I'm not Jesus, but...

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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!