just received an alert from a well-intentioned friend, warning me of a credit card scam doing the rounds, whereby people purporting to represent credit card companies, and who by whatever means already have obtained your card number, phone to get you to disclose the security number on the back of the card.

If you are worried by this scam, and feel there is a chance that you might disclose your number upon request by someone calling you and saying they work for a bank or credit institution, then send me by email your full name and address, along with your credit card number and the aforementioned security code, and I'll patch a security widget on the world wide internet that will ensure your details remain entirely confidential.

And if by chance these fraudsters do call you up, play clever, and rather than hanging up on them, give them a false number. That way they'll attempt a transaction and so leave an extra trace by which they hopefully might end up getting caught.

The more of these fraudsters that get hoisted by their own petard, the better.

Eng-er-land revisited

I was far too hasty, drifting into despondency following England's failure to qualify for the Euros. Just think of all the pleasure it has brought to so many. First of all there is the - at first sight - hapless manager, who nonetheless walks away from the job with all the money he would have earned if he'd stayed the two years until the end of his contract, and who is free now either to take it easy or take another job! Bet he hadn't thought of that when he took the job on!
Then there's the footballers themselves. It's been many decades since a top pro has had to worry about making sure of the win bonus, to keep their families in the luxury they're accustomed to. Now they'll be able to enjoy their earnings in the summer, and take their wives and kiddies on a really lovely, long holiday to somewhere exclusive where there's no riff-raff cluttering up the beaches.
Talking of riff-raff, we shouldn't forget the humble fans, either. Just think of all the money they'll save by not having to fork out on travel, tickets, accommodation and sundries in the Kingdom of Austro-Switzerland. They too will be able to treat their wives and kids, instead of pissing their wages up the wall like they usually do. Every cloud does indeed have a resplendent silver lining!

Eng-er-land

How shit is the England football team now?
It's enough to drive a chap to religion.

Material World

Punning may be the lowest form of wit, but nobody does it better than Quentin Cooper on "Material World" (BBC Radio 4, Thursdays). Not only can you enjoy his ingenious puns, you learn stuff too!
I found myself inwardly applauding one he came up with while interviewing a scientist about the way in which bees perceive their surroundings. Unsurprisingly, bees apparently see the world in a completely different way to us, so: "What a bee sees is not as simple as A-B-C."
Respect!

Sarkozy put in his thumb

... and pulled out a plum, or, at least, he soon will.

That bloke smiles too much, particularly now he's ditched the missus. Just watch! He'll be able to show a thing or two to the likes of John Major or Bill Clinton when it comes to the doe-eyed worship of his subordinates, although given his stature they're unlikely to be gazing UP at him in dewey wonder.

Our household is split between who his next avowed conquest is likely to be. 'Er indoors reckons it's going to be Rachida Dati, the Minister of Justice:

...whereas I reckon it has to be Rama Yadé, the "Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Human Rights", for her self-evident cigar-sucking appeal:

Go on, I'll give you 3:1 Rachida and 2:1 Rama!

Brains of Britain

So it appears that 60% of all degrees are nowadays Firsts or Upper-Seconds. Whatever happened to the standard distribution curve? Oh, I forgot, League Tables, of course. An A++ to the bright spark who pointed that one out. Now get back to your Game Boys.

Perfect day

... but not for France, Estonia or Notts County

Dared to say hello

What cynical times they are that we live in. As everyone hurries hither and thither around our tower block, ferrying kids to school or heading off to work, the most we manage might be a brief smile and grunt of acknowledgement to those whose faces are familiar, so when I turn a corner and am met by a spontaneous wide grin and big "Good Morning" from someone I've never seen before my first thought is: "Must be a simpleton". Someone offers a little ray of morning sunshine, simply because they're feeling good, at one with the world, and want to share that feeling with those they encounter along their way, and this is how you react!
Still, it turns out he was a simpleton after all.

Whoop-de-doo

I just bought a new English-German dictionary and it has the word "whoop-de-doo" in it. I don't know why I bother. I buy a new dictionary every fifteen years or so to keep up with linguistic developments and this is the kind of nonsense that leaps from the page (it's a page index header to boot). Who is it that determines what shit-de-bum is to be included in dictionaries anyway? I'm sure they must be moonlighting from the world of advertising.

Wrong pin

I had a good laugh at Liverpool Airport the other day when hiring a car. I used a French credit card to pay the deposit, so the "intelligent" software, recognizing the card's provenance, displayed the read-outs on the pin-pad in French.
When the time came to key in my "PIN-number" the message "Saisir broche" was displayed. A moment's reflection made me realize that was a direct translation of "pin" in the sense of the terminal pins you get on a jack-lead, for example. An attempt therefore to render "Enter PIN"*. Good stuff, but not exactly obvious. What if poor Jean-Pierre turns up for his car and enters the digits on the pin-pad that correspond to B-R-O-C-H-E, thinking that the next step will be to enter his PIN?! I zink J-P will be catching ze bus.

*Just in case you're wondering, it should have been "Saisir PIN". Duhhh!

Let your fingers do the walking

Why are the Yellow Pages yellow, and why are they universally so (Pages Jaunes, Gelbe Seiten, show me the way to Amarillo, etc.)?
I shan't bother asking why the White Pages are black and white and read all over.

9/11

With the anniversary of September 11, otherwise known as November the 9th, just having been commemorated, it occurs to me that on the day the twin towers were Fred Dibnah'd I rushed to the Internet to cop a screen shot of the live view from the webcam at the top of one of the towers, along with a screenshot of the panoramic restaurant on the 90 umpteenth floor. I wonder if I could cash in by selling these last minute memorabilia on Ebay? (the live view was... well, black, but beautifully framed).

Heroes and other damp squibs

I see from the TV listings that Heroes is coming up to halfway point on the Beeb. Well, in Douce France it's already been and gone, and I would like to spare anyone the trouble of sitting through the rest of it. Why? Think "Lost". Remember how intriguing that seemed at first. Hell, I even missed two episodes of Heroes early on and paid a fee to download them, so keen I was on the premise and the prospect of what was to come. Although the frustration had been welling up for weeks, I only actually stopped watching half way through the very last episode. How futile is that? Regrets: I have a few. The time I spent watching Heroes I could have fruitfully employed constructing an intricate structure out of spent matches, were I that way inclined.

When pooh occurs

We are told to Count our Blessings. This is all very well, and a noble injunction, but sometimes it's not so easy. It's one thing rationalizing: "Well, as long as you've got your health, you're laughing," only still to feel unfulfilled, or frustrated, or jealous, or whatever.
It's only when shit happens, and you come out the other end with a sigh of relief, that the dictum becomes easier to appreciate. Shit that ended up flushed and wiped for me in the recent past: having a recurrent slipped disk that was "there for life" according to the doc, but which seems to have gone AWOL for longer than a term in Guantanamo; my little lad having to be operated on, but then it turned out fine; losing my jacket and hence my wallet (that I've had since age 17) on a drunken night out, containing my bank cards, driving licence, ID and myriad other cards, only to be called by the cop shop in the early hours to say it had been handed in (minus the cash, but what the hell...).
Of course, it would be nice to win the lottery but, after all, as long as you've got your health...

Allez les bleus-blancs-rouges

What a fine day for the armchair sports fan with a heart of Albion! England's national side in action on three fronts, in the cricket, the football and the rugby. Leaving aside the latter (a win against a team of US amateurs that smacked more of defeat and which never stood much of a chance in any case in the viewing stakes, being scheduled at precisely the same time as the football), England's wins on the cricket field against India and at New Wembley against Israel were the source of great satisfaction, and the cricketers had the sense to finish off the Indians just as McClaren's men were about to kick off on another channel. Great, super, smashing.

Yet a source of real revelation for this particular sports fan was the evening game (let's face it, today I was in it for the duration) between France and Italy.

After over a decade of living in the country I think it's fair to say that tonight was the first time I really wanted France to win like it was my home team. One reason of course was that France was playing Italy, and no-one likes cheats. But even at the last World Cup Final, I found myself having to suppress an inward chuckle when my hosts fell over at the last hurdle against the very same ghastly Gattuso and his henchmen. "C'était plus fort que moi", I couldn't help it, as they say.

Don't get me wrong, when England next come up against the French, there'll be no contest (apart from the Rugby League where I'll continue to root for the Catalan Dragons - although that's more of a plucky underdog thing I suppose), and I'll no doubt be rooting for the Scots on Wednesday when they play the French (or I would if England weren't playing at the same time). But when you've got two little Froggy nippers avidly watching beside their Roast Beef dad on the couch, and who are as much a product of this land as they are of your own loins, then I guess a bit of their blood finds its way back into you.

Hey Luciano

What's the difference between a hard-drinking navvy the day before payday and the city of Modena in Italy? Answer: one's short of a tenner,...

Oo-ar-yer, oo-ar-yer

I quite like posting stuff of me larking about on YouTube, not least for the odd comment that comes one's way. So far I've been described as "a nobody" and a "sad, strange little man". On the other hand (or would that be a false dichotomy?) I've been seemingly mistaken by two people for Jerry Springer. It's enough to give a sad, strange nobody an identity crisis. JERRY! JERRY! (etc., ad infinitum).

School's in

Our little lad started proper school this week. It was quite poignant dropping him off in the same classroom with the same teacher as for our little lass four years previously. The only thing that had changed was that the teacher looked a little more careworn, but that's teaching for you. Of course, despite going on about it for days, he didn't want to stay when it came to leaving him, until that is he saw Brisane, a little girl he knew already from nursery. She took him under her wing and declared that "She wanted to go to the toilet and so did he". She led off and, dutifully, he followed. Beware where women lead you, my boy.

Beware of Geeks bearing gifts

So I start blogging, yeah? And I post my first entry, yeah? Curious to see the result, like you are, I go to the page, see it all set up - nice and bonny - then am drawn to a button that says "Next blog". So I click. Thought it might be alphabetical, you know, "Dear Dairy" followed by "Drear Diary" or whatever but no, I get "Hot blogs" and a volley of warnings from trusty McAfee telling me a Trojan has been stopped in its tracks. Hold on now, what kind of sinister business is going on here? It's akin to being tagged with a Cyber-Industries bluetooth earpiece with who knows what sinister intent!
Stop it out there with all your viral and associated nonsense! And stop telling me where to get Viagra, I've already had a penile implant! Look I'm pressing the switch - on, off, on, off. Oo-er, I think I'd better have a lie down.

Let's call him Nelson

Took a day out to that-there-London and as chance would have it stepped out of Waterloo station half an hour before a statue of Nelson Mandela was due to be unveiled just across the bridge in Parliament Square, in the great man's presence. What the hell, it wasn't on the programme but I stuck around to point my phone at the distant shrouded bronze. Don't know why, just seemed like the thing to do, everyone else was doing it.
Got bored before he denuded his likeness with a flick of his arthritic wrist and I made off across the green to do Planned Stuff, but found myself humming "Free Goody's umbrella" to the tune of "Free eponymous" as I went. It doesn't seem like two minutes since we were having a ruckus with Locals in Rammy culminating in arrests for some, flight for others (there I go, winged heels!) and the loss of the famous Brolly. Ah tempus fugit! Wist, wist!