Nanterre Massacre

At the start of the school year I began taking my little girl, Alice, to rhythmic gymnastic lessons. She loved it! Every Wednesday afternoon I'd drop her off at the gym, just five minutes walk from our front door, and go and pick her up an hour later. I'd generally arrive some five or ten minutes before the end of the lesson, and watch all these eager little girls being put through their paces with hoops, balls and clubs. A dozen or so of them having a great time! Then, one day, we got a phone call out of the blue saying that it was cancelled. The mayor's office was turning the gym over to a long-term exhibition of archaeological relics. Relics. In a gym. In the UK, people who are disgruntled about what is going on in their local neighbourhood have a useful outlet for their grievances which bypasses the bureaucratic channels. It's the local press, and sometimes grievances expressed in this way can build up a head of steam. Around our way, there's no local press. No "Nanterre Evening News". What happens in Nanterre is, well you probably remember... On March 27, 2002, Richard Durn opened fire in the town hall at the end of a council meeting. Eight councillors were killed. Cor blimey, that's six years to the day! I wonder if someone at Nanterre Town Hall has a suicide wish?

Will Absent of Volition

I was travelling along on the Metrolink from Bury to Manchester, only to be pricked every few minutes by the feeling that something was wrong. It was like a voice in my head. What could it be? Then I realised: the voice was external. It was telling me that we would soon be arriving at Besses O'th Barn. But it didn't ring true somehow. And yet there we were, Besses O'th Barn station, just as announced. So what was wrong? And then it came again: "The next station will be Prestwich." A woman's voice, quite mellifluous. Factually true in what it conveyed, as the next station was, sure enough, Prestwich. So what was wrong? Why did I feel there was something amiss? And then it hit me. Omygod it's the multiverse! At the front of the tram I could see through the driver's window, dead ahead. There seemed to be two sets of tracks, running in parallel, one for each direction and yet... as we approached each station there must have been points, maybe invisible, maybe spectral, offering maybe two, maybe more, maybe an infinity of possible bifurcations! "The next station will be Heaton Park". Literally, the voice is keeping us on the straight and narrow! In the old days, before the multiverse, the voice would have said: "The next station IS Heaton Park."! The same uncanny phenomonenon occurred on the train from Manchester Piccadilly to Mcr Airport: "Then next station will be Heald Green". Thank goodness the voice imposed that outcome, otherwise I might have ended up missing my flight!

No More Hairies Any More

Such was the designation of France's World War One veterans ("les Poilus"), and the last of the hairies - a clean-shaven 110 year-old as it happens - has finally shuffled off his stubbly mortal coil, so that the only remaining memories of WWI are now those consigned to the history books.
I wonder if there are any of his peers left in the UK, or elsewhere in the world, or is he really the last of his kind?
Rumour has it that his last whispered utterance was: "They don't like it up 'em".

Ticka-ticka timex

Well it's that time of year again when the stress levels rise and I start to wish I had an accountant to do all the dratted paperwork for the end of year returns. There is just never enough time - what with sitting round watching the TV and playing games and all. To quote David Bowie: "Time it flexes like a whore, falls wanking to the floor." Then again, his lyrics don't really bear much scrutiny. Not like Sting, for example. God knows, every women I've ever known has only ever wanted "De-doo-doo-doo, de-dah-dah-dah" from me. Finger on the pulse, Sting, man. Respect.

Return to the Shire

And so, after years of absence, the Wanderer is due once again to set out with the faithful merry brethren on the pilgrimage Holcombe-ward, where many a drop of mead will be supped and spilt in Ye Shoulder of Mutton over tales of yore - of foolish imps making cack in buckets, and of naked fauns striding through chill woodland streams. The days of such elvish merriment may be past, but their memory lives on.

Lord Slags Nurse Sluts

The esteemed Lord Mancroft used his podium in the Second House to decry the state of nursing in the country, having witnessed the slatternly chatter of dirty-fingered young nurses chatting about their night on the town, across his bed, as they tucked him in, sick and elderly as he was, not paying any attention to him as they thrust their cleavages so close he could see the goosebumps on their bosoms, not paying any attention to him - a Lord of the Realm - who in the prime of his life could have pulled any of these bitches. Damn them! I'll have my revenge, said the wizened old man.