UberGrumpy

British Politics Explained

2010-05-25T09:25:00.004+01:00

Well, actually, no it isn't

British politics has got a bit strange. First of all, who on earth is Nick Clegg? Here's who:

Nick Clegg, of the Lib Dem persuasion
Has ambitions to rule the whole nation
But he's out of the race
Unless we embrace
Proportional representation

But lucky Nick gets to lord it over the big bruising Tory and Labour parties, since whoever he pals up with gets to form a government. Let's sum it up with a natty rhyme:

Nick Clegg, amongst pigs just a piglet
Points the finger of power! Watch him wiggle it
Tory or Labour?
What a moment to savour!
Draw straws? Or perhaps just a Twiglet

So he went with the Tories, as they have a nicer office, and we now have a coalition. What does this mean? Here goes:

Nick Clegg, now assistant PM
Is brimming with vigour and phlegm
The Lords out of steam!
A new voting regime!
Incidentally, favouring Lib Dem

Here comes that posh David Cameron!
At Downing Street's door he comes hammerin'
With his wife, cat and dog,
The kids, the pet frog
At this rate he won't get his grandma in

And as for the previous lot:

Gordon Brown, that old one-eyed campaigner,
Makes room for a fresher chicaner¹
But soon, post-vacation
He'll deliver oration
If you pay him a handsome retainer

1 - Well, if chicanery is a word, then the person who does it must be a chicaner. Right?

Nun Of The Above

2010-05-07T12:00:00.004+01:00

Green, and proud of it

So - Britain has a hung parliament, and my goodness, it's well hung. Does this mean we can string 'em all up? No; it means even more dither, dishonesty, doom and disaster than usual. Herewith, a cautionary tale.

Sister Euphorbia gingerly descended from the bus outside the polling station, propelled by a sense of duty, but restrained by the butterflies filling her stomach. Sister Euphorbia had never voted before, but the stream of politicians arriving at the door of the convent to solicit the votes of the sisters, and the never-ending television, radio and newspaper messages had finally convinced her that this 2010 British General Election was important; and terribly terribly close.

The convent sat prettily in the village of Upper Woppingham, square in the middle of the sleepy Dorset seat of Bunchester. And this had the unwelcome distinction of being the closest-fought seat in the country. Pubs and hotels were full of newspaper hacks and political hangers-on, and Bunchester wasn't liking it much.

Thirty years ago it had been a safe Conservative seat, but after the long-term incumbent was photographed by a tabloid newspaper, indulging one of his unfortunate habits in his greenhouse, the capricious voters turned in their droves to the Liberal Democrats. Slowly they were coming back, particularly since the age of consent was lowered, and people seemed more relaxed about that sort of thing anyway. Now the race was neck-and-neck, a close battle in a nationwide contest too close to call.

So Sister E, traditionally aloof from the sordid intrigues of politicians, felt the hand of destiny on her shoulder, and breaking the habit of a lifetime¹ she took herself out to vote.

Sister E was no shrinking violet, having honed her battle skills teaching reluctant fourth formers French, and rugby. So why, she asked herself, was she so nervous? Could it be that her vote, her one vote, would be the one that made all the difference? Or could it be, that even after all the leaflets and broadcasts and insincere handshakes, she had not the faintest clue where to cast her vote?

Yes. That was it. As she neared the council hall where the polling station was set up, she found herself asking for divine inspiration; a sign. Any sign. But there were no signs; and she queued up to collect her ballot paper, and she signed herself off on the electoral roll, and she headed to the little booths, with a feeling of responsibility to which she was unequal. She hadn't felt like this since the convent had installed Sky TV and put her in charge of the remote control.

Finally at the booth, she opened the folded ballot paper with shaking fingers. In this, the closest-run constituency in England, there were no fewer than twelve candidates; and she began to scan the list of names. But there, right at the top, was the name of Ron Tibbles, standing for the Green Party. It was a sign! Tibbles - her beloved cat! Relieved and thankful, Sister E marked her X for Ron, whoever he was, and headed back to the convent, relieved and thankful.

But Sister E had made a mistake. Further down the list came the name of Einstein Phinbarr Humpty-Dumpty, the Monster Raving Loony candidate. Einstein; her goldfish. Humpty-Dumpty; her hamster. And Phinbarr, who delivered the groceries on a bike on Wednesdays.

So it came to pass that the Green Party, with their one seat, won by one vote, and were able to hold a casting vote in the Mother of Parliaments, because the other parties were exactly tied. And Britain began a new age of eco-socialism, where everyone walked or cycled to work, and the motorways were dug up for flowerbeds, and compost collectives sprang up everywhere, and everyone had to be in bed by nine o'clock to save electricity, leading to the biggest baby boom in human history, followed shortly by the biggest economic collapse in human history.

But most ironically of all for Sister E, the Greens quickly carried out their manifesto pledge of closing all convents and monasteries to make room for wind farms, rehousing the nuns and monks in old nuclear submarines. Come the next election, she intended to go and vote the bastards right out again; but the bus by then was pedal-powered, and alas, she just couldn't be bothered.

And of course, none of this is even remotely true, but I liked the title, and it fitted. Who did you vote for?

1 - And that's the last habit joke. This is serious stuff

A Chap's Guide To Childbirth

2010-05-04T23:19:00.004+01:00

Here comes the bride - and before you know it...

I am delighted to announce I'm an uncle for the 22nd time (!); and Mrs. G's little bro, ChrisProles, is even more delighted to be a Dad for a second time.

Having been through the childbirth thing three times myself, I had intended to equip him with the benefit of my vast experience. Well, better late than never. Here's some top tips.

1. Stay at the top end

Childbirth is a pretty messy and unfeasibly stretchy process, and if you want to continue thinking of your missus in a romantic way in the future, better stay away from the ghastly business end of things. That's what nurses and midwifes are for. Your job is to mop her fevered brow, and stare lovingly into her eyes, while she swears at you and tells you it's all your fault.

2. Wear waterproof shoes¹

When number one son was born Don Johnson was quite trendy, and I wore white canvas shoes. Big mistake. I'll spare you the details.

3. Childbirth is really painful

At number one son's birth, Mrs G decided to relieve her own discomfort by grabbing my hair and banging my head repeatedly against the wall. For number two daughter, the most comfortable birthing position required me to bend over for three hours while she used me as a human crutch. For number three son, she kicked a midwife clean across the room, although I emerged unscathed, having procured a crash helmet and a kevlar vest, and the wise habit of keeping my distance.

4. Keep your advice to yourself

'Push!' I said. 'I'll give you ****ing push', she answered, 'you ****wit ****er, **** off and don't come back.' And that was just the midwife. Mrs. G was even worse. She didn't mean it, of course, it was just the epidural speaking, but I learnt to limit my encouragement to smiles and gestures after that.

5. Newborn babies are unbelievably ugly

Lulled into a false sense of security by Hollywood births, where the smiling infant emerges with beautiful curls and a full set of teeth, I was pretty shocked when I saw our first newborn. Mrs G thought he was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen; but to me he looked like a mini Conehead after a brutal deathmatch mud-wrestle. 'What's wrong with him?' I asked in great concern. 'Ah,' said the happy midwife, apparently not hearing me, 'he's got his Dad's looks.'

6. Get your chequebook out, and keep it out

You may have thought that rushing out to buy the babyseat, carrycot, nappies, creams, advice books, rattles, dummies, sterilisers, stair gates, safety latches, nipple shields, cutesy shoes and celebration wine/Twiglets was expensive. Ha! Just wait until they get to university. You ain't seen nothing yet.

1 - Or waders if you have them

It's A Dalek, Dahling

2010-04-30T13:10:00.004+01:00

Daleks: The Next Generation

We have a new Doctor Who from the BBC. For anyone who doesn't know Doctor Who; think Star Trek without the money, or the adverts. Back in the 60s, the BBC couldn't afford a proper spaceship so they gave him the TARDIS. It looks like an old phone box left over from another film 'because the cloaking mechanism is broken'. Ha!

In another cunnning money-saving plot device, the Doctor 'regenerates' (i.e. they change the actor) when the current incumbent gets too big for his boots and wants more money. The new guy looks suitably weird; he weights about 80 pounds, has bow legs you could drive a train through, and a nose of surprising proportions. Captain Kirk it ain't.

And where Captain Kirk has 400 minions available to die on demand, the Doctor can only afford one assistant. Although he is a right-on equal-opportunity employer (this being the BBC), as luck would have it, this usually turns out to be a top-notch babe in a mini-skirt. Not that I'm complaining or aything.

The crew of the Enterprise weekly face Klingons, Romulans, Borg and Tribbles. The Doctor's nemesis? The terrifying Daleks; the ultimate evil in the universe. They may look like inverted compost bins on casters, but don't be fooled; they are TERRIBLY DANGEROUS. Armed with the Plunger of Doom, and a whisk, they strike fear into the hearts of their foes, plus, they never have blocked toilets, and their coffee is always nicely frothy.

The Daleks' sworn ambition is to master the universe, or at least those bits of it without stairs. Time and again they've come head-to-head with the Doctor, and lost, his sonic screwdriver (yes, really) proving too powerful for them. Check out this gut-wrenching clip, unless you're the faint-hearted type. They strike fear into the hearts of all who encounter them, including me¹.

Until now. Because the Daleks, like the Doctor, have had a makeover. Do you remember how BMWs went all fat and fussy-looking a few years back? I think the Beeb employed the same designer. Daleks are now corpulent and strangely bulgy. Gone is the indestructible galaxy-defying plywood; now they have plastic trim, like an entry-level Subaru. Gone is the Emperor Ming Shiny Black and Certain Extinction Silver colour scheme. Now they're orange, blue and green. They're Mighty Morphin' Power Daleks. Dare I say it? They look a bit girly.

But some things never change. The BBC may have been tempted to compensate by arming the new Daleks with Zombie Death Rays and Terawatt Ion Cannons. But bless 'em, they kept the plunger. And the whisk.

1 - When I was six

Gordon, Where's Your Troosers?

2010-04-26T00:46:00.004+01:00

Tartan: always stylish

Did you know a Scottish drummer in a kilt is the sexiest thing on the planet?

So says Gordon, our Scottish drummer, who spent last night drumming for us¹ AND his other band; and yes, he was in a kilt. I think this was terrifically brave. You wouldn't catch me sitting on a stage, on a three-legged stool, in a short tartan skirt with no underpants, joggling my knees up and down for a couple of hours.

The occasion: the special birthday of Gordon's amazingly young wife. How did he attract such a rare beauty? After all, he is a drummer. Well, if you saw his impressive drumstick manoeuvres last night like we did, you wouldn't need to ask.

And yes, I do have a hangover worthy of the occasion. Oh how it hurts. I blame Gordon Brown², and the wine.

These guys know how to put on a party. We kicked off with ace grub (no Twiglets - very classy) and then moved quickly on to a Ceilidh. This is pronounced 'kaley'; imagine The Queen on first-name terms with Kylie Minoghue and you'll pronounce it about right. The strange spelling results from the reluctance of the Scots, until recently, to buy the more expensive letters of the alphabet, like 'a'; they're a canny bunch.

Having learned 'The Gay Gordons' (it was a broad-minded sort of evening) we moved on to a rockin' set from Gordon's old band, The Works. Resplendent in kilts and big hairy sporrans, they blasted through rock classic after rock classic; but the high spot for me was the medley of 'Smoke on the Water' and 'Donald Where's Your Troosers'. Unforgettable. No really.

So then we came on and did our thaaang and do you know what? In my conventional legwear I got quite sweaty, and even a little chafed. So I've seen the light. Tomorrow I'm off out to buy a kilt. Then I shall chuck all my underpants in the bin. Except the tartan ones.

1 - Hot Rabbit, Hampshire's hardest-working band
2 - Scottish! Ah ha

Coming Home

2010-04-23T14:34:00.006+01:00

Travelling light

So finally we came back to England. Goodbye France, land of wine, wit, women, and wonder; hello Blighty, land of telly, twiglets, Tuborg, and taxation.

We were a bit tired after all that driving, but not nearly as tired as you poor buggers whose flights were cancelled from all four corners of the planet after Iceland blew up. Serves you right, I say; if you will ignore your carbon footprint by flying everywhere, then you have to expect a bit of Divine Retribution now and again.

Besides, walking home from Portugal is a great way to get fit, so stop moaning and get marching.

I like coming home. There's something comfortably incompetent about England. The ferry arrives (late) at Portsmouth Harbour, which is dominated by the lovely new Spinnaker Tower; 500 feet of gleaming white metal¹. It was originally to be called the Millennium Tower until it became clear it wouldn't open until 2003. On the grand opening day, the swanky outside lift broke down halfway up, and trapped the mayor and several local VIPs. On a quiet night, you can still hear their plaintive cries.

Portsmouth is also home to HMS Victory. She was built in 1763 and is still a commissioned ship of the Royal Navy. Given relentless Navy cuts, she soon may be the only one. Should we be pleased at the peace dividend, or concerned? Dunno. All we can send to exciting international wars is five kayaks and an old car ferry painted grey. I blame the global recession, and Gordon Brown.

The Family Von Grump are great travellers so we are reminded of other comings and goings. We've been back and forward across the Atlantic a bunch²; we lived in Washington DC for a couple of years, then London, then my favourite: Atlanta. What a cool town Atlanta is. Everything's big! Big-hearted people! Big cars! Big houses! Big potholes! Absolutely stupendous insects! When we had to decide whether to stay or return, I was sorely tempted to stay. But Mrs G was strangely drawn to her roots, even though she grew up near Birmingham. Well, someone had to.

So home we came. And in the end Mrs G, and England, won; because at heart we are dozy and lazy. In America 'I'm pissed and I'm packing' means I'm very cross and I'm going to shoot you. Here I'm pleasantly drunk because I'm off on vacation. Again. Whoopee!

1 - Or plastic. Or it might be concrete
2 - Until we realised how big our carbon footprint was, naturally

Bat Out Of Belgium

2010-04-11T12:41:00.007+01:00

Don't mess with Belgium

So, the Family Grump have survived the skiing season for another year. And what a top vacation; riding up and sliding down all day, generally without injury, with the exception of a nosebleed, one spectacularly sunburnt nose, and a nasty testicle-crushing incident on a draglift. So all round not too bad, since I didn't want any more kids anyway, and have never attained the high notes in "Bohemian Rhapsody" until now.

But in an unexpected twist, this vacation taught us many interesting things about that mysterious nation, Belgium.

Belgium, originally established as a place where the French could send their landfill, nuclear waste, and excess Algerians, would probably have disappeared altogether if the cunning Belgians hadn't invented the European Union. Allowing the Germans and French to believe it was their pet project, they managed to get it based in Brussels, which until then had only been known for its poisonous sprouts. What a stroke of genius. Today the corpulent EU splatters lucky little Belgium with great satisfying gobs of EU cash, and the canny Belgians have never looked back.

So here's what we learned.

Belgians can ski

Belgium is flat and damp. Skiing was unknown there until 1982 when EU defence chiefs, concerned about the possibility of war on a slope, issued every Belgian with new skis and natty jackets, as their contribution to the mighty European war machine. Each Belgian adult was issued with free skilift tickets, and vouchers for large frothy beers at lunchtime.

Belgians take a lot of vacation

As Belgium is at the centre of the EU, whenever any member state has a public holiday, Belgians honour that state by taking it too. Combined with the EU working time laws, this means that most Belgians work for two days each month, which is just enough time to enjoy their statutory sick days.

Belgians have enormous cars

The EU, concerned about domestic vehicle production, hit on the excellent scheme of issuing Belgians with whopping great BMWs, Volvos, and Audis. Small cars wouldn't work, alas, as Belgians, courtesy of the EU waffle, beer and chocolate mountains, tend to be on the large side.

Belgians drive very fast...

...and not very well. To hone their fighting skills, Belgians head to the Alps in vast numbers each year. It's a long way, so naturally they have to drive like maniacs to get there. It's a bit disconcerting for other road users like, say, me, travelling at the French limit of 82 mph, to be undertaken by a Belgian with a beer in one hand and a waffle in the other, steering with his knees.

So pardon me if I sound a little frazzled. Nine hours of Death Race 2000 with half the population of Antwerp doing Warp Factor 3 all around you is a dizzying experience. Next year, I think we'll take a cycling holiday. Somewhere flat and empty. Like Belgium.

P.S. I forgot to mention Twiglets. Oops. I blame the stress, and Gordon Brown.

War and Piste

2010-04-01T00:13:00.005+01:00

Spring skiing. Splendid

I've been a bad, bad blogger recently because I've been working my fingers to the bone trying to get ready for vacation. Sorry.

Vacation eh? For someone who's scared of heights, doesn't like the cold and looks spectacularly silly in any hat, skiing may seem like an odd choice. But the family like it. So for the next two weeks we'll be in France (again), for a week of which we will be sliding down a big slippery hill on two planks, then riding up again on a cold wet windy seat, and repeating until it gets dark. And paying for the privilege.

But I am a veteran skier and I have strategies. Here they are.

1. Ski in late Spring. You can't lose. Either the snow has melted and you have a nice walk, or it hasn't. But you don't freeze on the long lift which inevitably stops ten yards from the top, as the ski school of five-year-olds who pushed past you in the queue, learn how not to get off.

2. Stop after each run, or during, or both, for a hot chocolate or a mulled wine, avoiding the very real danger of mountain dehydration. Keep a packet of Twiglets available for dipping purposes, and to replace essential minerals.

3. On a related note, always ski drunk, so you can be relaxed and even amused as you fall over, hit trees, lose a pole, collide with a French snowboarder, etc.

4a. If it's snowing, take the day off. The fresh snow will be ace the next day.

4b. If it's raining, take the day off. Rain on chairlifts is miserable.

4c. If it's sunny, take the day off. You risk sunburn ('raccoon eyes') or skin cancer in that thin mountain air.

4d. If it's foggy, go ski! No-one can see your poor technique, and the family get cold quickly, so they want to stop for chocolate more often.

5. If you need a pee, and have to duck into the trees, take your skis off first. Sliding out backwards with your salopettes round your ankles, leaving a trail, is not cool. Trust me on this one.

6. Use your poles to good effect. Plant between a Frenchman's skis to impede his progress as he tries to jump the line for the lift. Or when hurtling out of control, wedge them betwen the ground and your solar plexus for a very effective fast stop. Or as a last-ditch effort to snag the drag lift as you fall off it.

7. Avoid the rush! Don't start skiing until about 12:00, when all the French are stopping for lunch. Stop at 14:30, just as they're starting dessert.

8. If the Frenchman on the lift next to you lights a cigarette, don't be afraid to aim a fart at him. It's expected, although he may display his Gallic wit by trying to light it.

9. You know those pine trees all covered in snow? You know how soft they look? Well, they aren't.

10. Can we go sailing next year? Please?

Teeth, and the Decline of the British Empire

2010-03-23T13:29:00.007Z

Open wide

No. 3 son, or MicroGrump as I call him, has just finished cosmically expensive orthodontic treatment. I tried to talk him out of it by appealing to his better side. I told him that if we gave the money to Translithumoronia instead we could protect their threatened uranium mining industry for the next decade.

No go. He wanted perfect pearly whites, like all his schoolmates, so they can admire themselves in their shiny iPhones. He now has A1 Ku Klux Klan teeth.¹

What's happened to us Brits? When we had bad teeth we ruled the world. Only fuzzy-wuzzies and Italians had good teeth. We've lost the splendid attitude displayed perfectly in verse 14 of the National Anthem:

"A cricketing hero from Leith
Who while batting got hit in the teeth
He spat out a molar
And said to the bowler
"A bit to the left, if you pleath"

That was the stuff. We used to have a stiff upper lip, which was mainly to hide the ghastly sight beneath, but now we're all full-lipped and pouty and sparkly, and what's the consequence? The empire is down to the Falkland Islands and seventeen retirement communities in Spain. We've gone soft.

Oh, for the excellent martial spirit of Rudyard Kipling:

"The boy stood on the burning deck
Impervious to the killing
He bit out the pin of a hand grenade
And risked his brand-new filling"

Well, I'm bringing it all back. I'm going to have a whip-round at my local, The Bridge and Crown, and buy a surplus ship from the Royal Navy (there are plenty). We'll name her HMS Halitosis. Once the weather gets nice, I shall load up with Twiglets, sugary snacks, and no toothpaste. Then it's off to France where I'll claim Calais back. Then I'll point the prow westward. It's about time somone invaded America. So get ready, colonials. You owe me a lot of back-tax. We can negotiate it over a nice cup of tea.

1 - White, mostly straight, and boring

iPhone, You Phone, Everybody Phones

2010-03-18T00:04:00.002Z

Hello? Hello?

They're everwhere. iPhones. You can't get on a train, go to the cinema, run round the park, shuffle round Sainsburys or even visit the loo without bumping into someone staring cross-eyed and jabbing frantically at a greasy little screen. And I wouldn't mind so much but they're constantly trying to use it to impress.

In pubs people run a little doodad which, when you hold the iPhone to your mouth, and tip, shows a virtual beer emptying. This is truly hilarious the first twenty or so times you see it. There's an application which tells you which London Underground train carriage to choose, so you are closest to the exit at your destination¹. There used to be an entertaining if rude aplication called Wobble, but the stiff folks at Apple put paid to that by removing it from the app store. That's OK; there are 150,000 more.

My little bro' has one and let me try it out. Well, I'm not impressed. Is it a telephone? No! Where's the speaker? Where's the microphone? Which way up do you hold it?

Is it a computer? No! Where's the keyboard? Where's the dot-matrix printer? Where's the fire extinguisher? Where's the cupholder?²

Is it a games console? No! Where's the joystick? Where's the popcorn? Where's Mario?

So; it's just an expensive chunk of electronic bling. It's a make-up mirror with batteries. And if I invite you out to dinner, I didn't invite your iPhone, so switch the bloody thing off. No, not 'vibrate', 'off', you pervert. What do you mean there's no 'off' button?

If I'm honest I'm also starting from a poor vantage point because I loathe all mobile phones. That may sound strange from someone who's spent his working life welded to a computer, but for me, life took a turn for the worse when my job could follow me into the bathroom. Mobile phones are the worst invention since the internal combustion engine foisted pollution, furry dice, obesity and the M25 on the world.

I have one of course; Mrs G made me get it, so I bought the cheapest one I could find from one of the 42 phone shops that blight Winchester. It cost £2.88 provided I bought £10 of pay-as-you-go time. That was a year ago and I've still got £8 left, mainly because the battery only lasts long enough to dial about six digits³.

So I obviously don't want an iPhone. Those iPads look pretty sexy though. When they make one that fits in my pocket, I'll be first in line.

1 - AnallyRetentive 1.0, from wwwwwwww.getalife.com. Probably
2 - My computers are quite old, admittedly
3 - I have fat fingers, so I have to dial with a Twiglet, which doesn't help

Mrs G Goes To Work

2010-03-12T11:47:00.003Z

And there's make-up on the upholstery

My favourite car is a very beaten-up Nissan. Bits are falling off, but the engine and gearbox are sweet as they come, and parking is a breeze¹. But recently I am doubly smitten.

First my lovely motor has begun to pong. It's quite unpleasantly pungent. I've searched under the seats, in the boot², in all the little handy Japanese compartments, for rotting fruit, dead animals or stale twiglets, but nothing. Maybe it's e Coli in the AC, or a Coli in the EC, or something. I'm not good with cars.

Secondly, Mrs G has begun taking it to work. As mentioned last post, she has found herself gainful employment, abandoning me to clean the porcelain. To add insult to injury, she's nicked my car.

Mrs G loves her job. She works on a smallholding providing opportunities for people to learn horticultural and outdoor skills. They have 100 chickens³, some donkeys, rabbits, three lambs (soon), and about a trillion worms.

And since Mrs G likes to share the love, and they have a constant need of help, she asked me. A door on their chicken shed is loose; could I fix it?

Well of course I could. Like most men I am extraordinarily gifted at fixing stuff. Except cars. I chuck the drill in the (other) car and head up. Mrs G shows me the offending door. Although it is a challenge drilling while being surveyed at close quarters by Chicken Licken and Henny Penny, it's fixed in a jiffy! Damn, I'm good. Mrs G, all impressed innocence, invites me for tea as my reward. Why, I'd love to. Teatime is in about an hour.

It's about now I should have got suspicious.

An hour to kill. What shall we do? I've got a suggestion, says Mrs G, fluttering her eyelashes, today is the day we clean out the chickens. Come and help me. OK. What does that involve?

Over the next hour I really earn that tea. 'Cleaning out the chickens' is a euphemism, like 'walking the dog'⁴. It really means shovelling colossal mounds of chicken crap into wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow. I had no idea chickens had such a productive digestive system. It's a foul job (pun intended). The fumes could knock a grown man off his feet⁵.

But wait a minute! I know that smell. And after tea I watch Mrs G pack up. She changes into her day shoes and chucks her gunge-encrusted boots into the back of my lovely car. So there's a silver lining. I simply treat Mrs G to another pair of boots she can use at home; and lo, my Nissan pongeth no more.

And that's my last scatalogical post for a while, you'll be relieved to hear. Spring has sprung; time to move on to more fragrant themes. But not before I show you this, with the best product write-up, ever. Ha! I never need to clean another toilet again. Or chicken.

1 - French style. Just drive up to stuff until you hit it
2 - That's 'trunk' to you, colonial chums
3 - 98 if we're picky. Two popped their clogs over Christmas
4 - Which actually means 'taking the dog to poop on the neighbour's lawn'
5 - That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. Tripping over a chicken would be undignified

Rage Against The Mr Sheen

2010-03-07T11:26:00.002Z

The perils of office life

I'm on my knees scrubbing a toilet. I like to start with the toilet, as it's the worst bit. Baths and basins are easy, plus, you get to shine the taps. It'll soon be one bathroom down, three to go. After that I get to wash towels and sheets. Sigh.

It wasn't always like this. I used to be an Executive. I had ties that I didn't wear, because we dressed down. I had a PA who fielded my calls and brought me tea. I went out with other executives, and we relaxed with manly jokes¹. I had a pen that went 'click'.

But I only have myself to blame. Back when I was young and stupid², it was fashionable to set life goals, so I did. One of my goals was to be able to stop work at 40, so I did. We sold the company, paid off the mortgage, did some clever investing³, and hey presto. Mrs G and I can now cruise along quite happily, provided we avoid extravagances like holidays, and eating.

Well guess what? Mrs G, after many years of looking after kids, and me, has decided she needed to 'experience the workplace again', and gone and got herself a job. How selfish is that? I could have told her about the workplace. It's all sitting down; in a car, on a plane, at a desk, on the loo, in meeting rooms, on the photocopier⁴, and on the job.

Except Mrs G's job is all outdoorsy, and horticultural, and people-oriented, so it's not a proper job at all. And it's only half-time. Where's the stress? Where are the repetitive strain injuries? Where are the office intrigues? Where are the incomprehensible coffee jugs? Where are the nylon carpets that send 5,000 volts up your bottom when you scoot your chair around? Where's the photocopier?

Anyway, Mrs G's job is for another post; today is about me.

So: I'm a house-husband two-and-a-half days a week. It's ghastly, but fascinating. Look what I've learned in a short time:

The hardest substance known to man is left-over Weetabix

Domestic vacuum cleaners are unsuited to Autumn leaves, especially when they're wet

You can have too much Tupperware

Does NO-ONE EVER FLUSH A TOILET IN THIS HOUSE???

Twiglets are not good with breakfast

Drier lint is surprisingly inflammable

Flammable and inflammable mean the same thing

The postman always rings twice. No idea why

I've also learned that I don't like it much, so grudging respect to Mrs G for putting up with it for so long. Time for some new life goals, I think. In our next life, we will live on a beach, which never needs cleaning. And has no toilets.

1 - Like 'Why haven't women been to the moon? Because it didn't need cleaning.' Oh, the shame. You wouldn't catch me telling a vile sexist joke like that now
2 - As opposed to middle-aged and stupid
3 - Savings account, premium bonds, and roulette. And we sold the pets
4 - At the Christmas party. Ahem

Come back, Monster Raving Loonies, all is forgiven

2010-03-01T10:05:00.008Z

Jackass or Dumbo. Make your choice

Election fever is gripping Britain. We will soon be summoned to choose between the sorry collection of has-beens, crooks, no-hopers, spongers, bankrupts, conmen, hangers-on, talentless minority group opportunists, fading B-list television celebrities, and geriatric dorks that pass for politicians here.

What a choice. It comes down to Gordon 'take that, you English pussies' BROWN, David 'Thatcher without the spine' CAMERON, and Nick 'who?' CLEGG. They'll all be licking babies and paying off unions until May or June when the whole ghastly business comes to a climax, as all the over-50s go and vote, and everyone else goes to the pub. And one thing is guaranteed; whoever gets elected will be as tedious as Mr. Bean: The Movie. And the sequel.

You can't even watch TV to escape. All channels will show 'Election Special' on the big night. This may sound like Asian pornography, but is in fact three wrinkly old men and a token wrinkly old lady pontificating to eternity while the results crawl in. All bloody night.

British politics used to be a lot more interesting. The '80s were the heyday of the Monster Raving Loony Party, headed up by Screaming Lord Sutch. They ran the party from a pub in Llanwrtyd Wells¹, fuelled by good Welsh beer, and twiglets.

By 'heyday' I mean they almost, occasionally, got the 5% of votes needed to avoid losing their £500 deposit. But undeterred they kept coming back for more. Their policies were bonkers but strangely compelling. For example:

Traffic cops "too stupid" for normal police work to be retrained as vicars

All motorways to become massive cycle tracks

The introduction of a 99p coin to "save on change".

See? The stuff of genius. I voted for them, twice. Partly because I liked them, partly because it was a great way to choose 'none of the above'. Lord Sutch himself is no longer with us, God rest his barmy soul, but the party, although much reduced, limps on.

The Loonies weren't the only 'out there' party. Miss Whiplash led the Corrective Party. The Fancy Dress Party made a brief showing, with their signature policy of using a smaller font to automatically reduce unemployment statistics.

Alas all that has gone, suppressed by the fat sloppy swine in Westminster who protect their jobs through a series of mealy-mouthed self-preserving small-minded laws making it harder for a small independent party to stand at all, much less get elected. Thank Heavens for Europe, where we've dispensed with all this democracy nonsense, and choose our president the old-fashioned way. Behind closed doors, over a fat cigar.

1 - If you pronounce that right, it should sound like burping and sneezing simultaneously

Sorry Mum. If Only I'd Known

2010-02-26T11:25:00.004Z

Poor Mrs G. No time to dress

Sensible folk that we are, Mrs G and I have three kids. Three is a good number: sufficient to continue the human race, so we've done our bit; but not so many that we have to drive a ghastly people mover¹, or sell body parts to buy food in embarrassing bulk quantities.

Yet we have a reasonable chance of engendering a pop star, prime minister, or oil magnate, who will keep us comfortable in our dotage. No. 1 son is now studying advanced mating habits, sleep deprivation and liver abuse at university (or 'yoony'), while the other two are working towards it. Job done.

My parents weren't so smart. I am one of seven. My childhood memories are mostly of being slapped around and told what to do by older siblings, and passing the favour on down the chain. We had to book the bathroom days ahead. My Mum couldn't remember our names, and still can't. Leaving home to go to university felt like moving on to somewhere quieter and less crowded. They didn't realise I'd left until I 'phoned home for a chat, and money.

Well, little bro' BalancedPaul is currently convalescing at home, and, kind souls that we are, we offered to host his four for a long (long!) weekend. But in a perfect storm, No. 1 son decided to grace us with his presence, since all his clothes needed washing, and MiniGrump came home from her cosmically expensive school trip to Thailand, all jetlag and jungle tales.

So we now have the 'seven kids for the weekend' badge. Blimey. I apologise for not blogging or visiting much recently, but at least now you know why.

Luckily BP's kids are a bunch of fun, with good manners and generally excellent hygiene, considering their age. The two youngest, Emma and Olivia, are twins, and sometimes leave pithy comments here. The last was 'mighty beautiful livvy the livvya livster said... bet i can do a better pose then her right every one oh please say yes and i bet you will'.

Can't argue with that.

But it's still been a stressful couple of days. I have sawed through a lock, unblocked a (very) blocked toilet, fixed two computers, driven about a thousand miles, averted several punch-ups², switched off every light in the house at least four times, hunted endlessly for tiny electronic toys, and washedupandwashedupandwashedup, while Mrs G cookedandcookedandcookedandcooked.

Back to two teen twiglets now. Are we relieved? No. Missing 'em.

But here's what brings me up short. We've managed this for a weekend and we feel like heroes. My folks did this day in, day out, for umpteen years, without killing, maiming or losing any of us, even once. Next time I see my Mum I shall bring her flowers and a decent box of chocolates. With a big card, with my name in it, to save her the trouble of remembering it.

1 - Although we do anyway
2 - Between Mrs G and me

They're Out There

2010-02-22T01:01:00.003Z

Bloody aliens. Always abducting me

The Ministry Of Defence, in its wisdom, has released details of UFO sightings from all over the UK up to 2000. We are awash in aliens, apparently, and I'm not talking about plumbers from Poland. Little green men are flying around the countryside, examining us, taking detailed pictures of our homes and streets, recording everything about us, our habits and tastes, every last byte stored forever. No, wait a minute, that's Google.

Anyway what's all the fuss about? I've been abducted heaps of times, and sometimes it's actually quite pleasant. The last occasion was about two weeks ago. I was walking briskly home from the pub at 9:30, after my modest white wine spritzer and small pack of twiglets, when a sleek, mysterious craft appeared from the western horizon, moving at incredible speed, but in utter silence, and stopped exactly above me, about 10 metres overhead, as though it knew me, and had sought me out.

I stared up. "Not again," I thought, resigned, but strangely unfrightened.

A beam of light suddenly issued from the base of the craft and enveloped me. Intensely white, humming, pulsating, warm on my skin, I felt myself lifted off my feet and drawn towards the source of the light. I was unable to move; my muscles were paralysed but completely relaxed. Slowly, inexorably, I rose into the belly of the craft.

It all gets a bit hazy from there. I remember some small silvery-skinned beings, laying me on a bed of steel and injecting my arm with a glutinous green fluid; but still I felt calm and unruffled. Somehow I knew they meant me no harm. Time passed without me sensing its passage; I later discovered four hours had elapsed until the moment I was deposited in the same spot. I was unharmed, but the fluids they had injected into me had left me unsteady on my legs. I managed to stagger home. When I told Mrs G the story, my voice was strangely slurred, my face was flushed, my eyes were bloodshot, almost as though I had drunk quite a lot of beer.

Which obviously I hadn't.

Welcome To Frqnce

2010-02-14T20:35:00.004Z

It's breezy crossing the chqnnel

After lqst weekend's hard slog to Wqles, Mrs G qnd I are enjoying a Frogtastic long weekend in La Belle France. Mrs G's Mum and Dqd live in Normandy and they love to see their dqughter. As for the son-in-law, I can come provided I mow the lawn, fix the computers and keep my mouth shut. So here we qre.

Ah, The Channel Tunnel. The most extraordinary feat of engineering. We cqn breeze up to London, grab a quick tube train¹, then sit back on the Eurostar to the very heart of Paris, relaxing with a glass of champqgne as the countryside rushes silently by.

We can, but we don't, because the ferry is cheaper. Also, we feel thqt unless you've come close to being sick in a bag, you haven't really travelled. So we go overnight from Portsmouth to Caen on the Nausea Express, lying in a cabin and groaning. It's exciting stuff.

We're travelling only with MicroGrump, as MiniGrump is in Thailand 'learning' and No. 1 son is at yoony, also 'learning'. Needless to say, qll this 'learning' is why we're travelling on the cheap. Micro once distinguished himself by vomiting on a cross-channel ferry before we actually left harbour. He's older and wiser now, and avoids illness by falling asleep early, and frequently equalizing bodily pressure, by farting from the top bunk.

But it's worth it. I love France. I love the people, with their high-spirited driving, and their ubiquitous yappy dogs('Je monte la garde'), which between them make for very lively jogging.

I love the booze and cheese (how do French people live so long?) I love the boulangerie, where you can buy (cheap!) bread so fresh the crust rips a hole cleqn through the roof of your mouth. And I love the pharmacy where you cqn buy any number of (expensive!) mouth ointments.

But one thing I don't love is French keyboards. You try using a PC where the A and Q are swapped. It's tqken me qbout four hours to type this. I might hqve missed q couple. Sorry.

1 - Seasoned London travellers might spot a hole in my argument here. 'Quick tube'? About as likely as 'Considerate Parisian'

No-one Rocks In January

2010-02-09T17:00:00.007Z

Bloody roadies. Always sitting down
on the job

(Yes I know it's not January anymore. I wrote this a week ago, and besides, we've been in Wales, where it's still November).

The worst-attended gig I ever played was in January. It was 1982, at The Albany in Great Portland St, towards the end of our ill-advised and ill-fated Monday night residency. We were a four-piece and we outnumbered our audience. And that included the barman. We got four encores though.

So I was a bit worried ahead of our gig at The Phoenix in Twyford last weekend. Proper pub; good beer, rotund jolly landlord, scampi (what are scampi¹?), chicken in a basket, or twiglets in batter. Darts. And skittles. For those who don't know, skittles is like bowling without the varnish, or the stupid shoes, or people in matching lurex tops whooping when they knock all the pins down.

But I'm worried. I didn't help myself by failing to e-mail around until two days before the gig. A few lame excuses came back; out of the country on business, in hospital having an operation, that sort of thing.

But the response I hate the most is 'we'll try to make it'. Eh? This is a trip to the pub, not an attempt on the North face of the Eiger. Why not just say 'I saw you before and I thought you were crap'? Or 'you old git, you can hardly carry the guitar, let alone play it?'

And the omens are bad. The afternoon of the gig, Martin, chief picker and co-crooner, mails to say he's lost his voice. My new guitar workstation dies. I bring the wrong power supply for the vox unit. During sound-check, some curmudegeonly old geezer playing dominoes yells at us; he can't hear himself think, apparently. I wonder what his excuse is the rest of the time.

But then it's time to play and things are looking up! About twenty of our lot have actually turned up, adding to a decent crowd in the pub. My good mate Alan has brought his daughter Lucy who luckily is professionally trained, as well as gorgeous, and gives us a vocal assist here and there. MiniGrump has brought a half-dozen mates, and they all dance, making us old rockers feel very special. What's more, the skittles alley is occupied by the Tone-Deaf Society of Hampshire, who love a good knees-up, and aren't too fussy.

Best song? 'Sex on fire'. (Even though no. 1 son hates it). Mini and her mates go nuts, and Mrs G puts her hands over her ears, so I know we're in the zone. Worst song? Don't be silly. They're all good.

Want to see some pictures? Go to the state-of-the-art Hot Rabbit web-site, click on 'Gigs galore', then select the first entry. Or just go here. Natty t-shirts eh? Well, I didn't say we were cool.

1 - And while we're on the subject, what do you call one scampi? Is it a scampo?

Mini's Big Surprise

2010-02-07T22:38:00.003Z

A lick of paint, a trip to Ikea and we'll be sorted

UberGrumpy is on vacation. Wales again. The house, and the blog, are under the care of MiniGrump for a week or so. Thanks Min.

Dear Papa UG,

First of all, I hope you are having a lovely holiday with Mama UG and MicroGrump. I am missing you a lot. You said you'd check the blog often, so I thought this was a great way to tell you my wonderful news - I met somebody!

We met online. Isn't Facebook wonderful? He is very lovely and I can't wait for you to meet. His name is Utbah. He's a little older than me but is very handsome.

He flew over straight away, just to meet me. Well I thought that since he came all this way, the least I could do would be to let him buy me a coffee! Although we have only known each other for a week, he has swept me off my feet. Don't be cross but - we are getting married! He proposed (over that coffee - amazing huh?) and of course, I just had to said yes, which was lucky, since he had nowhere to stay.

I wasn't sure at first, but he said we shouldn't wait, so we will be man and wife by the time you are home- isn't that fantastic? I won't be his first wife - he's a bit coy but apparently has several already. So he's well able to look after me, since he has plenty of experience.

But don't worry. We won't be a burden on you, he has a house in Saudi Arabia where we will be moving to soon. He wants to be closer to his children- he has 12, isn't that nice? You'll have 12 instant grandchildren who you can visit any time you like. If you can get a visa.

I have quit college already, you don't have to worry about that! Utbah has said he will provide for me, he also told me that he never went to school so I don't need to either. And apparently women don't need qualifications where he lives. I thought that was a very fair point, so I dropped out yesterday.

I can't wait for you to meet him. However, the flight we booked to Saudi Arabia is the day before you get back from your holiday, he thought it would be easier for me to leave without any tearful goodbyes (I know how you get) -so I probably won't get time to see you until the Summer. Or Ramadan.

So, I love you Papa UG, and goodbye- see you in a couple of months. You never know, the baby may be showing by then.

Lots of love, The MiniGrump Xx

P.S. None of the above is true, but I had a party and someone spilt IrnBru on the new beige carpet upstairs. Sorry.

Ikea Rocks

2010-02-03T14:31:00.003Z

Cool, maybe, but is it comfortable?

So. Vegetable Assassin threw down the gauntlet. Ikea rocks, she said; nothing you can say will change my mind.

I love a challenge.

Well, Vege, I know Ikea rocks. I've tried beer mats, rolled up wads of paper, my foot, wedges, beer cans, dead cats, but it's no good. In fact everything I ever bought from them rocked, apart from the OOMSKORTEN rocking chair for £19.99, which just wobbles. But that's not the point.

The key thing is the brain-numbing Ikea shopping experience.

They opened a new store in Southampton recently. It's been a while, but naturally we head down with the hordes. It's huge! We park up and shuffle in, wide-eyed. It takes a while to get our bearings. Everything is strange, and foreign. We squint at the labels.

Who names this stuff? Is that sofa really called EKTORP? Surely that's a medical condition. There's a shelf called BODO. Wasn't he a hobbit? Do I want a light called RUTBO¹? A bookcase called BILLY²? DO I want to sit on a POANG? Are they messing with us?

Plus what's with the food? We try a hot dog. It's actual dog, on stale bread. We try Ikea coke which tastes like brake fluid. The french fries have apparently been cooked in France. Sometime last year. I don't even want to think about the provenance of the meatballs.

But perhaps there's an exotic ingredient in the hot dog, because we're being won over. They've got whole houses in there! 20m² living rooms! Supercool eco-kitchens! Dining rooms bristling with awesome fold-away cleverness! Everything's in primary colours and metric measurements. It's cool, it's chic, it's tomorrow³.

We get carried away. We grab our little Ikea pencil and Ikea list and start to write down part numbers. It's easy! Just pick 'em up on the way out. First though, you must descend through the labyrinthine martketplace, having traded your little yellow bag for a shopping trolley the size of a small car. My advice? Keep your head down and grit your teeth. Do we need a set of eight RAMBO cheese graters? No. Or 100 TWIGLET candles. Or a clever SPILPOO toilet paper dispenser. Or ELEKTROKUT plastic bedside lamps.

At last, time to pick up the big stuff. And now the day falls apart. If you want to buy a Billy bookcase, it's on aisle 34, section 7. Apart from the shelves which are on aisle 92, section 16. The feet? Aisle 4, section 22. Hang on; these are black. We wanted oak. Start again. It's out of stock. Black then? If we must.

It takes hours.

And you're almost guaranteed to get it wrong.

Don't bother asking for help. If you do, you encounter the mysterious dichotomy between Ikea the company (efficient, clever, fresh and bright) and Ikea the employee (officious, stupid, stale and dull). The answer to every question is 'If it ain't on the shelf, we ain't got none', which is a bit strange when you're asking where the toilets are.

What's more, it's not that cheap. Look around the checkouts when you finally get to them; everyone is staring wide-eyed at their receipts. Surely the KLAPTORP wasn't that much? No it wasn't, but those GOTCHA cushions mount up. Sly bastards. And then they charge you extra for using a credit card. And parking. And bags.

The final insult; you get home and it's in pieces! I thought the boxes were a bit small. Hours of screwing later (ooh-err missus) and you have half a sofa-bed and a three-legged bookcase. In blue. And boy, does it rock.

1 - Yes. We buy four
2 - And a whole wallful of these
2 - This isn't a footnote, it means 'square meters'. Come on, shape up.
3 - It's chipboard, but nobody's looking too closely.

And the answer to the crossword clue in the last post was 'spent a penny'. Bumper pack of Twiglets to anyone who can tell me why.

Tagged! Phew

2010-02-01T17:36:00.005Z

Tea and boob cake. My favourite

Thank you to the incomparable JenJen for tagging me, and relieving me of writer's block. 'Tagging' is a new American thing, which means you answer terrifically intimate questions about yourself, then tag some other poor sods.

I beefed up the list a bit.

1. What is your current obsession?
15 across: 'Nasty, nasty authors cut through weed' (5,1,5)¹

2. What are you wearing today?
Carpet slippers and a floppy hat and nothing else. Well, it's Sunday. Or at least it was last time I looked

3. What do you think about the person who tagged you?
JenJen! Toppest of the top bananas.

4. If you could have a house totally paid for, fully furnished anywhere in the world, where would you like it to be?
Is the furniture from Ikea? If so, no thanks.

5. What's your favorite quote?
", closely followed by '

6. Who do you want to meet right now?
Nobody. Neither would you if you were wearing carpet slippers and a floppy hat

7. What's your favorite magazine?
The Economist, but I tuck in a copy of 'Jugs 3D' on long train journeys. You can't tell

8. What do your friends call you most commonly?
Friends?

9. Would you prefer coffee or tea?
Oh! Tea please. I think I'd like one of those lesbian jobs, like ginseng and jojoba, or aloe vera and euphonium. No sugar.

10. What makes you go wild?
Tea

11. Who's your favourite deep sea diver?
Jacques Cousteau

12. Is that a twiglet in your pocket or are you glad to see me?
It's a twiglet

14. Are you superstitious?
Certainly not

Today I'm tagging M's. That's MiMi, Mme DeFarge, Marla, Magda, mo, and Moooooooooog. Fill your boots, team

1 - Come on, work it out... answer next post

Welcome Home, BalancedPaul

2010-01-29T19:11:00.004Z

Oh no. Not another blanket bath

Big day today.

Observant readers will have noticed BalancedPaul is a frequent witty commenter. He also hosted the '55-word fiction' contest here over Christmas. Paul is my little brother. 'Little' as in younger; he's about three inches taller than me and could give me a sound thrashing if the mood took him, but luckily he is a genial chap.

Last summer Paul unluckily copped leukemia, at about the same time his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. He has had what the Queen, bless her, would call an 'anus horribilis'¹, which means 'arsehole of a year'.

Since then Paul has endured NHS pyjamas, peeing in a cardboard bottle, vomiting in a cardboard hat, frequent visits from obscure mates, NHS food, drips, London parking, hair loss, snow, NHS television, bedsores, tubes into his arm, tubes into his heart, Bargain Hunt, Countdown, crutches, teenage doctors examining his nethers, polystyrene cups, about a million pairs of rubber gloves, his bloody iPhone, me calling him on his bloody iPhone during nap time, you name it.

Oh, and four months of 'Not-dead-yet? Have-some-more-then' chemotherapy.

He's been in hospital for 103 nights on ond off since September. Not that he's counting or anything. Until around Christmas, his wife had much of the same. And they're not even allowed grapes. Or twiglets. So it's lucky all he can stomach is dry crackers, fruit gums, and Heinz Tomato Soup².

Well guess what? All primed with brand new bone marrow from Heroic Little Sis, Paul is now out on parole, although he's not quite home, as his brand-new antiseptic en-suite bathroom is currently a lot of bricks, pipes, and dust. Cue big brother, who is putting him up in his swanky London flat. Niiiice.

So Paul and Mrs BP are well on the way, but not quite out of the woods yet. Infection is the risk, and neither will be at work much before next Autumn. They face testing, prodding, poking, assessing, questioning, needling, general harrassment and irritation for months yet. And that's just from their kids.

It hasn't all been bad. Paul refers to this time as the Big C Diet, although he is still heavier than me, hehehe. He has honed his crossword skills; the Times Cryptic takes no time at all³. And although we may diss the NHS, no-one's ever asked him for a penny. Even for the pyjamas.

What about this blog? It was kicked off mainly as a gift to him. Unsurprisingly, you may see Paul commenting a bit less over the next few weeks; he has some catching up to do. (Ooh-er missus). And I may post a bit less for a week or two; not least of all because I'm a bit out of ideas myself. Sigh. But Paul and I will be back, as we've got the bug. (Don't mention bugs.)

If you are the praying type, please send one the way of Paul and his family. They deserve it. And/or leave him a message here; he reads 'em.

Paul, here's to you. If I could face what you have faced with half your courage, determination, optimism, dignity, humour, and sheer grit, I'd be proud. You should be too.

Enjoy your homecoming, little bro.

1 - Actually she said 'annus horribilis' but she's a bit old-fashioned. We know what you meant, your maj.
2 - And it has to be Heinz. He's a fussy bugger.
3 - Beacuse he still can't do it.

England 2, USA 0

2010-01-27T22:43:00.004Z

Yes, very nice, but what's with the gloves?

Aeons ago, when we moved to the Yoo-Nahted States, we were urged mightily to go to The Game. So we did. What a great night out. Fill your face with hot dogs! Get slightly sozzled! Seventh innings stretch! Do the politically incorrect Tomahawk Chop! Watch the lovely ladies during amazingly frequent commercial breaks! Laugh at the hilarious man dressed as a furry animal! Puzzle over the stats on vast screens! Marvel at the blimp! Drive home with all the doors locked!¹

On my third or fourth visit I realised some men in stripy pyjamas tucked into their socks were playing a game too. And although the game was rounders, with big cheaty gloves and large salaries, from that point on I was hooked. I learnt the rules, and the subtleties of the game. I even went as far as learning what RBI stood for, although I forget now. (Raking Billions In? Run! Balls Itchy? Reuben's Bagel Imporium? Nope, it's gone)

So we were fans. But when we returned to England we naturally turned to cricket instead. And it's much better! Why?

a) It lasts longer. Test matches last five days. Five days.

b) It's a closer contest. Most five-day test matches end in a draw. Or a tie, which is different.²

c) It's sartorially superior, with jolly nice white trousers, sensible jerseys, plastic codpieces and schoolboy-type caps. All very super, in a Village People sort of way.

d) There are no commercial breaks, but it's so slow you can have a beer/pee/nap/twiglet break whenever you feel like it.

e) Like all the best sports, cricket is more or less incomprehensible. Players take up positions with names like Silly Mid Off, Long Fine Leg and Third Slip. Batsmen can be out in any of a dozen ways, including hitting your own wicket. Which is less painful than it sounds.

On the downside, there are no scantily-clad cheerleaders. But the dinner ladies at the Hampshire Rosebowl are simply gorgeous.³

So cricket wins (unlike England 90% of the time).

Which brings me to football.

I have to tell you I went to about twenty American so-called Football games in Washington and Atlanta, and no-one kicked the ball. Not even once. They just threw it around like a bunch of gurlies. And the huge geezers running around the field looking tough? Once they get all that Kevlar padding off, I bet they turn out to be 120-pound metrosexual weenies with personal trainers, Rolexes and stockbrokers. Probably.

Game over.

1 - It's a tradition in America to build stadia in the roughest part of town, so the players can buy their cocaine on the way in
2 - Unless it rains, in which case it just stops
3 - After six pints of lager

In Praise Of Wives

2010-01-24T23:54:00.004Z

Mrs G is a keen gardener.
This isn't her, obviously

I am doubly fortunate. First, I have a wife who is half-French, half-English, which makes for an interesting life. Second, I am lucky in that her top half is English and her bottom half is French. As we all know, the English are sensible but reticent, and the French are sexy but incomprehensible. If it had been the other way round, I wouldn't understand anything she said, and we would have no children.

Modesty forbids me from revealing how long we've been hitched, but here's a clue; at our wedding, we danced to songs by that popular funky heterosexual, George Michael. And Elton John was married. And Frankie had only just arrived in Hollywood, and was picking out nice curtains.

You may get cross with the French for not turning up at all the exciting wars, but I like 'em; and vast benefits accrue from a multi-national marriage. Exotic holidays abound. We have vacationed all over France, horribly abusing family generosity. And my kids have multiple nationality, very handy in terrorist situations, or when England fail to kick gallic butt at rugby. MiniGrump in particular is French, English and American all in one, which is why she is cynical, smart-arse and sassy all at the same time.

We can choose the best of both worlds. For example, I haven't shaved my armpits since the day we met. And whenever we get a new car, Mrs G promptly crashes it to show solidarity with her Parisian kin, saving a fortune on unnecessary insurance.

When you've been together as long as we have, the question inevitably arises; doesn't one's romatic life get a bit repetitive? A bit dull? Aren't you tempted to play away from home?

In a word, no. Like Paul Newman said; why go out for burgers when you can have rump steak at home? (Or was that sirloin?)

It's true that frequency tails off a bit. There's no marital sauciness every second Wednesday, as I have to mow the lawn, and I haven't got the stamina I once had. But I have no complaints. Don't believe me, singles? Let me explain with an analogy from the exotic world of breakfast cereals.

When you're footloose and fancy-free, l'amour is like Kelloggs Variety; lots of different flavours, but not quite enough, somehow. But for the long-wed, it's more like bulk cornflakes. But wait. Cornflakes don't have to be dull. You can liven them up with strawberries, or blueberries. Or bananas. But my experienced counsel is to avoid the blueberries. You'll never get the stains out of the sheets.

Twitter: If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them

2010-01-22T15:54:00.002Z

Desperate measures

I notice many savvy bloggers using ~~Twiglet~~ Twitter to build up following. Right, I’m up for it. How do you do that? Aren’t you limited to 140 charac

Move Over Curly-Wurly; Here Comes Cheez Whizz

2010-01-19T19:19:00.003Z

You can expect Cornettos to get a lot smaller

So Kraft Foods has snapped up Cadbury for eleven billion squiddlies and change. Lots of change. Eleven billion nicker is a vast wedge of wonga in anyone's language, but specifically, it's about $19 billion. Blimey.

Kraft, famous for the most disgusting cheese in the history of mankind, a poison-spewing factory in Woburn, Mass., and a persistent refusal to publish trans-fat content, is now in debt up to its cholesterol-encrusted eyeballs and will need to make some changes.

I can't see the modest Cadbury Curly-Wurly lasting long. Curly-Wurlies may be a delicious symphony of chocolate and caramel, with their majestic swirls reminscent of the marvellous helical complexity of DNA, but they aren't very efficient. They're full of holes, and they're a bit crumbly. And they're short on preservatives, xanthan gum, carcinogenic E-numbers, and so on.

Let's face it. Their days are numbered.

In 1993 Kraft bought Terry's, a smaller confectioner with a 250-year history. Kraft closed the factory in York and moved production to Poland. Will curly-wurlies become curlski-wurlskies? I for one will not be eating them. This is because of my high social principles, and is nothing to do with them already being a bit sickly. God knows what they'll be like after the sugar wizards of Warsaw and Gdansk get hold of them.

On previous form, then, we can expect Kraft to wait for the press to focus on something else, then close down the Cadbury factories, along with their expensive outdated Quaker social policies. They'll save a mint, and no-one will notice, will they? Apart from the sacked employees, obviously, but they won't be able to afford chocolate anymore in any case.

So, with a heavy heart, this right-on socially-aware blog waves goodbye to the humble curly-wurly. From today we switch snack.

Behold: the day of the Twiglet.

Tax Return Blues

2010-01-17T15:05:00.008Z

My accountant

Here's a song from the archives. 'The Tax Return Blues', by Long Willy Roachcock and the Daydreamin' Mofos, was released on the 'Home Truths' EP in 1965, along with the then-seminal but now-forgotten 'I Bought Me A Poor-Performin' Index Tracker' and 'Ain't No Use Bein' Thrifty When There's Sales Tax On beer'.

Here's me performing it, but before you listen, an international apology:

1. Sorry for sounding American. You have to put on a phoney southern drawl to sing the blues or it don't work. Er, doesn't.
2. Sorry for sounding Japanese. I recorded it on a Roland Micro BR, the size of a cigarette packet¹, with a teensy microphone guaranteed to give your voice that Yoko Ono 'je ne sais quoi'. Note also the electronic balsa wood drum kit.
3. Sorry for sounding French. Everyone knows French people can't play guitar. Well, neither can I.

Here's the lyrics so you can sing along:

Done my tax return this mornin'
Got me on my knees
Done my tax return this mornin'
Got me on my knees
Missed my filin' deadline
Gotta pay some penalties

Goodbye savin' days of clover
All that money down the drain
Goodbye savin' days of clover
All that money down the drain
Had to pay my last dime over
Forgot my goddam cap'tal gain

Oh I shoulda seen it comin'
But I'm as blind as I can be
Oh I shoulda seen it comin'
But I'm as blind as I can be
But like a fool I closed my eyes and
Ignored my P11D²

Well don't you make my mistake
With The Man don't you be messin'
Well don't you make my mistake
With The Man don't you be messin'
Get yourself a 'lectric 'puter
And do some online self-assessin'

(face-meltin' gee-tar solo)

Gonna pack my bags and head out
Gonna slide on like Ry Cooder
Gonna pack my bags and head out
Gonna slide on like Ry Cooder
Gonna fetch up somewhere warm
Ain't no taxes in Bermuda

Errata

It's been pointed out to me that there are, in fact, taxes in Bermuda. So here's a new last verse:

Gonna pack my bags and head out
Gonna flow on like The Mersey
Gonna pack my bags and head out
Gonna flow on like The Mersey
Gonna fetch up somewhere chilly
There's a fairly friendly and red-tape-light tax regime in Jersey

And for the avoidance of doubt, we're talking about Jersey in the English Channel, not the hilariously-named 'Garden State'.

1 - But you don't have to be a smoker to use it
2 - It's a form. Kiss the planet goodbye, one sheet of paper at a time

(Inspired by Hunter's recent rap at The Time Crook.)

Cheer Up Miserable Blog Gits

2010-01-14T10:52:00.002Z

All right, no need to overdo it

Crikey, everyone's got the hump. I thought I was the grumpy one. January is apparently the saddest month but you know what? I like it.

Evenings are drawing out, and it's almost light at three p.m. Gordon Brown will only be rogering us painfully for another few months¹. There's a brand new Doctor Who. And so on. See? Simply heaps of good stuff.

So here are my reasons to be cheerful:

1. I already fulfilled a new year's resolution; to lose twenty pounds. It was 'Fancy Pants' running in the 2:15 at Sandown. Surefire tip, supposedly, thank you, bloody BBC Radio 4, but she came in last, having thrown the jockey after the first furlong.

2. I bought new clothes in the sales. I can now leave them hanging up 'for best' and Mrs G won't be able to nag me about being a scruffbag.

3. I built an igloo with the kids, a lifetime's ambition. It's looking a bit wonky now, but with a bit of luck it will collapse on the cat and save us a fortune in vet's bills and cat food.

4. I figured out my new AX3000G Guitar Workstation. I pluck one note and it promptly plays the whole solo on 'Hotel California'. Now all I need is a decent vocal effects unit and I won't even need to turn up at gigs.

5. At long last I finished Stieg Larsson's third book, the strangely compelling but bloody long 'The Girl Who Liked Swedish Rumpy-Pumpy When Not Beating Up Hell's Angels And The Swedish Secret Service', featuring the least likely heroine in the mercifully short history of Swedish popular literature. I'm now moving on to something snappier, like War And Peace, or the phone book.

6. It's still snowing so I have an excuse not to jog, or even walk for that matter.

7. Curly-wurlies are on special at Tesco; £1.00 for 5. Run in and grab yourself a happy bargain.

There you go. My reasons for feeling as happy as the proverbial pig. What are yours?

1 - I dread to think who's next though

UberGrumble And Filch

2010-01-12T11:10:00.003Z

Accessorising that perfect top

A good tale from my neighbour. Let's call him Ken¹. Ken is a good-hearted man; he bought his lovely daughter a top from AberCrombie and Fitch which was the wrong size. No problem; planning a trip to London anyway, he offered to change it for her.

We live and learn.

Upon arrival he is surprised to find a queue snaking out of the shop and round the corner. A queue for a shop? Is the queen visiting? Or David Beckham? Apparently not. There's always a queue at A&F. Ken joins the line to find himself surrounded by eager teenies. And when Ken sensibly takes the opportunity to eat his cheese and pickle sandwiches with curly-wurly and diet Fanta, they all noisily disrespect him.

So Ken feels a little out of place by the time he reaches the door. But upon entry he is concerned to discover they have a power cut, or a fire. How come they're still letting people in? It's completely dark, and sirens are going off.

But as his eyes adjust to the gloom, he realises this is how it is all the time. And the sirens are in fact loud and trendy music. Has he accidentally lined up for a nightclub? How embarrassing.

But no; he puts his hands in front of him and advances gingerly until he bumps into what feels like a clothes rail. It is the shop.

Now call me old-fashioned but I quite like to see clothes when I'm buying them. Ken's in the same camp. Wishing he'd brought his head-torch, he manfully squints at tops for a while. No help is available; the A&F employees are busy dancing, half-naked, on a dimly-lit balcony far above. Ken shakes his fist at them, but they mistake it for a dance move of yesteryear, and kindly shake their fists back.

Ken is now quite cross, but he's come this far and he is made of steel. He finds the right top and gropes his way to the tills.

There's another queue. This one takes half an hour. Ken is beset by suspicious glances from more teenies who obviously assume he is a pervert come to spy on their shopping. But at last he is at the front, by now grinding his teeth. The assistant, very fetching in a bikini and buffed up with what looks like margarine, asks did he want the pink top? The old one's orange.

No he didn't. He just couldn't see the difference. So she stands him to one side and fetches the orange one for him. But then it turns out the one Ken chose was indeed orange; it was just labelled wrong. It takes a manager in a thong and a bowtie with a shaven chest and more margarine to sort out the mess.

By the time Ken gets out, two hours have passed.

What sort of evil genius can conceive of a shop like this? Buy a job lot of clothes from a sweat shop in Cambodia, put BIG LABELS on them, and then hang them in the dark. And hey presto! The kids are converging from miles around. No matter what you charge, because they all have vast cash reserves.

Ken, here's to you mate; you're a better man than I. Next time I buy pants and socks from M&S I'm going to keep my eyes closed the whole time in solidarity. Maybe I'll end up with a nice shade of pink. Or orange.

1 - Because that's his name

Sports Illustrated - The Swimsuit Edition

2010-01-10T11:45:00.004Z

Just do it!

After my recent jogblog, Dan and BalancedPaul challenged me to publish a picture of myself in running togs. Vodka Logic also told me off for never showing pictures of hunky blokes.

Happy to oblige on both counts.

Thanks to Mrs G for taking this action shot of me overtaking some weeny cyclists. Although it's a bit cold here, luckily we had a nice sunny day. I thought she captured my 'determined runner' look very well. Can you spot the snack curly wurly concealed about my person?

I hope you appreciate my matching running gear and hat. I always run in a hat, for the sake of modesty.

The School Trip

2010-01-08T10:06:00.005Z

Would you like carbon with that sir?

My favourite school trip¹, ever, was a day out at Heathrow Airport, followed by a tour of Southampton Container Port.

Aeroplanes! Back then they had propellers, two sets of wings and frequent prangs with airships. And bombs.

Then containers! Thousands of them! As far as the eye could see! Full of exotic stuff like trousers, transistor radios and illegal immigrants. How could you not like containers?

All this for three quid, with a pork pie, a curly-wurly and a bottle of Corona for lunch. Magic.

How times have changed. No. 2 Daughter, AKA the garrulous MiniGrump, has just booked herself on her school's latest trip. They're spending ten days or so in sunny Thailand. Yes, Thailand. We have remortgaged Grumpy Towers and sold off a few superfluous organs to pay for it, so she's off!

Why Thailand? She's studying Buddhism. Therefore it makes absolute sense to head to the heart of Buddhism, right? Let's tease that logic out. She's studying French. Are they planning a sensible day jaunt to Calais, where they can also stock up on cheap booze and unpasteurised cheese? No. She's studying art. Are they popping up to the National Gallery to look at Great Art, or Tate Modern to look at blank walls and building materials posing as Great Art? No.

So what's behind the tour of places exotic? After attending the parent's talk I got to the bottom of it. It turns out the kiddies on the trip must be accompanied by teachers at a ratio of five to one. And are those teachers paying? What do you think? They told us they'll be working the whole time. I suppose someone has to keep them away from the drugs and the ladyboys. Nice work if you can get it, eh?

But economics aside it looks pretty fabulous. She gets to ride on an elephant! Learn Thai dancing! Ride the uniquely polluted rivers of Bangkok! Be bitten by strange and ferocious insects! She can't help gloating at us but I remind her that she's never had a whole morning out at Heathrow. At least not without actually taking a flight. Ha.

But the kicker is this. One of the teachers stood up at the end and said, in the spirit of Copenhagen, they want to offset their carbon emissions for the trip. They're going to invest in a marijuana farm in the Gambia or something, which will absorb simply heaps of CO2. To that end, could we all cough up an extra thirty pounds?

Hold on. Reduce emissions like this: visit the perfectly nice Buddhist temple in Morecambe Bay. They can stay there for a week. That way they avoid the enormous aeroplane and the luxury layover in Dubai. I suggested it and got a frosty 'no'. No explanation given, but I suspect it's because there aren't many elephants there, and it's not very sunny in Morecambe Bay in February.

So Thailand it is. But they can take their thirty pounds and shove it where the sun don't shine. And I don't mean the fridge.

1 - And it was my only ever school trip, so by definition it was my favourite.

Jogging Tips For Lazy Bastards

2010-01-06T12:17:00.006Z

Always choose sensible footwear
when exercising

About this time of year Mrs G throws out the mince pies, empties the Blue Peter Sweety Castle, then castigates me for being a fat git. And if I'm honest the 6-pack is looking a bit insulated, although I'm sure it's still in there somewhere.

We must go jogging, says Mrs G. If God had meant us to jog, He'd have given us feet, I retort. You've got feet, she replies, quick as a wink, you just can't see them any more. Get your trainers on. I'll do the laces for you.

When she gets these ideas into her head, there's no use fighting it. I get out my running gear (Nike! Just do it!) from the attic with a heavy heart. But I have learned some useful techniques from previous years' abortive fitness projects, so I'd like to share them with you.

First, and most important, always run in kilometres. These handy measures are a lot shorter than miles, cutting your journey times enormously. Kilometres were invented by the French in the 15th century so they could get to battles before the English and have their cannons all set up, plus have time for a plate of moules marinieres and a nice chablis before all that messy fighting. Then we outfoxed them by inventing the longbow, which still fired arrows in miles, but that's another story.

Second, a good warm-up and warm-down are critical. The best way to do this is by strolling the first and last kilometre, or 'K', as we joggers would have it. That way if you're planning a 5K, you only have to run 3! Neat eh?

Third, a good mid-run snack is important to keep your energy up. I usually drop a fun-size curly-wurly down my shorts, and although it's a bit melty by the time I retrieve it, it tastes as good as ever. Plus Mrs G generally declines my generous offer of a bite, so I get the whole thing myself.

Finally, pay your neighbour to secretly let his dog loose on your planned route. Mrs G hates dogs, especially those that jump up at her to let her know they've just deposited their breakfast on her path. Two or three more outings like this, and she's rethinking the whole jogging thing.

We're almost safe for another year. It just remains for me to suggest a conscience-salving game of tennis on the Wii. Unless the batteries are flat, in which case we'll just stop taking sugar in our tea, shall we? For now, anyway.

P.S. Check out my awesome award from JennyMac! She has an astounding 834 followers. 834! I've been limited to soixante-neuf for ages. Which is not something you get to say often.

New Year, New Passports

2010-01-02T23:48:00.006Z

Not a valid photo. Glasses!

This is about the time of year when we've had enough of drizzle, VAT, Tesco adverts featuring cheerful B-list celebs, the M4, and Gordon Bloody Brown, and we think wistfully of foreign climes. Unfortunately all the Family Grump passports expire in January so it's renewal time. Ha. For ample evidence that the government has well and truly lost the plot, and is making a thorough nuisance of itself every moment of your CCTV-recorded life, I recommend you try renewing yours.

Starting point is the photo. Easy, you may think. But you may think wrong. (I tried digging out left-over snaps from my previous passport application, but I look like a Mexican bandito with poor taste in shirts.) The rules for passport photos have got a lot stricter. Bloody government.

You can't smile, but on the other hand you mustn't snarl like a terrorist, unless you want a finger up the bottom every time you go to Calais for a booze cruise. Both ears must be on prominent display. You must wear neither your natty al-Qaeda headband, nor your sexy Che Guevara neckscarf. Your Vladimir Putin shades are right out.

So, new photo then. Bloody government.

Photo-Me machines used to be fun little booths you could squeeze into on the way home from the pub, to take some truly hilarious pics with you and your equally legless buddies, provided an earlier, more drunken reveller hadn't mistaken the booth for a public toilet.

Alas, technology has caught up, and so has the bloody government. The booths are now like little Whitehall departments in miniature. They know all about passports. Put your money in and they actually talk to you, to make sure everything is just right. Don't smile. Adjust your height. Lose the specs. Get your hair out of your eyes. Are you chewing gum? Are you sober? Did you brush your teeth this morning? I said, don't smile. Lean forward a bit. FLASH! You blinked. That'll be another four pounds please. Join the back of the queue, citizen.

After three or four attempts you're done. Now simply get the photo countersigned by a magistrate, bishop and/or or pop star, and you can progress to the application form. This hasn't got any easier either. You must fill in each little box exactly right or the weasel at the Post Office, which is 30 miles from your house because the bloody government has closed most of them, will give your form back and tell you to start again. Join the back of the queue, citizen.

The bloody government is obsessed with data, so obviously we've gone all biometric. Every detail gathered about you since records began is stuffed onto a little chip on the back page. So don't be surprised if border guards start asking you if you're a communist. Oh how you regret mistaking that copy of 'Socialist Worker' for 'TV Guide'.

The first foreign trip I ever took was to Germany (I was young and foolish). To allow me to travel I got a British Visitor's Passport. It cost about as much as two Curly-Wurlies, lasted a year, and the nice lady at the village Post Office and General Stores did it for me on the spot. Fast-forward to today. The price for the new family passports? Over three hundred quid. Three hundred quid! Is foreign travel worth the effort at all? Of course it is. We need a break from the bloody government.

Blue Wales

2009-12-29T16:25:00.007Z

A real Welsh beauty

Not blue as in 'sad', blue as in 'cold'. We're not sad, far from it; we're having a Welsh Whale of a time. Christmas in Wales is a blast. The cold isn't a problem either; we have plenty of firewood and when that runs out, furniture. Then cats.

Blogging, however, is a bit of a technical challenge. Luckily today just happens to be a day when we get both electricity and network access; very rare up in the Powys hills. So I'm taking the opportunity to announce the results of BalancedPaul's festive quiz (see previous post).

This isn't quite as simple as it should have been; e-mail has been a bit erratic, as by law all mails must be translated into Welsh, then taken by carrier pigeon to the local post office. However two successful entries managed to struggle through, and the winners are:

the incomparable Jen-Jen!

the amazing Vodka Logic!

Congratulations to them. The correct answers were 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'A Christmas Carol.'

If anyone else thought they'd answered correctly and I didn't get in touch, apologies. I have to admit to some confusion. Some of the pigeons are on strike, and others may have frozen on the way through. Please let me know and I'll sort on our return to ~~civilization~~ England.

I have one small confession to make. I bought the prize curly-wurlies and an extra one for me. Then I ate it. Crikey they're sweet. And quite sticky. Goodbye fillings, hello love handles. You have been warned.

Anyway, next post in the New Year. Party time! Cheers

BalancedPaul's 55-Word Mystery Giveaway

2009-12-23T14:46:00.003Z

Dressed for winter conditions

Special treat today; a guest post from BalancedPaul, and an epic curly-wurly giveaway.

BP is in fact my brother, and if I'm Sherlock Holmes (I wish) then he's Mycroft, i.e. cleverer, more enigmatic, and too lazy to run his own blog.

BP was much taken with G-man's 55-word fiction thing (tell a story in exactly 55 words) which normally takes place on a Friday, but this Friday we will be in the middle of our Welsh Christmas, so will spend all morning in church singing 'Land of our Fathers' and 'Bread of heaven', then all afternoon shearing leeks. It's tough up here.

So your 55-word challenge is early. He's fiendishly condensed two classic stories without referring to major characters at all. What are they?

Competition open to all followers of this blog. To enter, just e-mail the names to mw@tucasi.com. First three correct will win a year's supply of delicious and nutritious curly-wurlies¹.

Good luck. Here's the stories:

Bodice-ripper, with class

Lady with five daughters to marry off. Unlucky, eh? Eldest finds
catch. Vivacious second, his supercilious friend.

Youngest brings disgrace. Trollop. Friend dissuades catch but offers
own hand despite lowering himself. What! Rejected!

Complications ensue. Youngest marries. Phew. Honour saved.

Friend and catch finally learn value of virtue over background. All
marry. Everyone happy. Nearly.

WTD?

It's cold but no coal can be put on the fire. Miserable sod.

Christmas is costly. People wanting time off. Bah.

The ghosts show the error of this outlook; deceased ex-partner always forgotten.

A change of heart! And the goose is purchased for Tiny Tim (mind you, I wish someone would strangle him)

Merry Christmas!

1 - Which means five of them. I wouldn't want you getting lardy

Christmas Card Ethics

2009-12-21T11:46:00.004Z

Always use a ballpoint pen when
writing cards

We are racing through pointless Chrimbo cards to deliver to our neighbours, who we see every few days anyway. Poor Mrs G does the bulk of the work; I can't write, courtesy of being left-handed, and typing a lot, thereby losing the habit.

So we have developed a good system. Mrs G writes the cards, then I scrawl my name, stick on an address label and lick the envelopes. I like this bit. I feel with every lick I can taste a bit of old China, or Malaysia, and sometimes Hong Kong. (We don't spend much on our cards.) So I just enjoy the ghost of Peking Duck or Singapore Noodles, complete with green tea, and food poisoning.

Anyway all that's easy. Harder is tackling the Moral Maze of Christmas cards. There are several thorny issues. Here's some guidance for you.

One. Do I send them at all? Each year we get more and more e-cards, and a high-horse message telling us the money saved will be donated to charity. Yeah, right. Sure you do. Prove it and send me the accounts. Verdict: If you don't want to send a card, don't send anything. e-cards suck like a new Dyson.

Two. Do I send a card to Great Aunt Agatha again this year? I haven't seend her in thirty years and if one is honest with oneself, one is just hoping for a modest legacy when she pops off some time fairly soon. Is that the spirit of Christmas? I think not. Verdict: Yup, send it. She actually shuffled off this mortal coil in 2003 and her grasping kids got the mansion. At least I can annoy them with the card.

Three. Do I enclose a form letter with interesting highlights of my year? Verdict: Absolutely not. Ask yourself this: do you like receiving them? We received one this year detailing the contents of a child's blazer pockets. I don't give a stuff about your favourite films or your top ten recipes either. Save your breath and the planet. A simple hand-written 'hope to see you in 2010' will suffice.

Four. Do I give a card to the postman with a fiver in it, in response to his cheery card dropped in earlier in the week? Verdict: No. If he can't be bothered to say hello during the week, he doesn't deserve it, and he's on strike most of the time anyway. His card was a cynical attempt to gain a tip and should be used to light the christmas fire. If you have to give him something, a curly-wurly and/or a mince pie is ample.

Five: Do I send a card to my curmudgeonly neighbour who never gave my strimmer back and whose dogs leave wet little presents in the swing set? Verdict: Yes. It's a good opportunity to send a little reminder. Write a cheery message like 'Seasons greetings to you and your canine chums. Have you tried dried dog food? Where's my bloody strimmer?'

So there it is. I hope that eases some of those nagging seasonal stresses for you. And by the way, Merry Christmas. We won't be sending out cards this year, but will instead be buying a bigger turkey and a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape to go with it. The '95. Cheers.

The Knight Before Christmas

2009-12-19T16:38:00.004Z

A typical 'relaxing at home' outfit

Right, feeling better now. Thank you for your hangover cures.

I rewrote this 'orrible schmaltzy poem a couple of weeks ago, and felt very pleased at how witty and original I was until I saw lots of others had done the same thing, sooner and better. Particularly Bob and Eva. Oh well.

Anyway, for your reading pleasure; a sobering tale of a less-than-sober Christmas reunion. It's serious stuff.

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the flat
Not a creature was stirring, (we'd sold off the cat).
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
Along with some other top-notch underwear.

The children were nestled all snug at their Dad's,
who was out, naughty chap, in the pub with the lads.
And mamma stayed in with some tonic and gin,
And some Pringles with dip, for a long evening in.

When out on the street there arose such a racket,
She fell off the sofa and tore her new jacket.
Away to the window she flew with a curse,
I daren't repeat it, although you've heard worse.

The moon on the breast of the statue outside
Made its bosoms look big and its hips far too wide.
When, what to her booze-fuddled eyes should appear,
But the guys from the pub, overflowing with beer.

There was one on the phone, trying vainly to text,
she knew in a moment it must be her ex.
Like damp chipolatas his fingers they went,
It would surely be morn 'fore that message was sent!

"Now Jason! now, Tony! now, Martin and Steve!
Look, David! You've got some kebab on your sleeve
Try to look sober, grown-up and clean-breasted,
Or the cops will turn up and we'll all be arrested.

Mindful of this, the lads soon dissipated,
Apart from her hubby who stood with breath bated,
Looking uncertainly up at the flat,
Where his missus of fond memory was now at.

And then, in a twinkling, he weaved to the door
And dinged on the bell with a trembling paw.
No answer there came, but with booze-inspired pluck,
Down the chimney he went, though he nearly got stuck.

His dress was smart casual, from his head to his foot,
But his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
He didn't look clever or famous or rich,
Apart from his shirt, Abercrombie and Fitch.

His eyes-they were bloodshot! His lips, like blueberry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
But he grinned like a fool and tried to look sober,
Which he hadn't been since the last week of October.

But he didn't look too bad, all things considered
Though he looked a bit dozy and quite heavy-lidded
Nevertheless his bearing was burly
Curly his hair, his moustache nicely whirly

Come in to the kitchen she said with a sigh,
You'd better have coffee, I've got a supply
It's not that you're welcome, she said with a shrug,
It's just that the soot is destroying my rug.

He opened his mouth to deliver a carol
She hit him quite hard with an old biscuit barrel
Ouch, he exclaimed, was it something I did?
Yes, she replied, you're neglecting the kids

I am not, he declaimed, with great indignation
I left them at home with a distant relation
Who? She demanded, her eyes full of pain
"If you must know, it's Auntie Deauxma from Ukraine".

She softened a bit, and she offered her cheek
Which was more than he'd hoped for, for many a week
He asked if she'd let him remain for the night,
No, she replied, but when sober, you might.

He spoke not a word, but delivered his gift,
A small potted plant that he'd nicked from a lift.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
He wiped off a teardrop, which from him arose.

He sprang to his feet, like a kid with a toy
And blew her a kiss as he left, full of joy.
And she heard him exclaim, as he fell down a drain,
"Happy Chrishmash, and sorry I've been such a pain."

Wretched Excess

2009-12-19T10:00:00.003Z

Has anyone seen my glass?

No post this morning. Hung over.

Good cure anyone? I tried raw egg and curly-wurly already.

Lingering In The Lingerie

2009-12-17T12:42:00.003Z

Always check the fire-retardant
certificate when buying lingerie

It's that time of year. Mrs G likes something frilly in the ole' Christmas stocking so I pluck up my courage and head for the lingerie department. Actually, if truth be known, I think Mrs G would be quite happy with a gift box of curly-wurlies and a Harry Potter DVD, but a good marriage is built on solid foundations (snigger) and moreover there's a festive tradition to be upheld here. Where would we be without festive traditions?^1,2,3

So. Up to the second floor of Debenhams (nothing but the best for Mrs G). There are literally acres of mysterious lacey elastic-y underwired overpriced lurid lurex suspending padded inflatable translucent fripperies on display, and I am immediately all at sea.

Luckily I am not alone. The undies are all on little rails, just above waist height. Every ten feet or so there is a man wandering up and down, trying to look nonchalant, and studiously avoiding eye contact with everybody else. There are a couple of assistants too, hovering and trying not to laugh. We are like giraffes in the African veldt, poking our heads above the trees, taking care to evade the lionesses. Where's David Attenborough when you need him?⁴

In early years I would suffer hours of this, then grab anything and throw it at the till person, only to get it home and realise it's too big, too tarty, too itchy, too thongy, too purple, and, one memorable year, too edible. I have learned from my mistakes, and I now have a strategy. I boldly head⁵ for the chief lioness and ask her for her advice. What would she wear?

She wants to know Mrs G's size. No problem. I'm wise to this too. I used to say 'about two inches taller than you' and then wonder why they looked annoyed. Now I have all the relevant measurements to hand; cup size, inside leg, outside leg, surface area, fuel capacity, starting temperature, viscosity, voltage, range, 0-60 times, trade-in value, etc. I simply hand over the spreadsheet.

Looking suitably impressed, she makes some suggestions. Apparently crotchless earflaps are all the rage this year. They're pretty expensive, certainly if measured by the square foot, but who am I to argue? I pick out a pair in a tasteful shade of Manchester United red⁶. Subtle. She'll love this. Come Christmas morning, that'll get pride of place in the big drawer, on top of last year's. And the year's before that. And so on.

1 - Happier
2 - Richer
3 - Vacationing abroad
4 - Shopping for better quality lingerie in Harrods
5 - Yes I know it's a split infinitive. If Capt Kirk can do it then so can I
6 - I am a Chelsea fan but blue is sooooo last season, dahling

Christmas Number Two

2009-12-15T08:59:00.006Z

Merry what, daaahling? Can't hear you

How I loathe festive music. Every year in the UK, there is a tawdry traditional scramble to be top of the increasingly meaningless music chart, by releasing the most schmaltzy, gooey, sugar-coated, banal, insipid slop that the latest Simon Cowell-inspired, two-dimensional, d-list, brainless, egocentric, half-baked flat-voiced media monkey can croon. (Mind you, I quite like Alexandara Burke.)

These treacle-laden ditties exist for a reason, and it's nothing to do with invoking the spirit of St. Nick. They make a huge wedge of wonga for the author, and continue to deliver the dollops of cash year after year. Because I am quite poor, and mercenary, I have therefore swallowed my scruples, and penned a potential festive hit. Unfortunately it's too rude to publish on this family blog. Leave a comment or mail if you want the lyrics but I warn you, it's not pretty.

Last year Mrs G and I were in town, taking coffee 'n' curly-wurly to refuel between sessions of frenzied grasping for over-priced nine-day-wonder tat for the kids. Picture the scene. We sit in what we take to be a quiet corner. We're adding up the credit card bill, to get some worrying in ahead of January, when on comes Maria Carey ("All I want for Christmas, is yooooo"). This song induces a murderous Pavlovian reaction in me whenever I hear it, so to avoid the ghastly bloodbath which may ensue, I ask the waitress to turn it down, or preferably off.

Flat refusal. The customers like it.

This customer doesn't, so he unplugs the speaker. Blessed silence and happy coffee, and pleasingly baffled waitress.

So I encourage you to do the same; keep some nail scissors in your pocket or bag, unless you're going on an aeroplane. Then when you hear the first chords of "When A Child Is Born", snip! And it's gone. Merry Christmas.

P.S. The very lovely Vodka Logic has posted my 'New Santa's Hit' (watch that punctuation) at her sumptuous blog. Complete with tasteful illustrations!

Micro-Fiction Friday! Or Sunday

2009-12-13T13:35:00.007Z

So many books, so little time

There’s a top-banana craze sweeping the blogosphere; micro-fiction Friday. Or something. Go see Galen or Susan At Stony River for a better definition. Anyway, you have to write a story in exactly 55 words, and then fabulous prizes await. Well, I’m slow to catch on, but quick to catch up. Here’s my effort. I’m not creative enough to write my own story, but to make up for it, I’ve nicked not one, but four! Enjoy.

Celebrated Fantasy Trilogy

Bilbo, 111! Gandalf persuades: “It’s up to you Frodo. Take the ring. And Sam.”
The fellowship sets off. Legolas etc. fight well. Look out Boromir! Gandalf, dead!

Many battles ensue. Yawn. Gandalf’s back. Surprise!

Soon, hobbits and Gollum reach Mordor. It’s really dirty.
Chuck the ring in! No! Yes! No! Ow, my finger!

The end.

Shakespearean Epic

Montague and Capulet, always at it. But Romeo meets Juliet, now also at it, but in a nice way.

“Wherefore art thou? It’s dark down there”.
“Here! Marriage?”
“Yes!”

Angry Tybalt slayeth Mercutio. Romeo slayeth Tybalt back. Juliet feigneth death! Romeo, fooled, toppeth himself! Juliet awakens and joins him, silly girl. Chastened families apologize.

Tragic.

Popular But Tedious Thriller

French curator murdered! Langdon investigates, with sexy Sophie. Enigmatic code; scratch head; solved!

Clever old da Vinci hides clues. Hidden for millennia! Langdon uncovers all in about two days! Crikey, he’s clever. Or lucky.

Despite nasty self-harming monk, bishop, pope, church, etc., Langdon uncovers amazing secret! Jesus had kids. Big deal. Why all the secrecy?

Sci-Fi Classic

Vader captures Leia! Kiss the revolution goodbye. But Luke, trained by Obi-Wan, fights back! Take that, Death Star! Boom!

Many aliens and ludicrous teddy bears later, Yoda fulfils Luke’s Jedi training. Nice moves.

Sod that, says Darth, I’ll build another Death Star. But Luke is too powerful! Boom again!

Luke, I am your father! *croak*

Baaaaa Humbug

2009-12-11T09:37:00.005Z

Raquel, curiously, is not Welsh

The Family Grumpy are excited to be off to Wales for Christmas. Wales is a special and exotic place, and the Welsh are a noble and proud people, rather like Hobbits. It's just a few hours from London, but it could be the other side of the world, say New Zealand. Like New Zealand, there are more sheep than people, which goes some way to explaining how most of the Welsh Assembly got elected. Welsh sheep also come in many varieties; the dingleberry, the curly-wurly, the tikka masala, the temptress, the baabaablack, to name but a few.

Besides being the Prince of Wales' vegetable garden, Wales is famous for many things. It's produced celebrities like Tom Jones, Catherine Zeta Jones, Davy Jones, Aled Jones, and Indiana Jones. Globally renowned sports like rugby, bog snorkelling, Man vs Horse racing, and Extreme Ironing flourish there. Welsh rarebit, famous everywhere else as cheese on toast, is a local delicacy. And so on.

Wales has its own language, which like, er, whales, is (are?) endangered. This is not a surprise as it is one of the most bizarre languages ever invented. For example, to wish a Welshman "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" then simply say "Nadolig llawen a blwyddyn newydd dda". If you pronounce that right then it sounds like you choked on your Christmas pud, coughed it up and sneezed.

Left to its own devices this quaint language might fade away, but it's kept alive via generous dollops of my EU cash. All documents, road signs, web-sites, TV and radio programs in Wales must be translated. For example, go to the web-site of the Prince of Wales and click on the 'cymraeg' ('Welsh'¹) button. Bang! Goodbye vowels. It all adds to the mystical charm of the place.

We can't wait. We will be staying with Eldest Sister, a Physician of Repute specialising in sheep-related diseases, in her leek farm in the hills. We will be bringing modern presents from England, like tinned food, VHS tapes, and cutlery. Eldest sis doesn't have central heating, but she does have plenty of cats, so you can warm yourself by dropping one down your pyjamas of an evening.

They also don't have electricity, but we can watch TV as my brother-in-law is a handy soul. Someone simply pedals the power-generating exercise bike while everyone else watches the trusty 14" VHS combo, but we rarely do, as all they can receive is Welsh-language soap-operas, and Dr Who.

So blogging might be a challenge, particularly as 'broadband' in Wales is simply another variety of sheep, and I am obliged to translate all posts. But I'll do my best. Yacky da.²

1 - At least, I think it means 'Welsh'. It might also mean 'Sod Off English Pigs'
2 - Either 'good health' or 'your ewe is standing on my toe' depending on your dictionary.

P.S. Thank you Christie, for the lovely award posted on the right! Before I can pass it on I have to think of, and state, several original and interesting things about me. Don't hold your breath

Vous Voulez Ketchup Avec Ca?

2009-12-09T10:16:00.004Z

Nigella displays her bountiful cherries

It might not be common knowledge abroad, but we Brits are now a nation of gastronomes. This is a mighty blow to the French whose national pastime is to knock our grub (Mon dieu! Zis is cheese? It tastes like soap), but I suspect we now eat better than they do. If you don't believe me, have a mouth-watering rib-eye at our local pub¹, then jump on the Eurostar², wander down the Champs Elysees, and order steack frites³. You'll be picking the gristle out of your teeth for days.

How has this miracle come to pass? You can thank the celebrity chefs. Morning, day and night our TV is full of high-profile foul-mouthed macho chefs, ranging from Jamie Oliver (cor, strike a light, this pate en croute is f***ing sublime) to Huge Fartley-Whittlingstool (Keeping pigs is rewarding and ecologically fulfilling. Now watch while I kill one) to Gordon Ramsay (Who's f***ing moved my f***ing hat. I can't f***ing cook without my f***ing hat on, can I?)

Ah ha! We Brits rule the world in this field! Even you mighty Yanks have hamstrung yourself, by insisting that your celebrity chefs were already famous for something else. All you can offer is Paul Newman's (admittedly tasty) dressings. There's a lady called Martha Stewart who has an interesting take on prison food. And no, I don't want to buy a grill from George Foreman. Is that it?

There are a couple of frenchies in the offing, but they all live in London, so they're really Brits too. Game over!

This is also a recent UK history in microcosm. When I was a kid, '70s Britain was an austere place. The chef of choice was one Fanny Craddock, a truly nasty old lady who would frequently whack her husband with a rolling pin whenever his fingers ventured into her puff pastry.

On to the deliciously excessive '80s, and stagger forward Keith Floyd, bon viveur and utter drunk, who'd slur and sway his way through a recipe, and polish off an entire St Emilion Grand Cru in 25 minutes. No-one can remember anything he cooked, but he was ~~meshmerishing mishermeshing~~ hypnotic.

Then in the '90s, decade of consumption and choice, we went nuts. Delia Smith! Gary Rhodes! Ainsley Harriott! Rick Stein! Lloyd Grossman! Anthony Worral Thompson! All household names, and every single one of them released a book at Christmas, and/or a range of barbecue tongs, kitchen appliances, coffee machines, pasta sauces, flavoured condoms, you name it.

Which brings us to the sassy no-holds-barred noughties, and the current lot. Little wonder we're all fat.

Well, now it's my turn. I am a bit of a foodie. I eat most days, sometimes more than once, and I take my gastronomy seriously. I'm working on a modest book, "Chew On This", which might not be ready for Christmas but should be available for barbecue season, which in England is the afternoon of July 17th⁴.

You'd like a little taster? My modest contribution to our culinary cornucopia includes Battered Curly-wurly in Creme Fraiche. Delicious. Watching the cholesterol? Then may I recommend you my Cheerio Sushi Surprise? You may not like Cheerios, or sushi, but I guarantee you'll be surprised.

1 - Assuming you've got a spare forty quid
2 - Assuming you've got a spare two hundred quid
3 - Assuming you've got a spare three euros fifty, and can put up with the rudest waiter you've ever met
4 - Unless it's raining

Christmas Gig Report

2009-12-07T10:24:00.003Z

One of our roadies,
pre-warming the guitars

I'm posting at 3 a.m. because Hot Rabbit, Hampshire's Hardest-Working Band¹, just finished our Christmas gig and I can't sleep. We work our nadgers off when we play; we started at 9 and finished at 11:45, played more than forty songs, and only stopped for 30 seconds so the bass player could have a pee. (Bass players have notoriously weak bladders.) You'd think we'd be knackered at the end of it but I'm wired and am struck down with terminal munchies, so I have to sit up half the night watching Fu Manchu movies and eating cheese and crackers. And blogging.

We had an OK crowd; there were about 80 people in a small pub, and two huge dogs, so it felt full enough. Sometimes the ole' mojo kicks in and tonight it did. Oh how they danced. I reached the top notes in 'Livin' On A Prayer' and 'Mr. Brightside'. Fighting off pre-instrumental tension, I stepped up to 'Play That Funky Music White Boy'. I aced the tricky glockenspiel solo on 'The Curly-Wurly Of Love'. And the other lads were on similar top-notch form.

I sweated a bucket. We all did. We ended up The Four Hoarse Men Of The A-Puckered Lips. I've worn my index fingernail down to the quick, even though I use a plectrum, and my throat is as dry as Osama Bin Laden's wine cellar. Big noise, big fun.

But we're talking to the landlord as we pack up and he's shaking his head; it's tough to get people out on a Saturday. Why? Because TV is packed with shows like X Factor and Pop Idle and I Used To Be A Celebrity, Put Me Out Of my Misery. The British public sit in mindless droves soaking this stuff up, week after week. He's right. He's absolutely right.

I've tried to like these programs, I really have, because it would be a connection with the kids. But they kick me out of the room after five minutes of watching because my teeth are grinding so loudly.

The truth is I can't stand them (I mean the TV shows, not the kids). I loathe Simon Cowell. How can you trust a man with such straight teeth? He can't be a Brit. I despise the spectacle of half-arsed talentless gormless barbie-and-ken egomaniacs queuing up for ritual humiliation because they want to be famous ("it's my dream"; "it's everything to me"; etc. ad nauseam). The lovely Simon sticks a thousand of them on a pedestal for two minutes and then slaps all but one off. What fine entertainment.

Worst of all: the songs they slaughter and sell by the gazillion. Last year Alexandra Burke won Strictly X-rated Pop Factor, or something, and released 'Hallelujah'. She sang it with beautiful clarity and technical precision, and no feeling at all. Nothing. A song with heart, delivered like an advertising jingle. All she felt was lucky.

Ditto Susan Boyle's note-pefect and utterly lifeless 'Wild Horses'. Mind you at least she has novelty value. The last time a voice matched a face so badly was when Leonard Nimoy released his all-time classic 'The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins'. (The live version is even better).

So switch off the Electric Box Of Evil and Sloth, get out to a pub or club, and watch a band. Any band. These are people who get up and give, night after night, for the love of it. They don't stand up and sing half a song, with sly electronics and a full BBC orchestra covering up how duff they are. And they don't run home in tears when they don't win.

Better still, come and see us. We can promise you a warm welcome, a sweaty evening and a big smile on your face. How often do you get an offer like that? We may be forty-something (forty-thirteen in one case) but we rock.

1 - Check out our supercool, ultra-modern website, www.hotrabbit.co.uk. I did it myself, you know.

Drinking For England

2009-12-05T11:00:00.005Z

Phew! It's crowded in here

My mate Raj and I like to go to the pub the hard way. Parking next door is for weenies and liberals. We start out at least five miles away and yomp our way in, to build up an appetite for warm beer, and pork scratchings. That way we can discuss the overthrow of the government out of the reach of CCTV cameras and ultra-sensitive microphones. We never whinge about our better halves though, as that would be ungentlemanly.¹

So today we meet at Cheesefoot Head, which may sound like a fungal infection but is in fact a well-known beauty spot. It's been the wettest November on record, wetter even than Susan Boyle dribbling all over 'Wild, wild Horses'. But we are made of iron, and besides, we have waterproof boots. Fortified with a hip flask and a curly-wurly each, we walk, paddle and sometimes even swim to the Flowerpots Inn in Cheriton, the Best Pub in Hampshire, ready for opening time at 12:00.

Raj is a top-speed paddler. I trot along behind and we arrive early, at 11:30-ish. To our consternation the pub opens late, at 12:30, says the board outside. So it's another hour walking. But first we nip round the back to admire their fine urinals. We surprise the barmaid, who is polishing the Landlord's beer pump.

"Er, is the pub open?", I ask, which is my way of pretending I wasn't sneaking in to exercise the plumbing.

"We can be," she says.

Five minutes later we're warming our hands on the beer (a bit early I know) and having a fine old chat with the landlord. The fire's lit, the ale is tasty, really tasty, and all is well. On the dot of 12:00 half the village walks in, also ignoring the board outside, and the party's on.

Sometimes I yearn for foreign shores. The Family Von Grump plan long trips to sunnier climes, exotic locations, exciting places. We buy maps, mosquito nets, malaria tablets, harpoons and bear traps. We book guides, we buy insurance. You have to be prepared for anything in Normandy.

Then I come to a pub like this and remember why I live in England. It's absolutely bloody knockout. The staff are friendly, so are the locals, the food is wholesome and plentiful, the dog doesn't smell, there are no pinball machines or horse brasses, there's no tooth-grinding Christmas music. Opening and closing time are a fiction. Come when you like. None of this oh-sorry-breakfast-ended-at-eleven-sir. It's just people having a beer and a chat, and enjoying the landlady's plentiful baps.

No kids either; if you want to bring them, there's a jolly tent outside where you can stick them with a Vimto and a bag of cheese and onion crisps between them for an hour or four. It's prefectly safe; if the temperature falls below freezing, the pub will light a patio heater. Besides it's good for them. They need to develop patience, and their immune systems.

The beer is brewed on the premises with interesting variations, so naturally we end up sampling a bit more than we intended to, and staying a bit longer.

Before we set off the landlord has to leave on an errand, so before he goes we chat with him again. Fifty pubs a week are closing in Britain. We commiserate with him and he shakes his head sadly. Business is slow, he says, which is a surprise given how full the place is, but we duly leave a big tip for the food.

Then he's off. As we set out for the long swim back, bellies sloshing, we see him sweeping out of the car park in a fairly new red Porsche 911 Turbo. Crikey. I wonder what he drives in a good year?

1 - Plus, at least one of them reads this blog.

(Inspired by the full-on recent rant by Dan at Vacant Mind).

Navel gazing

2009-12-03T15:07:00.008Z

A typical blogger, revealing all

I think it must come to every fresh-faced blogger, sooner or later, to blog about blogging. Today's ejaculation may be a bit premature, but I'm fascinated, so please forgive the indulgence.

I started blogging to scratch a writing itch. I've written two fabulously unsuccessful novels. My best rejection letter was the hand-written scrawl "I do not read thrillers" in response to my romantic comedy, and as for my post-modern lightly ironic biopic set in the fascinating world of my office, well, I didn't bother sending that out at all. I'm working on an erotic sequel though.

But blogging is a revelation. Instant success! Write any old nonsense, press 'Publish', and it's plastered all over the planet for everyone to read. Mail all of your family and mates, let 'em know it's there, they'll be soaking up your pearls of wisdom on a daily basis.

Except they don't, mostly, because they don't share your obsession. And I have become an utter blog bore. Time and again when I bump into a buddy I blurt out: 'Have you read my blog recently?' I can't help myself. It's like Tourette's syndrome. The response is usually a polite, if stiff: 'Ooh, no, I will soon, thank you so much for reminding me. Again.' The notable exception is one brutally honest friend who shall remain nameless. She point-blank refuses to read it any more. Thanks Dawn.

So the other source of readers is fellow bloggers, and they do come, agonisingly slowly, but they do. And what an amazing bunch of people. Eclectic doesn't begin to describe it. Click on my modest followers collection if you don't believe me; they nearly all blog, and they're all good.

Followers are very precious, as are comments, because they mean someone has taken the trouble to read what you wrote¹. It's like your Mum praising your latest Airfix model. So I agonise about my followers and I'm just delighted out of all proportion when one joins, the same feeling I get upon finding an extra curly-wurly at the bottom of my Christmas stocking.

I don't think I'm alone. A recent post from Dr. Zibbs, who runs a very funny and refreshingly vulgar blog called The Blue Yak, complains long and loud about lack of comments. He'll give up, he claims, unless he gets at least 100. This from a guy who has several hundred followers. Cue lots of comments, effing and blinding, slapping him about and good-naturedly knocking him off his soapbox. Quite right too, Zibbs, count your blessings.

It seems the good doctor has broken one of the unspoken rules of blog etiquette, which is: Don't moan. This is because many, nay most, bloggers are from N America, where people are unrelentingly positive; witness the proliferation of cheerful jogging blogs. In the rest of the world 'cheerful jogging' is an oxymoron.

I like this attitude. Someone once summed up Brits and Americans thus: if an American sees someone driving by in a swanky car (an import, obviously) they give a cheery wave and say "That'll be me someday". In Britain we just mutter "Bastard" and pretend not to notice them.

Well, I may call myself Grumpy, but I'm with you colonials. Look how happy I am. Please feel free to follow me. Go on. Please.

Which brings me to awards. I'm bowled over to have got two today, so I have to recommend two-times-five-is ten other blogs. Only ten? I'm following about ninety and I like all of them. But here goes:

From Sandra, passed on to:

Alice In Wonderland - Pull up a comfy chair, plump up your cushions and let Alice read you a soothing poem
Dan at Vacant Mind - Fellow brit and much grumpier than me, despite the bloody cheerful music. Read his pub rant
Marla at Butts And Ashes - Serious stuff but beautifully written, from one good person
Sarah - The Good Girls. Straight from the heart
plainolebob - Everyone awards him so it'll clutter his shelf but how could you not? He's just a nice bloke with great stories

From Alice, passed on to:

Vegetable Assassin - She makes me blush but she's sure funny. I don't think she's a vegetarian at all
Jen - Cheerful marathon runner, for heaven's sake. She'll do her knees in. Help me talk her out of it
MiMi - Living In France - which she dosn't. V funny.
Tina, at the Clean White Page. Spoooooky; dare you enter?
Lou, at Live Write Dream. Anyone who can use the word 'Meh' to describe a movie gets my vote

Honourable mention: Sandra at Real Life In A Minute. I was going to award her but she's got so many today already the poor lady must be completely bamboozled. Next time, JP

1 - Except maybe comments offering to sell you a Ukrainian bride, or man-sized man-parts

The Blood Donor

2009-11-30T22:06:00.002Z

NHS dress code used to be much more relaxed

Addressing a lifetime's delinquency, I went to give blood today. My wife has done it for years, and in the 'container of blood' club, she has attained small wheelbarrow status. It's a breeze, she tells me. You won't feel a thing, she tells me.

We set off. Hell's bells - what have they done to the village hall? It's ghastly, like a scene from the old Hammer classic "The Mass Production Facility of Count Dracula". Beds everywhere, with people on them bleeding into bottles. My knees wobble, but I've eaten garlic recently, and the missus is with me, so in we go.

They greet her like an old friend ("Back so soon, Mrs Grumpy? Usual bed?"), but I have to undergo first-timers' initiation. It turns out they're quite fussy. Amazingly, it's OK to visit North Africa, but you can't give blood if you've been to North America. They may claim West Nile Virus, but I think they're worried we might start demanding payment. They're a canny bunch across the pond.

Besides wanting to know where you've been, they want to know all about your sex life. Some of the questions would make a trooper blush. Certainly not, I answer to questions 4 through 9, not with my bad back, and even if I wanted to I wouldn't know how. They ask if you've bounced around with anyone in a country where HIV is prevalent. I've been on an exotic holiday with my wife. Does that count? Confusing.

Questions, questions. What is your ethnicity? Have you ever been a member of the Conservative Party? Do you sell wartime memorabilia on eBay? Do you wear pyjamas in bed? I lie, obviously. Their privacy statement ominously says 'Unless we are required to do so by law, we will not disclose any personal information'. In other words, if you admit to having visited Morocco then HM Customs will drop round with dogs and sledgehammers, demanding to inspect your souvenirs. You have been warned.

At last the nosy questionnaire is out of the way. A nice nurse pricks my finger and then squeezes out a gigantic blob of blood, to test me for anaemia, and squeamishness. I pass the test by not passing out, so then it's off to the bed where the real business starts. It's super-efficient. Sweater off. Lie down. Tap, tap on the arm. Squeeze this. That? Yes, this. 'Nice vein'. 'Why, thank you'. Out with the needle; little scratch. Ouch.

Ouch. And more ouch. 'Does that hurt?' she asks. Er, yes. She wiggles the needle. Ouch. 'Does it still hurt?' Ouch. Yes. It seems she's gone in one side of the vein and out the other. I bravely try squeezing a fist for a while but I'm drier than Alabama on a Sunday morning. She's a bit embarrassed, and patches me up. It might bruise, she says. (She's right).

So I skulk in the corner while my wife lines up with the other veterans to receive her golden wheelbarrow. But there's a silver lining. On the way out, they still give me a free drink, and a curly-wurly! Ha! I beat the system! I can go again in 16 weeks. Sign me up.

(With apologies to the late but still great Tony Hancock.)

Haikus Are For Weenies

2009-11-28T11:18:00.005Z

Limerick, Ireland: Home to humourous
verse and, er, shorts

I summarised last month in haiku. My good mate dozyoldbuga at the time said that 'Haiku are just limericks with a posh education'. Stung, I report the month in limerick form then.

First, a round-up of world news:

At the prospect of President Rompuy
Europeans are getting quite jumpy
A Belgian on top?
Someone else, put a stop!
So I nominate UberGrumpy

The anonymous Lady of Ashton
By the press has been thoroughly bashed on
After far too much fizz
She defends her job, viz:
"I'm the firsht, but I won't be the lasht one"

From the US, the no. 1 charmer
With the slightly odd name of Obama
Went to China but then
Buggered off home again
What a blow for the poor Dalai Lama

And in science news:

And lo! the Large Hadron Collider
Finally has protons inside 'er
She'll soon be the cause
Of new physical laws
Which will silence the folk who deride 'er

London traffic congestion is chronic
But they're planning a car, supersonic!
Why not, instead
Make a driveable bed
Since we all come to work catatonic

Closer to home, the quaint but weird Queen's Speech has triggered the run-in to the UK General Election. Snore. Here are the main contenders:

Gordon Brown, through the speech of the Queen,
can vent his electoral spleen
More taxes by stealth!
Then that dirty word, wealth
Just like Brown, will become a has-been

David Cameron, old boy from Eton
Doesn't think he can ever be beaten
Dave, don't count that chicken!
Or you'll soon be lickin'
The wounds from the voters' unseatin'

Nick Clegg, of the Lib Dem persuasion
Has ambitions to rule the whole nation
But he hasn't a hope
Unless we can cope
With proportional representation

A nasty young young man name of Griffin
Ate far too much BNP tiffin
But it's really all right
'cause the chocolate is white
So he'll just have to tuck his midriff in

Lord Pearson is looking quite surly
The polls make the UKIP¹ look girly
So let's cheer him up
With a great steaming cup
of Earl Grey, and a nice curly-wurly

1 - Pronounced you-kip so yes it does scan, thank you very much

Goodbye, award, it's been real

2009-11-26T10:03:00.005Z

Advanced astronaut training.
I never made it this far

I'm supposed to pass on the award I got the other day, so it goes to Kate Lightfoot. Kate runs a warm and chatty blog from a village in Spain and she never fails to cheer me up, although her recipes are making me chunky. And no, those aren't her real ears.

I am reminded that a condition of the award was to reveal seven things about yourself. A deal's a deal:

1. I have been in a succession of bands with dubious names; The Flying Bogeys, The Sensible Jerseys, The Puffy Daddies, and these days, Hot Rabbit, to name but a few. The Sensible Jerseys gave Billy Bragg his first gig at some godforsaken college in North London. He blew us off the stage. I then left and they promptly got a record deal

2. I was turned down for astronaut training because of claustrophobia, and a nasty propensity for haemarrhoids in zero-gravity situations. Since that fateful day, I have never been on one of those free-fall rides at Thorpe Park, Six Flags, etc

3. Whilst attending the Bolshoi ballet in Moscow, as you do, I once stood at the next urinal to Peter Gabriel. And no, I didn't take a sneaky look at his manly parts, I was too busy trying to look nonchalant. This is tricky when you're peeing, even though Frenchmen seem to manage very well. We ran into David Byrne of Talking Heads in the hotel lift that very same weekend

4. I started a software company in the UK and US on the very same day (with some buddies, obviously). Its first name was 'Harlequin' which here means 'witty and sharp', but which stateside turns out to mean 'buffoon'. We quickly changed it to MATRA which everyone then mistook for MARTA, the Atlanta so-called public transport system

5. I drive a shiny Jag-wah supercharged turbo nutter bastard, and a really beaten up old Nissan Primera, and I think on balance I prefer the Nissan, even though it's a bit smelly from taking garden rubbish to the dump. This is mainly because it has more seats, and it doesn't have those ludicrous alloy wheels that cost you a bazillion quid to fix if you brush up against an awkward obstacle, like, oh, a pedestrian, or Sainsburys

6. I cut my own hair, apart from the awkward curly-wurly bit at the back which my wife hilariously pretends to do, but actually leaves so the kids can have a good giggle. Ha! Didn't think I knew, did you?

7. While revealing facts about myself I always tell one lie. Or is it two?

It's Frothy, Man

2009-11-24T08:28:00.004Z

Phew! I'll have another Grande please

Sainsburys used to corner off a section where the old ladies and gents could come and have a natter and a cup of tea, for the princely sum of 30p. It was all a bit greasy and the tea was cold, but they'd warm it up in the microwave at no extra charge, and they'd wipe the old lipstick off the cup if you asked nicely. It had a rather pleasant, chatty English feel to it.

You could get a bacon sandwich if you stumped up a bit more. As a bonus, when your teabag broke, they'd read your fortune in the tea-leaves. ('You will feel slightly queasy this afternoon...')

But a couple of years ago they wiped all that away and put in a shiny new Costa Coffee.

I don't like it. £2.79 for a coffee. Two pounds seventy-nine! The word 'Costa' seems a cruel irony. And you can't get tea at all.

I resisted for a long time, but I thought I'd finally try it. I went in today and joined the queue of yummy mummies with Nasa buggies, and serious-looking business guys. (The old ladies and gents have gone somewhere cheaper). After a long wait it's my turn at the vacant-looking serving person. I ask for a coffee. Coffee? Blank face. Do you want Latte? Cappucino? Americano? Al-caponeo? No, if I want pasta I'll go to bloody Italy, I just want a coffee-o.

Will that be Fair Trade, she asks? No, I say, it's daylight robbery, but I'm thirsty so let's not argue any more.

Much scratching of heads, and whispered negotiation with the 'manager'. How can she be a manager? She's only 12. They duck behind the bar and do something very loud (whooooosh!). Clouds of smoke billow up. I'm just casting around for the fire extinguisher when they pop up and present me with an enormous mug. I negotiate a quick re-mortgage on the ole' mobile phone and pay up.

I sit down with the daily rag and a refreshing curly-wurly, and take a sip. Or rather I don't. No matter how much I tip the mug nothing comes out. This is strange. There's a lady wiping tables. I aske her if ther's something wrong with my coffee. Oh, she says, you'll have to ask the barrista, I'm only the wipe-ista.

Barrister? I only want my coffee, I'm not pressing a lawsuit. Yet.

No, barrista, she says, patiently, they're the schoolchildren who make your coffee.

Enlightened, I return to the bar and politely ask why they've given me coffee-flavoured shaving foam instead of the coffee-o that I asked for. More blank faces. The manager puts down her colouring book and looks sternly at me. Ah sir, she squeaks, our customers like their coffee this way.

I'm your customer! I just handed over my life savings! And I can't find the coffee!

It's there in the bottom, sir, she says, be patient. If you'd wanted less froth you should have asked for it dry.

Eh? Dry coffee? Once when drunk, nearly hung over, and desparate for food, I tried snacking on undissolved instant Nescafe. I have to report that it's not good, although on the plus side your head clears pretty quickly.

I hand back my cup of froth with a haughty sneer. Never mind, I say. I'm off to Tesco. They've got a nice old-fashioned Starbucks.

Unaccustomed as I am...

2009-11-22T13:25:00.007Z

My wife wins heaps of awards.
This isn't her, obviously

I got an award! Check it out! (I hung it up on the right, there). Thank you Sarah of The Good Girls; I'm quite touched. Go visit her for a warm taste of California sunshine.

The last time I got an award was, I think, when I was 11 and I won the maths prize for swottiest kid. As I remember the prize was a bag of curly-wurlies and an eye-opening book on sex education for the under-12s. I've never looked back.

That was a good year; I also won the slow bicycle race at sports day although my joy was spoilt at the finishing line as I found out you were supposed to come last. It felt good for a while though.

I did win a prize once for Most Reckless Beginner when skiing at Killington in Vermont, but I don't count that since it was awarded mostly for falling all the way down the bunny hill, and may not have been entirely sincere.

So this award is all the more heartfelt, particularly since it comes with a £100 book token at Amazon and lifetime membership of Mr Bojangles, the happening nightspot for over-40s in downtown Eastleigh. Well, OK, it didn't, I bought those, but we all deserve little treats now and again.

My wife, naturally, gets hundreds of awards; tennis, skiing, euphonium, javelin, shot-put, etc. And I suspect there's another one coming. When she was late back from yoga the other day I called her mobile, only to get her instructor. He explained that they were practicing some extra tough positions, and he did sound a bit breathless. They were obviously working hard. Pretty soon I expect he'll be pointing a knick-knack or two her way.

But this one's all for me! I think the etiquette is to pass it on. Hmmm - off to the blogosphere...

EuroFudge

2009-11-20T00:25:00.010Z

Referendum? What referendum?

At last! Europe has appointed its first president. Please welcome: Herman Van Rompuy! Herman Van Who? You may well ask, and you wouldn't be alone. He is the prime minister of Belgium, a country about the size of Disney World, but less sunny, where the belligerent French and Flemish population are continually at each other's throats. Belgians brew insipid beer, make over-sweet chocolate¹, and - ah-ha! - host the vast bureaucracies of the sprawling European Union.

Lucky Herman ascended this lofty throne courtesy of a disastrous general election in 2007 which nobody won. Out of this mess, the King Of Belgium asked him to form the government of Belgium. It's like Willy Wonka handing over the chocolate factory. (This Herman seems like a nice kid; let him have a go.)

Behind closed doors, Herman has now been chosen by the leaders of the EU's 27 states to be our glorious leader. He's the president of 500 million people. I didn't vote for him, and neither did anyone I know. We didn't get the chance.

And second place goes to: Britain! The position of foreign policy supremo is handed to Lady Ashton, the EU trade commissioner, who has never held publicly elected office and has only been in post for a year. You've never heard of her either? Neither had I, until just now. But apparently she's jolly nice. And she does have a sociology degree, so she's obviously pretty damned smart.

What have these two paragons of fluff got in common? They're both completely bland. They haven't annoyed anyone, except people like me, and we don't count.

In Britain we were repeatedly promised a referendum on the constitution, which then became the Lisbon treaty. It never happened. The promise meant nothing because it was made by Blair/Brown. At least they're consistent.

Cameron's turn now. Sigh.

Can you imagine this happening in the US? American elections may cost as much to enter as the GDP of a small country like, ooh, Belgium, but at least they get bumper stickers ('Vote Herman and Lady Wotz-er-name 09!'), and everyone gets a say. Even in places like China or Russia they're honest about their dictatorships.

This is the biggest stitch-up in history, bigger even than Jedward on the X Factor. It doesn't feel right. Can it last? Of course it can. No-one cares. Chocolate, anyone?

1 - Not curly-wurlies, obviously, they're British

Doctor Who?

2009-11-19T10:51:00.004Z

One of Belle's many fans

Who is Doctor Brooke Magnanti? Why, none other than Belle De Jour, the infamous £300-an-hour courtesan who has blogged her way to fame with detailed and very naughty accounts of her professional exploits. Apparently she got into this after running a bit short of cash for the old PhD. I'm kicking myself. When I was short of beer money at yoony I went and stacked shelves in Sainsburys, which is a much less fun way of doing your back in. But hats off¹ to BdJ for a job well done.

Nevertheless, I for one am shocked. £300! And what were they doing for a whole hour? Negotiating? You have to feel a bit sorry for the punters who parted with their hard-earned readies for an illicit quickie, only to find their inadequacies plastered all over the blogosphere, with great wit, erudition, and detail. Explain that to the wife.

The good Doctor now works in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology, where she is a respected specialist. I'll bet. How does she find time to develop all those neurotoxins between book signings, movie rights negotiations, and in-depth interviews? This is one serious over-achiever.

What's she got that I haven't got? It's taken me months to build up a modest following, and there isn't even a sniff of "UberGrumpy: The Movie" yet. A change of tack is needed. Perhaps I need to start blogging about my exploits between the sheets. I think I could raise an eyebrow or two.²

So watch out for my racy new blog. It'll be called "In Bed With UberGrumpy", and the first article will be "Surprise her with a curly-wurly". I'll post as regular as clockwork, once a month, except summer when it's too hot. And Christmas, when we're too tired after all the shopping.

1 - And trousers, presumably
2 - And not much else these days, if the truth be told

Roger Less

2009-11-17T23:03:00.005Z

Where do you want these?

I've gone right off the cinema. I'm not unsociable, but I have the family curse; Strange Attraction. If I ever get on a train, the drunk sits next to me. On a plane, I'm in the middle seat between the sumo wrestler and the travelsick Mum with triplets. In Tesco's, old ladies pigeonhole me demanding to know where the luxury toilet rolls are. If the animal rights mob or the Hare Krishnas are in the neighbourhood, they always bang on my door first. You get the idea.

So the cinema is a nightmare. Do you have a mobile phone, BO, extra large popcorn, and four noisy children? Come and share my row. Do you spit when you chew your gum? Yup, the seat behind is free. Did you just buy an enormous hat? Sit right down in front of me then. Yes I can see just fine. Sigh.

So the Family Grumpy tends to watch DVDs. Which is why I've only just seen the latest James Bond film, Quantum of Solace.

Here's how a Bond movie should be. Bond, interrupted while servicing a beautiful ambassadoress¹, is summoned to fight a rogue General/Businessman from Germany/Russia/Korea. He stops off to sexually harrass Miss Moneypenny and diss poor Q. With his gorgeous assistant, agent Dee Cupps, who he sleeps with forty-five seconds into reel two, he flies first class BA/Virgin² to Budapest/Hong Kong/Iceland where he uses his exploding pen/rocket bicycle/homing jockeys to escape from the yacht/castle stronghold/ice palace.

And so on. It all ends with a terrific explosion and lots of shot-up villains descending on ropes, but lucky Bond escapes with the villain's girlfriend, who obliges him with a damned good seeing to. 'No, M, can't talk to the PM right now, I'm on the job'. Snigger. That's a Bond movie.

So what's with this Daniel Craig chap? He must dispatch about a thousand baddies, and some goodies (oops), but there's not even a kiss. There's no time.

And it's not only the love interest that's gone. OK, Dan's got the man boobs and a good pout, but where are the pithy quotes? ('Shocking!', 'No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die!', 'Is that a curly-wurly in your pocket or are you glad to see me', etc). Where is the comic American policeman? Gadgets? Q? Big lapels? Jaws?

The argument I keep hearing is that Bond is better now because it's much more realistic. Come again? Realistic how exactly? I've never killed anyone but I've done sex heaps of times, at least five, although admittedly never with a beautiful ambassadoress³.

Bring back Roger Moore, Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan, or that bloke who only got one movie (George Lazerbeam was it?) They may be wrinkly. But they had heart.

1 - I know it's not a word, I made it up
2 - And that's the only virgin you'll see in this film
3 - Yup, made it up again

The Ten (PC) Commandments

2009-11-15T20:17:00.005Z

And there'll be none of that either

1. Thou shalt not debate. At dinner parties thou shalt restrict thyself to talk of house prices, and the X Factor

2. Thou shalt never criticise the NHS, and thou shalt hold dear its essence, of being free to everyone forever

3. Thou shalt pay without complaint NHS parking charges, prescription fees¹, eye tests, dental work, substitute edible food for in-patients, poncey coffee in the lobby, essential services in thy dotage, vaccines, etc., and thou shalt cough up charitably for the MRI scanner which shall remain forever idle for lack of staff

4. Thou shalt keep thy Private Healthcare a close secret, although thou canst swank to thy heart's content about the expensive school to which thou sendest thy progeny

5. Thou shalt mightily endorse all things gay, even when thou becomest slightly queasy during Brokeback Mountain, and thou findest Graham Norton to be the most annoying and unfunny midget on TV since the Crankies, or even Ronnie Corbett

6. Thou shalt never criticise anything Jewish, lest thou be branded anti-semitic and have valuable banking services withheld from thee. However thou canst enthusiastically kick the Christian, for he will offer his other cheek, at which point you can kick that too. Thou canst likewise diss the Muslim, although thou riskest a Fatwa on thine arse

7. Thou shalt not read nor peep at the tabloids. Only The Guardian shall be thy organ of choice, even if thou preferest the crossword in The Telegraph, and thou findest Polly Toynbee to be self-righteous and up herself

8. Thou shalt express a preference for Labour although deep in thy heart thou longest for a bit of common sense, and the return of thy pension dividend credits

9. Thou shalt be in touch with thy feminine side, but not in a naughty way. Wolf whistle shalt thou never, except where it be an ironic endorsement of a male colleague who looks particularly buff today

10. Thou shalt stick to only Ten Commandments, and Ten shall be the count, even though thou feelest thou've only just got started

1 - Unless thou art Scottish or Welsh

The Dark Side Of The Sun

2009-11-14T16:42:00.004Z

Too much Sun is bad for you

You've got to hand it to The Sun. Despite accusations of being a tawdry two-dimensional witless rag, they keep on plugging, and they're still Britain's most popular paper by a very long chalk. We Brits may not have much taste but we read voraciously. Or at least we look at the pictures.

What's not to like? Irrepressible editorial style, unconstrained by conventional journalistic norms (truth, accuracy, ethics, etc). Attention-grabbing headlines. Handy format. Free DVDs featuring ropey films of yesteryear. Although admittedly the scantily-glad female in every copy is a bit of a cheap gimmick (ahem).

The Sun is so popular it has its own Cockney rhyming slang - it's the Currant Bun, my son, innit? Perhaps this unique blue-collar accolade is not such a surprise. There aren't many words that rhyme with Guardian (Cardigan?) and Telegraph is downright impossible.

But a watershed has been reached. After twelve years of Labour love-in, The Sun has decided to support the Tories. Cue furious reaction from the jilted party. We've seen copies ripped up at conference, Harriet Harman complaining about 'News In Briefs', and Peter Mandelson hinting at some dark contract between Murdoch and the Tories. He should know.

Does this strike anyone else as a teensy bit hypocritical? Can anyone remember them complaining as they enjoyed all that support? And the love was reciprocated. During Blair's glory years, Murdoch's News International enjoyed no shortage of favours from him. It's not every company that can persuade the UK PM-in-waiting to fly to Australia to give a pep talk to its executives. And Hattie Harperson was notably absent from her high horse, wasn't she?

It's all changed now. The Sun has been accused of distortion, rabble-rousing and hysteria. But UberGrumpy can reveal it's not just them. Here's a sample of articles from the so-called respectable press this week:

'Butcher Takes Pen To Queen'

'Dimbleby Surprised By Wife's Bullocks'

'Bobby Robson Compost'

'Thatcher Dead!'

'Curly Wurly In Space'

So don't believe what you read. Except on the Internet, of course. Here, it's all true.

Fat and happy

2009-11-12T09:51:00.005Z

Sudoku schmudoku! Let's eat!

Check out this terrifically sexist article from the BBC, saying 'curvy' women (their words) are cleverer than skinny ones. I particularly like the way the article reports that 16,000 people were tested, but the Beeb, scientific to its luvvie core, affirms the research with a sample of one, the very lovely Nigella Lawson.

Bloody cheek. What about us guys? I have long suspected that as I get fatter I get more brilliant. And the effect is instant. Picture me this week, seduced by the secret addictive ingredient in McDonalds, wolfing down a Supersized Big Mac with conscience-salving Diet Coke. I'm loving it, I think as I tuck in. But two minutes later and five pounds heavier my eyes are opened! It's disgusting. (Belch).

The converse also applies; lose weight, lose wit. Many an evening I've hit the pub and come out a lot more bloaty, yet extraordinarily wise. But beer, alas, doesn't last, so I wake up feeling stupid, until I embark on my five a day.¹

The government hasn't cottoned on yet. They're still trying to make people thinner. A brilliant new NHS scheme in Essex, obviously conceived by skinny doctors, is tackling obesity by giving people 50% off in the chippy if they choose the healthy option. What healthy option? Mushy peas? Pickled eggs?

So Gordon Brown's new jogging habit is a big mistake. He's losing his edge over that lightweight Cameron. Perhaps they should both move over; yield the Despatch Box to MPs with gravitas, gravity, and, er, gravy. I nominate Prescott and Pickles. Prime Minister's Questions will be a great deal livelier.² Between them they'll soon sort out those imbecilic Fat Cats at the banks. Here, hold on a minute...

1 - Sausages
2 - And a lot shorter, as they'll need to stop for their afternoon curly-wurlies

Ka-booooom!

2009-11-09T10:07:00.006Z

Bosons: small but fascinating

Anyone with a passing interest in science will know that the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, will start operating pretty soon, after the odd false start. This monumental machine will move science forward in ways that are tremendously important, more mysterious than a UK government budget, and eye-poppingly expensive, obviously, as it's a European project.

I have done some research. I now know what hadrons are. They are not the invisible villains that Captain Scarlet struggled valiantly against - those are Mysterons. No, hadrons are tiddly¹ bits of atoms, composed of even tiddlier quarks².

'Large'? It ought to be called the Absolutely Gobsmackingly Enormous Hadron Annihilator. It's a circle 27 km in diameter, like the North Circular Road, but quite a lot faster. It's got to be terrifically cold, so that the magnets can superconduct; a bit like Andre Previn in a freezer.

This all persuades the unlucky hadrons to hurtle round at huge speeds and then WHAM! They smite each other mightily, producing energetic and wacky particles that we can then observe, if we have the right sunglasses and a high-quality magnifying glass.

It costs about £4.5 billion. A mere bagatelle; the Bank of England could Quantitatively Ease that much in about a week.

Could it go wrong? There is a risk that it might produce a black hole, which would obliterate all matter within a 100 km or so. For this reason it has been built in Switzerland, which is not a member of the EU. Wales was ruled out because all the documents would need translating into Welsh and it's already quite tricky enough, thank you very much.

What's it for, you may well ask as you fill in your tax return? Ah. We are on a quest for the Higgs Boson. This produces the Higgs field, which allows us all to have mass. Most of the Higgs bosons disappeared very soon after the Big Bang. Problem. If there are no Higgs bosons then we will get lighter and lighter, and eventually float off into space.

So the LHC will produce a steady supply, gluing us all to the Earth. Because it's been paid for by the taxpayer, Higgs bosons will be provided free of charge, except in America where you will need to buy Higgs insurance. Unless you are poor, in which case you'd better not plan to go outdoors anytime soon.

1 - To give you an idea how tiddly, if we used hadrons instead of sugar to sweeten our tea, then the question 'one lump or two' would need to be '10²⁴ hadrons, or a multiple thereof'? If you then put them in one at a time, as fast as you could, your tea would be cold by the time you got to drink it, but you wouldn't care because you'd be long dead anyway.

2 - If you think that's a Star Trek character, just stop reading and look at the picture.

Twenty Feline Facts

2009-11-07T10:49:00.005Z

Who, me? Yes, you

1. Cats can lick their own bottoms, and often do
2. Use of toilet paper is quite rare in the feline world
3. Cat poo does not smell very nice
4. Cats just love to sit on your lap

5. Cats have claws that are sharper than razor blades
6. Each cat has over 700 claws
7. Cats often use their claws to catch germ-infested vermin
8. When cats get on your lap, they instinctively bury their claws about an inch into your skin. They rarely hit an artery

9. Upholstery is really really expensive (not strictly a cat fact, obviously)
10. Cats need to keep their 700 claws sharp
11. You can buy purpose-bult scratching posts
12. But the bloody thing prefers to rip the back off your new leather recliner

13. When they're not licking their bottoms, cats like to lick the rest of themselves
14. Cats swallow a lot of fur and need to throw it up, often
15. New rugs are even more expensive than upholstery
16. Cats always throw up in the middle of the nearest rug

17. Cats like to spray their territory with pungent, sticky urine
18. Even female cats do this, we were unpleasantly surprised to discover
19. Cats can mistake your brand-new and very precious guitar amp for a territory marker
20. We no longer own a cat

Some useful online resources:

http://www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com
http://catrecipes.com/
http://www.simonscat.com/films.html

Up in smoke

2009-11-05T18:06:00.009Z

Fireworks used to be a lot
more interesting

It's bonfire night! Tonight's the night we set light to our garden clippings and set off fireworks. Unless, that is, we are the Ilfracombe Rugby Club. These weekend warriors, who hurl themselves at each other every Sunday with scant regard to life and limb, are watching fireworks on a telly because of Health and Safety concerns. I'm with Stephen Fry; Health and Safety are the two worst words in the English language.

What happened to proper fireworks? Anyone remember Jumping jacks that used to chase you round the garden? Or those aeroplane things that used to fly up your Dad's leg?

So what can we burn in complete safety? I know; money. The Bank of England is extending it's Quantitative Easing policy by £25bn to £200bn. So two questions. What's £25bn? And what is Quantitative Easing?

£25bn is a LOT OF MONEY. We've got so used to seeing billions and zillions bandied around we've lost our sense of scale. So, £25bn is

About £180,000 for every doctor in the UK, or

About £830,000 for every school in the UK, or

About £417 for each of us, or

MPs' expenses for well over a year.

Yup, a lot.

As to Q2; what is Quantitative Easing? Well, it's printing money. Why don't we call it Printing Money then? Perhaps QE has come to mean 'trying desperately to recover from wretched excess'; and PM already means that, doesn't it Gordon? Or perhaps it's so that we can baffle the electorate with a piece of nifty jargon, so they think we know something they don't.

But surely printing money means it arrives out of thin air? Free cash for everyone? Er, no. QE just spreads thin the intrinsic wealth of the UK. The value of the pound stays depressed; have you noticed how expensive your foreign hols feel? And inflation is just around the corner. But that's OK, because the nasty Tories will have to deal with it.

Bigger, Stronger, Fatter

2009-11-04T09:11:00.007Z

Don't look up Ethel!

Interesting stories today. Apparently rugby players are much bigger than they used to be, so their injuries are proportionately bigger too. We're considering American-style padding, although that won't help much when someone is twisting the family jewels through 180^o in the scrum.

At the same time, child obesity is levelling off, which is a nice way of saying virtually all of us are now lardy. Hardly a surprise, is it? We don't buy Kit-Kats any more; we buy Kit-Kat Chunky! And we don't eat crisps; we eat Walkers Max Cheeseburger Crisps! Move over Dandelion and Burdock (what is Burdock?), here comes Pepsi Max Big Gulp!

It's not just people getting bigger. When we were at Yoony we used to watch Coronation Street twice a week on our b&w portable. Today we watch EastEnders on our forty-two inch plasma, four times a week, repeated on BBC3 with an omnibus edition and a web-site. Or rather we don't, as a) we can't afford one b) it's drivel.

Even already-big stuff has got bigger. The UK government is 866,000 people bigger today than in 1997. (Yes, really)¹. Our banks are so bloated they need to be split up, so they can re-bloat. Is everything growing?

No, not everything. When I was a kid a Curly-Wurly was three feet long. Now it's so short it ought to be called a Straighty-Waity. Also, the notes and coins with which we buy our Straighty-Waities are pathetic little things. I miss half-crowns like dinner plates and fivers the size of parachutes. With one half-crown you could buy a Party 8² and an economy bag of Monster Munch, and it was party time! Nostalgia, eh?

But our living space seems to be shrinking the fastest. In Winchester, Chilbolton Avenue is a road full of old sprawling Edwardian houses, with some wasteful open space called 'gardens'. They're being demolished at a furious rate. Same story all over the city, except for three very bland fields, where neighbouring nimbies are holding out. 'Save Barton Farm!' they cry from their old sprawling Edwardian houses. Regardless, a house a day is replaced by about fifty very efficient flats, with just enough room for a bed and a loo, and a forty-two inch plasma.

Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that the M3 is a car park from Basingstoke to London every morning. For most of these poor sods, it's the only place they can find somewhere to spread out. Perhaps we should build another lane. Sigh.

1 - Admittedly that includes over 200,000 merchant bankers.
2 - That's 'insipid beer in an oil drum' to the under-40s.

Texty Beast

2009-11-02T19:03:00.001Z

Try texting on this

When our kids were small we could fool 'em by spelling things out. We knew we were rumbled when The Boss, spelling to me 'Shall we go to M-C-D-O-N-...", was interrupted from the back seat by "We want happy meals!" And in recent times they've completed their revenge, by somehow mastering the oriental art of text.

Not so fast, kids. I too have learnt to text. You can too. It's crucial to get the rules right so you can communicate effectively with the yoof at yoony. I learnt the hard way, so here's a small tutorial for all you fellow technophobe oldies. Don't worry; it's a breeze once you know how.

Grab your mobile, and a pair of extra-strength glasses so you can see the fiddly little buttons and the rotten little screen, unless you have an iPhone, in which case you won't be able to find the buttons at all, so give up now.

Your kids hold the phone in one hand and use their thumb to text, but you will dislocate it if you try that, so you'll need both hands. You'll just have to steer the car with your knees.

Start assembling your text. There are two ways to do this. First, the traditional method, where numbers correspond to letters. For example, '2' equals a, b and c¹. To get a 'c' press the '2' key 3 times. Notice your screen shows 'aaa'. You pressed too slowly, because you are old and arthritic. Start again. Eventually your fingers will fly around the keys, and you can be as annoying as the little sod sat in front of you every time you go to the cinema.

Number two is the 'Psychic Text' method. With your eyes closed, press keys corresponding to your word, and the phone magically works it out. Perhaps you want to write 'money', a word you will need a lot to communicate with yoof at yoony. Simply type the keys 66639. The word 'bankrupt' appears as if by magic. Type in your message. When finished, your screen shows a a bunch of apprently unconnected words; but don't worry, your text-savvy recipient will understand it perfectly. I don't use psychic text because I am a Catholic.

Now for the clever bit. It's common to use some shortcuts when texting to save time, and as we all know, time equals ~~money~~ bankrupt. First, we can leave out most vowels. Ths rmovs th need fr a lt of unncssry typng. Scnd, lve out mst pnctuatn, bcs its actlly qt hrd to pnctuat on a mbl phn Ths mks you qckr stll Thrd, dn't use cptl lettrs jst cntnue your sntnce you are frly flyng alng now 4th swp cmmn wrds fr lttrs & nmbrs e.g. 'you' bcms 'u' nw u cn b th gr8st txtr on th plnt & u r frggh sdfsjjkf gdtrgdb snzzz glpsrrfgnm

See? Easy.

1 - The '1' key is not involved in texting, because it was invented in Japan, where one is a sacred number.

Haiku! Bless you

2009-10-31T15:10:00.000Z

Lovely Japanese
Clever in her glasses but
Underwear mix-up

For those short of time, I present the week in Haiku.

Tony Blair for pres
Sarkozy Merkel nix nix
Back to lecture wealth

Bloody great big ship
Oasis of the sea (sick)
Bang goes planet earth

Helicopter fail
'It's bad!' intones Jock Stirrup
That's a funny name

Postal strike again
Backlog high like Mount Fuji
(Covered that last week)

Halloween today
Telly full of scary crap
I think: DVD

Liking Haiku thing
I think I'm understanding
Or maybe it's just too difficult to fit the words in, espcially if they're rhyming
(which they're not supposed to).

Postman Pavel

2009-10-29T11:32:00.001Z

Striking

Let's hope this postal strike ends soon. It's quite disruptive. My post has been arriving quite early; so I am robbed of the happy anticipation of it arriving around suppertime. What's more, all of it is for me, so I've lost the enjoyable banter with my neighbours as I try to figure out who's got my mail.

I assume our replacement postie is temporary, because he's polite, cheerful, efficient, and Polish. I expect the usual incumbent, Darren, is champing at the bit to get back to work. He doesn't have time to be polite or cheerful; the permanent scowl and avoidance of eye-contact is because he's concentrating. However he makes up for this with a lovely pre-Christmas card ('from your postie, Darren'). I'm sure this has nothing to do with angling for a tip, so we don't give him one.

Darren is riding the crest of a wave of union enthusiasm. Life had got a bit dull what with everyone off to the office every day, so the gusto with which the CWU is failing to turn up for work is a breath of fresh air. They're not alone. Yesterday I received a Unison letter passed on from a public sector buddy. (I feel his identity is safe; there are 1.3 million of the buggers. Can you hear me at the back comrades?)

The letter was a response to a request for workers to take their full holiday entitlement. This would avoid a big budget deficit due to people carrying forward holiday. Unison helpfully suggested that if its members were being asked to take holiday, then they should share in the profits. In other words, pay me a bonus for taking my holiday. Which I'm contractually obliged to do anyway.

Ho hum. Welcome to the 70s.

Clock and Bull

2009-10-27T16:39:00.000Z

Winter is coming. Brrr

I'm feeling a bit fragile today. This has nothing to do with a huge excess of red wine; it would be wretched and debauched to be suffering from a hangover on Tuesday. No, it's jetlag from turning the clocks back. Plus the sheer effort; there are no fewer than 21 clocks in my house, all showing a slightly different time. What a waste. Does my microwave really need to know it's 3:30 a.m. when it's heating up cold pizza to combat my munchies?

It's a strange time of year. We struggle home in the dark to the merry sound of schoolchildren bouncing off car bumpers. So what's the point? Apparently it's so that the last fourteen farmers remaining in Britain can have a bit more daylight. Obviously you can't buy tractors with headlights. Or at least you couldn't in 1916, when we started messing with clocks.

But what's really bugging me is this. Our cheap nasty Japanese car, used for trips to the dump, happily sets the clock from the radio. Unlike our luxurious British motor, which cost as much as a small house (admittedly nowhere you'd actually want to live). We Brits are no longer capable of practical things. So don't expect to see the clock-changing mallarkey stop any time soon.

There is one bright spot. ChrisProles reminds me that October 25th was also the anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt. Ha! Take that you Frenchies. We may not be able to build cars anymore, but we've got a really long memory.

Unholy Alliance - A Play In Two Acts

2009-10-25T11:57:00.000Z

Look how nice we are now

Act I: White City; BBC HQ

(The national anthem plays)
Big cheese 1: Well, let's face it. Numbers are down.
Big cheese 2: Yup. We need to do something drastic.
BC1: The usual formula?
BC2: Back to 'Men Behaving Badly'? 'On The Buses'? That sort of thing?
BC1: Tempting, but no good - wouldn't fit with our new PC image.
BC2: OK - here's radical for you. How about Nick Griffin on Question Time?
BC1: What! Are you mad? He can hardly string two words together!
BC2: No problem - he'll be up against windbags from the main parties; he'll never get a word in edgeways. He'll just sit there and shake his head.
BC1: Good, because if he opens his mouth we could be in trouble.
BC2: Stop worrying. There's no such thing as bad publicity.

Act II: White Town; BNP HQ

(The national anthem plays)
Big cheese 1: Well, let's face it. Numbers are down.
Big cheese 2: Yup. We need to do something drastic.
BC1: The usual formula?
BC2: Back to men behaving badly on the buses? That sort of thing?
BC1: Tempting, but no good - wouldn't fit with our new PC image.
BC2: OK - here's radical for you. How about Nick Griffin on Question Time?
BC1: What! Are you mad? He can hardly string two words together!
BC2: No problem - he'll be up against windbags from the main parties; he'll never get a word in edgeways. He'll just sit there and shake his head.
BC1: Good, because if he opens his mouth we could be in trouble.
BC2: Stop worrying. There's no such thing as bad publicity.

One out, all out

2009-10-24T10:30:00.000+01:00

Ooh! That's quite a backlog

No post today, I'm on strike.

Vive la difference

2009-10-23T14:21:00.000+01:00

Smouldering hunk with
6-pack, as requested

I like to include a light-hearted illustration with postings, to flesh out the theme, so to speak. But it's been pointed out that a disproportionate number of pix happen to include inadequately-clad ladies, and looking back, to my surprise I find I can't disagree. So today we redress the balance with one for the ladies. Enjoy.

Feminism has come a long way since the seventies. But I've always tried to remain abreast of current thinking. When my friends were burning their bras, I tried to show solidarity by burning my y-fronts. No-one told me you had to take them off first, and I still bear the scars today. I may wince a little when mounting my bike, but you won't find me complaining, because it was worth it.

But hooray! We're still different. I offer a trip to Waitrose as compelling evidence. My good wife engages trolley, then belts up and down picking goodies up in order, by instinct, even though she's never been there before.

Meanwhile I'm on a quest for the tomato puree. I can't find it. Obviously I can't ask directions, I am a man. I begin a systematic aisle-by-aisle search. There isn't any. Then I can't find her. Are you with me guys?

Finally she rams the trolley into my ankles as she chucks in two tins from the extensive selection of international purees on aisle 12, which I'm standing in front of. Battle of the sexes? There's no contest.

Pass The Duchy On The Left Hand Side

2009-10-21T09:03:00.000+01:00

Personal security
doesn't come cheap

Anyone who read The Times yesterday will share my sense of shock at the headline 'Prince Charles's Harpist Arrested For Stealing'. Or something like that; I threw it away after the Su Doku and the crossword. Blimey! I thought. Prince Charles has a harpist? Alas, it turns out he doesn't; she just played at one of his weddings. Apparently harp gigs are scarce, for she has gone on a nicking spree, and was caught with a flat-screen TV and other goodies in her Ford Galaxy.

But it made me think. We haven't heard much about ole' Royal Big-ears in recent times; has creeping republicanism under New Labour bitten hard? Will we soon be seeing G. Brown's horrible fizzog on our hard-earned pound coins, ar at least those he's left us? Did Chas lay off his harpists, punkah wallahs, polo ponies and palace polishers?

No. Check out the very classy Duchy of Cornwall web-site. The royal train is still brimming with prime gravy. His Nibs owns 54,000 hectares spread over 23 counties (mostly Devon, funnily enough). Next time you're munching on one of those slightly weird and cosmically expensive orange biscuits, consider this; in 2008/9 the Duchy pulled in a tidy £20.2m, with costs of only £7.3m. Not bad eh? I suspect he could afford to charge a bit less. But one does need to maintain a dignified distance between oneself and the jammie dodgers.

So where do all those profits go? Well, the Duchy gave away £86,000 to charit-eh (I wonder if he supports hard-up bloggers?) which accounts for about 0.6%. The rest you'll find in section 13 of the accounts; 'Balance due to his Royal Highness' which shows his payment last year as £16,458,000. Nice work if you can get it.

To be fair, this princely sum (sorry) covers a bunch of other stuff too, including £3.4m of tax to Mum. That, and other things like 'official duties' (Good heavens, Camilla, is it Thursday already?), 'maintaining official residences' (Sorry, too tired, I'm orrf to sleep at Clarence House), and 'military seconders' (I say, Major, are you free this Thursday?). In all they eat up £13.88m. Makes your average MP's expenses look a bit weedy, eh? But HRH is left less than three million quid to spend on himself and the family. That would hardly keep one supplied with decent biscuits. No wonder he's sent the lads off to the army.

Spandau Belly

2009-10-18T11:31:00.001+01:00

Phew, Kylie's getting on
a bit

Like most 48-year-olds who are scared of motorbikes, I'm in a band. When you hear the words Hot Rabbit you may think 'marital aid' but a lot of people round here think 'Hampshire's Hardest-Working Band'. We're pretty good. As NME¹ puts it, 'These guys can rock, and sometimes do. If you're planning a wedding, bar mitzvah, or funeral, look no further. It's party time. Discounts for over-60s.'

So when I watched Strictly Come Dancing last night, and saw Spandau Ballet, still rockin' after all those beers, it felt like an encounter with true kindred spirits. Tony Hadley may not be able to quite reach the high notes any more, but he has more than compensated by beefing up his stage presence.

I love Strictly, like everyone in Britain is obliged to. I can put up with Bruce Forsyth, the god-awful face-lifted judges, the tooth-grinding pregnant pauses when one of the b-list celebrities is kicked off, the 15p per call 'but mobiles cost considerably more', the stilted chat segments, the endless follow-ups with Cladia Winkleman, and the odd purple lighting that makes my TV go funny. The nine minutes or so of actual dancing, which is knockout, make watching the entire two and a half hours worthwhile. Plus my family like it, and they'd be quite annoyed with me if I grumped. So I won't.

Instead let's focus on Spandau Ballet themselves, and the phenomenon of the never-ending rock group. Never mind if names like 'Gerry And The Pacemakers' 'The Mamas and the Papas', or 'Derek, Pass The Dominoes' get to sound a bit ironic with the passing of the years; the songs live on, man. When the competition consists of Lilly Allen or Mika² then they'll live on for a while yet. So if they can still sing, wheel' em out! The fans will overlook a pork pie or two, and if you can't dive into the mosh pit any more because of your hip replacement, they'll understand.

Bottom line; if Ozzy Osbourne can do it, so can we, even though we have to carry our own equipment. We don't intend to retire anytime soon. And we're quite cheap.

1 - New Milton Echo - one of the South's most influential free newspapers
2 - OK, a matter of opinion, I know. But have you heard We Are Golden?

Brick, Lame

2009-10-16T11:55:00.000+01:00

Shhhh!

Why are all new novels 600 pages long? I am wading through Stieg Larsson's new effort, and boy is it a marathon. It's full of lists. Pages 73-5 describe a shopping trip by our heroine in unprecedented detail, with such immortal sentences as 'She bought two Karlanda sofas with sand-coloured upholstery, five Poang armchairs, two round side tables of clear-lacquered birch, a Svansbo coffee table and several Lack occasional tables'. And it doesn't stop there. Let's hope she had all the bits when she got home.

This whopper is the follow-up to his last bestseller¹. Larsson, if you don't know him, was a slightly earnest balding forty-something journalist who is alas no longer with us. The underlying stories are pretty good; it's racy stuff, in which a slightly earnest balding forty-something journalist solves murders, mostly by drinking coffee, and sleeping with every female character he comes across. There are whole chapters where you're willing him to just get on with it. (The plot, I mean).

He's not the only novelist where skipping pages is required if you want to finish before the plane lands. It's a common trend - so what's going on? I have a theory. (Don't roll your eyes, it's a good one). I blame the word processor. Yes, the simple, ubiquitous PC, or, as Stieg L might have it, the Mac Ibook G3 with 35 cm screen, 32 Gb hard drive, 2 Gb of RAM, a zip drive and a coffee-cup holder, set on a clever desk from Ikea. With one of these babies every word you write can be preserved in formaldehyde and regurgitated later on with a nifty cut and paste manoeuvre.

In Jane Austen's time they didn't have word processors; they only had the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and TV hadn't been invented so even they weren't much use. No, Jane had to use a pen, with proper ink, so in order to achieve more than one book in a lifetime she had to choose her words with care instead of spewing them forth like an MTV presenter.

Imagine if she was equipped with MS Word. Darcy's rejected proposal to Elizabeth in the original novel is far too short; just a sentence or two. Where's the detail? Here's the revised version in Pride, Prejudice, Propriety, Providence, Privilege and Prosperity:

He sat down for a few moments, uncomfortable on the edge of the two-cushion Karslanda with peach print and laminated oak legs. Then getting up, he walked about the room, frowning absentmindedly at the volumes lining the Billy in beech veneer. Elizabeth was surprised, but said not a word. Quietly she waited on her Poang, maintaining her composure, concentrating silently on her upcoming lunch of swedish meatballs and curry sauce. After a silence of several minutes, Darcy came towards her in an agitated manner, and thus began: "In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. This has been a rollercoaster ride of emotion, but it's my dream, I've earned it, the moment I've been waiting for all my life. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you. And respect you as a person of course."

See? Much better.

1- The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Short Hair, Interesting Piercings, Leather Trousers, High-Heeled Shoes and Underwear from Stockholm's Raciest Shop

AdNonSense

2009-10-14T17:24:00.000+01:00

I'm feeling lucky

Observant readers may notice that where there used to be ads, there now aren't. This is because Google switched them off. They have a program called AdSense that the new blogger is sold quite hard. Monetise your blog! reads the blurb from the George Bush school of sales. It's supposed to earn you a bit of cash when people click on targeted ads. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I signed up. But over the weekend alas! I received a mysterious e-mail saying my ads are no more; and they can't tell me why, because it would reveal mysterious proprietary secrets from the very bosom of Googledom. I suspect my sin is having kids who are clicking a bit too enthusiastically, particularly on the yoga ads. Or possibly using the word 'bosom'.

Obviously I read the Terms and Conditions¹ in fine detail when I signed up, and when they switched it off I read them, er, again. We are prohibited, among other things, from using 'repeated manual clicks' (i.e. if anyone clicks on an ad twice you're doomed); and 'engaging in action that ... reflects poorly on Google'. Oops - blown that one then. There are other clauses that are beyond me, although I'm well up on legalese, having read several John Grisham novels.

I can understand Big G's desire to protect their advertisers - in my professional life I am one, and I pay about £300 a month for the privilege. What's more, they host this blog for free, so I don't feel I can complain too much. And the cash that potentially flows is way too small to get worked up about.

But there is a problem here. The contract is one-sided and slack, and allows them to disable AdSense for, well, anything. The disabling process is instant, uncontestable, and precedes any actual payment; it must at least be tempting to disable vigorously, in the interests of driving up revenue. It's starting to feel like the Microsoft model, i.e. generate vast gobs of cash without ever having to deal with a real client. What an awful fate for our nice 'do no evil' chums at Google.

It's mighty galling to be lumped in with those clever but repellent souls dotted around the world who write programs to deliberately defraud. Excuse me, but I'm not one of those, and not only because I'm not clever enough. I've also put effort in to my blog, youthful though it is, and I'm quite proud of it. So I'll appeal, and I'll let you know how I get on. But I'm not expecting much. I feel fortunate not to be one of those hard-working writers who rely on this system to make a living; because this feels like a court where all are guilty until proven innocent, and the only sentence is terminal.

1 - Check the Hong Kong version for extra legal clarity

Lessons From Marrakech

2009-10-13T11:10:00.001+01:00

Our tour guide

I've just been for a lad's weekend in Morocco. I can highly recommend the guided walking tours in the Atlas mountains. It's a long way for a short time, I know. But fear not ecomentalists; I offset my carbon footprint in several ways. First, we travelled home from Heathrow via National Excess. Our genial driver ('No ticket? This bus leaves in one minute, mate') found us a space on the roof between chicken-carrying baboushckas, and students with halitosis and Ipods playing The Prodigy. Secondly, I left behind non-essential items, like my mobile phone, and the wife.

Morocco is an interesting lens through which to view Blighty. I've been reading a lot about waste of all kinds recently, but apparently food is a biggy; 20% of all UK carbon emissions, and if you came to a barbecue at my house, that statistic wouldn't surprise you. Compare this with Marrakech. There is a huge square there called Djemaa el Fna ('place of a thousand scams'). We sat down to eat there and Brits that we are, didn't complain when they bought twice as many dishes as we ordered. We left a lot.

But as we left the table some enterprising locals pounced on the remains of our meal and spirited it away. Nothing got chucked, even the 'small fish of a thousand bones'. Why don't we do this? I would gladly give the large collection of Black Cherry yoghurts and half a Curly-Wurly at the back of my fridge to anyone who asked. What's more the supermarkets won't give excess food to local homeless people because of their fear of litigation, unless the homeless one concerned carries the appropriate insurance. Can you spare a few coppers for the premium, guv?

In Morocco this efficient approach to life doesn't stop at food. They even dispense with expensive power-hungry alarm clocks. Instead there is an obliging chap who climbs up a tower at 4:30 and wakes everyone up. Oh, how we laughed the first time that happened. There is also a thriving moped pool which sees little Hondas everywhere, groaning under the weight of three or more Marrakechians who wave cheerfully as they neatly deflect you into the gutter. Oi! Where's my camera?

Inspired by all this, I'm going to make a few changes close to home. This afternoon I shall be bartering for the weekly food shop at Waitrose. After that I'm off to buy a loudhailer with all the money I've saved, and a stepladder long enough to reach the roof. I'll be up there at 4:30 tomorrow to surprise the neighbours. I can hardly wait to see their faces.

Squeezyjet And The Carbon Conundrum

2009-10-07T22:10:00.000+01:00

Those were the days

A few years ago I used to fly regularly across the atlantic (in a plane, obviously). There was a bit of jockeying for position shortly after take-off so that you could bag a row of middle seats to stretch out and lie down. That's if you hadn't managed to chat up the ground staff and wangle an upgrade. Sleeping generally wasn't a problem anyway once they introduced free drinks; the problem was waking up at the other end.

I'm glad to say all that inefficiency is long behind us. If there's an empty seat in a plane now it's because someone's feeling rich enough to use the loo. (I'll resist comments about feeling flush). Either that or the co-pilot hasn't turned up. Planes now fly fully laden from A to B, umless they're diverted to C because of fog at B. It's an awesome business, particularly when you think that the Airbus A380 can carry 800 people. Eight hundred people. That's more than go to Southampton home games.

It seems half-empty planes are a thing of the past; a famous victory for the ecomentalists. Or is it? Since Stelios O'Leary introduced his famous 'fly for a quid, pee for a fiver' business model, we seem to be flying everywhere, a lot. The only people who don't fly are guilty middle-class types, with the strange but somehow gratifying result that tourist destinations close to home, like Ventnor or Swanage, are slyly becoming quite chic. By the same token Harry Ramsden's may now be enjoyed from Florida to the Middle East, if enjoyed is the right word.

I'm particularly focussed on this now as I'm about to board a train for an hour's ride to London. This is followed by a four hour flight. The train costs more than twice as much as the flight. Unsurprisingly, then, we've developed some ludicrous habits. I'm sorry, but flying to New York for a weekend's shopping is insane. If the ticket cost a grand for a three-legged stool in the back of the bus, like it used to, even your keenest bargain hunter would think twice.

So how can we save the planet? There's one way - and that's to make flying a lot more expensive. Tax aviation fuel like other fuels - problem solved! Except this would involve the EU and US etc. actually agreeing on something.

Some imagination is needed then. Perhaps we could try discouraging the punters by forcing them through overcrowded dilapidated airports for hours, being hostile to them at interminable customs and security checkpoints, confiscating their deadly toothpicks and suntan lotion, forcing them to eat Harry Ramsden's chips whiling away the three-hour delay, then cramming them onto badly maintained uncomfortable vehicles and sending their bags to Athens. Or did we try that already?

Grumponomics

2009-10-06T22:48:00.000+01:00

A typical fund manager

Investing is a tricky game. It's all in the timing, as I found out when I recommended to my investment club buddies that we buy Railtrack shares a week before Stephen Byers, bless 'im, 'nationalised' (i.e. nicked) the lot. It wasn't all bad, though, as it's given the lads an opportunity to relentlessly take the mickey ever since. Sigh.

If you don't take an interest in the stock market, or gilts, or bonds, take a bow, because the smug podgy half-wit who's taking 3%-5% out of your pension pot each year for 'managing' it is relying heavily on your disinterest to fund the balloon payment on his/her Aston Martin. I stopped paying into pensions some time ago. My retirement plan is now to ask my wife to hit my lower leg with a mallet just before we retire, so I can get some of this disability benefit everyone keeps talking about. A moment of pain, a lifetime of gain.

A quiz. If you had built up enough debt to entirely fill the Albert Hall with £20 notes¹, what level of interest would you choose to pay? a) 10%? b? 5%? c) Bugger all? This is the fascinating position in which our fabulously profligate government finds itself. By following public spending policies to help keep interest rates negligible, and printing money Zimbabwe-style to make the debt worth less and less, it hopes to emerge from the gargantuan hole it has dug for all of us. Move over savers; we have to pay for those civil service pensions somehow.

Doubtless there are a few suckers who killed themselves in their early careers saving and paying off their mortgage. Fools! You wouldn't find me doing that.² But never fear - it's not too late. The housing market, against every law of physics or rational explanation, is on the up and up once more. So go out and get yourself some debt, and bag an executive box in Uxbridge for half a milllion quid. Money is cheap! Let the good times roll! Pop the champagne! (Did someone say 'bubble'?)

1- No really. And some. Leave an appropriate comment and I'll send you the maths if you're interested.
2- ...again

Bloated, Biased and Confused?

2009-10-05T23:18:00.000+01:00

Admit it, you owned one

Whither the BBC? Stick ten Brits in a room and ask them what still makes Britain great, and they will overwhelmingly answer - the BBC! At least that's what the papers will tell you. Don't believe a word of it. I've actually tried this and I got some interesting answers; including 'gardening', 'fair play' and 'table manners'. No-one said 'the BBC'. Mind you I admit I may not have got their full attention, but that's what you get when you phone people up during EastEnders.

Where was I? Oh yes - Auntie. British Telly Is The Best In The World, as we all know. The only reason it's stuffed full of American sitcoms, science-fiction repeats and soaps, is that we need to encourage the Yanks in their early efforts, and besides, the programs are quite cheap. Cheap is important; it's common knowledge that the Beeb represents tremendous value for money, and always has done.

But value for money is getting surprisingly expensive. In 1996 a TV licence cost £86.50. Today it costs £142.50, up by a mere 65%. Don't complain; we now have a plethora of new channels. We have BBC3 featuring classic programs like F*** Off I'm Fat. We have more saccharin-rich children's channels and programs than you ever thought you would need, or could stomach. And we have ever-more exotic sports coverage. Who needs football when darts is so riveting?

It's not just TV either. No exploration of the BBC would be complete without reference to the radio output, which is terrific, particularly if, at a key point during an Ashes Test Match, you want to know the weather conditions in German Bight (where is that anyway?). And those Archers are as fresh as ever. Despite the theme tune. But the list doesn't end there. What about the enormous web-site, interactive TV, programs in Welsh, the BBC Micro?

Of course, an organisation that generates content free of dirty commercial interests is a noble thing. The tasty £719.6M that the BBC made last year from its commercial arm doesn't count, because it's mostly sales to Johnny Foreigner, so it's definitely still true that there is no commercial bias or pressure within our precious Beeb. So if you elect not to have a TV, you should just put up with the endless threatening letters¹, outsourced to Capita, who are a private company; they don't have to be nice. Cough up. We know where you live.

1 - click this if nothing else - it's eye-popping

When Irish 'Ayes' Are Smiling

2009-10-03T12:48:00.000+01:00

Never! I mean, you betcha!

If exit polls are to be believed, our obliging neighbours across the Irish Sea have voted with a resounding 'Yes' to ratify the mysterious Lisbon treaty. Plenty of goodies will ensue; we are apparently due for Tony Bleeeuh as president. I expect his eyes are watering with anticipation. If he could drag Britain to war with Iraq against the collective will of both countries, imagine what he'll do with Europe.

And there's plenty more hidden in there. It may not be called a constitution anymore but what's in a name? In the wise words of Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who despite the name isn't a girl: "Public opinion will be led - without knowing it - to adopt the policies we would never dare present to them directly. All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden or disguised in some way." But don't just take her, sorry his, word for it, have a look at the whole enchilada! I warn you; there are 413 articles and I dropped off after the first three. It's good reading around nap-time.

But wait a minute - didn't the Irish vote 'No' to this same treaty? Why yes they did; but that was the wrong answer. It's like the British planning system; if you want to build a monstrous carbuncle in your back garden, then (a) chuck in a ludicrous planning application (b) if accepted, build! Sod the neighbours! (c) If refused, wait a month and start at (a) again, then repeat ad infinitum.

This ingenious mechanism has ensured a plentiful supply of housing in our little country for years to come, whilst leaving intact the royal hunting grounds and allowing the MOD to retain vast tracts of Wiltshire. And because it's gradual, we don't have to waste money on annoying fripperies like extra roads, hospitals, and schools. Good, eh?

So think of the irony! Brussels, courtesy of Ireland, has at last taken a leaf out of the British book, and has reached that happy 'Sod The Neighbours' moment. Expect many new palaces, junkets, expenses, hangers-on, oh, and laws.

The Great Yoony Funding Swindle

2009-10-01T17:41:00.001+01:00

Pay attention, boys

In common with a host of other soon-to-be-impoverished parents, we proudly dropped Number One Son at university (or yoony, as it is now called) this weekend. It's changed a bit since my day, I can tell you. When my Dad dropped me off at yoony the world was a different place; Tony Benn was still called Anthony Wedgewood-Benn, and a Thatcherite was someone who enjoyed rural roofing. Britain still made the odd ship, and the best band around was The Clash, or Abba, depending on your upbringing. Computers weighed eight tons and needed to be wound up each morning. Good days, good days.

Anyway. Number One Son's accommodation was in fact comfortingly familiar; paint peeling off the walls, a dripping tap labelled 'communal shower', ancient graffiti scratched into the chewing gum, third-world kitchen facilities, contrarian plumbing (hot in summer, cold in winter), the works. We didn't get to sample the food, we were bundled off too quickly for that; he obviously wanted to get straight down to some serious studying. But if we had, I can take a good guess at the fare. It may be called poulet en sauce riche avec vegetables mixte, followed by glace vanille en gateau¹, but it'll always be chicken a la king and arctic roll to me.

This carefree bohemian life is much as we expected back in the seventies; after all it was 'free'. Of course it wasn't, it was funded by an exuberant tax regime, but it felt free. The difference now is that he's being asked to stump up over four thousand good English pounds a year, and that's at the bargain end. Cheapskates that we are, Number One Son is denied even the basic luxury of a washbasin to pee in at the end of a hard night's studying, but comparing notes with other parents, we may have sold him a bit short. Some students appear to have an en-suite bathroom, massage area and sauna. I expect they're paying a bit more.

If your local council offered accommodation of this standard to those who need it, at this sort of cost, then they would be accused of being latter-day slum landlords. Don't get me wrong though; I approve of Number One Son living in the same sort of conditions we used to. It did us good and it'll do him good too. It's important for him to know, for example, that after a month without a shower we smell a bit, or that milk left on a windowsill during the vacation probably won't be much good when you get back. Unless you're feeling really hard up.

1 - You can probably tell my degree subject wasn't French

A Short History of Yoga

2009-09-29T19:32:00.000+01:00

Cutting toenails, yoga-style

Whenever my wife leaves for her weekly yoga session and booze-up I am left pondering the mysteries of this Eastern art (the yoga, not the drinking). It certainly does her good; she always comes back slightly flushed and a little dishevelled, and her yoga teacher seems very pleased as he drops her off in his Porsche, so I know she's putting her back into it.

This evening's session is a little longer than usual so I have had the opportunity to do a little research. Yoga, it turns out, has a long and colourful history. We can scarcely do it justice here. In short, it was invented in the 13th century by a mysterious ancient person from India. Like Father Christmas, he had a long white beard and kindly eyes, but unlike Santa, he was double-jointed, thin, and wore only a very ill-fitting pair of swimming trunks. On his head. During his long and illustrious life, he derived enormous health benefits from bending further than a man has any reasonable right to expect, both forwards and backwards, sometimes even left and right, and shortly before he died he perfected the position snimanataputra upsabootsy ('good heavens I can see your house from here') which today is sadly lost.

Yoga travelled slowly westward to gradually smile upon the ignorant fat unbendy people from Europe. As it travelled it developed and changed, so that many branches of yoga appeared. There are popular derivatives today to suit every taste, such as Pilates (yoga for pilots) and Iyengar (an involuntary exclamation of dismay when you see the back of your knees for the first time). Lesser known types include Waystaponelee (yoga for the upper body) and Pasmeethachipps (yoga for the larger person, involving eating rather than bending). And it's not just an imaginative way to slip a disc; there is a whole set of ideologies which would shame a fully-qualified Jedi. At £4 a week, that's what I call value for money.

Although this is strictly my wife's territory, I have to admit to having dabbled myself. My few lessons opened up new sensations for me; an overwhelming feeling of humility as a whole roomful of women, touching their toes with their elbows, snigger discreetly while I try to touch my toes with, well, anything, actually; the discipline of not breaking wind on the way down; how it feels when you rip an entire toenail off on the carpet. You get the picture.

Despite its origins yoga does seem to be an activity designed with women in mind. I acknowledge that I may be just doing it wrong, but some of the positions can be really quite uncomfortable, leaving one's male accoutrements either crushed or distressingly stretched. On balance I'll probably stick to golf. At least there's a sport that when you lose a ball, it's an annoyance, not a disaster.

Brave New (Plastic) World

2009-09-26T17:34:00.000+01:00

Much better than the real thing

Front page news! Local bars are now to begin using plastic glasses and bottles instead of glass. This is a good thing, according to the local constabulary. I entirely agree; use of plastic means that the local yoof can now knock seven bells out of each other every weekend in complete safety. You might even argue that the use of plastic is an inspiring call to arms; the establishment that uses it is obviously expecting trouble, so let's not disappoint them.

But there are other, less obvious, advantages. Once the 'glasses' wear in a bit, the rough surfaces become quite absorbent, leading to the retention of some interesting flavours. You may order a 'glass' of water, but if the previous user of the 'glass' drank, say, a Pernod and Blackcurrant (a popular drink in the 70s so its return is imminent), and the user before that drank, ooh, a Babycham (ditto, except it was never all that popular), then imagine the subtle tastes that will leach into the water. Mmmm.

But not so fast. As the airline industry knows all too well, the most innocent items can become weapons. Shoes and belts can be pretty scary, as can nail scissors. A friend of mine had the immobiliser removed from his car keys as he boarded a flight, rendering his car useless, but hey, he flew in the knowledge that he was safe. Probably.

But I digress. The point here is to issue a warning about the dangers of plastic glasses. What's to stop some enterprising soul filling one with stones and knocking the opposition on the head? Or holding their nose in a 'glass' full of beer until they drown? Or focussing the rays of the sign into a dangerous spot of heat?

So here's a modest and envrionmentally sound suggestion. The pub of the future should serve drinks from cardboard containers. (If we can pee into them in hospital, then surely we can hold a drink in them for a while.) We could print useful public health messages on the glass, like 'alcohol is harmful to your health' or 'bumping into tables gives you bruises'.

Me? I'll stay at home and watch a film. With a glass of wine. From a glass. Cheers.

Merry Christmas everyone!

2009-09-24T11:43:00.000+01:00

Always dress warmly
during cold weather

Not grumpy today, no sirree. I am lifted from the drudgery of a visit to Sainsburys by the sight of the new Christmas chocolate biscuit range. Festive cheer already! We can have three whole months of celebrating, and I for one can hardly wait.

Whilst examining the sumptuous new range I overheard an old lady asking a cheerful storeperson where the gardening range was. His response was that such things are seasonal, and therefore no longer stocked. So she can take heart too. Autumn is traditionally a very busy time in the garden, but this year she can kick back and enjoy a premature Yuletide Chocolate Hobnob.

Since the biscuits are in already, I wonder what other seasonal delights await. Let me guess. Soon we will be able to load up on Spiderman Holiday Calendars, since Advent calendars are horribly old-fashioned, two-dimensional and just not calorific enough. Our pets will enjoy their very own stockings; hilarious novelty items will send us giggling round the aisles; we can be astounded at forty-seven different varieties of Christmas cracker; baubles for the tree, checked by the HSE, will ensure a shiny but safe holiday for our loved ones.

If we think this is all too gluttonous, then we can salve any guilt by chucking a tin of Basics Tinned Tomatoes into the Basics Bank. So all those poor and homeless people can enjoy three months of relentless jollity too. Share the love!

Beginner's guide to Twitter

2009-09-23T11:09:00.000+01:00

Tweet! Tweet!

Who needs yet another social networking site? Not me. How anyone can begin to write anything significant in 140 characters or less is beyo

Baroness? Scotland? Resign? Nah

2009-09-22T17:31:00.000+01:00

Scottish people often
wear tartan

So Baroness S has been handed down a £5K slap on the wrist for flouting her own laws with respect to the hiring of illegal immigrants. As difficult as it might be to envision anyone outside the government getting away with this, she has, and will. Quelle surprise.

While I'm warming to my subject, why is everyone in the Labour Party a Lord, Lady, Baronet/ess, etc. these days? Didn't Tony Blair come to power with lots of rhetoric about an elected second chamber? (Shortly before replacing nearly all the hereditaries with his mates, bankers, and family).

Anyway, do politicians ever resign for anything any more? Does anyone remember Robin Cook's heroic resignation from the cabinet over Iraq? If it seems a long time ago, that's because it was. The last person with any honour deserted this bankrupt and defunct government years ago.

And lest we forget, the good baroness was in the news two days ago for waltzing off with £170K of yours and my money after claiming the allowance for peers living outside London. Perhaps Chiswick is outside of London in her book, or perhaps she considers her £2M house to be so above the run of the mill that she is effectively outside London. Whatever, I bet she gets away with that too. It's a good day to bury bad news.

It must be Sunday...

2009-09-20T20:47:00.000+01:00

A typical mower

...because the neighbourhood is alive with the sounds of garden machinery. Mowers, hedgetrimmers, chainsaws, machines for pointlessly blowing leaves around the garden, you name it.

There's a gap in the great wave of ecomentalism that's sweeping the planet. We're worried about pollution, carbon footprints, rainforests, gulf streams, et al, and quite right too, but we've missed something. What about quality of life? Not just for endangered species or exotic tribes, but, well, you know, me. We don't seem to worry about noise pollution in our own back yard; and if we're desensitised enough for that then maybe our judgement when trying to save the rest of the planet is equally impaired. (Oops - I'm off subject - I feel a future grumpyblog coming on).

So back to garden machinery. What's going on here then? How come Honda, home of the slick and slimy adverts proclaiming how their products are making our world a better happier fluffier etc. place, make garden tools which can be heard clear across town? If they can make a car run on a glass of water or a cow fart for a week, can't they fit a silencer to a lawn mower? Just wondering.

Die, Electronic Arts, die

2009-09-18T22:36:00.000+01:00

A randomly-chosen
character from RA2

Ok, I admit it. I play games. I'm 47 and I play games. Why? A host of reasons; they relax me, it's a way to share a hobby with the kids, they're good for the brain (if you choose carefully) but most of all this; they're clever. You're not just playing a game; you're getting into the mind of the person who wrote it.

I've worked with computers all my adult life, and games have always pushed what they can do. It takes a very bright team of people to make that little box under the desk jump and hum the way some games force it to; extraordinary graphics, other-worldly sounds, and an intelligence that in the best games, runs rings around the gamer.

Westwood Studios were among the brightest and best for a long time. Their Command and Conquer games were witty, sharp, imaginative. Time and again they pushed their own envelope to produce a game that engaged the imagination for long enjoyable evenings. They were among the first to produce a game that could be networked allowing two or more players to share a game. Gaming became a social activity and a very enjoyable one. Read Alert 2 is still one of the best games ever; try it if you haven't already.

Then along came Electronic Arts. They bought out Westwood and proceeded to milk the franchise with a series of dull and lifeless titles. But worse - they got greedy. Westwood used to give away an extra CD with each game so you could play with a buddy. This is way too generous for EA. Go out and buy two.

But with their latest title, the execrable Red Alert 3, they've gone a step further. It's not a great game; recycled humour and washed-up actors grinding out a tired plot. Much has been made of DRM (Digital Rights Management) which only lets you install the game five times; then your expensive DVD is a coaster. But I can live with DRM, because the game was hyped as one where you can play along with someone else. My two sons were dead keen; and father-son time is a precious thing.

So here's the added twist, and the one that's really hacked me off. To play a network game you need to register with an e-mail address. So my younger son registered and promptly forgot which address he'd used. He's 13 - what did they expect?

The result? Having bought two copies of this game, I can't play on a network with my kids, regardless of the hype. EA support is non-existent; we can't reset it. My game is a coaster before I ever expected it to be.

A new C and C title is in the works. It'll be the first that I won't buy. I don't think I'll be alone. People of Westwood, if you're still out there, buy your poor broken company off these idiots and give us our games back.