dear dairy milky milky

Iron Lady

2012-01-09T09:20:00.002+01:00

Went for a Friday night roller blade ride, took me down the Champs Elysées. A crowd blocked the way, I thought it must be a street performer, but on approaching I saw they were massed in front of a cinema, and there was a cordon leading from the doors with cops in attendance, obviously awaiting the arrival of a limo with some screen celeb (maybe Ms Streep herself) for the Paris premiere of La Dame de Fer, as it's billed over here. Since I came upon it by surprise, and was skating downhill, it was only the rear of the queue that would have heard me when I yelled "Thatcher is a twat!". Completely unpremeditated, a kind of Tourette's reaction. Then the next song on the earpieces came on: "Up against the Wall" by the Tom Robinson Band. Moments like that are very special.

Black arse, fat arse, what arse?

2011-11-09T14:32:00.002+01:00

There's been such a frightful brouhaha in the media lately about the ex-caddy of Tiger Woods exclaiming at a caddies' award ceremony that he would haved liked to "stuff the award up TW's black arse".
The uproar that ensued largely concerned the interpretation of the comment, and the underlying attitude, as racist. Well, on the day that even Tiger Woods has come out in public to defend Steve Williams as "certainly not a racist", I feel quite simply that the question is more linguistic and aesthetic than a matter of racism.
The statement was certainly meant as an insult, and an insult requires strong epithets. He might have got away with just saying "stuff the award up TW's arse", but that fails on at least two counts. Firstly, it is weak. Compare "I'm going to smash your face in" with "I'm going to smash your stupid face in." Your interlocutor may not have a "stupid face"(and what, in any case, is a "stupid face" supposed to look like?), and in this respect it is just an - arguably - milder, perhaps more reflective, alternative to a stronger expletive, such as "fucking" or "cunting" or the like.
The same might be said of "black arse". What else could he have employed as a reinforcing adjective: "fat"? TW isn't fat. "Skinny"? Ditto.
So that's the first consideration. As for the second, if he'd simply uttered "I'd have liked to ram the award up his arse," the interlocutor might have been left in doubt about the speaker's sexual predilictions, and the use of a sneering "black" nips any such doubt in the bud.

e-bay constitution

2011-06-08T13:58:00.002+02:00

I was watching a documentary on TV about Veit Harlan, the favourite film-maker of the Third Reich. This got me thinking about the way these empires and republics have been listed chronologically in the nations that have done away with their kings and queens. France is now in its "fifth republic", for instance. What is it with the British monarchy? Why does it almost seem to inspire longing (one might even go so far as to say envy), in the denizens of even stauchly republican nations when big royal events come along? For me, it's a bit like the e-bay phenomenon. In the past you threw stuff out, considering it worthless and surplus to requirements. Now you find that stuff you hung on to has a value, invariably deriving from its nostalgia value to others. You feel gratified about not binning it, and bask instead in what its fundamentally worthless essence has accumulated in perceived worth. So it is with the constitional monarchy. Long live the e-bay constitution!

Half-man Half-biscuit

2011-01-27T09:10:00.003+01:00

Possibly the greatest band name ever.
Here's another name to call a band, a marker of the times, I invite any budding musos out there to feel free to use it on a first come first served basis (I assert no copyright claim).
And the band name is: "Great kid stupid name".

Well, well...

2011-01-02T22:58:00.000+01:00

In this godless age, when so many are keen to embrace atheism, eschewing the healthy doubtfulness of the agnostic, and no moral compass is to be had in such an eschatological vacuum, how ironic that in response to the question "How are you?", people no longer tend to say "I'm well", but "I'm good". How can they know?

I'm not Jesus, but...

2010-10-30T23:48:00.002+02:00

I'm not Jesus, but as I stood outside on the garden terrace, in the pitch dark, naked after a hot bath, trying to cool down, I was aware that, with my arms spread out at my side, any aliens peering down at the benighted countryside below with an infrared viewer would have seen a humanoid figure, alone, beaming brightly with arms spread wide, and would have considered the humanoid legend of Christianity, and would have thought, well, that's around two thousand Earth years later, and there is talk in their book of a second coming...

Vegan BBQs

2010-08-25T08:59:00.002+02:00

I wonder how vegetarians and vegans get on at barbecues? Not in terms of what they eat, but in terms of how they cope with marauding insects. In other words, is it okay to swat a wasp? Just what level of beastly sentience counts for them? Taken to the extreme this would put them in the same (holiday) camp as the Buddhists, who literally watch their step for fear of treading on an insect, which may, according to their system of beliefs, be the reincarnation of a dear departed relative or ancestor. This no doubt explains the obesity and sedentarism of the Buddha himself, who singularly lacks the svelte silhouette of a roaming, insect-indifferent Jesus or Mohammed. You would think, after all, that one would be all the more inclined to put the creature out of its misery, if you believed in that kind of thing, in order to hasten its passage in the reincarnation hierarchy to a higher life-form. Being cut off in your prime as an insect might even, who knows?, offer the fast track to the next life as a human being, just one step on the ladder below the Glenn Hoddle or the Tom Cruise.

Dream conundrum

2010-08-16T15:43:00.002+02:00

I woke from a dream and found myself still amused by its contents, which is rare since a funny dream rarely seems amusing in the cold light of day. It consisted of a scene from the Eurovision song contest, with a dead ringer for Yozzer Hughes from Boys from the Blackstuff, but with a dark complexion, black hair and a big black tash singing the Turkish entry. Like most Eurovision contestants these days he sang in English, and the lyric went "Oh, I have got a big tash, I've got a big moustache", before switching (Eurovision style) into German: "Ich habe einen Schnurrbart, der niemandem gefällt". What was really funny was the dum-de-dum melody, which then segued from the German with a brief "Allerdings" back into English. My waking impression was that this would make a good Mitchell & Webb sketch; I could imagine David Mitchell doing the Yozzer act with a really outrageous Turkish moustache. But I knew if I got out of bed to note it down, I'd not get back to sleep again. What to do? I decided, since I was still awake, to get out of bed and make a brief note of the lyrics, such as they were. Yet the damage was done. No way could I get back to sleep, the tune kept buzzing around in my head. Thus it was that at 4.30 am I was up and hammering away on my computer. Half an hour later, I started to feel drowsy. So I head back to bed, only to realize that the melody was lost to waking oblivion. Rats! Zéro points, Royaume-Uni.

Nicknames

2010-06-02T15:06:00.001+02:00

Funny things, nicknames. I was the one who came up with "Fatty Arbuckle" for a solidly-built friend of mine when we were just first-years, and by the time we reached fifth-form it had been abbreviated to "Arby", and my explanation of this laconic version of the original nickname and who came up with it and why would fall on deaf ears.
I had curly hair at a time when perms had just come in, so the effect was somewhat unfortunate. Someone tried to impose the nickname "Bogbrush" on me for that reason, but it didn't catch on as I coined the counter-nickname for them of: "Fuck off".

666 and all that

2010-05-20T14:03:00.001+02:00

I wonder if the "number of the beast" was a genuinely prophetic announcement of our worshipping of our chosen lottery numbers, week in week out? I leave you to ponder on that exegesis (personally, I go for the lucky dip).

Who should I vote for, mum?

2010-05-11T23:37:00.002+02:00

Say what you want about Scousers, even the hardest-bitten Man Utd fan would have to concede, well, at least they hate The Sun.
Last night I was in the pub watching the cricket when I inadvertently picked up a copy having failed to spot the masthead. Horror! I'd just ordered food that had to be eaten without cutlery and I thought "Arrgh! Fecal matter!" and proceeded to smear some on both front and back pages.
So they decided to ditch Gordon Brown's Labour for David Cameron's Tories, and lo! and behold, the Tories have jemmied their way in.
It reminds me of my five-year old who walks in while I'm watching sport on the box and checks out the score before announcing who he wants to win (i.e.: the team that's winning). Then again, that's probably about the literacy age that you'd associate with that sorry rag.

What the foreigners are saying

2010-05-04T10:13:00.002+02:00

Ever wondered what those what those quaint foreigners are really warbling on about when news teams are reporting in voice-over on their life and times? There may be more to it than meets the eye. Take the report on French TV news last night covering the British election campaign. A fairly nondescript overview of the situation in the country, with a few talking heads in Brixton and one or two toffs at a foxhunt in the shires. Yet as one particular twill-and-tweed beclad huntsman led the camera around the dog pen area, and the French reporter droned on about issues economic with the huntsman's words muted down in the background, those of us with English as our mother tongue could just about make out what the chap was saying: "...and these dogs are the females: in English we call them 'hot bitches'." Went totally over the heads of the newshounds, both in the recorded report and back live in the studio. Absolutely priceless!

LHC - Large Hadron Cafetière

2010-03-31T10:03:00.002+02:00

I find the work that has got underway again at Cern on the Large Hadron Collider quite fascinating. I was mulling it over as I stirred cream into my coffee, and noticed how the cream took resembled the spiralling of a galaxy. The scientists say that the astral bodies (galaxies and the like) could only be moving at the rate observed if surrounded by invisible dark matter. In other words, what they are looking for is the coffee. And the question should be, not what it consists of but how long elapses between it being stirred and it being drunk.

In hommage to Grommet

2010-03-16T11:14:00.002+01:00

Since today is a Tuesday, I should like to pay my respects to a funny little chap who we all called Grommet when I worked as a municipal gardener in Bury. He looked like a hobbit, or rather a hobbit crossed with a troll, but he was a cheeky chappy, and when I found out many years after leaving blue-collar labour behind me that he'd died of liver disease I felt sad.
Anyway, since this is a Tuesday, it reminds me of Grommet, who would saunter into the tearoom of a Tuesday morning and yell out in something resembling a singing voice: "Kiss me dick on a Tuesday."
Then again he said that every other day of the week as well. As far as I know, no-one ever took him up on it.

Jonathan... Jonathan... I can't say it

2010-03-12T12:15:00.001+01:00

Just been watching the ubiquitous Jonathan Ross, this time on Film 2010, where he just fell short of declaring the new Scorsese flick as "weally quite pwepostewous".
For all his massive earnings, and undoubted charisma based on his sharp and voluble wit, it just occurs to me that he's the only TV presenter that I can think of who is unable to actually pronounce his own surname.

Phil Archer - closet homosexual!!!

2010-03-03T11:28:00.002+01:00

Just catching up on The Archers, and while they're clearing away the stuff of the late, lamented Phil Archer, Jill goes under the stairs and says "It's a real glory hole down here". I wonder who used to stand on the other side while Phil waiting for some passing trade.

Hungry war robots

2010-02-08T08:29:00.004+01:00

Funny this morning on the radio. On the Today programme on Radio 4 they're interviewing some military bod about a robot that derives its power from consuming organic materials, and Evan Davies puts it to the spokesman that the fear would be of these machines feasting on dead soldiers. The spokesman counters this by saying that these robots are designed mainly to feed on plant materials, and in any case they have to be programmed - there's a MENU! I laughed my socks off when I heard that, but no-one in the studio seemed to spot the joke.
While on the subject of inadvertent hilarity, it reminds me of a Colemanball that I heard the other week while watching the Africa's Cup semi involving Algeria, when they had a player sent off, for the commentator to utter: "He probably should already be off the field after headbutting the referee." It didn't make anyone in the commentary team laugh! I ask you, sense of humour bypass or what.

Love thy neighbour

2009-12-09T12:17:00.000+01:00

I have a friend who earns a lot of money and to assuage his conscience he does some charity work for the physically and mentally handicapped. I asked him if he did it regularly and he said no, only spas-modically.

Taxe Professionnelle - l'arnaque à la française

2009-12-01T10:19:00.003+01:00

Il est grand temps qu'ils suppriment cette taxe néfaste en France, ou au moins qu'ils la rendent plus équitable.
Considérez la situation d'un quidam qui travaille à son compte (comme, en l'occurrence, moi-même).
Déjà ils prennent comme base de calcul les 6% de tes recettes : non, pas de tes bénéfices (c-à-d, ce que tu as gagné), mais de ton chiffre d'affaires global.
Pire encore : ce sont tes recettes globales PLUS la TVA y afférente : or, tu paies donc la taxe SUR les taxes (que tu as, d'ailleurs, récolté gracieusement pour le compte de l'Etat). Ça vaut la peine de tarder sur ce point : effectivement, on est taxé sur une taxe qui déjà ne te rapporte rien. Pas étonnant de voir le niveau de criminalité s'envoler partout : ça commence dans les institutions avec leurs arnaques réglementaires.
Et ce matin j'entends aux infos que La Poste avait été exonérée de paiement de la taxe professionnelle, sauf qu'elle doit maintenant la payer car l'Union Européenne juge qu'il s'agit d'un "cadeau" sans justification.
Et mon cadeau, il est où ?

Presiding as the Chairman

2009-11-20T09:04:00.003+01:00

Much of this conflict over the significance of the new post of "European President" is little more than language based. "President" in English is definitively the top donkey however you look at it, whereas in French "président" translates as both "president" and "chairman", and a chairman at best will have the casting vote when it comes to making decisions. They've even been saying in the English-language media that the French and Germans among others consider the role more as that of a "Chairman" than as a "President", when for reasons just stated this amounts to the same thing.
So why not just call the new top honcho the "Chairman of the European Union"? Not grand enough I suppose.

Herman Van Rompuy, new EU "supremo"

Thierry Henry - La Honte!, or, Gods with feet of clay

2009-11-19T09:09:00.002+01:00

If "L'Equipe", France's national sports daily, were impartial - or, let's face it, not French - the headline blazing out on its front page today would surely read "LA HONTE!" - "The disgrace!" - after the scandalous way in which Eire was eliminated from the World Cup Qualifiers by Les Bleus last night.
Instead, it runs with "La main de dieu" - the, oh!, so evocative (for English fans) "Hand of God" line, and that in itself speaks volumes.

It speaks volumes of everything that is wrong with football today and, indeed, of why football is the world game and, arguably, the one true religion in this godless age, when other "true" religions appear either whimsical at best or dangerous at worse to the public at large.

The whole language of worship has been transferred from pew to kop, with banners unselfconsciously proclaiming "My team - a religion"; "My manager the god". The faithful congregation gathers to sing hymns of praise every week to the deities whose icons adorn their children's bedroom walls.

These latter-day deities have so much in common with the Roman gods in so many ways; aside from the manifest falsehood they stand for that we all try to deny lest our lives appear as meaningless as they surely are, the old gods (with lower-case "g" for good reason) were all feted for representing a particular characteristic: Mars the god of war; Bacchus the god of bacchanalian roistering; and so on. In other words, they were all one-trick ponies, just like footballers.

Craig Burley, nephew, of ex-Scottish manager George, blew the gaff on the "cream" of that nation's footballers by declaring they were "too thick" to understand his uncle's management strategy. Yet, to quote the song, "Is it any wonder?" All they know is how to kick a ball about and their dedication was invariably at the expense of their education. Yet they are all - at the summit - as rich as Cresus for all that, and live in their bubble like the immortals on Mount Olympus.

So what are gods - indeed God - for? Surely the answer is: to provide lessons in how to live, ostensibly "righteously" (though a moot point when it comes to Muslim fundamentalists).

So what lessons do we learn from the gods of the football field? How to live venally, in celebration of philistinism, selfishly (even small clubs are going to the wall as all football's "largesse" is greedily hoarded by a relatively small cabal) and as filthy cheats.

Thierry Henry, and all of France this morning to give them their due, are looking and feeling sheepish about the events that transpired last night. If he'd been a cricketer (Andrew Strauss this summer springs to mind), he might have held his hand up in a show of good sportsmanship and called a foul on himself (like a snooker player would). But cricket and snooker are not the world's game. Football is. And such an admission would be unthinkable in football. So maybe, at the end of the day (as football pundits like to say), we get what we deserve.

And the legacy for Thierry Henry? They call him affectionately "Titi" in France, the name given to Tweety-Pie as it happens, the bird that "t'ought it saw a putty-cat". Well the world all saw what you did, Titi, and your name will go down in history as "Tricheur Henry", i.e.: Henry the Cheat.

Anyone for tennis?

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

2009-11-11T13:34:00.002+01:00

It strikes me on this Commemoration Day that each of the leading world nations has sent into battle in the great wars its own unknown soldier, and this soldier has always ended up getting killed. Talk about cannon fodder!

Sarkozy the Liar

2009-11-10T10:40:00.003+01:00

Not only does Sarkozy come out with the most blatant piece of historical oneupmanship at the Berlin celebrations of Nov 9, when he tries to echo the famous Kennedy utterance: "Ich bin ein Berliner" with his own "Wir sind Berlin" (neither of which the Germans would have said, the first notoriously translating as "I am a doughnut", and the second being pure invention, since the famous chant was "Wir sind das Volk" ("We are the people"); the cocky littly upstart also claims to have been there in the madding throng on that auspicious evening.
I can demonstrate that this has to be complete bollocks.
I was living in Germany then, in Hamburg to be precise, and, like the death of Lennon or the attack on the World Trade Center, moments like this are etched in the memory.
I was sitting to watch the news at home, waiting to go out and see the Pogues in concert. The German evening news begins at 8pm and finishes at 8.15, and I remember distinctly the look of surprise on the (female) newsreader's face when it comes in over her earphones, just before the end of the broadcast, that there was a breach in the wall and that the Easterners were flooding through.
So even if you lived in Germany, you had no idea what was coming, no idea of how the night might have progressed (repression? bloodshed?) and a cat-in-hell's chance of organizing your travel arrangements to get over to the city.
So what of the likelihood of some ambitious French would-be politician just beaming down to enjoy the thrill of it all, apparently accompanied by today's Mayor of Bordeaux, Alain Juppé??
Give us a break, you duplicitous toe-rag.

Photo of me sporting unfortunate moustache, hammering away at the wall alongside all the other "Mauerspechte" ("Wall-peckers")

24

2009-10-08T22:13:00.000+02:00

Wife's watching 24 again. I'll tell you what's truly superhuman about Jack Bauer - it's going all day and night without eating or taking a crap.

One-day wonders

2009-09-18T17:18:00.002+02:00

Change the first vowel and the third consonant of the third word and you've got the England cricket team to a tee.
What a quandary for the official Ashes tour DVD makers! Having purchased the DVD for the "Greatest Ashes series ever" (I quote) following the England series win in 2005, I looked forward to adding the latest triumph to my video library, and then along came the one-dayers...
The whole misguided exercise casts a long shadow over the superb achievement of the cricketers' test incarnations, and just watch those DVD sales take a hit. Can we not just pretend it never happened?

Harry Grotter

2009-08-04T22:52:00.003+02:00

I'm really pissed off that JK Rowling got in there first. I'd written a whole series of books about the apprentice wizard, Harry Grotter, when she happened to publish her first volume. Shite! All mine got rejected on the grounds that I was just some bloke trying to cash in writing some fantasy bollocks for kids, whereas she with her aura of struggling single mum rocking baby in the pram while she writes her books in a café to keep warm and fed on cream teas makes a bastard mint. Makes you sick. I've given up writing fiction and now I do some slaughtering instead and recount it in documentary form.

AA - wAAs geht los?

2009-08-04T22:51:00.005+02:00

French bureaucracy: two things to be said about it - it's very bureaucratic and it's very French. The French, like several European states, have until now had a vehicle numberplate system which knocked the UK system into a cocked hat. Rather than underscoring how new my car is or that my husband considers me 5EXY, the French numberplate integrated a final pairing of digits that indicate the French département. This feature is useful in identifying out-of-towners, enabling the casual observer behind the wheel of one's car, in particular, to be wary of the same since they're liable to drive unpredictably due to their unfamiliarity with the local topography.
However, the available numbers inevitably started running out. So what are the alternatives? Let's take the current model, what could be done with it: "123 ABC 75"? 75 is Paris, okay, so what about reversing the order of the sequential numbers and letters: "ABC 123 75"? It must have been considered, and yet this is no doubt where the bureaucrats stepped in. With scant heed to the sociological benefits of the system to date, they surely decided that by making all the digits and letters sequential, and not "wasting" two of them as "place-markers", they would have a system that was almost infinitely expandable - or at least would last until the petrol ran out. So now we have the model "AA 111 AA".
Yet for obvious reasons there was a bit of a backlash about the loss of the department indicator, and so it was decided as an afterthought to include it on the numberplate but not as part of the numberplate, over to the right as a counterpoint if you will to the "F" Euro insignia over to the left. But this is where the "so French" bit comes in: it's only optional (land of freedom of choice); and you can choose which department you want. I ask you! How laissez-faire is that? And what is therefore the bloody point of the exercise? You might live, work and drive all year in Paris but have a fondness in your heart for Corsica and so opt for 2A (south Corsica) or 2B (north) on your number plate. Or state your heart's allegiance to Brittany. Or the Vendée. Or anywhere come to that. Defeats the whole bloody object.
Anyway, about the German in the title. I was quite amused when I saw a tourist coach from Germany parked at the hotel across the way from us, all the way from Aachen. German number plates continue to retain their local identifier, which in this case is at the start of the plate in the form of letters signalling the town of immatriculation. Get the picture yet? "AA". Every new car at the time being driven around France had a plate reading "AA...", since the "AB..." series wasn't out yet. I had this vision of a perplexed coach driver from Germany wondering why so many of his townsfolk were popping up all over the place as he traversed the highways and byways of France.

Her Majesty the Queen

2009-07-01T12:06:00.002+02:00

I never was much of a royalist, quite the opposite in fact in my formative years, but having witnessed first-hand heads of state with feet of clay (Chirac) and literally not measuring up (Sarkozy), as well as gazing on dumbfounded from afar at other crappy heads of state (eg Berlusconi), I conclude that a constitutional monarchy such as we enjoy in Fair Albion is a GOOD THING. One thing I've always been curious to know though, is has the Queen ever said "Cunt"?

Michael Jackson RIP

2009-06-29T12:14:00.003+02:00

At least we can take consolation in the fact that he will be joining his friend, Ronney Barkey, in heaven.

Ronaldo gone for a song!

2009-06-11T12:16:00.000+02:00

So Christiano Ronaldo departs Man U for a fee that is the equivalent of the GNP of Lesotho. As a (bit of a) ManU fan, I'm quite relieved as - despite his contribution to United's recent success - I've longed for years to shout at my TV screen (I'm a ManU fan, of course I only watch them on TV!): "F*** of Ronaldo, you poncey diving c***!"
Roll on the Champions League 2009-10.

Expert in the studio

2009-05-12T13:14:00.002+02:00

On the news just now they had "Tony - former burglar" throwing in his tuppence worth about housebreaking rates in the UK. What a load of toss! Might as well have "Reg - former rapist" discussing sex crimes recidivism. Once a lowlife scum home violator always the same. I'm not as liberal-minded as I once was, by the way.

Max Mosley

2009-05-12T13:11:00.002+02:00

It's been revealed that Max Mosley had been considering quitting the Formula One scene and following his father's footsteps into politics as a Tory MP. Only he was put off the move when it was pointed out to him that, in the event of stepping out of line, he risked having the whip removed.

Addictive personality

2009-03-26T20:36:00.000+01:00

I've just enjoyed the most amazing hit of homemade apple crumble and devon ambrosia custard. You can keep your drugs. It doesn't get better than that.

Sins of the father

2009-03-16T23:37:00.004+01:00

I was somewhat perplexed the other day by the naivety of reporters and commentators alike in their comments regarding the resurgence of Republican violence in Northern Ireland. First one and then the other would express incredulity and dismay at the fact that the new radicals who spout their bile - Protestant and Catholic alike - either in chatrooms or on the street were all young, in their late teens or early twenties, and had never lived through the troubles. Surely it is blindingly obvious that this is the very reason why they have no qualms about disinterring the old factional hatreds! They haven't had to endure the strife, cope with the trauma, get worn down by it all over so many years. They've never had to get their shirts wet. To expect these young neo-Republicans to accept what is plainly an imperfect solution to the Republican dream (however irreconcilable the alternatives) on account of what their elders have come up with and resigned themselves to is as unreasonable as expecting the next generation of adolescents not to take up an all-consuming interest in sex when their balls drop, on account of others previously having done it and been there. The fact that their elders have chosen the wisest path is neither here nor there. Kids. You can't teach them owt. I blame the parents.

Show me a coloured tool

2009-03-09T23:45:00.003+01:00

There's a mind-puzzle doing the rounds of the pal mail, which opens with what seems to be a maths exercise (take a number, times by this, divide by that, etc.), which lulls you along until you are suddenly asked to think of a colour and a tool. I didn't really play the game, because the ploy looked familiar and I thought I'd be asked to think of a vegetable (carrot, obviously). So I rapidly scrolled right to the bottom and - as you probably already suspected if the statistics claimed are true - I discover that no less than 98% of people would come up with the words "red" and "hammer".
I advisedly say "the words", since some time later I casually asked my French wife, in French, to think quickly of a colour and a tool. She duly produced: "rouge" and "marteau".
As David Coleman might once have said, "Quite remarkable!" Subsequently, upon due reflection while a'strolling in the green sward, I figured out that it might be safely concluded that the Pavlovian response to this prompt is not phonological. It has nothing to do with the way the words sound or how they trip off the tongue.This contention may be supported by the syntactic discrepancy relating to the French response, logical inasmuch as it answered a query for a colour and a tool, in that order - "rouge marteau" - yet this doesn't work as an epithetical compound in French, since the natural word order gives "marteau rouge".
So, again, we might conclude that it is not the words, but the concepts that spring to mind - whatever the language. Why might this be? Well, I would hazard to guess that like most things pertaining to the collective subconsciouse it relates to our primal instincts passed down along the line of evolution.
Why the hammer? Since it is surely the first tool ever used. Take the animal kingdom. Of the rare animals that use a tool (apart from chimpanzes using straws for extracting termites, and these aren't tools, anyway, they're straws, and you don't buy straws from a tool shop), the tool of prediliction - surely the only tool - is the hammer. Take sea otters, for example, using stones for cracking open shells. Our first ancestors would have done the same. They would have cracked open shells and other recalcitrant titbits. But they would also have cracked open heads. And that's where the colour comes in. For from the time before man had words to describe his environment, the only colour that would be guaranteed to shock, startle, terrify or delight was red: the colour of blood. The reaction being determined by whether the spurting redness came from himself, his people, his enemy or his food.

I've told you a million times...

2009-02-02T14:26:00.004+01:00

There's nothing worse than people who say: "there's nothing worse than..." to present a fairly unpleasant phenomenon.
I wonder how many Palestinians sitting around the rubble in Gaza are likely to say: "There's nothing worse than getting stringy meat stuck between your teeth when you don't have a toothpick."
Oo-er, spot of politics...

The Great Satan

2008-12-16T11:30:00.002+01:00

So another US crook has "Madoff" with everyone's money. He's 70, so spending the rest of his life in prison is no big deal. They should make him and his entire family, and everyone associated with him who ever benefited from his crooked business DESTITUTE and reduced to eking out their existence from one soup kitchen to the next. But this is America, so no chance of that happening. And they said that the Communist system was inherently wasteful and unsustainable. I remember sitting through social science lectures (not a main academic interest I hasten to add) in which the smug lecturer would illustrate with a flow chart how the need for stout boots for winter in the USSR would result in massive overproduction but offset to the extent that when the over-supply of boots finally came into circulation, summer had arrived and the boots were no longer needed. How quaintly naive that all seems in the light of one man's fraud of tens of billions of dollars with no oversight from the national regulators. Send those bastards to the soup kitchens too! Talking of boots - the Iraqi journalist should have worn a pair of steelies to the press conference, and practiced his aim before turning up and missing the little twat.

He who smelt it dealt it

2008-12-03T12:48:00.002+01:00

You know how other people's farts are obnoxious but you're quite happy to smell your own? Well, I think it has to be conceded that curry farts have to be welcome to the nostrils, whoever the purveyor. The smell is identical to when the curry was bubbling on the stove. Oh how I wish I had some of that chicken rogan josh left over from yesterday.

VAT decrease - who benefits?

2008-11-26T12:36:00.002+01:00

Not the consumer, that's for sure!
Retailers will derive all the benefits from this VAT cut, consumers will get nothing and small businesses will suffer. Why? Because prices posted in stores have nothing to do with the precise VAT percentage. They're always set at the psychological levels: "9.99", "95", "195" and sums of that ilk. No retailer will be encouraged to pass on anything less than a ten-per cent drop in VAT. They'll just pocket the difference, the consumer will receive no benefit and small businesses that are registered for VAT will find themselves paying more for their consumables since there'll be less VAT to recover against the net price.
So much for the Government master plan.

Dying at home - the statistics

2008-11-26T12:33:00.002+01:00

According to a BBC survey:
"The warning comes as a YouGov survey suggests more than 70% of people would feel happiest dying at home. In practice three times more people end their lives in hospital than at home"

The same statistical survey points out that a staggering 99.9% of respondents would prefer not to die at all.

Is it because ah is?

2008-10-23T13:11:00.002+02:00

Call me cynical, but I feel my eyebrow rising instinctively when I hear of Obama spending quality time with the ailing grandmother who had been such a support to him, blah blah blah. I wonder if he would have taken so much time off the campaign trail and made such a fuss of it if it was to tend to his black granny. As US African Americans go, he reminds me a little of Steve Martin in The Jerk. This is no criticism, by the way. It may well prove to be a very serendipitous way of getting a non-white male into highest office. If he's half-caste, at least he's half like us...

Luvvies, dahlings

2008-10-13T17:00:00.002+02:00

Here's a little game for you. Go on You Tube and type "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme" in the search line. See if you can spot me treading the boards. Eight clips to discover. Warning! They're all talking French!

Attaboy

2008-10-12T23:19:00.004+02:00

Stan has some toys confiscated from his bedroom because he hasn't tidied them away. The next day his mum brings them back and tells him that if he doesn't tidy them away today they'll be confiscated for good. He thinks about it and then says: "Tu n'as que les confisquer". Respect. He's only four.

Everybody's gotta get stones

2008-10-06T11:02:00.003+02:00

I bought some Cadbury's Fruit & Nut because I love the taste of Melamine in the morning.

Revelation

2008-09-19T06:35:00.007+02:00

Gordon Brown, getting a grilling on TV off the press about the global economic crisis, IS Tony Hancock on Face to Face!

Hallelujah

2008-09-19T06:35:00.005+02:00

I woke in the middle of the night and I found Jesus. It's true. And I wasn't even aware I was looking for him. Sleep went right out of the window but it doesn't seem to matter. It feels good. I've always wanted to believe but have never really been able to. The sticking point for me has always been the multiplicity of faiths. How can one faith claim to hold the one and only path to salvation? What about all the good people of other faiths, or none, or those who lived back in "pagan" times, who have cared for their children and tried to lead good lives? Then it dawned on me in this long moment of epiphany that this is not the question to ask. The scientists at CERN are asking questions for which they can never hope to get an answer. So they find the Higgs Boson? Lovely, at least now we have a face for the name. It still doesn't explain why everything in the universe that is "real" accounts for only 5% of what is out there. We ask questions using the only reference framework we have available. One of the images that came to me as I lay in the dark was of two ants, rubbing antennae, asking each other: "What if this is all there is?"
Despite my agnosticism I have always felt that my path has been lit in dark times, at crucial points in my life.
There are words that we can use to hint at what underlies these kinds of phenomena: like serendipity, or coincidence, or "blimey, am I imagining things"?
So I figured as I lay there, or rather it struck me, that you have to follow the path that is right for you. For who you are, where you come from, what has moulded you. It's only right for those ants to keep running round, doing what they're programmed to do, until someone pours boiling water over their nest.
And then I thought. And then I thought - should I share this? And then I thought, well perhaps I should, if only because I had the idea to, and I should perhaps see where this leads.
And as I logged on to the Internet, and opened "Blogger", I wondered what I should put in the title bar. And I thought I'd put "Hallelujah" but I wanted to make sure I fully understood the meaning of the word, and so I opened Wikipedia, and my attention was drawn to today's featured article, which read as follows:

"Anekantavada is one of the most important and basic doctrines of Jainism. It refers to the principles of pluralism and multiplicity of viewpoints, the notion that truth and reality are perceived differently from diverse points of view, and that no single point of view is the complete truth. Jains contrast all attempts to proclaim absolute truth with adhgajanyāyah, which can be illustrated through the maxim of the "Blind Men and an Elephant". In this story, one blind man felt the trunk of an elephant, another the tusks, another the ears, another the tail. All the men claimed to explain the true appearance of the elephant, but could only partly succeed, due to their limited perspectives. According to the Jains, only the Kevalins—the omniscient beings—can comprehend objects in all aspects and manifestations; others are only capable of partial knowledge. Consequently, no single, specific, human view can claim to represent absolute truth."

Coincidence, or what?

As the great Dave Allen used to say, "May your God go with you".

Alternative to BBC I-Player

2008-09-12T15:20:00.004+02:00

I sometimes wish they'd just leave well alone. They had a corking little Listen Again facility on the web for BBC Radio which worked like a dream, and then they had to go and embed it in the I-Player alongside the TV programs, which are no darned use to me anyway, since no-one abroad can access them anyway. To make things worse, it's a pound to a penny that the ruddy thing won't work in any case, throwing up a "program temporarily unavailable" message when you want to listen to the latest episode of The Archers.

Well, I've just discovered a natty wee get-around to get back to the old style re-broadcast using Real Player. You simple enter the following in the address bar of your web browser:

rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/xxxx_ddd.ra

whereby you replace "xxxx" with the time and "ddd" with the day of the week. So, for example, if you want Thursday's episode of a tale of country folk, you'd put "1900_thu". As long as you already have the real player application on your PC, this will generate it and set it running just before the start of the program and shut it off two minutes after it is over. So you get to hear if that night's Front Row is worth listening into. Which is nice.

Capello - what's that about??

2008-09-05T18:17:00.002+02:00

I've just been watching that overpaid stooge Capello struggling to get through his press conference in English. We'll get beaten by Andorra tomorrow. Ten-nil.

Bush/Blair - the legacy lives on

2008-08-18T23:03:00.002+02:00

So Medvedev sends his troops into Georgia. Who could countenance such an unprovoked brutal invasion of another sovereign state in this day and age? Oh, that's right, we've been there. I can here the tinkle of smashed panes in glass houses.
Still, I think what it really amounts to is a divertionary tactic by the Russian hierarchy to take their people's mind off the Olympic Games and make them feel they've got some clout in the world still. They're being tatered by Team GB, for goodness sake.
I do kind of like watching Medvedev on the telly, though, as I'm a great fan of Gerry Anderson's classic sixties series, the ones where you could see them pulling the strings. Here, of course, it's Putin who's the puppet-master. The invasion of Georgia: filmed in Supermarionation!

Beijing 2008

2008-08-08T14:57:00.002+02:00

It's a load of old wank that the Games should have gone to Beijing, but now they're there I'm watching them, of course.
I must confess my admiration at the spectacle of the opening ceremony. I'm wondering how London might match, let alone top, that in 2012.
I figure that in order to get such well-choreographed excellence we'll need to install martial law at least 18 months before the Games begin, in order to get the participants ship-shape and Bristol fashion and all toeing the same line.

Strike it lucky

2008-08-03T14:34:00.002+02:00

Ten-year old boy stabbed to death in frenzied attack around the back of his house while family parties out front - luck strikes once.
Chap wins 35 million euros on Euromillions - luck strikes twice.
Good luck, bad luck: strike it lucky.
Life - you've got to be in it to win it.

Zounds

2008-07-09T16:43:00.001+02:00

People don't say "Zounds" any more. Not for centuries.
They say fuck shit bollocks wank, but not "Zounds".
Probably a good thing, showing how basically we are all very God-fearing, and hesitant to take the Lord's wounds in vain.

Perchance to dream

2008-06-17T11:42:00.002+02:00

In my dream it's a kind of post-apocalyptic world with feral young people running riot. I find myself seeking refuge from the rampaging hordes, pursued by a rabid youth who forces me to escape by jumping into a hole. As I look up, he starts to transform into The Hulk - but a brown one. He's going to kill me, I know - it's real nightmare time - and as he turns his back and squats at the edge I know how I'm going to die: he's going to do a massive Hulk shit and I'm going to drown in it. With that I wake up - Phew! Pick the bones out of that, Freud.
I wonder now, though - have I just dreamt the plot of the new Hulk movie? I can't wait till it opens here, to find out.

britishexpats.com - serving expats wrong

2008-05-27T09:42:00.005+02:00

Having subscribed for 350 USD to a sports streaming site for a year (liveuktv.com), and been in sportsfan heaven for four or five days tuning into all Sky Sports and Setanta, it all went belly up to my horror barely a week in. First there were some solicitous replies to my queries, stating they were "having routing problems", then 48 hours later the site was taken down altogether, replaced by a summary notice from the hosting company (Global Media Group) declaring the site's illegality (which is ripe, considering I'd been buying the streaming to individual events from the site for over a year).
I started to delve around for a way of either getting my telly or my money back, and a spot of Googling threw up a forum on a site called britishexpats.com where others who had been had were having their say. Only trouble was, they weren't the only ones.
For those not familiar with the workings of a forum, here's how it goes. When you visit a forum it is generally because that forum caters to a particular interest. Within that forum there are usually a number of topics being discussed at any one time, or that may have been discussed in the past. You can trace these topics and the interchanges via a thread, which corresponds to the subject line in an email. If the thread is still alive, you can contribute to it. This is what I did for the thread: "What the frig's happened to liveuktv?", or words to that effect. There were a few contributors who had a similar experience to myself, and were wringing their hands and seeking advice, too. Unfortunately there were also a bunch of oafs going on about something and nothing, at a complete tangent to the thread, and scumbags with nothing to offer but abuse. So it is that, for a forum to work properly, it has to have a moderator. The moderator is meant to keep everything in order. The idiot moderator on this site - pseudo Bob - dictatorially declared that the thread was being closed down because it was going around in circles. No doubt since I'd signalled to him my opinion that he couldn't run a piss-up in a brewery (couched in far more diplomatic language, I might add), I wasn't surprised to find he'd cancelled my forum login. So why was I trying to log in, might you ask? It certainly wasn't because I wanted anything to do with this poxy forum stroke community ("Pwease can I be your fwend?"), but it just so happened that I'd discovered a way to get a full refund, and I would have liked to share the solution with the other poor suckers who'd fallen foul of the siren of liveuktv. Thanks to Bob the Shite Moderator of Britishexpats.com, those poor suckers are going to have to find out for themselves.

John Cooper Clarke

2008-05-15T10:42:00.003+02:00

I've just been listening to the Paul Morley documentary on John-Cooper Clarke on Radio 4, and the talk of how he deflected hecklers with humour reminds me of when I saw the estimable punk poet supporting Be Bop Deluxe at the Manchester Apollo. A rather geeky chap I was with (no names, no pack drill, Jonesy) yelled out half way through his number: "We want Be-Bop!" Quick as a flash, Clarke riposted: "Just Ships in the Night". Sure enough, who remembers Be-Bop Deluxe these days? Meanwhile, JCC is up there on a cultural plinth, being fêted on the tranny.
Incidentally, some time around the time I saw him in concert, I remember being on a school outing to the Goethe Institute in Manchester with my A-level group when I spotted JCC outside a shop. I pointed out to those around me, not particularly loudly, "Hey, look, it's John Cooper Clarke". Noticing that he'd been spotted, he seemed to take fright, turn tail and march off smartly. Maybe that was the period when he was heavy into heroin with Niko, and we looked odd and menacing through the druggy haze. Maybe he thought we were monsters from outer space, just landed with his ex-wife, pursuing him for alimony.

Liz Collins RIP

2008-05-07T16:34:00.004+02:00

I've just discovered that Liz Collins (BRGS, 1972-1979) has passed away, but I don't know any more details. I did my A-Levels with her and liked her a lot, she was very intelligent and vivacious. The obit says she was married to Stephen Wilkinson, also of BRGS. The name rings a bell but I can't place him. A Crackerjack pencil will go to the first person to send me a photo of Stephen or let me know what poor Liz died of. I am curioz orange.

The things they say

2008-05-02T15:02:00.004+02:00

Stan: "J'ai assez fait de la voiture, je vais prendre mon bébé et faire le hibou."
("I've played enough with my car, I'm going to get my baby and play at owls.")

Stan (pulling a tricycle with a hoop hooked around the handlebars, negotiating some garden furniture): "Vache! Fais attention à la chaise!" ("Cow! Mind the chair!").
Alice (twenty minutes later): "Je vais traire ta vache." (I'm going to milk your cow.")

Dot com millions

2008-04-14T15:23:00.003+02:00

Could I be the next dot com millionaire? I don't know if I should be sharing this, since I've done nothing to secure the project as yet, but I've just discovered that the domain: Ihadarightgoodpooh.com is still untaken! I'm thinking of squatting on it. I don't know precisely what to do with it yet, but one thing's for sure: anyone who signs on to it as a subscriber will be feeling good about themselves, and when you feel that way you're tempted to treat yourself. I know I am.

Nanterre Massacre

2008-03-28T00:58:00.000+01:00

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

2008-03-25T10:21:00.003+01:00

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

2008-03-13T11:10:00.004+01:00

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

2008-03-10T10:59:00.002+01:00

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

2008-03-05T15:57:00.003+01:00

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

2008-03-01T21:57:00.003+01:00

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.

Sublime to ridiculous

2008-02-27T10:33:00.004+01:00

Spending a few days in the rural heart of Brittany, I went for a stroll around town - a town that I have been returning to for many years - and it turned into a stroll down memory lane as I walked past the Chapel of Rest and remembered a well-loved aunt of my wife who was laid out there for us all to bid our final farewells. A very poignant memory. Then I got an image in my mind of the delivery of a nubile young female's corpse to a similar chapel of rest, and one of the employees whispering to another: "Looks like we've got an eater, here." Yet I can't figure out if it's a scene from a film or a book or a joke, and it's bugging me.

The things they say

2008-02-14T09:54:00.003+01:00

When a child reaches the age of acquiring the "Why? Why? Why" syndrome ("Why am I a boy?", "Why is blue blue?", that kind of thing), the exasperated French parent will often answer: "Pour faire parler les curieux" ("To get the curious talking.").
Stan's take on this was rather more off-the-wall: "Pour faire parler l'écureuil" ("To get the squirrel talking").
You couldn't make it up, could you?

Dwayne's survival of the fittest

2008-02-13T07:34:00.002+01:00

It would seem I got my facts wrong, and although Chambers has been picked to run for Team GB he won't in fact be eligible for the Olympics on account of his drugs record. The man himself can't get his head around the levels of opprobrium heaped upon his inclusion in the team. When asked for a reaction, he is quoted as saying: "Is it because I is black?"

Dwax and Dwayne

2008-02-12T18:02:00.000+01:00

So a drugs cheat gets picked to compete in a corrupt nation's Olympic Games.
The only way Dwayne Chambers could redeem himself in my eyes would be to walk around the track after his 100 m final in Beijing with the Tibetan flag draped over his shoulders, when he comes in third (come on, he's British, he's not going to win!).

The nation's hangman

2008-02-08T11:29:00.001+01:00

I was on the blower to me old mam and she told me that she had just found out from an uncle of mine that we're related to the man who was the country's hangman at the start of the twentieth century, responsible for pulling the lever on the likes of Dr. Crippen, to name but one.
The wonder of the Internet of course meant that, as we spoke, I was able to look up details of the man himself and read her what I had found, and then to find the book he had written of his life as executioner on Amazon and order it before the conversation was over.
She was of course very pleased that I was able to come up with all this, and told me: "Isn't it a coincidence that you were looking into this too?"
Truly worthy of Mrs Brady, Old Lady! Nice one, mum!

Paroles d'enfant

2008-02-04T17:59:00.000+01:00

(Brisane, 3 ans, menton écorché)
- Tu t'es fait mal, Brisane ?
- Oui.
- Tu es tombée dans la cour ?
- Oui.
- C'était aujourd'hui ?
(Stanley interrompt) - Non, demain.

Paroles d'enfant

2008-02-04T17:56:00.000+01:00

("Cérébrale Académie" = "Big Brain Academy" [Wii])

Stanley : On peut jouer à Abracadémie ?

Paroles d'enfant

2008-02-04T17:53:00.000+01:00

Maman : "Stanley, tu veux venir avec moi, je vais déposer des vêtements pour les pauvres."
Stanley: "Les pauvres quoi ?"

Cinderella - the Truth!

2008-01-24T11:21:00.000+01:00

I just discovered something very interesting today. The Cinderella story is a fabrication! She never actually wore a glass slipper! It all comes down to a confusion of the homophones "verre/vair" in French (the latter meaning leather, from some kind of base critter). I just knew it was all bollocks! I shall never trust the veracity of a fairy tale again.

National Popularity Survey - Top 10

2008-01-21T10:01:00.000+01:00

Have you ever wondered which nation and which nation's people are respectively most and least admired? You probably have your own ideas.
I've conducted an informal, non-exhaustive survey on the Internet which offers a statistical answer to this question.
Using a popular Search Engine, I entered the query: "F*cking !!!!!! C*nt" (replace * by vowel and !!!!! by national identity - English, French, American, etc.). The results were as follows, in descending order of number of hits:

1) American: 418
=2) English: 116
=2) French: 116
4) Irish: 76
5) German: 74
=6) Scottish: 51
=6) Welsh: 51
8) Foreign: 16
=9) Japanese: 4
=9) Chinese: 4

So the Americans seem to be most despised, while the Orientals tend to be looked on most favourably. It's refreshing to note that the levels of general xenophobia would seem quite low, with only 16 hits for "effing foreign c***".

Entertain me

2008-01-15T11:37:00.000+01:00

Well, Xmas has been and gone, we've got our Wiis and our video games and our HD TVs and our broadband access, and I'm drawn to remembering how dire Sundays used to be when I was a kid and there was literally nothing to do.
As the rain spatters the window pane, I recall how we'd be reduced on a Sunday afternoon to betting on which raindrop would reach the bottom first. Wait a minute, I must concentrate on this. I'm sure the one on the left is going to win.

Cute

2007-12-21T08:37:00.001+01:00

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

2007-12-20T10:51:00.000+01:00

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

2007-12-10T14:04:00.000+01:00

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

Balmy army

2007-12-05T14:28:00.000+01:00

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

2007-12-03T23:42:00.000+01:00

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

2007-11-26T09:15:00.000+01:00

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

2007-11-22T15:22:00.000+01:00

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

Material World

2007-11-02T17:02:00.000+01:00

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

2007-10-29T11:03:00.000+01:00

... 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

2007-10-16T09:11:00.000+02:00

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

2007-10-15T21:40:00.000+02:00

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

Dared to say hello

2007-10-15T09:24:00.000+02:00

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

2007-10-05T11:24:00.000+02:00

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

2007-09-24T16:51:00.000+02:00

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

2007-09-18T13:17:00.001+02:00

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

2007-09-15T00:41:00.000+02:00

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

2007-09-12T16:44:00.000+02:00

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

2007-09-11T18:57:00.000+02:00

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

2007-09-09T00:15:00.000+02:00

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

2007-09-07T00:22:00.000+02:00

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

2007-09-04T16:54:00.000+02:00

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

2007-09-04T16:08:00.000+02:00

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

2007-08-31T10:51:00.000+02:00

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

2007-08-31T10:01:00.000+02:00

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!