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This Is What twitter Looks Like If You Are @Revmoon

2012-01-13T07:30:00.001-08:00

Build Your Own @Revmoon

2012-01-04T12:12:00.000-08:00

If you’ve still not gone back to work after the Christmas break, and have made vague promises to yourself that you’re going to do something with your life in the New Year other than just watch TV, drink yourself into a stupor and beat your wife, why not discover and build twitter’s vilest tweeter, @Revmoon?

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#RudeCelebSaturday

2011-12-30T16:24:00.000-08:00

On an upcoming Saturday of twitter’s choosing we will all message all the celebrities on twitter with the following statement:

“Either you start following us back or we will stop following you #RudeCelebSaturday”

The above is only 57 characters, and so that will leave plenty of time for the @twittername of the celebrity in question.

We will start each tweet with a fullstop, so that the tweet can be seen by everyone. Therefore a #RudeCelebSaturday tweet should look like the following:

.@FamousPerson Either you start following us back or we will stop following you #RudeCelebSaturday

We will then do this every Saturday until celebrities on twitter either accept that the normal rules of their closeted lives don’t apply on twitter, or else fuck off onto Google+.

Celebrities on twitter will be required to follow a minimum of 500 non-famous people back. As soon as a twitter celebrity is following this number of people, they will cease to receive the above message from everyone on twitter every Saturday.

If any celebrity is seen not to be replying to the tweets of non-famous people who @reply them – at a rate of at least 10 replies a week – they will receive the following tweet:

"Reply to our tweets or we will cease to spend any money or time on your work #RudeCelebSaturday"

If a twitter celebrity doesn't start following people back they will receive the following tweet:

"Follow us back or we will cease to spend any money or time on your work #RudeCelebSaturday”

Get on it.

A non-work request for you to consider actioning in your own time.

2011-12-10T01:57:00.000-08:00

Dear all,

A non-work request for you to consider actioning in your own time.

David Cameron – our Prime Minister (I can feel some of you grinding your teeth already) - has said that there is money to fund road schemes, which could be awarded in 2015.

Mr Cameron – who looks exactly like a handsome man with his face reflected in a spoon – has said that the allocation of funds will come down to who shouts the loudest.

The dualling of the A21 between Tonbridge and High Brooms was previously agreed, but shelved during a government spending review last year, as it was felt that the money could more be usefully allocated to bombing brown people in warm countries. Those of you who drive past Tonbridge to go to work will know this section of road very well, as it is the part where two carriageways filter down to one, the traffic from Tonbridge joins, and the whole road then winds single file uphill at 0.2 miles per hour behind a dustcart or a man towing a caravan and yelling at his children.

If this section of road were widened, it would make your journeys to work around 15 minutes briefer – possibly more. This part of the A21 is a notorious bottleneck, and the profile and winding nature of the road causes numerous accidents each year.

The local paper, The Courier, is running an on-line petition to collect views – with a view to possible road-building beginning in 2016.

I invite you all to contribute your views by either logging on to www.thisiskent.co.uk/a21for2016, or writing to the Courier at:

Courier House
80-84 Calverley Road
Tunbridge Wells
Kent
TN1 2UN

Go on, it’s just a bunch of trees and badgers and such, and I’d concrete over them for you.

Thank you

Kev

P.S. I am not responsible for significant increases in your journey time if they do dual the road and you end up being diverted via Crawley, or sitting in traffic-lighted traffic along the same stretch of the A21 and watching overweight, bare-chested workmen the colour of mahogany leaning on shovels and shouting at female motorists about breasts. - K

Revmoon T-Shirts

2011-07-23T03:25:00.000-07:00

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Men's T-Shirts

Ladies T-Shirts

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Increasing Size Of My Dog Pablo

2011-07-13T03:38:00.000-07:00

December 2010

July 2011

Jan 2012

On The Unnerving Passage Of Time (Part 2)

2011-06-13T14:38:00.000-07:00

When last we met to discuss this matter, I said that, when looking back, I measured time in relation to my birth, to the Beatles, Bohemian Rhapsody and Live Aid. We acknowledged that Pulp Fiction is now an old movie, that Live Aid is now an historic event and that those of us who were born in the mid-seventies have now been alive for a period greater than the interval between the end of World War II and our births. We agreed that this was depressing, frankly, and have since tried to put it to the back of our minds.

In actual fact it was January in which I wrote that blog. At that time the Christmas glow of lardiness was still with us and, in our house at least, we were still trying to get through what was left of the Christmas booze.

And now here we are, but a twinkle of the eye later as I write part 2 of this blog, in June, and Wimbledon is about to start. Or, put another way, we are halfway to Christmas.

The way that I measure the progress of time through each year is to consider it in relation to Wimbledon and Christmas. Up until the time that Wimbledon starts I tend to think, “Gosh, it’s quite warm this early in the year, isn’t it?” or, “Wow, the sun is still up quite late into the evenings, isn’t it?” Once Wimbledon comes around, though, in my mind it is actually full on summer. From there, of course, it is then but a short run into the evenings drawing in and, before you know it, Christmas decorations up in the shops and the sound of George Michael’s pension racking up another few quid.

Someone once explained to me why it feels as if time is moving faster as you get older. They told me – and I happen to agree – that, to a five-year-old a year is one fifth of their life. By contrast, to a 36-year-old a year is just a thirty-sixth of their life; proportionally far less, and so it feels as if it has gone by much quicker.

I was discussing this matter with our 9-year-old the other day (who, alarmingly from our point of view, is nearer 10 than 9 – where did that time go?!). I said that it feels like it’s only just been Christmas and here we are halfway through the year. She said Christmas was ages ago and it’s still ages until the start of the school summer holiday. I realised that, for her, time feels as if it’s moving at a much slower rate, and this made me remember that, when I was that age, the period between the Christmas decorations going up in the shops and the last day of school term would be interminable. Hell, a wet Sunday in December could last for anything up to about 2 weeks in contemporary terms for me. I know I am not the only person to observe this, nor am I the only person to note that, whilst we tell our children to appreciate their childhood, because it is over so quickly, this is actually a misnomer – childhood goes on for ages; it is adult life that flashes by.

I know from speaking to my mother, now in her late seventies, that the phenomenon I have described above does not slow down, but just carries on getting faster. Presumably until you just pop off. I imagine for her it must feel as if she wakes up in the morning and she has just had Christmas, by lunch time she is probably feeling that it is warm for the time of year, by dinner time she will feel as if it is Wimbledon finals week and by bedtime she is probably wondering what on earth to buy me for Christmas. And thinking that an HMV voucher will probably suffice (again; although the one bonus of getting older is that your memory goes, and so you don’t have to worry about whether you’ve forgotten anything because you’ve already forgotten what it was like to be able to remember anything).

All of which begs the question, “why aren’t old people in a fucking hurry, then?”

Worf A Day

2011-06-12T15:11:00.001-07:00

Deo's Try N' Save

2011-06-11T14:26:00.000-07:00

I had a thought today whilst popping into my one of my local convenience stores, Deo’s Try N’ Save.

Deo is a man of Asian descent who employs a large number of young Asian blokes to run his shop. They are all of a similar age – about 19-years-old – and all have a somewhat Tibetan look about them. Every few months or so an influx of new staff appear, being trained by the existing staff.

What consistently is the case is that, when they first start working for Deo they speak no English at all. They shadow work alongside a more experienced staff member, who, in their very early days, does all of the talking.

The thought I had today was that one of the recent influx of new guys suddenly appeared to have learned to speak English perfectly.

I thought this because, as I walked out of the shop having used the cash machine inside (£1.75 to use, fuck you!) I said, “Cheers, mate”. The guy behind the counter replied, “Alright, mate”. I then said, “See ya,” and he replied, “Cheers, mate.”

I walked away thinking how remarkable it was that he had learned English so well, so quickly, that he could even manage an exchange of casual slang terms so easily.

Then it occurred to me that that is basically all the English that he knows, and it got me to thinking. If you were to bring someone to the UK and teach them English by the book, you might expect that the conversational exchange above would go something like the following:

Customer: “Thank you. I will not be purchasing any groceries, as I only needed to use the cash machine”

Shopkeeper: “That is absolutely fine. We hope to see you again when you next do need groceries”.

Customer: “I am sure that you will. Goodbye”.

Shopkeeper: “And goodbye to you”.

The truth of the matter though, and perhaps Deo is a genius for realising this, is that the English barely converse with each other in English at all, and certainly not in shops. To work successfully in Deo’s Try N’ Save you would only need to know the following English words.

The numbers One to Ninety-Nine (bearing in mind that the till will do all the maths)

The names of items behind the counter: Marlboro/Mayfair/Bensons/Rothmans/ Rizla/Matches/Lighter/Lottery/Scratchcard/Nurofen/Gas card/Electricity Key

And that is it. Any encounter with a customer that demands a greater level of linguistic knowledge than this, such as, “What time do you close?” or, “Can you get Granny Fanny magazine in for me?” can be answered by the guy looking past the customer towards the back of the shop and calling out, “Deo!”

Of course, the exchange that I had with the guy serving today sounded so assured and easy because the phrases he used seemed so advanced. However, if you were set down in Lhasa and everyone greeted you with a handful of phrases, you would soon learn to repeat a handful of them back, probably with a reasonable local accent, well enough to appear that you understood what it was you were saying. But, as a matter of fact, what exactly does, “Cheers mate” mean?

Pabs And Kimi Duke It Out

2011-05-20T05:53:00.000-07:00

Ten Tips On How To Lose twitter Followers

2011-05-16T05:29:00.000-07:00

We all enjoy having followers on twitter but, frankly, many of them are superfluous and we could do without them. Obviously there is no value in not having any followers, as your tweets will disappear into a vacuum, but neither do we want to be followed by people who disagree with things you tweet and @reply to you asking you to revise your opinions or even to delete specific tweets in case someone should be offended. As we all know, the point of using twitter is to give yourself a fake name and then be able to say all of the scurrilous things that you’re not able to say to real people in real life.

Unfortunately, through the normal use of twitter, there are many traps that we can fall into which, through no fault of our own, could lead to us behaving in socially acceptable ways and thereby risk gaining the wrong sort of followers. The danger, or course, is that we find that by inadvertently acting in that way we grow in popularity and thereafter we fall into the trap of attempting to second-guess what people will want from us and our tweets in order to become still more popular. We then risk ending up pointlessly maintaining a twitter account that is followed largely by people that don’t get our real sense of humour, and is enjoyed by no-one, including its author.

If you want to have a twitter account that is actually worth the effort of maintaining or indeed, following, here are ten tips of how to go about it:

1. Choose An Obscure Avatar.

When we’re looking across other peoples’ accounts we find that some avatars catch our eye more easily. We are then more likely to follow that person’s account. The type of avatar that the eye naturally falls on would be well lit, properly framed and would be a picture of that person smiling. Obviously, therefore, all of these things are to be avoided in selecting an avatar. Similarly, sticking with the same avatar for long periods helps people to remember you and the type of person you are, so you should change your avatar often.

If you’re feeling very brave you might even opt to have no avatar at all and just have that brown background with the blue rings.

2. Write An Obscure Or Insulting Biog.

If you’re the type of person who feels that they can be summed up in that little space, then I genuinely feel sorry for you.

Why not take this opportunity to warn people that you are curmudgeonly or just wilfully offensive?

3. Link To An Unpleasant Website.

Decide on the kind of filth that should be your linked website/blog from your twitter homepage. This will get rid of those people that need more persuasion. You might try linking your twitter page to those websites that have webcams filming decomposing corpses or perhaps the on-line sex offenders’ register.

4. Swear As Often As Possible.

This will certainly serve to thin out the numbers of people following you. A good tip is to aim to use the following swearwords in the following ratios:

Bollocks (used in 15% of your tweets). Well put to use as a sort literary full-stop, as in the following:

“I locked my keys in my car. Bollocks”.

Wankers (used in 20% of your tweets). Usefully many of the more small-minded Americans on twitter will believe that they don’t know what this word means and will be put off by its use. Of course, the reality is that they do know what it means, but don’t use it in their culture – much in the same way that they don’t use atlases or tolerance of other cultures – and so are put off by it for those reasons.

Arseholes (used in 20% of your tweets). Use arseholes as a descriptor of any group of people to which you do not belong – this might include everyone who has been on twitter in the 10 minutes before you log on. You might begin an evening on twitter by tweeting something like;

“Evening arseholes. What load bollocks have you wankers been tweeting about?”

Fuck (used in 100% of your tweets)

The word ‘fuck’ doesn’t really count as a swearword in normal society any longer, but, these days, twitter is awash with people whose brains are still programmed to become upset by it. It is clearly better to get rid of these people as soon as possible, so use the word fuck in every tweet as a term of endearment (how are you, you fucks?) as a descriptor (fucking big/fucking cold/fucking idiot) and to just generally insult and demean – ideally in tandem with other swearwords (You fucking wankers still here?)

Cunt (used in 10% of your tweets). Always use the word cunt as a descriptor of the successful and admired.

5. Always Describe Things In Negative Terms.

It doesn’t matter that the majority of people in your country voted for a politician that doesn’t share your views. It is your duty to show them the error of their ways. Always do this with due reference to tip 4. This should lose you superfluous followers very quickly.

6. Be Inconsistent.

People will naturally remember those people with whom they frequently exchange tweets and will feel that they have built a relationship with them. This ‘relationship’ may lead them to believe that they share a worldview with that person and they may then go on to follow them loyally for many years. The best way to avoid this is to ‘blow hot and cold’ in your @replies and try to avoid exchanging pleasantries or showing any interest in others. Tweet them back to correct them on their spelling/punctuation/opinions and write something before their name so that everyone can see it. Don’t forget to do this with reference to tip 4. You might try the following:

“Oi, @ThatBlokey, it’s spelled ‘you’re’, you fucking wanker”.

You should also block people if they start talking to you like they’re your friend. Do they think they can just read your tweets for free?

7. Don’t Follow People Back.

You’ll only have to read their fucking tweets the whole time.

Some people will @reply you several times in an attempt to get you to follow back. You should avoid doing so until they promise something really worthwhile, like pictures of their sister naked or actual hard currency.

8. Be Generally Offensive.

Invade trending topics by using the trending hashtag, but then just tweeting a load of unpleasantness. A good example of this might be the following:

“#ParalympicSwimming Oooh look, vegetable soup”

9. Be Rude To twitter Celebrities.

Although most people on twitter complain about twitter celebrities, generally speaking they still follow them. This means that if you @reply a celebrity, the non-famous twitterfolk will see what you have written. You might try something like the following:

“Oi, @DavidSchneider, bet you’re regretting spending all that money on a superinjunction now, eh? Eh?”

10. Post Loads Of Tweets About How To Get More Followers Or About How You Can Use twitter To Make Money.

Nothing makes people look away quicker than that.

Family Photo

2011-04-25T03:09:00.001-07:00

Dicks, Pussies and Assholes (From Team America: World Police)

2011-04-22T14:55:00.000-07:00

There are three kinds of people: dicks, pussies and assholes. Pussies think everyone can get along, and dicks just want to fuck all the time without thinking it through. But then you got your assholes, and all the assholes want is to shit all over everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way, but the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick. With some balls. The problem with dicks is that sometimes they fuck too much, or fuck when it isn't appropriate, and it takes a pussy to show them that. But sometimes pussies get so full of shit that they become assholes themselves (because pussies are only an inch and a half away from assholes). So pussies may get mad at dicks once in a while because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes, and if they didn't fuck the assholes, you know what you'd get? You'd get your dick and your pussy all covered in shit.

Pabs and Kimi

2011-04-19T23:36:00.001-07:00

On Trying To Lose Weight

2011-04-15T15:34:00.000-07:00

I am trying to lose weight. This has been an obsession for the past 15 years or so. I say obsession – it’s not like I’ve actually done anything about it, except feel grumpy about it. I always feel that, in a fair universe, thinking negatively about being overweight and planning to one day do something about it should burn calories.

A few years ago I did go on a binge diet and exercise plan. I did the Slim Fast plan and did 1000 sit-ups, 250 press-ups and half an hour on an exercise bike a day. I carried on smoking, since I felt that smoking speeded up my metabolic rate and kept the weight off. I kept this up for a couple of months, but as soon as I’d lost what I considered to be a sufficient amount of weight (probably a couple of stone), I went out and celebrated with an extra large doner and have essentially carried on eating the same way ever since.

I am not hugely overweight – I have a BMI of 28.8 – supposedly bordering on obesity, which is obviously bollocks. According to Wikipedia, when he was in his pomp, Arnold Schwarzenegger (at 6 feet tall, weighing 250 pounds) had a BMI of 33.9, making him obese, and not too far from being morbidly obese. I am 6’ 2” and weigh a shade over 16 stone. You would hardly say that I was bordering on obesity, but (and it’s a big butt), I can sense that I am not going to get any slimmer unless I do something about it. Moreover, dieting in a not particularly committed way will not make me lose weight, but will just make me gain weight more slowly.

I basically just really like my food – and your food too if you’re not going to finish those chips – and I have a sedentary job. Those who indulge, bulge. For many years the only exercise I have taken (besides jumping to conclusions and reaching for a bigger plate) has been walking the dog. It has long been my habit to buy crisps and chocolate bars pretty much every time I walk past a newsagents, as well as having, on average, 4 meals a day.

I also noticed around Christmas that I was becoming a little too fixated on booze. Nothing serious, it’s just that I started drinking around noon each day. This being Christmas, this wasn’t particularly different to anyone else, but added to all the chocolate, meat, nuts and other savoury nibbles I was getting through, it did have an impact.

I have knocked my drinking on the head for a while, and find that I am remarkably more wakeful and less grumpy as a consequence. Obviously, this has also been a good way to reduce my calorific intake – which has been awesome for quite some time.

Years ago, when I had a physical job, this was less of a concern. I just burned off a lot more calories through working. I also quit smoking about a year ago, and have since noticed with alarm that I am spreading out ever faster. I found that I could not get into a pair of shorts that I bought a few years ago (at which time I was already considering myself overweight) and that other clothes I had owned for a long time were becoming a little tight. No matter how much I might want to convince myself that my clothes have shrunk in the wash, I know that this isn’t really the case.

I think a lot of responsibility must lie with my parents. They set my expectations of what a meal should be, what constituted a decent portion and how it was a crime to leave a meal unfinished, since there were starving people in the world. Additionally, as a child of the 30s, my mother has always cooked with the attitude that there is still rationing going on and it is better to lay down some fat now than to become malnourished later on. It was my mother who taught me at an impressionable age that dripping – essentially lard – was a suitable spread to have on toast (with a bit of salt to bring out the flavour). To this day, if you eat shepherd’s pie at my mother’s house, she will start cooking by adding the mince to some dripping.

There is obviously no connection between her approach to cooking and her high blood pressure and my late father’s history of heart disease.

Since I have lived in my own home, my weight loss has accelerated impressively, and this has represented a serious investment in expensive cheeses, sophisticated savoury snacks, fine wines and chocolate that is high in cocoa solids. As well as these sophisticated foodstuffs, I have also continued to indulge in high fat, low quality foodstuffs. I happen to greatly enjoy cheeseburgers and agree with the view that unhealthy foods are not appealing despite being unhealthy, but are appealing precisely because they are unhealthy.

So I have joined the gym. If you had suggested to me 10 years ago that my principle activity outside of work hours would be working out, I believe I would have shown you one of my fingers and cast aspersions as to your parentage, but nevertheless this is the case.

We have bought a family membership at a local sports centre that entitles us to use the gym, the pool, the courts and access certain lessons for the cover price. I have been going there most days and have been swimming afterwards. It has been going quite well and I’ve been quite pleased with the weight I have lost so far. My wife has already noted how my addictive personality has meant that I have gotten into using the sports centre very regularly and heavily. I know my own personality well enough to know that I will, at some point in the not too distant future, grow to hate going to the gym and will view it as a total bind and a drain on my free time.

At that point, the trick will be to have identified this ahead of time and have cancelled the membership at the right moment – as they make you give a month’s notice to cancel. For the moment, though, I am nowhere near this point. For the time being I am getting a nice, healthy rush out of having exerted myself at the gym and, if I have been expecting to go to the gym and then can’t go for some reason, I get quite grumpy. This is a vast departure for someone who has always considered himself to be allergic to his own sweat. I am very mindful of the fact that people very often get addicted to the exercise itself and the change to their physique. There isn’t room here (and nor can I be fezzed) to discuss everything that is wrong with the body fascism images in the media that we are expected to aspire to, and I personally find people who are too muscled or too slim to be unattractive.

It hasn’t been a perfect experience. It tends to be the case that I can only go to the gym around dinner time, which means that I come home to eat a cold dinner afterwards. My hands that have become soft from a few years of driving a desk have developed calluses on them like I am some sort of working class labourer, and the gym itself is not my natural environment. The music that blasts out in there is fucking awful, and I have always found that sporty people get on my tits. There are quite a few wankers who hang out there, showing off the stupidly large amount they can lift and talking in confident voices about how confident they are, and failing – massively – to disguise how self-conscious they are and how low their self-esteem is. I would rather shave my scrotum with a cheese grater than listen to people like that talking, or the shit music; so I make sure I have a good selection of stuff on my iPod and try and avoid making eye contact with anyone.

This policy hasn’t always worked, and in recent weeks I have inadvertently attracted the attentions of a gay guy at the gym. I think this happened because I was working out on a machine and became very breathless. This guy happened to wander into my field of view and made eye contact whilst I was staring into the middle distance, exhaling mightily and mouthing, “ffffffffuck me”. Since then this guy tends to come and work out next to me, or positions himself in my vision and flexes his muscles.

Obviously I couldn’t give a fuck if he is gay, but even if he’s the only guy there who is out, you’d have to concede that there is something pretty gay about the appreciation of the male form, even if it is your own. Sometimes in the gym, hearing dance mix versions of Kylie songs, and being surrounded by men sweating, sighing rhythmically and preening before mirrors, it does occur to me that it’s only a hair’s breadth away from becoming a gay orgy. I don’t know what it would take to tip the balance, but I imagine it would be about 6 beers apiece.

So for the time being I am going to continue to go to the gym and will try and shake off the results of several years of sloth and culinary indulgence. My physique is now noticeably more toned in my upper body, and the lard is gradually getting carved off the lower. At this point I look like a statue of a slimmer version of myself that is at the first phase of being carved out of a somewhat lumpy bit of marble.

I’ll let you all know how things progress.

On Eggs

2011-04-12T15:30:00.001-07:00

I bet you all woke up this morning thinking, “I wonder how @Revmoon likes his eggs cooked…” It’s a perfectly reasonable question – I’m surprised it took you so long to ask, actually.

I like eggs in every way in which they can be served, except pickled, which is unnecessary and gross, and in that hundred-year-old way, which is not really food, but basically just a dare.

I like ‘em fried, scrambled, boiled, poached, hard boiled and in an omelette (which is one of those words – like diarrhoea and manoeuvre – that none of us can reliably spell without spellcheck). Eggs are remarkable things and the broad variety of ways in which they can be cooked just makes them all the more remarkable.

If you stop and think about it, it is pretty fucking weird to eat the unfertilized embryo of an animal.

Even stranger, to my mind, is the fact that I myself have no compulsions about eating chicken’s eggs, but am grossed out by the idea of eating duck, pheasant or goose eggs, despite loving the taste of those adult animals.

Eggs and our attitude towards them is, like so much else, coloured by our attitude towards them when we were children. What child was not given a boiled egg with soldiers?

It is rather odd that we carry on calling slivers of buttered toast ‘soldiers’, and (I discovered through doing a bit of twitter and Facebook research) we all, as adults, still make sure we crush the emptied boiled egg shells to make sure witches don’t sail away in them – although one would think it would be an advantage if witches were to sail away from us, rather than stick around.

Because we have been raised eating certain things certain ways, we go on into adulthood sticking religiously to having those things in the same way.

For me – except in the case of scrambled eggs and omeIettes – I always want my eggs to be cooked in the same way – with the white perfectly uniformly firm (with no gross semi-liquid bits) and the yolk still perfectly liquid. In practice, this is extremely difficult to achieve.

First of all, we can scratch fried eggs off the list. They are greasy and unhealthy and, just as importantly, messy to cook. They have to have hot oil dripped over them to get the white to cook properly, and you always end up with those really thin, burned bits of egg white with bubbles in them. In any case, the little buggers invariably stick to the bottom of the pan, or otherwise break when you try and spachelor them out, running yolk everywhere and rendering the whole enterprise pointless.

The only way to have a fried egg is in a café, or at a burger van in a bacon burger, but when you do there is a significant risk that they will be overcooked and the yolk will be hard and therefore pretty much flavourless. This is because it takes attention to get a fried egg right, and the cooks in those establishments don’t have time to focus on doing only one egg. It is also because different people have different views on how an egg should be cooked. It is much like tea and coffee; if you let someone else make you a cup of tea, you could end up with pretty much anything. Better to ask them to make you a coffee, as coffee is always just coffee.

The thing about eggs is that their yolk is pretty much the best sauce in the world. It goes well with pretty much everything, but tastes best on bread – though it tastes pretty fucking sensational on bacon. My favourite way is to dip soldiers into it.

Whilst I love poached eggs, you cannot dip a soldier into a poached egg. Once punctured, the yolk of a poached egg just runs everywhere until the egg is emptied.

A boiled egg’s yolk is retained in place by the egg white and, ultimately, the shell. This leads me on to the problem; the boiled egg is the best way to have an egg, but it is also the hardest to get right. I would even go so far as to say that I have never cooked a boiled egg perfectly in my life – although I have probably boiled something in the region of 1000 eggs in my life.

The reason for this is that you can’t see what the fucking things are doing when you are cooking them, and have to rely on a timer to get them right. The best thing about poaching eggs (in a poaching pan anyway, I find eggs poached without a poaching pan to be either too watery and unappetizing or not watery enough and dry and grey and unappetizing) is that you can see the egg cooking and can serve them as soon as the white is hard – in fact, I tend to cook Sunday breakfast of poached eggs, toast/fried bread, bacon, mushrooms and tomatoes; and I set the whole thing up so that the meal is ready as soon as the eggs are ready.

A boiled egg does not afford us the luxury of being able to see inside it and so we have to time it in some way. The idea of timing something as natural and variable as an egg is patently absurd.

With this in mind, I bought an egg timer that I found in the gift shop of the Science Museum yesterday. It is called the ‘Egg Perfect Color Changing Egg Timer’ and is made by Burtons Plastics. This timer bases its function on temperature rather than time, changing colour from the outside in – along a scale – as it gets hotter. It reportedly accounts for the number of eggs that are in the water, and should always produce an egg boiled in the same way – once you have established where on its scale you favour.

I used this timer today to boil 3 eggs for D and I for lunch. I also ran a standard timer for 5 minutes to make sure that I didn’t get the timing of the eggs wildly wrong. It didn’t work. What happened, and what always seems to be the case, is that the egg white at the top of the egg was still soggy and not fully cooked (ugh!), but the yolk was also partially hardened. That’s not playing the fucking game! It’s supposed to be one or the other surely! No timer is going to help me get that right. Also the scale on the timer is too small and cannot be read accurately through boiling water.

I guess what I am getting it is that we need to either breed a species of chicken that lays transparent eggs or else someone needs to buy me one of those Eggxactly egg cookers. Is there such a thing, or what it just a thing on Dragon’s Den that never came to anything?

Meanwhile, I’ll just carry on poaching eggs and wishing that I could dip soliders into them. Once a month, or so, I’ll think, “What I really fancy is a boiled egg. I shall make one”. I will then end up with an egg with a watery top, and semi-hard yolk, half a plate of unused soldiers and a deflated feeling.

The other thing I bought at the Science Museum was an orange peeler, which works perfectly.

(Note: D wanted me to call this blog: "The Most Important Blog Ever - No Yolk". She also wants me to tell you all that she has invented a pair of rubber fingertip gloves that enable you to peel a boiled egg without burning your fingertips. Once this product is rolled out, she intends to start work on an egg boiling pan that changes colour when the eggs are cooked and has a more readable scale to show when the eggs are cooked. I, for one, am out).

Why Twitter Is Shit Now

2011-03-17T16:08:00.000-07:00

I know that writing a blog about twitter is generally a sign that you have nothing left to blog about. That is most likely the case here, but there are a few points about twitter that I want to share with the average 3 people that read my blog posts.

I think twitter started to go downhill the day that we all joined it. I’ve been tweeting for just over two years and, like a lot of people, joined after seeing Stephen Fry on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross. If I recall correctly, at that time Fry had about 50,000 followers, which was most likely pretty much everyone who was on twitter in the UK at that time.

As some of you will remember, there were so few people on twitter at that time that there was button where the trending topics are now that just said, "Everyone". By clicking on it you could read all the tweets tweeted everywhere by everyone on twitter in real time. What's more, it didn't even move that quickly. It was a really neat way of finding new people to follow.

Since that time, twitter’s popularity has snowballed to a point that even my mother has heard of it and this week the company I work for issued a Social Networking Policy. Whilst pretty much everyone I work with is Facebook friends with everyone else I work with, I can understand that we might need an explicit policy on the use of something like twitter to ensure that we are all representing the company with integrity. Having read the policy I am pretty sure that I would not be infringing on it, since I would be more likely to perform penis surgery on myself in the woods with a tent peg and a mallet than I would be to tell you lot what I do for a living. I hope you understand, it’s just that I have no fucking idea who you are and I certainly have no intention of telling you anything about myself that I wouldn’t run down the street shouting about.

For those of you on twitter that I know in real life, the above is doubly true.

I digress. At the time when twitter was more underground, you could pretty much guarantee that everyone on it had a similar attitude towards it as you – namely that it was somewhere to write scurrilous, libellous and deeply offensive things, sometimes directly to famous people that deserved to hear it, but more importantly, their tweets would be largely unedited, stream-of-consciousness type of affairs. If you didn’t like what you read, you just moved on to the next tweet.

Equally, other people would just read your tweets and laugh or just disagree with them. They might even strongly disagree and unfollow you. This was absolutely fine, because there is no reason not to unfollow someone. You don’t actually know them. They are just a thumbnail and a point of view.

Twitter started to go downhill when things like unfollower shout outs came to the fore. If I ever get shouted out for unfollowing someone I always retweet that tweet. I want everyone to be clear why I unfollowed “Yes, I unfollowed you, because you’re a small-minded prick who would subscribe to unfollower shout outs”

The other issue with twitter is also, of course, the alarming cases of people being arrested for tweeting and a sense of humour failure. It was pretty dumb for that guy to tweet about bombing an airline – that is only ever going to get some heat on you – or for that Tory to suggest a writer should be stoned to death. Nevertheless, they are just jokes. If you made them to friends, they would be passing comment and soon forgotten. Wasn’t that the philosophy behind twitter? That an idea could be put out there, but then just forgotten? Isn’t it supposed to have the same value as a comment scrawled on a toilet wall?

It was at one time, but now twitter is more popular. So it has to be responsible as well (for some reason). And that means that it has a value too. So there are promoted trending topics (Fuck.Off.) and shite like that. Now I am constantly reminded that I’m using a version of twitter that won’t be around for much longer and invited to switch to new twitter. Why? What is so important about twitter that it needs an upgrade? The whole point of it is, it requires wit and imagination to use it. You should be able to run twitter from a ZX Spectrum.

If we upgrade twitter this time, it won’t be long until the next and the next upgrade, and by stealth twitter will become just like everything else in this age. Mindless and devoid of imagination of distinction – of no actual value to everyone, but enormously popular. In essence, just another Facebook, with tagged photos and fucking Likes and Pokes and Scrabble and Farmville and I’ve Become A Fan Of Scratching My Arsehole And Sniffing My Fingers.

There’s also the trending topics bollocks. 90% of which are people tweeting, “Why is this subject trending?”

I understand that the "Who has been looking at your profile bots" are now on twitter. The people who invented these programmes should be forced to eat glass. These programmes were offensive enough on Faecesbook (where they encourage people to update with, "I know who is stalking me thanks to this programme; I'm not stalking you. If you don't want people to look at your profile, don't fucking put stuff on there), but should not be allowed to be involved in twitter. They are irrelevant.

Not to mention the fact that I could tweet something that would cure cancer and free the world, but if I did so on a Saturday evening in December it would be missed entirely because everyone would be tweeting about the fucking XFactor.

Another thing that sucks is the sheer number of companies who spend time searching for uses of their company name and then bombard you. I asked for advise on a function on my Blackberry this evening and immediately had 3 @replies from tweeps (all of who had avatars of attractive women – two in their scants) telling me where I could get a Blackberry. No, you arseholes, I have a Blackberry, I want advise on using the fucker.

Then there are the, let’s not be coy, psychos on twitter. Not so long ago I was criticised by a tweep for unfollowing her. She had criticised me for saying that I thought Tyra Banks had a penis. She rebuked me because African American transsexuals suffer one of the highest murder rates in America (which is a level of picky detail that I cannot even begin to aspire to). @Charlesmacstout – who is a cleverer man than you, but hung like a cocktail stick – has noted that when people complain of being offended, they very often go on to say that they themselves are not offended, they are complaining on behalf of those people who aren’t present, but would be offended if they were. The difficulty thereafter, the tiny-penised one noted, was that everyone falls in line to protect everyone else from being offended and what basically follows is censorship.

As it happened, I unfollowed this person the following day at the exact moment that she said, “If you think jokes about rape are funny, unfollow me now”. I was mortified to have unfollowed her at that moment, but even more so when she then picked up on it and confronted me about it. I followed the thread of a conversation she was having and saw that someone (I forget who – remind me!) had written a fake horoscope saying, “Gemini: You will be visited by three ghosts who will show you the true meaning of Christmas. Or gang rape. One or the other”.

Now forgive me; rape is not funny – of course it fucking isn’t. That joke is though, and I would defend to the death that person’s right to say it. Actually, I wouldn’t. In the modern world, it’s really not worth the fucking effort to defend someone’s right to do anything. Best not to draw attention to yourself. I might retweet them though, which is also a big commitment. The fact that one of this odd woman’s tweets was recently quoted on Have I Got News For You was actually pretty galling. Why didn’t they read out my one about being willing to pay good money to see Cheryl Cole kicked to death in a pit? My tweet had substance and passion.

I noticed that the adorable @MattWhatsit (who learned how to tweet from the best) responding to someone who was castigating him over something he tweeted with the following:

@MattWhatsit Thank you for your comment. If you find my material offensive may I suggest you unfollow and block me. Enjoy Twitter :) x

This is probably the only way to deal with this type of thing. How else can one respond when you regularly encounter tweets like the following:

@NameWithheldToProtectADouche A person who uses bad language on twitter has no respect for other TWITTERS & SHOULD NOT BE FOLLOWED! parents have children around.

Yes, parents have children around. And they are responsible to:

a) protect them from bad influences

and, crucially

b) ensure that they are not so mollycoddled that they are not equipped to deal with the real world. If you have kids and they are at school, they already know every swearword that you do. FACT.

I suppose what I am experiencing is a sort of cult mentality. You know the sort of thing; Anything that is big must also be bad and anything that is being used by bourgeois old bastards should be ignored. What logically follows from this argument is that anything that lots and lots of people like must be rubbish, which is obviously something that a moron would believe, but I digress.

Given that I wasn’t on twitter before January of 2009, I don’t know what it was like before that time. I would imagine, though, that there was a greater chance that the few celebs that were on there then might even converse with the hoi polloi. Now twitter has become just another place for these pricks to gain attention and swan around like they own the fucking place, ignoring the plebs. People that I work with who know I’m on twitter ask me which celebrities I follow and I always say, “None, they have nothing to say”. I guess this is hardly surprising. What celebrity is actually gonna give away jokes or opinions or information about themselves for free on twitter when they could get Heat or OK or the Sun to pay them a couple of hundred grand to say it in their shitrag? I suspect that most celeb’s followers are constantly changing, as new people join twitter, follow celebs, try and have a conversation, get blanked by all of them, get fucked off and then realise (finally) that the joy of twitter is talking to people you don’t know about what is real and what is really affecting you. Still, it is pretty galling that someone like Charlie Sheen joins twitter and gets a million followers overnight, without actually saying anything. I guess there is the excuse that it is interesting to look at a car crash, but, come on guys, aren't these people getting enough attention?

So, what am I getting at? I guess what I’m saying is that the lustre has gone off twitter a bit. Basically there are too many people on it who have joined because it’s the new, happening thing (actually they are about 20 months too late) and they feel they need to be part of something. If you are one of these people, don’t be surprised if I don’t follow you. On the other hand, drop me an @reply and, if you’re funny or interesting, I will follow you back. What I do, incidentally, is look back over someone’s last few pages of tweets to see what they’re like. If all their tweets are @replies to people I’m not following, I don’t bother following. If they are illiterate and don’t know how to use an apostrophe, I don’t bother following. If they tweet a load of shit about a football team, I definitely don’t bother following.

I guess, in reality, I’m just sounding off. I do love twitter. It suits my attention span and my sense of humour. The bunch of people I chat with (and I am always willing to add to it) know what to expect from me and vice versa. I’m not gonna meet up with anyone or anything like that, but I am willing to share a few things about myself for what they’re worth, and there is an odd joy is doing so with people that you don’t know. To quote the daddy of all twitter, @onlydanno, Facebook is where you lie to people you know. Twitter is where you’re honest to strangers.

Carry On Up The Dark Path

2011-02-25T13:57:00.000-08:00

It is a little know fact that before Fox studios agreed to produce the Star Wars films, George Lucas travelled to London to pitch the idea to the Rank Organisation, telling them the whole saga of the Force, the people and the creatures of the Galactic Empire.

Rank were so taken with the idea of the futuristic adventure romp that they signed a contract with Lucas for the film rights immediately. This being the British film industry in the 1970s, the movie was rushed into production as a light comedy by the Carry On team and completed within a fortnight. Lucas, being a fan of quality movies, detested the Carry On films and withdrew the film rights, preventing the movie from having the gala opening at Bognor Regis that Rank had planned.

And, for more than 35 years, that was the end of the story. The movie sat forgotten in a can in Rank’s archive until it was rediscovered last year, together with all the promotional materials. The inheritors of the Rank Organisation are once again in negotiations with George Lucas and are hoping that a remastered version of the film can be made available on Betamax in time for Christmas 2012.

What follows is the original publicity for the British Made (1975) film –

Starring:

Jim Dale as Luke Skywalker, the young, innocent farm boy who runs away to fight a noble fight with the Rebellion and learns mystical skills and discovers new friends and a family he never knew about.

Sid James as Darth Sid. He may be the evil ruler of the Empire, but he has a twinkling smile, an infectious laugh and a taste for the ladies. You will rock with hilarity when he delivers the lines, “You, like your father, are now mine. Cor, blimey!” and "Wipe them out. All of them. H’Yuk, yuk, yuk, yuk.”

Kenneth Williams as Darth Vader. Right hand man to Darth Sid and in ruthless pursuit of the rebels. Who will ever forget William’s hilarious delivery of the lines “I find your lack of faith disturbing, Matron” and “ ’Ere, the force is strong with this one"?

Also starring the girls of the Carry On Films

Barbara Windsor as Princess Leia – The brave leader of the Rebellion who attracts the boys and frequently gets captured. We will always remember her hilarious line, “Help me Obi Wan Kenobi. Hehehehehe, saucy!”

Hattie Jacques as Jabba the Hutt. She may be a slimy, worm-ridden piece of filth, but she has a heart of gold and a heck of a bust!

Joan Sims turns in one of her classiest performances as Queen Amidala, the elegant ruler of the Naboo and mother to Luke and Leia; if she can ever get to be alone with Darth Vader!

While Patsy Rowlands reprises her traditional role as a sour-faced old cow; this time playing Darth Vader's mother, a simple slave woman on a faraway planet, but is there something more to her relationship with Darth Sid than she is letting on? Certainly not if Sid can help it!

Also starring Leslie Phillips as Han Solo, the dashing and charismatic captain of the Millennium Falcon. Solo is a true ladies’ man, and his pursuit of the young princess will delight moviegoers, as will his debonair delivery of the line, “Scoundrel? Ding Dong!”

And also starring Bernard Bresslaw as Chewbacca. Captain Solo’s faithful sidekick and co-pilot. He only communicates in guttural grunts, such as, “Corrr! And Phwoarrrr!”

The path for our heroes is long and hard. Along the way they meet many hilarious characters, both good and evil, Including:

Charles Hawtrey as C3P Oooh and Terry Scott as R Terry D2 – The hilarious combination of Hawtrey’s famous camp delivery and Terry Scott’s comedic pratfalls and spluttering will have audiences rolling in the aisles.

Frankie Howerd as Yoda, the Jedi master, who teachers Luke the ways of the Force. The hilarious wisdom of his lines, “Size matters not on your Nellie”, “Not, ye Titter” and "Do or do not... there is no try, Missus", will be quoted by generations of moviegoers for years to come.

Peter Butterworth as Obi Wan Kenobi, the Jedi Knight who utters the immortal line, “Mos Eisley spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be circumspect”.

Kenneth Connor as Boba Fett, the evil bounty hunter who falls over a lot and is hilariously scared of being alone with women.

Bob Monkhouse plays the charismatic, but Machiavellian, Lando Calrissian with even more boot polish on his face than usual.

Jack Douglas gives a memorable slapstick performance as the bungling Admiral Piett, who just can’t keep track of the rebels and earns the wrath of Darth Vader, with hilarious consequences!

Stanley Unwin makes an appearance as Gungan Jar Jar Binks. Unwin’s trademark hilarious gibberish will win the hearts of the youngsters.

Phil Silvers makes an hilarious special appearance as Qui Gon Jinn.

Bernard Cribbins performance as Wicket the Ewok will both delight and charm audience members of all ages.

Windsor Davies appearance as Darth Maul will both excite the young ones and add to the general hilarity.

Terry Thomas will have audiences rocking with mirth with his hilarious performance of bounder slave owner Watto

And for the first time in a Carry On Film, a special appearance by Marty Feldman as Admiral Ackbar.

Whilst Carry On regulars Julian Holloway and Roy Castle appear as Grand Moff Tarkin and Bib Fortuna.

Don’t Miss!

Star Wars, Carry On Up The Dark Path. From the Rank Organisation. In cinemas this summer.

On No One Knowing How To Fix or Make Anything Anymore (Part One)

2011-02-13T14:04:00.001-08:00

Sometimes, when I’m walking the dog, I entertain myself by thinking about how well I would cope if I were stranded on a desert island, or if there had been a nuclear war, or some other apocalyptic event, that meant that existing technologies were rendered useless and that the buildings were no longer inhabitable. Would I be able to survive? Could I make a fire without matches? Could I build a structure to live in? Could I work out how to hunt and kill animals for food?

I will save you the effort of pointing out that the reason I indulge in this fantasy is that I am not suited to living in the world and society as they currently are. I don’t think that I am alone in this, however. I think many of us hanker after a simpler time when we lived on our wits and acquired skills in many areas as we went along, before ultimately passing them on to the next generation.

The odd thing about this is that it was thousands of years of precisely this process that, inexorably, led our species to the point where we are now; a flabby, useless few billion people who do not have any real skills at anything genuinely important and are not psychologically or physically strong enough to survive for very long without the cushy systems we have set up around ourselves.

This last statement is proven by the fact that people of my parents’ generation (born in the 30s) were bombed by the Luftwaffe in their own homes whilst being generally starved of necessary nutrition and waiting to see whether there was going to be anything left of their country and economy once it was all over.

Contrast that with our own generation who take the day off work if there are snow drifts as high as the tops of their ankles. Who require that everything is fixed for us and who go to pieces if twitter is over capacity.

It is not only that we have not had the knowledge of how to farm foods passed onto us. Technologies used to be analogue and physical. The understanding of previous generations of technology would be built in to successive technologies, but the innate knowledge stayed alive and was passed down.

If you went back a few generations, the average person in the street would carry with them a vast amount of knowledge about, if not how to build a basic machine, at least how to maintain it. They would know how to build physical structures to live in. They would repair their possessions, including their own tools, as they went along. They would have a greater relationship to the natural world and the rhythms of it, and would know how to utilise this knowledge to grow food and devise herbal remedies. They were less separated from their natural, animal selves than we are, because they knew how to take an animal carcass and prepare it as food.

In this time and place the most animal thing about us is our sexual and excretory organs and our behaviours when we use them. It is curious to me that these events are so personal and are something that we do either alone or with our closest confidantes only.

The closest we get to this connectedness with the natural world is 10 days camping in Cornwall once a year. We have no knowledge whatsoever about herbal remedies and are completely dependent on the pharmaceutical industry to cure our ailments. If we were stranded on a desert island we would most likely be dead within days unless we happened to have Ray Mears in a rucksack.

Because our technology driven species has arrived at a place of largely digital technology, within only a couple of generations, we will have completely lost all of our understanding of analogue technologies. We have already largely been left behind gearing and clockwork. It is quite incredible to me that people in the past sat down with bits of bent metal and managed to make machines that accurately measured time.

Without a computer, would we be able to measure time or commutate the mathematics required to survey the London Tube network, say? I think it is fair to say that, not only would we not know how to do these things, I would go as far as to say that we would struggle to do these things with a computer, because we generally don’t have those skills either. We know how to repair disc permissions, or can install an update, but most of us don’t really know how that works, either.

On No One Knowing How To Fix or Make Anything Anymore (Part Two)

2011-02-13T14:03:00.001-08:00

(WARNING: THE FOLLOWING BLOG CONTAINS THE PHRASES ‘THESE DAYS’, ‘WHEN I WAS YOUNG’ AND ‘IT USED TO BE’. THIS BLOG MAY ALSO CONTAIN NOSTALGIA FOR SIMPLER TIMES THAT MAY NOT ACTUALLY HAVE EXISTED AND BROAD ASSERTIONS MADE ABOUT MATTERS WITHOUT ANY ACTUAL VERACITY).

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but we have become deskilled in the west and disempowered to do anything about it.

The consumer durables around us have become so complicated that it is no longer possible – or financially worthwhile – to fix them. There was a time, not so long ago that if your TV broke down you could go to a bloke in gloomy shop somewhere that could fix it for you for a reasonable amount of money.

In those days, if your cooker or fridge went wrong, it would be possible to buy the necessary parts to fix it from a dealer in some out-of-town location. These parts would be largely interchangeable between similar aged and similar makes of fridges or cookers and would cost just a couple of pounds to buy. Furthermore, they were so easy to fit that you could probably fit them yourselves or give them to a handyman to fit, who could do it pretty swiftly.

These days, when an item goes wrong you cannot get the replacement part to fix it, and, if you could, you wouldn’t be able to take the thing apart to fit it anyway. If you doubt the veracity of this statement take a trip down to your local dump and have a look at the stuff people are throwing out. The electrics bins are full – full – of vacuum cleaners, stereos, DVD players and small kitchen appliances like irons, toasters and kettles. These items all look like they are just a few years old. In all probability they were perfectly functional up until a drive band inside them broke and a replacement cannot be bought or fitted.

It is the same with cars. It used to be the case that you could buy most parts for your car in a shop on the edge of town – together with a Haynes Manual with instructions on how to do it. If your car blew a head gasket you could get out on your front drive on a Sunday, take it apart and replace the gasket yourself without too much trouble. These days, a new car has to be plugged into a diagnostic computer to find out what the error is. Typically what’s under the bonnet of your car is so interconnected and complicated that you would have to take half the car apart to replace the screenwash reservoir. This therefore means that you have to take your car to a qualified mechanic and pay their inflated rates to get your car running the way it should.

It is not just technological advances that have created this situation. Advertising and marketing lead us to believe that the new vacuum cleaner available is so good that your old one is uselessly out of date, and your house is probably dirty if you persevere with it. Given that these days there is a very valid imperative to recycle and to use resources more efficiently, it is shocking that ours has become such a disposable society. This was brought home to me on a recent browse around a local YMCA secondhand furniture warehouse. One of the rooms was full of widescreen TVs that no one wanted. Their owners had obviously upgraded to the flatscreen TVs that have rendered the older, bulky units redundant. Admittedly the flatscreens do have the advantage of being able to be hung on a wall and giving you back a fair amount of space in your living room. However, I bet that most owners of flatscreens have only bought them because they perceive that they should have one because; “that’s the way things are going, innit?” and don’t want to be left behind. Presumably they use this cutting edge HD technology to watch the overwhelmingly shit TV we get these days in crystal clear quality.

The other side of this consumerism sea-saw is borne out by what most of us do for a living. Those of you that work in industry are likely to be doing something imaginary for a living. Hardly any of us make or do anything tangible anymore. Most of our industries are imaginary. The banking industry only exists because people choose to believe in it. The I.T. industry only exists because people have been led to believe that they need to upgrade all of their technology every 24 months (or less) despite that fact that they have probably barely scratched the surface of its functionality or capacity. Industries – and economies – that are based on things that do not actually exist, or for which there is no actual need, are pretty fragile. Unfortunately for us, our jobs within those fictitious industries are also becoming ever more fragile.

This consumerism is not only led by the marketing industry, but is the cornerstone of our entire economy. We import virtually everything that we use in the UK – including over 50% of our food (surely the one thing that even our backward little nation ought to be able to create without retooling and retraining). According to a recent documentary on containerisation, our greatest export in the UK is fresh air, as the metal containers leaving the country are, for the most part, floating back emptily to China to be filled up with more crap we don’t really need. Because we don’t really have any industry or exports, our national economy is entirely dependent on consumerism. If we all stopped buying things we didn’t need, the nation would probably go bankrupt. This is why economists are so scared of the words 'credit crunch' or, worse still, 'recession'. If the man or woman in the street don't feel it's safe to part with the cash in their pocket, our fragile economy might fracture completely.

Now, I’m not saying that the modern way is any better of worse. This is simply the way the world has progressed – and you cannot stop progress – but it does rather seem as if our progress as a species has stalled somewhat.

Clearly, as a species, we have a greater capacity than that which we are using. What is required is the guiding hand of the brightest minds that we have to bring us to the next level. The next steps our species should be taking are beyond the capabilities of individuals. A trip to Mars, and beyond, is in the hands of governments. These things are not so far beyond us. The first manned flight went all of 120 feet. There is an infinite source of energy out there, which we have the scientific understanding – if not the technology – to tap into. The most powerful source of energy we current have is an atomic explosion, which is less than 1% efficient. In other words, we are underachieving in a massive way.

Unhappily our governments are not interested in the advancement of the species and are just helping maintain a status quo and keep us addicted to our cars, alcohol, technology upgrades and aspirational desires that indicate us towards lifestyles that the taxes and duties they make us pay would not allow us to have.

Our governments pour tens of millions of pounds into things like hosting Formula One races, or billions of pounds into Olympic bids – knowing they will never recoup the costs outlayed and knowing that the facilities that they create will not actually be needed after the 3 week event is over, but doing it anyway because they wish to show that their nation is forward-thinking and a player on the world stage – whatever that is.

In between times, our governments in the western world spend our taxes on bombing the shit out of shepherds. This seems to be the international policy of Britain and the U.S. in the past 15 years – to be involved in an everywhere war, two countries or more at a time with no hope of defeating an enemy – but every possibility of letting off a few explosions to appease the boards of the conpanies that helped them get office.

Individually people are bright and resourceful, but collectively we are pretty thick, and what is worse, we are too busy monitoring what other people have and measuring our own happiness by the acquisition of stuff. It seems to be beyond many of us to accept that ownership of an iPhone 4 will not silence the howling void at the centre of our lives. None of the stuff we own will be coming with us when we peg it. To quote a crucified idiot, “what you got to lose? You come from nothing, you're going back to nothing. What have you lost? Nothing!”

My Wife Has Been Sketching

2011-02-05T11:32:00.000-08:00

On All My Heroes Being Dead

2011-01-30T09:15:00.000-08:00

It is a strange part of my mentality that many of the public figures that I admire the most are dead.

Because they are dead they are often represented in the media as, perhaps, greater exponents of their art than they would have been if they were still alive. This is probably the case with John Belushi, John Bonham, Gilles Villeneuve, John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix, all of whom were dead before I had heard of them.

Sometimes I come across people and grow to admire them enormously, only for them to swiftly end up dead. This was the case with Freddie Mercury and Bill Hicks and several others. When I do develop a very strong admiration for a living public figure I almost feel that I should write to them and say, “I’m terribly sorry, but I feel that I should warn you that I admire you a great deal, and that this therefore means that your life with be tragically foreshortened”.

This matter is complicated by the fact that I have been an amateur musician for about 22 years. I would say for a good 10 of those years I had aspirations to be a professional musician and, more than that, a rockstar. My view of how a rockstar should conduct themselves was sharpened by many years of listening to the aforementioned Bill Hicks; any performer who is mediocre or banal is not truly an artist and has no business lowering the standards for the rest of the human race.

A real artist should be entirely original in thought and action. They should act as a beacon for humankind as to the possibilities of unfettered imagination. They must exercise total quality control in their output. They should be loaded at all times and die a young and glorious death – indeed they have a civic duty to do so, so that the rest of the population who are unable to be artists can live vicariously through them.

Of course, the idea of a young death is written into the very fabric of artistic endeavour, and is by no means a new thing. It is the case that an early death means that the memory of the youthful, vibrant hero does not become tainted by more recent memory of the fat and bloated, cynical, money-grubbing later version of themselves. After all, when a young icon dies, the world is suddenly awash with images of them in their prime doing what they did best. In a nutshell, dying young preserves the icon in eternal youth before decay can set in.

If Paul McCartney had died in the mid-sixties (and there are many that will tell you that he did) we would now revere him and Lennon on equal terms, maybe even Macca slightly ahead, as he would have been gone before his girlie songwriting came to the fore and overshadowed the balls-out rocker he once was.

In contradistinction, as a lifelong fan of Freddie Mercury I often am deeply irritated by how Freddie is – in more recent years – held up as one of the greatest proponents of rock and being British (whatever that is), when he was vilified when alive and not considered (in the media, at least) to be anything special. Those of us who were fans knew him to be the best at what he did whilst he was alive, it’s just that the media weren’t prepared to admit it to his face and had to target him for regular character assassination for being gay (strange to remember this, as it was only 20 years ago, but this is a fact).

Another reason for this blip in my mentality set up is the fact that many of our standards about what constitutes a worthwhile life are formed when we are teenagers. Amongst teens, the noble death of an icon – preferably involving drugs or some destructive death - seems romantic. In my teenage years I definitely found dead rock stars and actors more appealing than those that were alive and well.

For some reason I formed the view that, as John Belushi had died at 33 (along with a few other notables), this was the best age to die at. I also made various daft assertions to the effect that, if I had not died by the time I reached 33, I would take my own life – something that disappointed a friend of mine when I turned 34, who apparently thought that assurances I made when I was barely pubescent would be legally binding.

In later years I came to realise that the number of rockstars who had died at 27 is quite incredible, and much more impressive; Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Kurt Cobain all shuffled off this mortal coil at 27, although there are, again, some that will tell you that at least three of that group were murdered.

So where does this leave the rest of us, and most importantly (I hear you all asking) what about me, Kev? I have always been a keen guitarist and have had instruments around me most of my life. I have played in bands, have written songs and recorded them; i.e. have basically had every opportunity to become successful – or at least – there has never been anything that you could say has stood in my way. The fact that the people listed above achieved everything they were ever going to achieve by the age of 27 is somewhat galling. However, I have long since made peace with the fact that I have never been that talented. I just enjoy having a bash about and playing some riffs and singing some songs. I could have released some bland, poppy type stuff of no real substance, but by the standards of the artists that I admire the most (and many of them are still alive, though no one would argue they are still doing their best work), I am just not in the same league. If I had achieved a measure of wealth and fame through doing anything less than stellar music, through not really being an artist, I would always have considered myself a bit of a fraud and would never have been truly happy – though the money would not go amiss, I will confess.

My ambition these days – such as I have any at all – is just to be as good as I can be at what I do for a living and as happy as I can be at home. At this point I just want to have as long a life as possible, live to enjoy a long and healthy (and well fucking earned) retirement. With a boat.

Admittedly, this means that I will inevitably deteriorate inexorably towards the grave, but, as Uncle Monty so rightly noted, “There can be no true beauty without decay”.

Pablo And Kimi Are Getting Comfortable With Each Other

2011-01-30T09:02:00.000-08:00

On The Minutes Of Meetings

2011-01-29T16:46:00.000-08:00

I chair a lot of meetings and have the dual role of minuting them. It is also the case that full written information of all of my professional activities are provided to another group of professionals who base a large part of what they do on what it is I write and disseminate.

I often find that the minutes I produce miss a great deal of what was said - typically the bits that I said, since I was too busy saying what I said to write it down - typically because what I say causes everyone present to talk for several minutes about the many different ways in which I am wrong, and I am too busy trying to capture their responses.

I often am so busy writing down what someone says that I forget to record who it was that said it. In meetings some people are particularly helpful in raising points and asking questions, leading to a brainstorming session and the formation of a plan. Typically what gets recorded is not the discussion, but the plan and the action point. This can mean that, from reading the minutes alone, you could conclude that some people's attendance at the meeting was pointless, as the records do not show them contributing at all.

I also find that I am more mindful of being present to the conversation happening in the room than the scribbling and want to contribute more to the formulation of plans than the documenting of them. My other failing in this area is that I tend not to write down the things that people say that are obvious or have been recorded elsewhere, since there is no value in capturing this information. This means that the minutes show a discussion on one matter apparently lurching into something completely unconnected. Reading the minutes would give the appearance of a meeting attended entirely by people with no attention spans. It is redolent of that documentary about the narcolepsy society who have to have more than one person writing the minutes, as they all inevitably fall asleep repeatedly.

It is also the case that creative and inspired people very rarely think or discuss matters in the compartmentalised way that agendas ask them to. Quite simply, life is not divided up into separate subjects in that way, and an holistic approach dictates that all areas will overlap.

The net result of which is that the minutes I produce seem to leap about in a style such as the following:

4 Finances

Michael said that £110 a week was not proving sufficient.
Michael noted that the vehicle was not going to be ready in time for the holiday, as there were insufficient funds to pay for its repair.

5 House

There is not enough clearance under the car port for the vehicle. The cost of raising the car port would be £1000.
The roof of the house requires repair

6 Vehicle

Valerie noted that there is insufficient money to pay for the parts needed for the vehicle.
If the money is spent on the vehicle or raising the carport, there will not be enough money to pay for repairs to the house.

What inevitably ends up happening is that the minutes I distribute contain all the pertinent matters and agreements that were discussed, but are not a verbatim representation of what was actually said, as I move information about for the sake of clarity. This often means that the minutes of meeting may actually bare comparatively little relation to what it was that was actually said.

Whenever I distribute minutes following a meeting, I am always put in mind of a quote from Sir Humphrey Appleby on the subject of minutes:

"It is characteristic of all committee discussions and decisions that every member has a vivid recollection of them and that every member’s recollection of them differs violently from every other member’s recollection. Consequently, we accept the convention that the official decisions are those and only those which have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, from which it emerges with an elegant inevitability that any decision which has been officially reached will have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials and any decision which is not recorded in the minutes has not been officially reached even if one or more members believe they can recollect it, so in this particular case, if the decision had been officially reached it would have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, and it isn’t so it wasn’t."

La Lecture de la Lettre

2011-01-29T15:46:00.000-08:00

This is La Lecture de la Lettre (Reading The Letter) by Pablo Picasso.

Some friends and I went to Paris in 1997 to visit various galleries; Musée Rodin, Musée d'Orsay, Centre Pompidou, Musée Picasso and others. Of these Musée Picasso was by far my favourite, and I learned that everything I thought I knew about Picasso was largely wrong and that he was far more versatile than I knew.

Picasso has ever since been my favourite artist, and La Lecture de la Lettre my favourite of his works.

On Wanting To Be A Private Detective

2011-01-22T10:38:00.000-08:00

I did recently did a small amount of snooping work through my job. Over a couple of days, I staked out a building to see if someone I pay a pretty decent salary to went to work on a particular day (She did not) and also, having had a tip off of an address, I knocked on the door of someone known to us – but who does not know me – to see whether he was living where we thought he was, and also to make a judgement as to whether or not he was taking drugs. To do this latter bit of snooping effectively, I created a fake backstory for myself, with props, and assumed a particular manner so that I could ask him a few questions and not arouse his suspicion.

Both events made for interesting bits of work and they rekindled the vague latent yearning to be a private detective that a lifetime of watching poor quality television and third-rate movies has instilled in me.

There are a few different types of private dicks on TV, in the movies and in literature. Ideally, I would want to be a holistic detective in the Dirk Gently area, investigating the fundamental interconnectedness of all things – hopefully involving anomalous events, ghosts, possession, the generally inexplicable and also a bit of time travel. This is probably not very realistic, unfortunately, as life is rarely like that, if at all; as even Dirk himself discovered, spending most of his working life looking for lost cats or not working at all. Still, I like Dirk's style; following random people who look like they know where they're going leads him to where he needs to be, even if he doesn't know it.

Dirk's philosophy is that he could question anyone he encounters and - if only he knew what to ask them - could ascertain all the details he needs to solve his case, get paid for once and save the universe, or at the very least the Earth.

If it were not possible to be an holistic detective, I would settle for being the sort of hard-boiled, ex-cop type of private detective of film noir tradition. The kind of guy who is always in a mackintosh and fedora.

The kind of guy whose pursuit of villains usually end up in fairgrounds or under a pier, whose intake of coffee and chilli dogs is truly heroic and one of whose ex-wives will invariably become involved in the case – most likely in a sleazy motel with flashing neon signs.

Obviously to fully inhabit this character it would be necessary to have an ulcer and a dusty office in the less salubrious part of town. This office would contain a beaten up desk, empty scotch bottles, venetian blinds, at least one cheap dame and a big ceiling fan.

There is a third kind of private detective. The techy kind, with all the neat listening devices and hidden cameras, who takes on a seemingly innocuous enough job of looking for a missing person and ends up uncovering a vast conspiracy and bringing down a corrupt local dignitary.

Being this guy could be pretty neat, except that in the movies this guy usually ends up seeing his house explode with his wife in it, having his daughter kidnapped and generally gets captured himself, undergoing vaguely homoerotic electrical torture by some deeply camp, ex-special forces baddie, and I can basically live without that.

Clearly I would need a Watson – a Boswell to follow me about saying, “Good lord, that is clever” or “We’ve only got 48 hours to find the kidnapped girl and catch the heroin dealers” or simply "Nice work" when I catch a baddie. He wouldn't really serve any role except to say the above and maybe carry the handcuffs. Maybe he could read 'em their rights or say, "You just don't get it, do ya? We can talk about this here, or we can talk about this downtown" to hoods. Maybe his wife and kids could be blown up instead of mine, causing him to drink too much and try and take down the corrupt Mayor alone and get killed in the process. I could then go on a revenge mission. In a dirty vest. Hanging onto the bit on the bottom bit of a helicopter, chasing henchmen up fire escapes and across the rooftops of houses, or commandeering an oversteering car and driving it up and down the hills of San Francisco (though, at a pinch, the hills of Tunbridge Wells would suffice).

Naturally, I’d have broadly bad relationships with the local police, who’d have little patience for my screwball antics, but would earn their grudging respect when the Mayor turns out to be an evil drug overlord. Or something.

I’d have to comply with a pretty stringent daily regimen of upper limb exercises to build strength for all the swinging on fire escapes and hanging onto helicopters I’d be doing.

Presumably I’d have to buy some dentist’s tools for jimmying locks, or whatever it is they use.

Unfortunately, the only private detective I have ever met spent all of his time sitting around in cars photographing people having affairs, so maybe it’s not as glamorous as the movies make out.

(It is worth saying here that the last time I mentioned on twitter that I had known a private detective, I attracted the attention of private dicks who asked me in a friendly manner who I had known in what area. When I told them who and where, I was pretty swiftly sent the @Name of the person in question, who naturally did not remember me. They all talk to each other, you see, and get together once in a while to show off their cameras hidden in neckties, share tips on crawling through air conditioning vents and probably play daisy chain games underneath their dirty rainmacs).

On The Unnerving Passage Of Time.

2011-01-20T13:01:00.000-08:00

I recently have realised just hold much older I am getting – naturally, I don’t feel this way from moment to moment. It’s not something I am doing on purpose, but something that is happening to me due to the unnerving passage of time. All those passing moments are the culprits.

How much time has passed was made apparent watching Pulp Fiction on TV last night. The continuity announcer described it as a classic – which is assuredly is – but it seemed a strange description. I looked up what year the movie came out. I was not surprised to read that it came out in 1994 – because I still consider the mid-nineties to be modern times. What was disturbing was to realise that 1994 was seventeen years ago. Some of you on twitter were not even born then. Fuck, how I hate you.

Watching Pulp Fiction now – in 2011 – would be the equivalent of someone in 1981 watching the Mary Poppins (1964). Hold on a minute! That can’t be right! Sorry, fella, it is.

The reason I think of the mid-nineties as modern times is that I was an adult in the mid-nineties – physically at least, although in retrospect I was still barely functioning as a teenager. Nonetheless I had left school and college, and was in my first job.

When I am reading about ‘old’ movies, novels or music, I tend to measure time in relation to the time of my birth and also to the time of the Beatles. I tend to think of Bohemian Rhapsody (1975 – the year of my birth) as being relatively modern music, as it was recorded in a multi-track way, as all modern recordings are, albeit that they would most likely be recorded digitally now (and sonically poorer for it, in my view). Bohemian Rhapsody even had a video that can still be seen on TV fairly regularly. I suppose it is reasonable enough that any individual should think of the year of their birth as modern times.

10 years before Bohemian Rhapsody the Beatles were recording the Help! album, standing around playing the songs live in the studio for the benefit of 4 track tape machines. In my mind, the mid-sixties were a long time ago. Wasn’t everything in black and white then? However, obviously the difference between Help! and Bohemian Rhapsody is only 10 years. It seems like it should be more, somehow. Everything about the music business seemed to change so much in those intervening years.

10 years after Bohemian Rhapsody was Live Aid. Very much a modern event, in my view, but only 20 years after Help! and 26 years ago at the time of writing this blog. Fuck off! Live Aid was never 26 years ago! Stop doing this to me!

Go back 20 years before Help! and it was 1945. Or, put another way, I have been alive for a period greater than the interval between the end of World War II and my birth. Holy fucking shit! That can’t be right, can it? Bollocks, it is! The second world war is clearly ancient history. The people in those days acted and talked like they had pickles up their arseholes. They called each other ‘perishers’ and never saw bananas, or something. They have so little in common with us, they may as well be a different species. It won’t be many more years before everyone that can remember World War II is dead and gone. Oh my God! Oh my God! This is not fucking funny!

There is a broader implication to all of this. I believe it is the case that the world around us (in the West) has changed so little in recent decades that the passage of time has largely become irrelevant, except for the fact that we are all individually ageing and technology is becoming smarter – though, in the case of cars, not necessarily any more useful. In many ways it still is the Sixties – that most celebrated of decades and source of constant annoyance for those of us that were not born, but have to hear about how we missed out. I don’t even think this is true. We still have a younger person orientated culture, still have easily available birth control, rock music, drugs.

It could also be said that the difference between the late seventies and the present day is practically an illusion and irrelevant because – in terms of rock music – the intervening years were a waste of time and effort anyway. Yes, technology has advanced and we have ever-changing new formats for our albums, but we’re all still basically listening to A Night At The Opera.

Revmoon Star Wars Figure

2011-01-16T11:06:00.000-08:00

Pablo

2011-01-09T11:32:00.000-08:00

Bitey Puppy

2011-01-03T15:57:00.000-08:00

Pablo Climbs The Stairs

2010-12-26T11:36:00.000-08:00

Possibly The Cutest Thing I Have Ever Seen

2010-12-21T11:51:00.000-08:00

The Short Life and Fast Times of Lumbo (Part One)

2010-11-16T12:23:00.001-08:00

Our story starts on Saturday 8th October 2005. My wife, our little girl and I were sitting in a café having an early lunch. My wife had been working on me to get a dog for some time (I have a theory that women instinctively acquire dogs when they have children to protect the homestead). I had persistently said that we should not buy a dog, that we were all out of the house everyday and that we did not have time to walk a dog. “I suppose you’re right”, my wife – the expert manipulator – said, “Shall we just go to the rescue kennels and look anyway?” Having no other activities planned that day I agreed, not thinking that D (then 4-years-old) and I would naturally identify with a dog locked in a cage and want to bring one home.

Which is precisely what happened. Of the dogs at the rescue centre that day, one particularly took my eye. He looked young and healthy and had an interesting, character filled face. His name was Columbo – presumably because of his scruffy coat – and he was clearly of indeterminate breed, which to me is always a bonus in a dog. Even better, he was a vast lad – more like a bear than a dog – with a deep and booming bark. They told us that he had been at the rescue centre for 3 weeks and was 9 months old.

We were allowed to walk him around the grounds for a few minutes and then decided that we would take him home. The rescue centre – I won’t name it here – made no particular enquiries of us as to whether we had owned dogs before, had the time to look after one or even had a back garden. Fortunately, my wife and I have had several dogs and had a pretty good idea what we were doing and what we were getting into. Or at least, we thought we did.

On the way back from the rescue centre, I took this picture of him and me on my phone.

Most impressively when we got home our cat, Donut returned to the house to find this enormous dog in the living room. The dog leapt up and bounded over to the cat who promptly turned his back and started grooming himself. Columbo stopped dead in his tracks, aghast that this cat was so not scared of him that it would turn its back in this way. Donut had the psychological edge from then on (although it helped that he spent a good 15 minutes biting Columbo in various places when he was heavily drugged up following an X-Ray not long after he came to live with us).

Columbo was very much underweight and in poor condition when we got him. His claws were overly long and his fur was full of dreadlocks on his underside and between the pads on his paws. He also had fleas. It was quickly apparent that he had been underfed and underwalked.

It was also quickly apparent why he had been abandoned at the rescue centre. He was – and always remained – a deeply anxious dog. We surmised that he was part Gordon Setter – he had the looks of this breed – and part German Shepherd. Gordon Setter’s are intensely loyal dogs, who are slow to mature, if they ever do. In my view, it was this loyalty that manifested itself as an overwhelming separation anxiety when he was apart from us – particularly me. For the whole of his life he would always bark constantly – in the most pathetic tone – if left outside a shop.

He would follow me everywhere I went in the house, even if I went between the same two rooms endlessly. Much worse, this separation anxiety was very strong when he was left alone in the house. At the time we bought him, I was at university, D was at school and my wife was working full time. Whilst we did whatever we could to walk him before we went out in the mornings and allow him to open his bowels, we would always come home to chronic soiling throughout the house. He would shit all over the floor and furnishings in our loft bedroom until he was only passing diarrhoea. He would urinate in multiple places around the house as well – not withstanding the fact that in the early weeks he would force his way out through the terrier-sized dogflap in the back door. He was always in the garden when we came home (sometimes in next door’s garden), but did not toilet in the garden. Because of this, and the fact that he could easily escape, I replaced the dogflap with a smaller catflap and came home the next day to find that he had smashed the thing out of its hole and chewed up the wood around the flap, necessitating me lining the hole with aluminium.

He would also take out his agitation on various things around the house – destroying items that we used. I had a particular textbook that I had been using for several days whilst writing an assignment. I left it at the house one day and came home to find he had destroyed it. A particular pair of trainers that I wore practically everyday were destroyed on the one occasion that I wore dress shoes to university to do a presentation. My wife bought a bag of potting compost for the garden and left it in the basement room. On her return she found that Columbo had attacked the bag in a frenzied way, evidently thrashing his head from side to side whilst biting it. Potting compost was found inside the light fittings and on top of picture frames in that room.

We quickly learned to close the internal doors when we went out to stop him from soiling on our beds. Unfortunately the loft bedroom does not have a door, so he could not be kept out of his self-chosen inside toilet.

On one occasion the bathroom door had been left only partially closed. I came home to find the house empty, but could hear him barking upstairs. Upon going into the bathroom I found that he and the cat had both been shut in there (presumably the cat had sauntered in and the dog had followed him, backed up again and shut the bathroom door with his backside). All of the shelves in the bathroom had been knocked down and the shower curtain and pole pulled to the ground. The cat was sitting in the bath amongst the shower curtain and various bottles looking thoroughly pissed off. The dog had spent his time tearing up the linoleum on the floor and attempting to chew his way through the door, in which effort he had got impressively far.

Because he was so underweight, Columbo was always turn out all the bins in the house whilst we were out would also always eat anything that was even remotely a foodstuff.

A quiche that was defrosting once disappeared. I found its chewed tin foil dish in various turds that I picked up over the next couple of days. He got into the cupboard where his biscuits were kept and ate about 10 kilos of them. I came home to find him largely immobile from this experience and looking like a sausage dog on stilts – so rotund did it make him. He was desperately keen to eat any carbohydrates that were around. On one occasion we went to the supermarket and returned to the house, bringing in the carrier bags in multiple trips. At the end of putting the shopping away we found the torn packet of a loaf of sliced bread. Columbo had eaten an entire loaf of bread in the very few seconds that he had been alone in the kitchen with the food.

He would compulsively drink all of the water that was left out for him, as if he felt that he had better drink all he could now because there may not be any water later on. On one occasion he destroyed the kitchen water filter to get at the water within. It was tempting to not leave him with too much water, as he would drink it and piss all over the house, but we felt that he needed to learn to moderate his intake. We felt – and still feel – that this particular compulsive behaviour was probably caused by his previous owners limiting his water supply, or removing it completely, to stop him from pissing everywhere, probably leaving him thirsty and unhappy and fearful that he may not have all the water he needed in future.

We sought widespread advice as to what we could do to calm him. We were sold a product that plugged into a power point in the house and gave off an appeasing pheromone that was meant to remind him of the calming presence of his mother. We spent many hours outside the house, returning spontaneously and going out again for unpredictable lengths of time so that he would become accustomed to us coming and going. It must be said that for as long as he lived he could never bear to be left alone in the house and never did truly get used to it. Whilst you are accustomed to a dog being pleased to see you, Columbo’s response to you coming home was always overwhelmingly powerful. He could easily knock you to the ground in the early days and if he did, you better roll into a ball, cover your face and get up again as quickly as possible or you would be leapt upon with all four heavy paws, scratched and licked and nibbled.

The overriding advice we were given from all quarters was that it would just take time for him to get used to the things around him. I guess an aspect of dog training is the ruling out of behaviours. The dog behaves as his instincts tell him and the master must quickly and clearly tell him what is not acceptable. Once corrected, Columbo rarely behaved inappropriately in the same way twice. This was evidenced by the fact that when I finally caught him pissing in the house and gave him a smack; he never soiled in the house again. The difficultly is that dogs apparently have a window of only a few seconds within which they can associate their actions with your reactions to them.

Gradually, bit-by-bit, Columbo became used to the world around him and the expectations of how he should behave. He began to become a valued member of the family. His loving nature endeared him to everyone who met him and his overwhelming loyalty and love for us outweighed the ever decreasing downsides.

He would be very protective of D, getting between she and I when we were playfighting and giving me hang-dog looks, imploring me to stop or he’d have to defend her. He would treat D very gently and happily follow her commands, as he knew that she would toss him the crusts from her breakfast toast each day. D once let our friend John into the house whilst I was in the shower. I overheard the barking and came downstairs to find that Columbo had cornered John by the front door and was leaving John in no doubt as to what the consequences would be if he tried anything funny.

He was also just great fun to be around. Dogs are just funny, in my view, and watching one perform tricks, kick at the air with its back leg when you scratch its tummy or thrash through woodlands after squirrels just puts a huge smile on my face. It was a pleasure to spend time with him, and his happiness when you came home was heart-warming, even better, his reaction once you had checked the whole house for soiling and found none was a delight.

His love of the great outdoors complemented my own and I never found it too much of a hardship to go out with him, even on dark and rainy winter evenings. He made himself a place in our hearts, protected our house whilst we were out and inspired friends to get their own dogs, who he would go for walks with and happily smash them into the ground in his overbearing and friendly way.

The Short Life and Fast Times of Lumbo (Part Two)

2010-11-03T10:48:00.001-07:00

It was my father who first suggested shortening Columbo’s name to Lumbo. I loved this suggestion because it was a unique name that seemed to suit his loving, lumbering character and strength.

When we walked Lumbo he always seemed intent on pulling your shoulder joint apart. Yet when we let him off the lead in the early days he just walked at our sides and wouldn’t run off any of the profound energy that was causing him to be so frantic when he was left alone.

Happily, my sister’s dog, Sadie, taught him to get into the woods and find scents. This especially delighted me because Sadie had learned this way of being from my last dog, Dood. – a creature of limitless capacity and absolute self-belief. Whilst Lumbo had never met Dood, I was very pleased that he had, in turn, learned these behaviours from Dood, and later was able to pass them onto my brother’s dog Jaybles.

Once a dog has learned this way of being, they never look back and always seem to self-actualise into a happier and more confident creature, more aware of their capacities and more at peace with their position in their pack.

The bond between a dog and the person that takes him out – who puts in the mileage and covers the ground with him – is unbreakable. By investing many hours of trust in him Lumbo learned to be trustworthy and controllable off the lead. Being Lumbo, of course, he couldn’t just have a good run about, chase a few rabbits and come home with the edge nicely taken off him. Oh no. Lumbo would have to totally overdo it and push the envelope to the point of being slightly beyond control and into the realm of proper danger.

On one occasion I was walking him in the dark in the woods near my house. He ran over in my direction and cocked his leg over a post and then suddenly was whipping around backwards frantically in a circle in the most disturbing way. I pulled my iPod plugs out of my ears to hear that he was rending the air with piercing shrieks. I grabbed hold of him to find that his right eye was filled with blood. We went straight to the vets where it became clear that he had pierced his cornea – I think on some barbed wire. He was kept in overnight and it was touch and go as to whether the eye would become infected and he would lose it.

Dogs have two eyelids, an inner and an outer. Lumbo’s inner eyelid was stitched closed and the eye was allowed to heal itself. He was sent home looking like a zombie pooch crossed with a lampshade, as he was fitted with a protective plastic cone to stop him from scratching away at his eye. Being Lumbo, he could not be left alone during the fortnight he was healing, as he was running at various surfaces and trying to smash the protective cone in an attempt to get it off. Had he succeeded, I have no doubt that he would have gone on to scratch at his eye until the stitch was removed and the itch was relieved. He probably would have caused the infection that we were trying to avoid and lost the eye. I had to strengthen the cone and my brother and mother both kindly looked after him for me in that fortnight and stopped the worst from happening.

My relief when the stitch was removed and simple tests revealed that he could still see was palpable. Happily the eye healed very well, albeit that a small milky dot forever remained in the centre of his eye. Less happily, I was charged £100 by the vet for the emergency consultation, and left the process with a final vets bill for £300.

Nor was this the last time that such costs were incurred by this endlessly clumsy hound. Whilst chasing sticks thrown for him, Lumbo dislocated – or at least partially subluxed – his back left leg. By putting this leg through a passive range of movement I was able to return it to it’s joint and we finished the walk. However, Lumbo was very stiff the next day and was finding it hard to get up, so another trip to the vet was necessary. The vet advised that an X-ray was needed, and this necessitated a general anaesthetic as a dog cannot be made to lie still on its back for the X-ray to be taken.

The vet then told me that Lumbo was developing osteoarthritis in his hips, and that this would ultimately cause him problems. I was advised to not throw sticks for him. or to otherwise cause him to accelerate in bursts. The vet suggested I consider walking Lumbo on the lead or – unbelievably – consider only exercising him through expensive hydrotherapy sessions, thereby condemning me to an empty wallet and the perpetual smell of a wet dog.

During another walk Lumbo disappeared in an enormous nearby woodland. He was gone so long that I was convinced that he had knocked himself out by running into a tree (something my last dog did) or was in a farm field attacking livestock. Frantically searching through the woods, I finally burst out of the trees onto the A227 to find traffic queued in both directions and Lumbo about to be put into the back of a police car. Unfortunately at that time Lumbo did not have an tag on his collar with phone numbers on it (though he had a chip in the back of his neck) so the police could not ring me. Had I arrived 5 minutes later the police would have gone and taken him to a kennels, who would have checked him for a chip (one hopes) and contacted me, but no doubt charged me for kennelling him over that (bank holiday) weekend. I would not have known what had happened and would probably have continued to wander around the woods miserably until nightfall and then gone home, hoping against hope that someone would find him.

The police told me that when they had arrived Lumbo was wandering back and forth across this 60mph stretch of road and that traffic was stacked up in both directions. Happily, Lumbo never let himself get too far from me in the woods again.

In relatively recent times a long Sunday walk with Lumbo and my brother and his dog resulted in the dewclaw on Lumbo’s right front leg being busted off and for him to pump out a great deal of claret. This necessitated another out-of-hours consultation at the vets, a small operation to remove the stump of the claw and stave off infection and a vets bill for £250. Even when finances have been particularly tight for us, I have always considered dog insurance to be highly prudent and have made sure that Lumbo’s insurance was fully paid up.

I have always said of Lumbo that there were no small gestures. If he was happy, he would overwhelm you with it. If he was anxious, he would be sick with misery. He he got burrs in his coat, he would be festooned from head to tail.

If he defended himself by fighting back when another dog attacked him, the ground would shake. When he was good, he was very, very good. When he was bad, he would come close to being carted off by the police.

Over the years that he lived with us, Lumbo’s edge gradually dulled and his gestures started to become less grand. He became a trustworthy and reliable dog. Whilst you knew that he might chew the post half the time – and it is hard to convince a dog that the man who comes everyday, rattles the letterbox, but is never let into the house is anything but an enemy – the house was secure whilst he was in it. No burglar in the world would be dumb enough to burgle the house with a grizzly bear-like dog inside.

He would still take out his anxiety on objects, but he would restrict himself to destroying only the things that you gave him. If you bought him a toy, he would instantly begin chewing it into the smallest possible pieces.

But, happily, Lumbo would sit at our feet and would wait patiently for us to take him for a walk. He rarely stole any food - although my sister did observe him carefully eating a small amount - so that I would not notice - of his biscuits from an open sack. He knew his place in the household and was incredibly tolerant of the noise of children and the presence of our somewhat disturbed cat.

Lumbo, naturally, thought of our little family as his pack and was comforted by his place in the hierarchy. As before, he was beside himself when we came home, but, for the most part, could be trusted whilst we were out. He loved the affection that he got from his mistress and would be replete with smug satisfaction if she were to invite him onto the sofa with her.

Best of all, the simple, unquestioning bond that he and I shared was a constant delight to me. He knew the names of the people in the family and could be instructed to shake the water off his coat in the front garden with a simple command of, “shake”. How can you not fall in love with a creature who is consumed with joy when he sees you, who gazes at you as if you were a god and who would happily lay down his life to see you safe?

All of the time and effort spent nurturing him in the early days began to pay off. It took a long time for Lumbo to mature, but it was very pleasant when he did.

Late this summer I took Lumbo to our company barbecue at my boss’s house. I couldn’t have done this even a year ago, as Lumbo would surely have done something to embarrass me. Either through crapping next to the barbecue or disappearing for a few moments and then coming back with a dead rabbit and dropping it at the feet of some of my colleagues' children. As it was, he behaved impeccably all day and won the hearts of everyone there. I understood from colleagues over the next few days that several of their kids had gone home asking their parents if they could get a dog.

It seemed as if all of the years of hard work were finally paying off and all of us, Lumbo included, were now going to benefit from the slower, more relaxed middle -aged years that were coming next.

The Short Life and Fast Times of Lumbo (Part Three)

2010-11-03T10:44:00.000-07:00

Our story ends of Tuesday 2nd November 2010

I got home from work at about 5pm and went straight out with Lumbo, walking to a wood which is less than half a mile from my house. It being November it was already dark. Upon arriving at the track that leads to the woods I let Lumbo off the lead as usual and we walked together up the track. Lumbo stopped to have a crap and then jogged up the hill to catch up with me.

He caught up with me at the point where the track narrows, becomes a footpath and crosses the railway line. He suddenly dropped to the ground.

As I was wearing my iPod and it was dark, I was momentarily unsure of where he was or what was happening. Once I saw that he was lying down, I pulled the plugs out of my ears to hear that he was shrieking with pain.

Lumbo was on his side, but partially rolling onto his back. He was biting at the air angrily and thrashing about.

It is difficult for me to exactly remember the chain of events; partly because things happened so quickly in the dark but also, I believe, because my psyche is protecting me from the full memory of events. I cannot tell you how long it took, but think it was less thirty seconds.

My first thought was that Lumbo had just hurt himself again in some clumsy way. He was lying next to a chain link fence and I thought that maybe he had become snagged in some stray part of the fence. I suppose I also imagined that he could have hurt himself in some other way. I knew that the fence was not electrified, but there are power lines in that area. Without properly forming thoughts, I wondered whether his behaviour was because he was getting an electric shock.

Having seen Lumbo become overwhelmed on many occasions and having seen him injure himself several times, I knew full well that he could not be de-escalated under these circumstances. I was partly thinking that he needed to take a minute and he would calm down. I do remember that I was talking to him throughout, calling his name and trying to get his attention.

I then saw that this was not the case because he stopped moving. I crouched down beside him and spoke to him again. I put a hand out to touch him and he suddenly moved again, snapping his teeth. He then made a final gasping sound and then lay still.

I rang my wife on my mobile. I told her that Lumbo was hurt and that she had to come and get us. I then rang the vets and told them we were coming in as an emergency.

I then noticed that Lumbo’s tongue was very grey, which I took to mean that there was no circulation.

I picked Lumbo up. He was totally limp and his head hung down in an uncontrolled way. I walked back down the track to car park where the track starts. I was puffing and blowing by the time I got there, as Lumbo weighed around 40kg. As I walked I do remember that I was telling Lumbo he was a good boy. When I reached the end of the track my wife had already arrived with D in the car. I told her that I thought Lumbo was probably dead. She opened the back door of the car for me and I got in with Lumbo on my lap. We drove straight to the vets – a distance of less the ¾ of a mile – and, upon arriving we were shown straight into a clinic room where I put Lumbo down gently on the clinic table.

Whilst I am unclear as to how long events took, I am positive that Lumbo was lying on the clinic table within 4-5 minutes of collapsing.

A Veterinary Assistant was present before the senior Vet came in. The assistant put a stethoscope on Lumbo’s chest. She seemed reluctant to say anything – perhaps because she was too junior. I asked if Lumbo was breathing. She said that he was not. I asked if his heart was beating. She said that it was not.

The vet came in after a few seconds. I had met this vet before, and in fact he had put our pet rabbit to sleep last year. He also listened to Lumbo’s chest and checked his airway. He said that there was no heartbeat. I said, "So he’s gone? He’s dead?” The vet confirmed this.

The vet said that he thought that Lumbo had most likely had a heart attack.

He said that he understood that you had two minutes after a heart attack to take action to save the life. I told him how long it had been since the collapse. He said that we had got to them quicker than most people would have done.

At this point it is worth reflecting on possible other scenarios that could have occurred.

We could not have got to the vets any faster than we had.

Had I been in the car driving him somewhere and been passing the vets when he had his heart attack, I could not have got him there within 2 minutes. I would have realised that something was wrong and stopped the car. I would have seen that something was badly wrong and gone to the vets. This all would have taken time.

I could easily have gone out without my mobile phone and I would not have been able to call for help.

The heart attack could have happened on another day walking somewhere else, and we could easily have been 3 miles or more from the car.

Lumbo could have been swimming in one of the many local lakes or the river when the heart attack happened. Obviously I would have had to go into the water after him and have dragged him out.

My wife may not have answered the phone when I called.

Lumbo could have been out with someone other than me at the time of the heart attack. My brother has very often walked Lumbo for me, and, indeed has looked after him many times when we have gone on holiday. I am very grateful that this didn’t happen.

There are deer in the woods where we were walking and on many occasions Lumbo has chased them – running off as hard and fast as he could and disappearing into the vast woodland for several minutes. If he had sustained a heart attack on one of those occasions he could easily have been half a mile from me in an unknown direction. I would not have known where he was under those circumstances and it would have been a long time before I was sure that there was something wrong. I may never even have found his body, such is the size of the woods and the variety of places he could have ended up. I’m sure I would have stayed in the woods all night calling for him, though, and would probably have spent several days believing that he might still be alive, but perhaps having suffered a concussion or a broken bone. I would struggle to think of a more miserable set of circumstances to endure than this scenario!

As it was, we reacted as fast as reasonably possible, and it was not fast enough. I believe that Lumbo could have had his heart attack in the vets and probably still died. Whilst they obviously do have ventilators and other equipment, they are for animals undergoing elective surgery and not for emergencies. The simple fact of the matter is that vets are not set up to be Accident & Emergency units.

And if it had been possible to conduct some form of CPR on him and for Lumbo to have survived, would that have been any better? I am inclined to think not. I am sure we would thereafter have had to stop walking him in the way that he loved – free hunting in the woods – and he would have been very unhappy about this, as would I. In any case he would have had a limited life expectancy from that time on.

As it was, it was probably for the best that Lumbo passed as quickly as possible, alone with me. He didn’t have the indignity of passing with her peers there or when out with someone other than me. I was his master and it was up to me to be there with him when it happened.

They asked us if we wanted his ashes. We said that this wasn’t necessary. The vets said how sorry they were – Lumbo was well-known to the vets, as they had met him many times and he was a very personable dog – and we left to go home without him. He was less than 6 years old.

The next morning, in the daylight, I returned to the woods to see if there was any more information I could glean. I wanted to find the crap he had passed to see if there was blood in it or if there was anything at the point where he died. I could see nothing – just the signs of a disturbance in the earth where he had died. I broke down a little and then went to walk away – I had to get to work – when I heard the sound of a joyous bark carried on the wind from the woods. Every dog owner knows their dog’s voice, and this sounded just like Lumbo if he were barking happily at a squirrel up a tree in the woods. I stopped in my tracks and the barking stopped. I started to walk away again and the barking restarted, so I stopped again. “I’ve got to go. I love you. Be good” I said. Three big barks, blown on the wind, drifted down to me. Then only silence.

This is the last photo taken of Lumbo.

On Making Choices

2010-10-31T11:14:00.000-07:00

As we all know, every time a decision is made the universe splits in two and both possible decisions are played out. If you’re anything like me – slightly detached from reality – you’ll actually find this comforting, since it means that you actually don’t have to agonise about the decisions you make or the decisions that are made for you. Didn’t get the job? Alternate universe you did. Mac or PC?

Just make any snap choice, alternate universe you will test the other one. Married the wrong person? Alternate universe you made the right choice and is balls deep in her every night.

Of course, where more than one choice is offered, another universe containing another you has to be called into existence to play each possibility out. The important thing to remember is that the alternate universe yous probably aren’t especially enamoured with their choices either and probably think that you make better choices than you. That’s because the alternative universe yous are also stupid. Maybe there’s an alternate universe where you don’t suck, at least some of the time. This is probably unlikely.

With all these universes being constantly called into existence, there is obviously a need for material to build them from. All matter is energy, yes, but you can’t make or destroy energy; the material has to come from somewhere.

It may interest you to know that the material these alternate universes are made of comes from all the biros, packets of rizlas, stamps, teaspoons, clipper lighters, odd socks, £5 notes and copies The Wasp Factory that we have all lost down the years.

This is why we have all misplaced the vast majority of the biros and stamps that we have ever bought; why we are given numerous £5 notes but can’t find them when we go to the shop for milk; why we put a clipper lighter down in our lap and then never see it again.

It is also the case that vast numbers of people are sometimes called into existence. There are 6.7 billion people in the world in total, but if you use the Northern Line on at 8am on a Monday morning you will see at least twice that many people just queuing in front of you.

Using the M25 on a Friday evening? More people than have ever existed will be looking to use the same piece of road as you (and at least 6.7 billion of them will be those wankers that keep changing lanes and slow the whole business down for everyone).

To give another example, no one you have ever met has ever voted Conservative, yet they are in power once again.

It must be the case, therefore, that these parallel universes overlap at times and that their separateness is an illusion. Evidently tens of millions of people are able to cross the division at will purely for the sake of making us late, or for giving Kenneth Clarke another shot at being in the cabinet.

Maybe there’s even a parallel universe where a political party that actually represents the views of the people is elected and doesn’t then turn out to be a bunch of warmongering fucks with little idea of economics.

If only we knew how to, we could cross into alternative universes and inflict a communist government on them. That would show them. You could also go and find the you that picked 2, 22, 32, 33, 37 and 45 on last night's Lotto and get him to buy you some socks.

Camping Top Trumps

2010-10-27T10:22:00.000-07:00

Not so very long ago I created a set of Top Trumps cards based on the very large group of us that go away camping together. This group consists of my own little family, my sisters' families, my brother and a few other families that we go away with.

We decided that the categories for the cards should be based on the fundamentals of successful camping in large groups - how consistently a camper trips over guy ropes, how grumpy they are, how many people in their immediate family, how practical they are on a camping holiday, how much noise they make and how good they are at frisbee. The highest score wins in each category.

I have included a handful of the cards here.

Cards reproduced without the permission of those people that are in them, but with the permission of the person who created them, which was me.

Ginger Lib

2010-10-26T13:04:00.000-07:00

I am ginger. Frankly, I am sick of your shit about it. Your fucking racist shit. Being ginger is the consequence of particular genetics, like being blonde, being short or tall, or being black.

You wouldn’t rip on someone for being black – unless you are an ancient, idiotic, pathetic bastard – so how come you’re allowed to rip on us jinnas?

As a matter of fact, only 1% to 2% of the population of the planet is ginger. Not only are we an ethnic group, we are an ethnic minority.

There are great things about being ginger. One of them is that we don’t sweat. This means that we don’t fucking stink on a hot Tube train, unlike you, you fucking stinking racist pigs.

Then you say that we have short tempers. Is it any wonder with your xenophobia all around us? If you say we have short tempers again we’re gonna stab you in the eyes. That's right, motherfuckers, the ginger militia is coming to get you. Our identities are secret, but we know where you are, and we're going to pelt you to death with Duracell batteries.

I am also half Welsh.

On Dreaming

2010-10-25T13:25:00.000-07:00

I like sleeping. I like dreaming. I like the free association of my mind when I am asleep. Maybe it is in this state that our minds are truly free.

One of my favourite things is to set my alarm clock before I need to get up and then doze in and out of consciousness with the alarm clock on its snooze function; allowing the sounds around me to bleed through into my dreams.

I find when I am in this state that my dreams are at their most surreal. Whereas when I am properly asleep and in a R.E.M. state my dreams are more like full stories, in this semi-wakeful state they are almost like surreal little short stories.

Because I am merely snoozing, another part of my mind is rational and monitoring what my brain comes up with and is thinking, “You fucking loon, where did you get that from?”

Meanwhile, yet another part of my brain is essentially conscious, or at least, believes itself to be. This part of my brain thinks it is monitoring the time between snooze alarms and thinks it is in charge. This part of my unconscious can become convinced that the snooze function has in fact broken and I have been lying in this half-awake state all day. “The sounds you can hear outside,” this part of my brain tells me, “are not kids going to school, but in fact kids leaving school on their way home. Those sounds you can hear from the kitchen are not Wifey Wu emptying the dishwasher, but are in fact the cat and dog driven to ravenous despair and scavenging through the dirty plates in the dishwasher looking for morsels of food”.

In this state I often dream pitches for movies. I have frequently woken up to tell my wife that I have finally had an idea that will make us rich, so long as those bastards in Hollywood give me a profit share. The best one was about a cop (on the edge, of course) who was pursuing a criminal on an amazing free-running style chase through a building and who finally triumphed and shot the baddie. Only at this point did his guide dog appear and offer him handle to the harness. I woke up with a start thinking, “what a brilliant twist in a movie. Only at the end do we find out he’s blind. How cool would that be?” “That’s utter bollocks,” my wife said, when I told her.

I also have many recurring dreams. Typically these take place at either my mother’s house or my aunt’s house. Sometimes they have features of several houses I have lived in, but never the one I live in now. Often in the dreams there will be a doorway in our living room that I have never been through before, which when used, will lead into, perhaps, the upstairs floor of another place entirely.

I also have flying dreams, although not as often as I would like. Usually in these dreams I have invented a flying machine from one of those plastic school chairs and that bit that spins around in a dishwasher, firing water.

I have also sometimes dreamed that I can fly by simply leaving the ground at will. This is the kind of dream that real life just cannot compete with. I have at times woken up and gone to the garden to try it out, so convincing has the dream been. I’m sure my neighbours are watching me from their kitchens thinking, “Why’s he in the garden in his dressing gown standing on tiptoes?”

More often than not, though, my dreams in the semi-wakeful, morning state are just nonsense, for example, last night/this morning I dreamed that David Bowie was on stage eating soup with a spoon with a 90 degree bend in the middle. If anyone knows what the fuck that dream means, I would be grateful to hear it.

The Life Of Senna, By Tom Rubython - Biograpy

2010-10-25T04:13:00.001-07:00

I have recently read the biography The Life of Ayrton Senna by Tom Rubython.

Prior to this, I had never really read anything about Senna before. I wasn’t watching Formula One whilst he was driving in it, but have seen obviously seen many clips. Whilst it was clear that the guy was a matchless talent (unmatched by the other drivers during the years he was racing), I always figured I wouldn't really have been a fan, though would have admired his talent.

I have to say that this book has not particularly changed my opinion on the driver.

The book itself is quite poorly written and highly repetitive (for example on two facing pages, the book records twice that Senna and Martin Brundle first raced against each other in 1983). One wonders whether the book was written as a series of articles that have been collated into a book here.

The book covers in great depth Senna’s feelings for Alain Prost and the history between those two. Intriguingly, the book suggests that the one of the reasons for Senna’s outright pace advantage over Prost may have been because Honda always supplied their development engines to the Brazilian first and to Prost later. Reportedly, when Honda were publicly forced to supply parity, the gap was much closer (though Senna was still a bit quicker). This culture of giving the newest lumps to Ayrton would also go some way to explaining why Senna suffered so many retirements caused by mechanical failures. The development engine will always be less reliable. Whether true or not, it does add some spice to the debate. At the time Prost first came into the sport, he was regarded as the quickest guy by miles. He blew away Watson, Arnoux, Lauda, Rosberg and anyone else unfortunate enough to be on the other side of the garage. Once put alongside Senna, however, the story was very different. The Brazilian was leagues ahead of Prost in the races and particularly in qualifying.

The book also asks the interesting question of what would have happened had Senna not been killed. The ’94 Williams was not as great a car as ’92 and ’93 cars. It was reportedly unstable and hard to set up. Senna put it on Pole for all 3 races he started in it, however. He suffered retirements in both of the preceding races due to errors and was leading at Imola at the time of the fatal crash. Although it must be said that Michael Schumacher’s title challenge in the Benetton was subject to a number of (contrived?) FIA penalties that held the German back and allowed Damon Hill back into the hunt, probably Senna would have beaten Schumacher to the title in ’94. With Senna then being the most famous driver in the sport, Renault may well not have given their engine to Benetton in ’95, instead consolidating at Williams. Senna then could easily have taken the ’95 title too.

Williams drivers did win the WDC in ’96 and ’97 when Renault pulled out of F1. This Rubython book makes many suggestions that Ayrton would have finished his career driving for Ferrari. Had he lived, he could have gone to the Scuderia as a 7-time world champion in ’98. Whether Schumacher were already there or not (and he would have been a much less attractive proposition for them without any world championships of his own) Might he have pulled off a title or two for Ferrari before retiring finally in 2001 at the age of 41?

One of the final chapters of the book deal with specifics of the fatal crash suffered by Senna at the Tamburello corner of Imola as well as the subsequent ‘manslaughter’ hearing.

This chapter is worth the cost of the book alone, and offers some very interesting perspectives on the accident and the closing of Formula One’s ranks around its members. This chapter asks many more questions than it answers.

As we know, any racing driver death in Italy is investigated as if it were a road death. Italian law states that if someone can be judged responsible for a racing driver’s death, then a trial and a jail terms can follow. This law has hung over F1 in Italy for many years (just ask Colin Chapman, who saw Jochen Rindt and Ronnie Peterson killed in his cars at Monza in 1970 and 1978 respectively). Rubython heavily implies that, had criminal convictions been forthcoming in the Senna trial, F1 would not have returned to race in Italy.

With this in mind, the circumstances surrounding the Senna trial make for very interesting reading. There are a number of discrepancies between the information reported at the time and the information that was fed into the trial. Whilst many F1 insiders did appear before the court to give testimony (including Sir Frank Williams, David Coulthard, Damon Hill, Charlie Whiting, Michele Alboreto, Mauro Forghieri), none were required to appear. Damon Hill’s testimony, given only under the insistence that the cameras be removed from the court, were reportedly breathtaking, as Hill answered time and time again “I don’t remember” to questions including, “Did you have power steering in the Williams in 1993?”

The two on-board black box recorders in the Williams were removed by an Imola circuit engineer with the consent of the FIA immediately after the car was returned to the pits complex, despite the fact that the team were restricted from going near it. The black boxes were then handed over to Williams. To be fair, at that time no one knew that Senna was dead. The circuit engineer claimed that the black boxes were both intact, but for a few scratches. Williams engineers stated the very opposite. They said that the Renault box (which would have recorded nothing of steering inputs, or lack thereof) was intact, but that the Williams memory drive was irreparably damaged by the action of the crash, causing the data on it (some might say conveniently) to be removed.

It is alleged that Patrick Head, watching Senna’s crash live on the monitors in the team’s garage during the race shouted the words “Steering power” as the car went straight on into the concrete wall of Tamburello. Head allegedly then asked others around him in the garage if it had seemed to them as if the steering had failed. No one who was in the Williams garage on that day has ever commented on the record about the crash, nor Head’s shouted comments and subsequent questions. Damon Hill was ordered by Head on the grid to switch off his power steering for the restart.

The on-board footage of the car cuts 0.9 seconds before the accident, more or less at the precise moment Senna leaves the track. The explanation given for this was that the director cut away at that precise second. At that time, with the technology that existed, the TV director was only able to follow four cars at the same time, switching between those four cameras until the director chose to drop one camera and pick up another. It was reported to the trial that, although the director had been following Senna’s car for 9 minutes, he chose to cut away to another car at that precise second, thus missing the second of the crash. It took FOCA 6 months to present the footage to the investigation.

Williams oft claimed cause for the accident has been that the car bottomed out, as its tyres were cold from a long safety car period and therefore slightly smaller than they would have been if fully up to temperature. Some of you may have seen a documentary about the crash with a CGI recreation of it working to this theory. What this doesn’t account for, however, is the fact that Senna set the (at that time) fastest lap of the race on the lap prior to his crash. This lap was only bettered towards the end of the race by Schumacher and Hill in cars with next to no fuel on board.

The Italian prosecutor’s allegation was that the steering column, which had been lengthened at Senna’s request by the welding-in of an additional length of metal, had snapped. The prosecutor’s suggestion was that Senna was left with no steering at all at 192mph facing a concrete wall. Although Senna managed to scrub off 60mph or so in the 60 metres between leaving the track and the impact, the speed and the concrete were still enough to kill him. Of course, if the black box had not been damaged and unreadable and the on-board cameras not cut away in the preceding 2 seconds, the truth about the steering would be eminently provable.

Of course, many of us will have read that Senna and Berger visited Tamburello as part of a track safety inspection and concluded that the wall could not be moved due to the river behind it. Rubython makes clear that if only Senna had requested that a line or two of tyre crash barrier were placed against the wall, he would have survived the crash.

The book also details some of the, frankly, nutbar conspiracy theories about shady Middle Eastern gambling syndicates. It also mentions that there were pictures taken of a piece or debris on the track which Senna allegedly ran over. Detailed here is the rumour that Senna’s helmet was under weight and would not have passed scrutiny. Senna allegedly favoured a particularly light helmet as his neck muscles were not his strongest muscles. The helmet was released to the family very quickly after the accident and immediately destroyed. Whether underweight and unfit for purpose or not, the visor and forehead area of the helmet were pierced by a suspension piece. It was this impact, plus the basal skull fracture the killed Ayrton. Modern F1 helmets and the HANS device would reduce this accident to merely very, very heavy.

Also discussed (and dismissed) is the notion that Senna was wont to hold his breath for a lap in order to increase his concentration and shorten his reaction time. It had been suggested that Senna had done this on his (third fastest overall) preceding lap and then passed out, causing the crash. I think that anyone with half a brain can see that this is a load of hoary old crap.

What is clear is that, for whatever the reasons and whether or not there was a conspiracy of silence, mechanical failure or driver error, Senna was killed because of a random event that just happened to occur at one of the few places in the world where there was insufficient run off area between the track and the wall and no tyre barriers. Had it occurred virtually anywhere else in the world, he would have climbed out of the car and stalked back to the pits, now 30 points down on Schumacher in the championship.

Most tellingly for me, in the tremendously generous pictures section of the book is a sideways on shot of Senna in his Williams. The cockpit sides are so low that one would almost be able to see the driver’s shoulder blades were he shirtless in the car. It is surely this, more than any other factor that lead to the death of Ayrton Senna.

Emergent Technology

2010-10-24T12:43:00.000-07:00

I had a thought watching our little girl D writing her blog yesterday. It was an obvious one, but I will share it with you all anyway – computers have got a lot better in the last 30 years.

My first computer was a Commodore PET.

It was already old and out of date when my dad was given it – I know not by whom – and, aside from bearing a passing resemblance to Deep Thought from Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, was useless. I distinctly recall my brother and I writing a not especially elaborate questionnaire programme in Basic and filling the memory.

Later on we inherited a ZX Spectrum 48K. Many of you will have had the same machine with games on cassettes. The shrieks and chuntering sounds of a game loading – such as the timeless Chuckie Egg - will live with us for many years, as will the ‘Loading Failed’ screen.

On leaving school I did a BTEC I.T. course, and to this day don’t know why I did. I think I did it because some friends of mine were doing that course and I couldn’t think of anything else to do, but did not want to have to go and get a job.

I then took my eye off ball as far as computer developments were concerned. I did not come back to using computers until about 10 years later. By this time, some people had PCs on desks in their houses, but usually did not have an internet connection. This period in IT development is best encapsulated by a Fast show sketch in which someone says, “I’m on the internet, I am. Haven’t found much of a use for it, to be honest”.

Then, in very recent years, I finally got a brand new computer when I joined the firm I work for. They gave me a MacBook and a synched iPhone. This was the first new computer I have ever had and I use it every day to work from home. Suddenly computers were not only relevant and useable, but actually indispensable. Our company has a bespoke intranet which is simply wonderful. Everything to do with all of our clients can be accessed and updated easily by all of us. Even better, our firm has an I.T. guy who, if given tea and talked to sweetly, will come to my house, set things up and solve all my I.T. problems and even provide recipes for puddings.

I can be absolutely stumped by new technology. I recently upgraded my personal mobile to a Blackberry Curve. Suddenly I didn’t know how to mute my own phone, text my wife or add a number to my contacts – let alone go on line on it, or use any of the more obscure applications. I am as hesitant and nervous of fucking up as my mother would be – to quote Eddie Izzard, “I’ve deleted the internet?!?”

Of course, I’m nothing like as bad as my parents’ generation. My mother insists that she uses a programmable computer, because there’s one in her washing machine. This is as far as she is prepared to go with technology, and it didn’t stop her draining the colour from most of my shirts and shrinking all of my trousers whilst I was living with her.

The opposite end of the extreme was apparent to me when watching D setting up a blog for herself recently. She intuitively navigates her way around registering, chooses the format she wants, writes little blogs and uploads photos. She is entirely fearless of technology. She has been showing me how to use some applications on the Blackberry - despite never having used one before - because she just presses buttons and sees what happens. I later have to find my way into the settings of, say, the camera and stop it from using sepia, as she has inadvertently set it to always use it. She is 9-years-old and has been using a programme found on line to teach herself to touch type. She also has a Mac and uses it to the full. She sends me elaborate emails with links to funny YouTube clips and endless little avatars. It is almost as if she is taking the piss.

All of this puts me in mind of a set of rules created by Douglas Adams that describe our reactions to emergent technology. They are:

1) Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2) Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3) Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

Clearly, D lives under rule 1. I live under rule 2 (and probably was thinking along those lines when I did my I.T. BTEC at the age of 16) and my mother lives under rule 3.

So I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I am pre-disposed to think of computer technology as exciting and new – but, crucially, also revolutionary. This means that it is powerful and affecting, and therefore to be revered/respected. D just treats computer technology in the same way that I treat TV. It’s just a thing that’s there. It is pretty cool, but not as good as sweets or sleepovers. It isn’t exciting and also doesn’t wind her up. She is just at ease with it.

However, I am far from at ease with computers. When they don’t work as they should, I and can lose my temper instantaneously in a way that shocks even me, but also in a way that I never could with an organic entity. As a matter of fact, I have invented a way that computers can be made to meet people like me half way. I believe that the way to make computers stop aggravating me and others is for the manufacturers to install a touch sensitive panel on computers that we could caress or strike – in the manner of the sensor on the head of a Sony Aibo dog. Computers would soon learn to stop annoying me if I jab a sensor to could cause them pain, or reward them when they please me. Probably this route would lead pretty quickly to Skynet and self-awareness, but fuck it, I just want the bastards to work.

What I Would Change About Formula One

2010-10-22T15:41:00.000-07:00

Some people like watching blokes kicking/batting/volleying/potting balls about. Other people like watching blokes punch/kick/ground and pounding each others heads in. Some people like watching blokes hitting horses with whips to make them do what they do naturally anyway and other people like watching blokes and gals running/jumping over things/chucking javelins/hammers about the place.

Some of us, though, like Formula One racing. Those of us that do dread being asked why we like it. We dread this for two reasons. The first reason is that we’re usually asked this question by football fans (in fact what we’re asked is, “Wotthefuckyouwannawatchthatshitfor?”) Most of what we’re dreading under these circumstances is having to talk to football fans. Happily most F1 fans have learned that the best way to get a football fan to go away and leave us alone is to say one of the following:

1) Look at those foreigners over there
2) Engladd
3) Look at the tits on that

What the football fans struggle with – but is the best thing about F1 for those of us who are evolved beings – is that there is no nationalism involved. The guy who seems most likely to win this year’s F1 championship is an Australian, driving an Austrian owned car, designed by an Englishman, with a French engine running on Japanese tyres. There’s no room for any jingoistic bollocks there.

The other reason that F1 fans dread being asked why we watch it is that, in truth, we sometimes wonder ourselves. Sometimes, to be fair, it is a hard watch.

A long-term F1 fan has to accept that sometimes entire races will go by with little incident. You have to take the long view and look at a season as a whole. Only when a year is complete can you tell whether it was a good one or not. Every once in a while – perhaps 3 times in any given season if you’re lucky – there will be a shit hot race, packed with incident, crashes, fires, decapitations and overtaking.

OK, there is very rarely any decapitation in F1 these days, but this does bring us onto the obvious – though perhaps less politically correct – appeal of F1 or motorsport in general, the fact that we might see a bit of carnage. The purist F1 fan (beard, surly manner, thermos, fuck-ugly wife, baseball cap from long defunct team) will look back to the days when drivers' heads were regularly wiped off their shoulders and then set on fire and say, “Of course, it was much too dangerous”. What they’re really thinking, though, is, “It’s too anodyne now”.

They have a point.

In truth there is something undeniably exciting about watching something on telly and knowing that someone could be killed, or maybe just maimed, at any moment. This used to be acceptable, but things have changed a lot down the years. The fact is, on a spring day in 1994, the BBC televised, live, the death of Ayrton Senna. At that time – and ever more so since – being able to tune in and watch a global superstar have his skull punctured and gasp his last was not considered suitable for midday Sunday TV.

This is not the case in American motorsports, but American sports are always pretty much the exception to any rules. American sports act as if the rest of the sporting world doesn’t exist (like pretty much all of America’s policies regarding the rest of the world). To play the American variant of cricket, you have to wear a crash helmet and kick dust at each other. To play the American variant of rugby, you have to wear a crash helmet and a couple of mattresses. American motorsports involve cars doing 240mph for 500 miles and turning left only. Sometimes they do turn right. What happens then is that the drivers hit concrete and die from basal skull fractures. Americans like their sports to be endless and endlessly violent.

But F1 is an international sport, watched around the world. Probably 99% of its viewers would say that it is not as good as it used to be. This was apparent to me watching classic F1 races on the BBC red button recently. The wonderful Gilles Villeneuve was dragging a car that clearly was not fit for purpose around a track that was, at best, Spartan in its safety features.

He and the other drivers slipstreamed each other closely, and passed and repassed each other thrillingly for the benefit of those present and, evidently, one camera. The camera zoomed in and out and panned around from atop a crane to cover the race. For 5 seconds each lap it filmed where it knew the track to be, but where it was obscured by the edge of a car park filled with VW campers and Austin Maxis. It occurred to me that the modern version of F1 has 600 cameras covering every possible angle of largely processional races. How amazing would it be to have racing like in Villeneuve’s day but covered with the modern cameras. That would keep us on the edge of our seats for 2 hours every other Sunday. You wouldn’t dare look away.

All the excitement that remains in F1 these days is from the unpredictable. Typically this unpredictability comes from rain. There have been suggestions of deliberately wetting part or all of the tracks, but to most of us this idea is too predictable. If unpredictable events can be predicted, they cease to be unpredictable.

There have been discussions about creating more overtaking by forcing the teams to put wings on the cars that create more drag, or deceasing the efficiency of the brakes to make the braking zones longer (since most overtaking happens under braking). I would be in favour of both of these changes, but a lot of purists would not be. A lot of purists don’t mind an absence of overtaking, since a driver is only truly racing himself, his capabilities and his machinery. An overtaking manoeuvre should never technically happen if people have qualified well, they say, and overtaking is just a nice bonus when it does happen. Never mind that in modern F1, when you catch the guy in front, you can’t get closer than 100 metres behind him because of aerodynamic turbulence.

Other people have suggested mixing up the grid by putting the championship leader at the back of the grid, by having the drivers swap teams in a preordained pattern throughout a season, or by making successful drivers carry extra weight (success ballast) in their cars. Many of these ideas have merit, but their institution, many feel, would smack of impurity.

Well fuck all that. If F1 wants to have hours of prime time weekend viewing on a terrestrial channel it has to liven up. We are fast approaching a point where the casual viewing public will realise that they can see the emperor’s cock. Action should be taken and I should be put in charge of it.

This is what I would do to spice up F1.

1. Slipstream inducing wings
2. Steel brakes – to lengthen braking zones
3. The starting grid is formed by reversing the finishing positions from the last race.

So much for the formulaic stuff. I digress:

4. Mad Priests running up the track every race

5. Race on open public streets – how much respect would you have for a Sauber, say, if it screamed past you on the hard shoulder of the A303?
6. Wasps nests inside the cockpit of the championship leader’s car.
7. Everytime Lewis Hamilton wins a race he has to drink a pint of Fernando Alonso’s piss.
8. Pitstops in public petrol stations only. Drivers have to carry cash and do the work themselves.
9. Maximum salary per driver $60,000 a year, but they get $5,000,000 per win.
10. Oscillating concrete walls alongside the track/road.
11. Drivers have to keep spare petrol in the cockpit with them and in their mouths.

12. No Jonathan Legard

And finally, if he gets back to form and resumes winning every fucking race.

13. Michael Schumacher impaled on a spit.

It has just occurred to me that some people are born to be a certain age.

2010-10-21T11:23:00.001-07:00

The easiest way to conceive of this is to think back to secondary school. For some of you, this won’t take much effort. If you are a late teen or a person in your early twenties (let's call you group A), the likelihood is that you well remember your school days and place great significance on them. It may be that you still discuss which other boys in your school were hard. That train of thought can go in one of two ways, and neither of them should be explored here, except to say that you should be ashamed of yourself.

If, like me, you are a couple of decades out of school (we’ll call these people group B), you probably have a lot of difficulty remembering your school days with any clarity. Quite frankly, you have lived more time as an adult and out of school than you lived in it. You probably think of the mid 90s as recent and probably still have some articles of clothing that date back to that time. This will make people from group A laugh quite a lot and probably think you are ancient. They may well ask you things about dinosaurs and whether all of this used to be just fields. There is no point in taking revenge over people from group A (although it is worth telling them that the music, films, TV and icons of their age are of no value whatsoever).

However, If you group B people cast your minds back you should be able to remember that at your school there were nerdy types, those who were good at sports and everyone else.

The sporty types were the kids who thought that games was the best lesson. They probably took the longest communal showers after playing a sport rigorously and then shared deodorant (paging Dr Freud!) This group were also into fighting in a big way and were definitely likely to be in awe of those lads who were the hardest.

This group, let’s call them meatheads, would have appeared to be the most popular people at school. In truth, however, they were only popular in the same way that capitalism is popular with the majority of people – everyone would like to get rid of it, but they know it’s overpowering but cannot do it alone and don’t want to be the first person to say so.

These meathead types were born to be between the ages of 12 and 16. Outside of these ages and the school environment, the meatheads’ power quickly wanes. If you are my age (mid-thirties) and still live in the same area where you went to school, you can see the meatheads working in your local supermarket, driving white vans with copies of The Sun on the dashboard and being treated by local psychiatric services for depression and anxiety. For all their power in their early teens, these people have grown up to become largely irrelevant. They just sort of take up space, vote Conservative and have failed relationships. If their fathers were violent drunks, they have probably mimicked this behaviour by now and spawned a Ford Galaxy full of their own little meatheads to take up more space and fuck with your kids. The meatheads still retain some of their power on drunken weekend nights when their low-ceilinged imaginations and barely suppressed resentment can bubble over into aggression. Of course, so long as it is their own type that they kick the shit out of, no one really minds too much. Finally, this group will inevitably be hierarchically overthrown within their own households by their children and grandchildren whom they (incorrectly) believe are far worse than they were at that age.

The nerdy types were the kids who were the least fashionable group (although in recent years there has been a strong movement to recognise the nerds and give power to them; in my view, the nerds who identify themselves as nerds are not true nerds at all. Banding together in cliques for safety, to become fashionable and to enable the identification of yourselves by a common behaviour is the domain of a meathead. Whilst it is true that this group are not physically aggressive, they are profoundly verbally aggressive and can usually be found with their own type practicing precision verbal abuse – albeit quietly. For the sake of this paper we will call this new sub-group meatnerds).

The true nerdy types were far more likely to be found on the periphery of proceedings noting who was acting childishly (this is whilst still technically children). This group are profoundly uncomfortable in their owns skins because their natural age is between 60 and 85-years-old. When they finally reach this age, they will blossom into their full beigeness and move to Eastbourne. In the intervening time they simply take up space, work in middle management positions of no actual use, (which they quickly were promoted to as they are clearly so trustworthy and straightforward), vote Conservative and drive whatever the modern equivalent of an Austin Allegro is.

The final group is everyone else. What the true nerdy types and the meatheads lack that the members of the everyone else group has in spades is individuality. For this reason, whilst the everyone else group is the largest group by far, this in itself did not offer any protection during childhood, since this group is naturally cautious and does not band together. The everyone elses were not fully switched-on in their teens because they were born to be between the ages of 21 and 59. Now that they are between these ages, the everyone elses can be found working in the most rewarding jobs, enjoying spontaneous and fun lives and having lots of urgent sex in pleasing locations with staggering attractive people.

As the motto of John Belushi’s favourite LA club - On The Rox - read, “Living Well Is The Best Revenge”.

Why I Should Be England Manager (an open letter to the Football Association).

2010-10-19T13:24:00.000-07:00

I have consistently said that the FA (Football Association in England) should give the role of England Football Manager to me. I haven’t yet heard back from them, but it could be that they have concluded that I am not serious. If they have, nothing could be further from the truth. Not only am I completely serious, but I offer now this unconditional guarantee: If I am made England manager and given all of the resources I list below, England will win the next world cup.

I will explain how in a moment, but first let me outline my own position: I do not like sport very much. I care even less about football. I believe the individual members of the England squad are overpaid and disinterested arseholes that you wouldn’t trust to paint a fence. I couldn’t give a fuck if the England football team win eight World Cups in a row or all die in a plane crash tomorrow.

It is my view that the English character does not allow my countrymen to truly put their hearts into a competition, because in our 21st century society to truly care about something is not thought of as cool, and the kind of person who ends up playing football professionally will inevitably have the playground mentality of a 13-year-old boy.

Three salient points

1. All of the above is true. Nationalism is pathetic and it is ridiculous to believe that we have more in common with the England Football team than we have with, say, the French team, because we were born on the same land mass as they were. Such imaginary boundaries are not indicative of a truly advanced species in my view. I find them deeply embarrassing and something more akin to the views of some semi-evolved tribe of Neanderthals going to war against the next village over some image of God one of them saw in a fire after ingesting too much fly agaric.

2. By total coincidence, the players in the England football team have about the same level of national pride as I do. They do not act out of national pride, as they have none. They are not motivated by the thoughts and goodwill of their countrymen. They act out of self-interest and for personal gain. The reason that they play international matches with such apathy is that they are not being paid to do so. Nevertheless, part of the frustration for the fans is that it is self-evident that a selection of the best eleven players in England should easily be able to win a World Cup

3. A football team’s manager can only have an effect on the conduct of the team in training and on formation strategy on the pitch. In the case of the England manager, the media place all of the expectation upon the manager to win tournaments, overlooking the fact that the players can usually be found walking around the middle area of the pitch waiting for the ball to come to them with a sense of entitlement and thoughts of tonight’s coke and whore party on their minds. As the wise @mugpi said to me on twitter, “I don't think until every manager in the world has tried and failed to make England succeed will the FA admit it is the players”

As it is, these players know how to score goals win, how to win and how to cope with the pressure (one of the fortuitous things about footballers is that their brains have such a low level of output that they are able to function despite the massive weight of expectation), but are empowered in such a way that they are allowed to play successive games with disinterest until the manager is replaced.

They are allowed to crash out of tournaments and despite general disgust at their level of commitment, they continue to behave as if they are untouchable Gods among men and will again be picked to represent their country at the next big tournament.

Clearly what is needed here is not knowledge of football, but motivation.

Some people have suggested that, as the players are highly motivated to play for financial rewards for their league clubs, they should be paid to compete for their country. I think that there is a grain of truth in this, since the players are motivated by money, however my view is that they already have enough money and the acquisition of more is not incentive enough.

Rather, my plan is the very opposite. The players in my England squad will stand to lose their money and possessions for every game in which they don’t score. Steven Gerrard is reportedly worth £85 million pounds. By the rules of my team, he will lose a million pounds for every minute of the game in which he does not score. If England lose the game, all of his possessions will be repossessed by my office and given away to ticket holders.

Under such rules, Mr Gerrard will have little trouble finding the back of the net. Even Frank Lampard – whose name means ‘miles out’ in my house - will manage to get the ball under the crossbar several times a game. This financial disincentive will be the same for each of the other attacking players. If the attacking players do not each score in each game, they will be penniless by the end of the match.

For defence and goalkeepers, my rules will be slightly different. They will be held collectively responsible for each goal England concede. They will lose all of their money and possessions in much the same way as detailed above.

This will obviously leave the players vulnerable to attacks from their beloved media, as they will be unable to pay off the various whores and drug dealers that they have mistreated over the years.

In order to deliver on my promises, I will need the following:

Power of attorney over the players

Several numbered Swiss bank accounts

A team of strong lawyers

£1 million a day salary

£1 million a day for expenses

A large number of Albanian men

A broad variety of firearms

An aircraft carrier, a platoon of paratroopers and two Harrier Jumpjets

Diplomatic immunity in whichever country the next World Cup is being held in.

I predict that England will win each of their group games as much as 38 nil and the results in the finals will be much the same.

I await your response with interest.

Strange Man At Hastings Fireworks. 16/10/2010

2010-10-17T09:17:00.000-07:00

Best In Show

2010-10-11T13:58:00.000-07:00

D And I Go Bodyboarding

2010-09-29T09:48:00.001-07:00

D Reads To Kimi (He Likes The Middle Part, But Doesn't Like The End)

2010-09-29T09:35:00.001-07:00

Increasing Size Of My Cat, Kimi (Pt 2)

2010-09-29T09:28:00.001-07:00

How Am I Supposed To Get Any Work Done?

2010-09-29T07:18:00.000-07:00

Know Your Fannies

2010-09-24T14:20:00.000-07:00

Pope On A Rope

2010-09-16T14:06:00.000-07:00

Singing 'Rain' At Our Rain-Afflicted Company Picnic

2010-09-13T05:48:00.000-07:00

Tony Blair Was Kind Enough To Sign A Copy Of His Book For Me

2010-09-13T05:44:00.000-07:00

I am hilarious

2010-08-24T11:45:00.000-07:00

Increasing Size Of My Cat Kimi (With A4 Page For Scale)

2010-08-15T12:50:00.000-07:00

Jersey 2010

2010-08-03T16:17:00.000-07:00

I Finally Have Some Photos Of Me Waterskiing

2010-06-09T04:00:00.000-07:00

Me In Monaco

2010-05-16T08:24:00.000-07:00

My New Sandals (With Socks)

2010-04-30T09:24:00.000-07:00

Letter To Local Newspaper

2010-02-10T10:49:00.002-08:00

Dear Sir,

As a resident in the Bellend Road area of Scumtown I feel I must write to you about the inconsiderate conduct of children from the girls schools in my area, the Fucking Bitches Grammar, Mouthy Shit High School and Burbleshit Grammar.

Your readers who also reside in this area will be well used, I am sure, to hearing these children shouting in the street, finding the litter and cigarette ends left in their gardens by them and, most annoyingly, being forced to walk in the gutter by groups of these girls walking 5 to 6 abreast along the pavements.

Only this morning I was bashed into the gutter by a schoolgirl in plain clothes who then turned to me and yelled at, “Excuse me” sardonically.

Not so very long ago I saw a lady in a wheelchair attempting to cross Dead Bastard Road, forced to stop and wait in the middle of the road whilst children from the above schools swarmed all around her, impeding her progress. I telephoned each of these schools to ask discuss the matter, receiving the memorable response from one “Well, what do you want us to do about it?”

Experience has taught me that there is simply no point in approaching the schools directly about the conduct of their students out of grounds.

I wonder if any of your other readers agree with me on this matter.

Yours Faithfully,

An Old Man

Letter To Mojo Magazine

2010-02-10T10:49:00.001-08:00

Dear Mojo,

I gasped with disbelief when I saw the cover of this month's Mojo.

I have seen exactly one issue of Mojo that did not have Syd Barrett on the cover, and that one had Pink Floyd's The Wall on the cover.

I'm sure you guys know your own market, but I do wonder whether you're aware that Syd Barrett did about 1 1/2 Pink Floyd albums and a couple of solo albums that no one would want to listen to anymore.

Perhaps you are also unaware that since Mr Barrett retired from music, there have in fact been several decades of intervening time (not the Dark Side Of The Moon track, no), during which several albums by several artists (some of them not from Cambridge) have been released.

If you publish this letter, please do not send me a year's subscription, as I have already read everything I care to know about Syd Barrett.

Regards,

The Black And Green Scarecrow

Words And Sentences My Wife Does And Doesn't Understand

2010-01-31T15:20:00.000-08:00

WORDS AND SENTENCES MY WIFE UNDERSTANDS:

Yes
Would you like…? (Wine, another handbag, etc)
Buttons
Hellooo
Good night/Good morning
Cup of tea
I want the duvet/cushions/pillows
I’m taking your wallet/keys/phone/cash/fleece
I would like one of those, wouldn’t I?
Presents
Flowers
Holiday
A new…
Soft
Shiny

WORDS AND SENTENCES MY WIFE DOESN’T UNDERSTAND:

Take your phone
Take some parking money
Check the oil/tyre pressures
Put some petrol in the car
Move over
Don’t do that
You’ve got all the duvet
Don’t leave that there
Shhhhh
I am trying to read
We can’t afford it

Words And Sentences My Dog And Cat Understand.

2010-01-31T14:58:00.001-08:00

WORDS AND SENTENCES MY DOG UNDERSTANDS:

Lumbo (Columbo, Lumby, Lumbob, Bob-Bob, Bobby) [Also shouted version=bad]
No
Good boy/Good dog/Good lad
Bad boy/Bad dog/Bad lad
Dog/Doggy
Down
Come on
Come here
Go away
Go on
Back
Move
Speak
Quiet
Shut up
Up/Stand up
Downstairs
Upstairs
Sit
Lie down
In
Out
Get off
Stop it
In the back
Go and lie down
Paw
Other one (other paw)
Roll over (He’s knows what it is, he just won’t do it)
Do you want…?
Walk (walkies, go out)
Garden
Bath
Dinner
Breakfast
Biscuit
Take it on your bed
Tidy up (crumbs)
Drink
Ball
Stick
Where’s your…? (Where is it?)
Who’s that?
Bed (On your bed, Go and lie on your bed)
Stu (Stuart)
Wait
Stay
Leave it
Drop it
Find it
Over (Go over, Over you go)
Get it
Over there (With gesture)
Rabbits
Squirrels
Heel! (Sort of)
Jaybles (Other pet)
BB (Other pet)
Kimi (Other pet)

TOTAL 59

WORDS MY CAT UNDERSTANDS:

Kimi

TOTAL 1

Kimi And Postcard

2010-01-17T14:51:00.001-08:00

Princess Diana In The Hat I Made

2010-01-17T11:53:00.000-08:00

Frothing at the mouth

2010-01-08T04:47:00.000-08:00

This box of 6 cupcakes has appeared on the kitchen table in our house this week. I think they were a Christmas present to the current Mrs Revmoon. The title on the box says "A Delicious Selection of Pampering Cupcakes."

I have been gradually eating all of the Christmas foods left in the house -taking the chocolate bullet and saving others in the household from putting on weight.

Have today found the cupcakes in the bathroom and read the packaging properly for the first time. On closer inspection,they are bath bombs, hand and nail creams, foot creams and an exfoliator. I was thinking of having one with lunch. The exfoliator one in particular looked nice a light and fluffy.

D's New Bike 27/12/09

2009-12-27T04:43:00.000-08:00

Long Suffering Dog

2009-12-19T16:18:00.000-08:00

Kimi Christmas 2008

2009-12-19T16:10:00.000-08:00

Sledging And Dog Maiming

2009-12-18T14:52:00.000-08:00

D 18th December 2009

2009-12-17T15:18:00.002-08:00

D 17th December 2009

2009-12-17T15:18:00.001-08:00

Who Was The Hardest Member Of Queen?

2009-11-28T04:52:00.001-08:00

I once read that in Barcelona in 1986 on the Spanish leg of the Magic Tour Queen had a huge tension relieving backstage fight. In contradistinction to established rock and roll folklore the only thing in the backstage dressing room that was not smashed was the television.

But what was the cause of this ruck? Did the backstage rider run out of Cristal? Did Clair Brothers forget the Dud cabinets? Did someone ask the band when they were going to start making decent albums again?

But most importantly, in a free for all fight, which member of Queen would win? Ladies and Gentlemen place your bets.

Freddie
Although a sensitive and delicate man, Freddie has been shown in many people's accounts of him to be a man with a firey temper. Besides his obvious cardiac and pulmonary fitness due to his on stage antics, we must also factor in that Freddie was considered to be a fine boxer at St Peter's school in Panchgani. We also know that Freddie was not intimidated by a drunken Sid Vicious when the two met. Indeed Freddie confidently stood his ground and took the mickey out of the talentless clot.

Add these elements together and I reckon in a fight Freddie would be a seething mass of hard little fists and nasty bites and scratches. I can also believe that Freddie would have an insider's knowledge about pressure points in sensitive areas and would not be above playing dirty.

Worse if he had his trusty half-mike stand with him, he may well bludgeon your sorry hide until you were well past caring. Your only hope might be that Phoebe and Jim would drag him off you whilst Mary yelled "Leave him, Freddie he's not worth it!"

Roger
Roger's most obvious attribute is his physical prowess and fitness. Anyone who can play drums with all four limbs for 1 hour 40 a night and sing backup as powerfully as he did would have a strong circulation and wiry muscles. Another factor in Roger's favour would be his relative (for a member of Queen) street-wise character.

I reckon Roger would keep a broken drum stick with a sharp end about his person and would jab and twist this weapon in your flesh if you wronged him. I can well imagine that if you keyed Roger's car he would keep coming at you until you were on the ground writhing and begging for mercy.

John
Although not the most obvious candidate for being a bruiser, one has to always give John Deacon the benefit of the doubt. Anyone who could survive 20 years with Freddie, Roger and Brian must have boundless reserves of inner strength. Also, anyone who's ever played the bass will attest that the instrument itself and bass amplifiers are very heavy. Photos show John to be a man of very lean physique and we must remember that he didn't squander his energy on singing or running around on stage too much.

Finally, John might have the most to prove of any Queen member. I believe that John could be like the kid in school that was always picked on. When he finally snapped it wouldn't matter how many assailants there were or how much you hurt him. He would keep coming at you until you tired and then he'd open a can of whupp touche on you that would see you consuming pureed food for several weeks.

Brian
Although Brian has gone on the record as being a hippyish guy and believing in peace and harmony at all times, I can believe that in the right circumstances he could be more than most people could handle. At well over six feet tall Brian would have a tremendous reach and as a man who has been bending guitar strings tuned to 16 pounds per square inch for several decades he would have great strength in his fingers and forearms.

If, say you were to try and steal the Red Special from Brian I could well see him gouging at your eyes and throat with his tough, long digits and perhaps jabbing at your mid section with those narrow, pointy knees of his.

Finally, the heavy wooden clogs on his feet would be a formidable weapon if you went down on the ground. Brian would probably show no mercy even if you begged him. Your pleas would be lost amid the sound of Dutch wood connecting with bone.

So, what do other people think?
Who would win in the big free for all Queen fight?

New Queen tribute band

2009-11-27T19:37:00.000-08:00

Hi guys,

I'm shortly going to start a Queen tribute band. The intention is to produce the look and sound of Queen as accurately as possible. It will in actuality be a 5 piece band as we'll need to have additional keyboards, rythmn guitar and backing vocals. Rather than do a 'through-the-years' type look, we've decided to emulate the Kind Of Magic Tour look, you know Freddie in a yellow leather jacket and 'tache, stripy top for Roger, short hair for Roger and Freddie, ridiculous puffy hair for John, Brian with a poodle on his head, ala, well, the last 35 years.

I will be taking the part of Brian. I am therefore seeking advice from you all. After all, I know you guys are fans and it's the fans we're hoping to please if we're to join an already very busy sector of tribute bands.

So the advice I'm seeking falls into 4 areas.

Clogs
Does anyone know what type of clogs Brian wears? I've been wearing a pair of Austrian clogs, but I know for authenticity I should be wearing Dutch ones. The pair I have raise my height by 3", but I'm not sure if that's correct. Luckily I do have thin legs and I can report that I do look like a praying mantis when I wear them, which seems right. Also, whenever I put them on I look like a complete tool and people point and laugh. That can't be right, can it?
I have also noticed earthing issues with wooden clogs. Does Brian wear a rubber insole?

Hair
I have naturally straight hair, but I have had it permed. I have decided to have slight auburn highlights as Brian did on the 1986 tour. The trouble is I think the perm's too tight, as it looks more like a bad white man afro. This has only added to the frequency of jibes and insults I have had to endure. Does anyone know how long Brian's hair would be if it was pulled tight? It would help me a lot if someone who meets Brian could go up behind him and pull a good few square inches of his hair straight whilst another person holds a ruler up to his head and takes a picture. I feel sure he wouldn't mind too much.

Legs Akimbo
I have been practicing my Brian posture in front of a mirror, but can't get the distance between my legs right. You'll all be aware that when Brian sings backing vocals, he stands with his legs at least 3 feet apart. However, when I do this I find that my balance is severely impaired. If there is a slight breeze I tend to fall over, which obviously detracts from my performance a bit. Does anyone know if Brian ever wore a splint or truss which might have helped him with this?

Facial Expressions
I feel that Brian's face in performance pulls 6 standard expressions. They are:

i) The sad middle distance stare-For slow numbers.
ii) The chin jutting out eyes half-closed- For singing backing vocals.
iii) The cheeks puffed out, eyes-half closed, slight frown for very loud A and A/G chords and song endings- As if the rock is so hard that it actually hurts.
iv) The slack jawed, eyes fully-closed wobbly head -For noodling til the cows come home.
v) The teeth biting the bottom lip, eyes half-closed, constant nodding-For echoplex sections.
vi) The slightly monged, unfocussed look for playing Tie Your Mother Down and other heavy riffs.

Can anyone think of anymore?

I think that's all my questions for the moment, but I would welcome any other suggestions anyone may have, particularly if anyone has any tips for strumming a chord and bringing my right hand up in the air above my head; I'm unsure as to what the exact angle of abduction of the shoulder and extension of the elbow should be. I tried this in dress rehearsal recently and put my hand straight into a spotlight, the electricity conducted through the sixpence and I got quite a shock, although my perm became considerably less tight and onlookers reported that I managed to pull facial expression v) perfectly for 11 seconds.

Anyway, I'd welcome your feedback.

Love, Kev

(n.b. I posted this piece some time ago on another site, but thought I'd put it on here too and maybe make someone smile out loud)

Me winning the Spanish GP in my Citroen ZX

2009-11-26T01:37:00.000-08:00

The Best Sign Ever

2009-11-02T12:10:00.000-08:00

Mandy The Bunny

2009-10-14T11:51:00.000-07:00

My new Strat

2009-10-08T13:19:00.000-07:00

Car Pool Or You're A Nazi

2009-09-28T09:51:00.000-07:00

Exploration of Castle Hill Hillfort, Tonbridge Kent. 2008.

2009-08-26T13:36:00.000-07:00

Visited this site on Sunday 19th November 2008, with 4 members of my family and my dog. We walked in from Forge Farm at the viaduct at the bottom of Powder Mill Lane. Past Devil’s Wood on the public footpath and then into Castle Hill Wood in order to come onto the site.

This journey was navigated using an OS Map 1:25,000 scale; but, to be perfectly honest I did not need the map to find the site. This is because I have attempted to reach the site many times in the past. I have lived within sight of the masts of Castle Hill for 20 years. I became aware that there were two forts on the site about 15 years ago and have become increasingly obsessed with visiting the site.

On my first attempt to reach the site I travelled in on mountain bike from Forge Farm. On that occasion I was chased out of the area by two mangy, but rather large and certainly hungry looking dogs. This was a very hot summer’s day in 2002. I ran out of water and did become slightly delirious.

My next attempt to reach the site started from Pond Bay, another site of ancient earthworks near Vauxhall Lane in Tonbridge, in the company of two friends. We had no map on that occasion and very quickly lost our bearings in the woods.

My third attempt at reaching the site started from the A21, where I had parked. I then walked in through the footpath next to Castle Hill stables (with my dog). On that occasion, my dog and I were harassed by the boisterous horses that are held back from the path by mere strands of fence wire. Having finally reached the point where the footpath reaches the woods, I then left the right of way and navigated around the back of the forts.

It is worth pointing out that the forts themselves are (I believe) on private property and not particularly near the footpath at all. I had my trusty OS with me and considered what to say if I met a landowner and was asked what the hell I was doing; pretend to be helplessly lost or fess up and hope to elicit a sympathetic response. Eventually, I simply felt too conspicuous and came home, knowing that I had been extremely close. The trouble is, you see, the two masts are the kind of high-value infrastructure that would be guarded most seriously by those who own them. I’m quite sure that should someone with responsibility for protecting the masts see me walking up there, they would immediately conclude that I was going to vandalise the masts or in some other way behave illegally. The idea that I might have an interest in visiting a 2,400 year old, pre-Roman site a few miles close to my home would doubtless seem very unconvincing to them.

Therefore, on my most recent trip I decided that I would go in the company of several children. I recently discovered, when going door to door looking for a lost cat, that I am infinitely more friendly looking when accompanied by my little girl. I can understand the logic of this, even if it does make me feel a little sad. With this in mind I decided that I would be friendlier still accompanied by two of my many nieces. I also took my brother to help me shepherd that lot along. The dog I took simply because he needed a walk.

As we were coming in from a south-westerly direction, we first arrived at the younger of the settlements. This univallate (An enclosure defined by a single bank and ditch) fortification was built during the 3rd century BC. It enclosed an area of 1.01 hectares and was built to the south-west of the original fort. This second fort was reportedly occupied for only a very short period and then it fell into disuse.
The fortifications are still visible following the edge of the field and running off into the woods in an arc. However, if you did not know what you were looking at, you would not think it significant at all. Certainly the land around it has been farmed extensively over the last 2-and-a-half millennia. The earthworks themselves are riddled with rabbit holes, which sent my dog into a state of hyperexcitement,

Following this, our party walked around the back of the masts and into the area of the older of the two forts. The 4th century BC a bivallate (unsurprisingly, two banks and ditches) fortifications are much more obviously unnatural and defensive in nature, still being an abrupt, albeit short climb. This fort reportedly enclosed an area of 1.8 hectares on the brow of the hill.

A 1976 study by James Money, who was Director of Fieldwork on an excavation of the site 1969-1971 says:

“after a brief occupation, the revetment of the inner rampart (beside the east entrance at least) was destroyed by fire and collapsed into the ditch”.

Money tells us why the forts were built on their site:

“the two forts are situated on a spur of high ground controlling a natural north-west, south-east route which the A21 follows today”.

Suggesting then that the route of the A21 is an old a route as any in the area. Nearby Southborough’s Historical Society’s website says that Powder Mill Lane dates from a very early period, being a section of a route linking the ancient hill forts at Oldbury near Shipbourne, Saxonbury at Frant and Castle Hill near Tonbridge.

The Southborough Society website goes on:

“Powder Mill Lane has been a key site for discoveries with an Iron Age axe and both Iron Age and Bronze Age burial remains found at various sites along the road. The existence of burial remains hints at the possibility of some kind of settlement rather than just an itinerant population.

Money states:

"It seems likely that these forts were built against some actual or
potential threat, assuming that some of the smaller ones were not simply for enclosing stock. Possible threats could have been Belgic settlers in areas around the Weald, the Romans, or unfriendly neighbours at any time".

So there we have it. Castle Hill is very definitely of historical significance to the area. Whilst it must be said that there is actually very little there to see. In truth I always knew that if the forts were truly worth seeing, there would be a car park, an admission charge and a children’s play area with plastic dinosaur climbing frames, an ice cream van and a plethora of wasps and litter. In essence, it would be ruined; but, at least, preserved.

Tonbridge is already the owner of a 13th century castle, built on the site of an earlier wooden Norman castle. The town centre contains many old buildings, including a particularly old church. Many of the waterways around the town were man made to act as management systems to keep the moat around the castle full. The Somerhill site near Castle Hill is also a very old settlement. In short, the area has much in the way of history. Perhaps, if this were not the case, the Castle Hill site might be just a shade more well known. As it is, I know of no one (other than those that I personally have bored rigid) who know either the name of the hill or that there is an historical site on it.

As I have said, there is really very little in the way of visual history on the site. It may be the case that the older, easterly fort has more to see, as maps show it to be made up of the greater amount of earthworks. The masts themselves are built seemingly on top of part of this site. One wonders whether Money’s survey was conducted because the masts were to be erected. In any case, the countless signs telling us that we were on private property and not welcome stopped us from exploring too much farther. We began to feel that we had pushed our luck far enough and that it was time to leave.

Since the permission and funding for dualling of the A21 has finally been granted, the site at Castle Hill may be lost entirely. Or, it is equally possible that the existence of the masts on the site will cause the dualling to spare this site. I certainly hope so.

Kentish Community Spirit

2009-07-29T11:59:00.000-07:00

Water Taxi Ride Along The Grand Canal Venice 29th June '09

2009-07-12T03:19:00.000-07:00

Venice '09

2009-07-12T03:18:00.000-07:00

Bloke Fixing Gondolas

2009-07-12T03:16:00.000-07:00

Evening Gondola Trip

2009-07-12T03:14:00.001-07:00

Wedding L and I walk off together into the sunset

2009-07-10T16:54:00.000-07:00

Wedding L and I

2009-07-10T16:53:00.001-07:00

Wedding (Everyone)

2009-07-10T16:50:00.000-07:00

The Susan Boyle Potato

2009-05-29T11:48:00.000-07:00