To blog or not to blog

2009-07-04T14:23:00.003+01:00

Hi all - just to let you know I'm moving. In fact the van is here already, loaded with all the collected detritus of blogs gone past and heading off for a new home.

I'll be living at a new address - http://oberonuk.com - already been decorating, putting up curtains and so on. Its a bigger place though, with room to expand and somewhere I hope you'll come visit regularly. There'll always be a pot of coffee on the stove and a bottle of rosé in the fridge. Don't forsake me - please!

2009-07-03T14:50:00.006+01:00

I’m wet. Not moist, not even a bit soggy. Very very NOT dry. The sort of wet that would make Saint Swithin think, ‘Maybe they’ve had enough for now – perhaps, on hindsight, forty days and nights was a bit excessive!” (But he’s gonna have to wait until the 15th to condemn us to biblical amounts of persistent precipitation, and anyway, we’re doing quite well enough without his help, thank you!) Wetter than a wet week in Whitby. More moist than a bath full of nuns looking for the soap. Dank doesn’t come into the equation.

We’ve had a few days of blistering heat, high pressure, oppressive atmosphere and no air. I was starting to wonder whether we’d entered a phase of massive coronal discharge, with solar flares scorching our otherwise green and pleasant land. But following some astute scientific investigation, availing myself of one of the most tenacious and analytical minds of our time (well, Google) I can inform you that:

Analysis of Solar Active Regions and Activity from 01/2100Z to 02/2100Z : Solar activity was very low. No flares occurred during the past 24 hours. The solar disk was void of spots. The geomagnetic field is expected to remain quiet for the next three days (03 - 05 July).

In fact, the darn thing looks positively spotless, not a black-head in sight. We officially have a zit-free sun! Bloody hell and we only bought that Clearasil at the weekend!

Today, by way of contrast, the manna from heaven is presented in liquid form. Which is typical. Today I needed to venture out. We have invited some friends over for dinner tomorrow and I needed to shop. Well, it is my way of showing I care – somehow getting Tescos to deliver seems to be cheating when it is for a dinner party. Besides, I like to fully examine the plumpness and quality of any breasts before committing – don’t like my breasts too big, my loins too lardy or my plums too pert. Buns have to be beautiful and grapes nicely bunched. A good broddle around in fresh produce is medicine for the soul. But therein lies the challenge, when the shops are separated from me by an excessive over-order of weather. We’re talking serious down pouring here; rain that pelts down with enough ferocity to drill holes in your head. Now I’ve never much been one for trepanning, even when it is meant to release evil spirits from the head - I surely have a few of those - and certainly not in the course of buying a stick of garlic bread! Protective headgear is required before venturing out. Where’s my pith helmet? Someone’s taken the pith!

So to the shops, cap on head shielding eyes and keeping specs clear, but in the process managing to channel all rain within vicinity into a single torrential stream running down back of neck. I feel assaulted. Nape Rape! Swiftly seek sanctuary in sweltering supermarket where suddenly steaming starts. It’s like walking through smog. You see, the supermarket hasn’t lost any of its heat accumulated over the last week and is now but a pine panel away from being a sauna. Mmmm, there’s a gap in the market: Sainsbury’s Sauna-and-Shop. Bring your own towel. Men and women only on alternative weekends and no canoodling in the bakery department – “Put those baps down Sir”, “No I don’t want to see your Italian sausage!”

I should have remembered that Friday in Salford is Rent-a-Muppet day, a fact that I was reminded about upon entering said purveyors of finest fruit, veg and groceries in the entire kingdom (and yes, I did actually check it out on MySupermarket.com!!! Have a look – I was quite surprised. You can do your online shop just the same as with Tescos or whoever; they compare the prices and let you send your order to whichever worked out to be the cheaper retailer! Well impressed. And Tescos WAS the best value for ‘my basket’ so ASDA can go stick that in their non-representative trolley!) So, back to Muppet-central anyway. Muppet is a particularly appropriate term for most of the people in there – they looked like they all had someone with an arm up their arses working them. Why do people decide that the middle of a narrow isle is the best place to park two trolleys, a pram and basket-on wheels, while they have a good natter about Betty and her recurring corns, or the questionable merits of Tenna Lady? Why do teenage mothers bring the pre-school brats along and then not keep them under control? We have leashes for that sort of thing! Muzzles. You’d not get away with letting a dog loose in there unrestrained, and dogs don’t sneeze all over the mushrooms or try to stick carrots up their noses. Geez, I know it’s hot but lock the buggers in the back of your daddy’s four-by-four; just remember to crack open the window a bit and teach them to not lick the cigarette lighter. It’s not like anyone is gonna kidnap THAT snotty-nosed cabbage-patch reject anyway. No, dear, it isn’t puppy fat when the droopy-nappy, germ-ridden, snot monster can’t survive more than thirty seconds without another, “me wanna sweety now!” Sweetheart, catch it, bin it, kill it. It’s what Darwin would have wanted.

Now I have limited stamina, not a lot of strength for hauling shopping baskets round (even if they ARE cheaper than ASDA’s) so the sight of a checkout with hardly any queue is something of a relief. Except its Mable and Eddie in the queue in front of me. You’ll have met them. They’re in their 90s, tartan shopping trolley, hearing aids, put the ‘less’ into gormless. Sweet, I’m sure, and we’ll all grow old one day, but how many coupons?! How can you have more money-off coupons than items in your basket? Here’s how: only every fourth one is still in date. So, Bekki on the checkout, has to scan every one, and you can tell she’s not happy about this, especially when one is devoid of bar code and she has to flash at the manager for assistance. “No love, that’s your ration book and you used up your allowance for powdered egg and spam in 1953”. Now Mable and Eddie only use cash. Mable’s purse has somehow made it to the bottom of her tartan ‘Speed Shop Deluxe’ basket-on-wheels, and into which have been stacked the several bags of shopping. So out it all has to come amid must frustration and the worry that she has either left the purse at home or had it pinched, probably by the snot-monster. But all is well and the purse turns up, a little battered from its adventure at the bottom of her ‘cart’o’convenience’ and happy to relieve itself of the bulging stash of coinage that Mable’s been secreting away since that nice Mr Churchill was Prime Minister – before he started selling car insurance, Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes!

My friend Bekki (It feels we’ve known each other so long now that I’m sure we’ll feature on reciprocal Christmas card lists) has made the fatal mistake of asking if the wrinklies have a Tescos card. Frantic searching through purse, with vacant expression. “We don’t use cards, dear” explains Eddie, presumably thinking that somehow a credit card is required. “It’s for your points. Your clubcard points”. “Oh, no dear, we don’t do them. Just cash.”

Now I know I can be a little unforgiving, but if it is me being asked to pay £9.97, and I have a crisp new £10 note to hand (I suspect she irons them), then I would probably opt for handing that over and getting 3p change rather than counting out the full sum in bronze coins! I tell a lie – there were a couple of 50p pieces in there but you could tell she was parted with them only after much soul-searching and inner turmoil.

Behind me in the queue I now have two barely pubescent mothers who’s conversation seems to be largely about how fit someone called “Lozza” is and whether or not “Bethny’s a lucky cow to have been invited to his party”, which will be “well good, cos everyone’s gonna be there”. I’m not sure how valid, or indeed rare, Bethny’s invitation is if everyone is going to be there anyway, but I suppose it is nice to be asked. The snot monster, bored with queuing and already onto his second packet of ‘flumps’ is busy removing mars bars from the shelf and making a small construction out of them – maybe a fort, it is hard to tell. He’s avidly watched by second child, thankfully strapped into a push-chair (or buggy I think they are these days). Poor thing. Pig-tails pulled so tight it looks like she’s had plastic surgery and an expression of concentration reserved exclusively for the moments preceding the wafting forth of a green mist and the sure knowledge that Mummy will have more than just the shopping to unpack when she gets home. Remind me why I never had kids? Oh yeah, I’m gay. Thank fuck for that!

It might be pouring down outside, but it’s as hot as a blacksmith’s jock strap inside, and twice as humid. I can practically hear the pot of double cream curdling as I queue. Methinks strawberries and cream might end up as a cheesecake at this rate.

But at last my turn has come! Bekki looks at me with the glum disinterest of someone who has had the life sucked out of them and I notice Mable and Eddie now blocking the exit as they rearrange the contents of their ‘shop-o-matic turbo’. Thank heavens all my items scan without incident. I was worried that a missing bar-code might be enough to send Bekki over the edge. She already has the Samaritan’s number tattooed on her knuckles, but what is that I see, poking from her burgundy tabard pocket? Why, an invitation to Lozza’s party, no less! You see, there IS a god, innit!

Back at the car park, trying to straddle the veritable river that is now sluicing under my vehicle and with the distant honk from the horn of a barge that seems to have been misdirected from the Manchester Ship Canal and is heading this way, I load my bags of shopping into the boot. A few cars down I see Mable and Eddie talking to a large, skinny bloke in a black cowl, carrying a scythe. “No, we can’t possibly come now, you see, Friday she has her Bingo. You’ll have to come back another time...”

2009-07-02T10:18:00.003+01:00

What’s in a name?

It would be very easy to start this text with a note that today marks the death of Nostradamus in 1566 (I wonder if he saw THAT coming?), especially as he was contemporary - just - with the main subject of today’s entry. But I won’t. That would be too easy. Instead I intend to digress from any previous format (you know, where I take inspiration from events in history, my latest encounters with the medical profession or the proliferation of pants that plague my neighbourhood – two pairs again today and what appears to be either a bra or a small hammock) and for a change I will bow to a theme that has been encroaching on my life over the past few days. There have been a few points over previous weeks when this theme has tried to assert itself, but I knocked it back. Midsummer’s Day/Night was one of them, but we were only just back from Hungary then and anyway, the News covered all things Druidic at Stonehenge for me. Perhaps a blog about lay lines and standing circles another day? At the start of the week, when I was in hospital, the Globe Theatre burned down – well, if you take a temporal skip back a fair few hundred of your Earth years. However, the final straw that prompted this thread happened yesterday on Twitter, where, in a reply to a Tweet, I noted that ‘discretion is the better part of valour’. My observation was re-tweeted by none less that Shakespeare himself. I kid you not. @shakesp if you don’t believe me!

The exact Tweet went as follows [certain details removed to protect the guilty]:

Shakesp RT @OberonUK @xxxxxxxxx I'm saying nothing! Discretion is the better part of valour! http://bit.ly/XXXXS5:19 PM Jun 30th from Tweetbots

I am curious to know which part of the Tweet was picked up by the bot, the quote from Shakespeare or the Oberon part of my name.

For anyone who doesn’t know, and shame on you, Oberon appears in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and it is from that reference that I draw my web-name. I’ve used the name since 1994 when I started working at Durham University (on the 4th July to be exact). That was back in the days when the internet was more the plaything of boffins and researchers, predominantly text based and used mostly out of educational establishments. The University granted access to JANET – the Joint Academic Network ISP backbone which even today is responsible for the .ac.uk and .gov.uk domains. Windows (like the original USS Enterprise) didn’t even have a number let alone a fancy name like Vista!

Now, being gay in those days was a very different kettle of cod. There were none of the methods of contact that the yoof of today take for granted. No internet dating sites (let alone ones dedicated to gay men), very few bars or clubs and certainly no mobile-phone-based apps like GRINDR for hooking up with like-minded pooftahs within reasonable travelling distance. The most we had was a couple of pages on CEEFAX/TELETEXT (GL GWM 27 seeks GWM 20-30, GSH for chat & FSHP), personal ads in the ‘free paper’, or the local pub which ran a ‘gay friendly’ night on a Sunday once a month, played YMCA on an endless loop and came with a pretty good chance you’d be queer-bashed when leaving. But JANET, and subsequently a home PC, gave me access to the internet and such wonders as IRC – Internet Relay Chat, text based, but real-time, where you could chat with actual people. They even had a North room! OK, so that covered an area from Leeds to Newcastle via Manchester and Carlisle, but the point is it WASN’T London. So what, that you got disconnected every hour?! So what, that it could take just as long again to get back online?! So what, that phone bill totals were often so high they were indistinguishable from the actual phone number! It was a revolution. And it demanded an online persona, a name, something to allow others to identify you but that wasn’t linked directly to your actual real life. (Heaven forbid that any straight person should find out about your double life!) And so OberonUK was born, with tongue in cheek and a wry poke at the world. Oberon, you see, is the King of the Fairies. It seemed somehow appropriate.

So with a name borrowed from Shakespeare, the Bard has had a number of impacts on my life. I studied The Dream for O-level (back in the days when examinations had currency and it actually meant something to get an ‘A’ grade), so I have a love for that particular play. My school motto was borrowed from Hamlet: “To thine own self be true” – a quote from Polonius who gave us few other phrases still in use today such as "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" and "brevity is the soul of wit."

Shakespeare is credited with many phrases which remain in common use today, and is widely believed to have coined quite a few new words too:

bedazzled (The Taming of the Shrew)
coldhearted (Antony and Cleopatra)
dauntless (Macbeth)
to drug (Macbeth; first use as a verb)
gloomy (several, "to gloom" was a verb)
to humour (Love's Labour's Lost, first attestation as a verb)- regular readers of my blog may recall my thoughts on the four humours from last week.
mimic (Midsummer Night's Dream)
new-fangled (Love's Labour's Lost / As You Like Itpuking (As You Like It)
uncomfortable (Romeo and Juliet)

There are many more, but I do not wish to make much ado about nothing!

I’m sure many will recognise the title of this blog entry, “What’s in a name?” as being a direct lift from Romeo and Juliet, where the ill-fated and ‘star cross’d’ heroine contemplates the fact that Romeo belongs to the Montague family, with whom her own relatives, the Capulets, have been feuding:

JULIET:
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;

You will, of course, also recognise “A rose by any other name” – Shakespeare is unavoidable and pops up to shake his ruff in the most unlikely of places. I remember at Art College in Carlisle we had a lecturer in print technology who could bore the socks off even the most stalwart student and was blessed with the most obvious and unrealistic hairpiece. Made from the best nylon money could buy - we knew it was nylon: you could see the M&S tab! It all but hovered just above his head and never seemed to quite keep up with him when he changed direction. He turned up late one day to a lecture, and delivered his monotone monologue for a full hour without noticing (or maybe just not acknowledging) that some whit had written on the blackboard behind him: “Toupee or not toupee: that is the question!” but more of the original version of that particular speech later.

All this said I will confess that aforementioned lecturer did teach me one interesting fact: Newspapers were originally available only in the broadsheet format and were traditionally set without columns, just lines of fully-justified text that spanned the whole page length. When the tabloid format was introduced, the style changed to include the use of columns. In type, where you have two or more columns, or a gap between facing pages, the space between the columns is known as the ‘gutter’. It is from there that we get the term, “The Gutter Press” although the term has somewhat changed in meaning to be synonymous with sensationalist and poorer quality reporting. I seem to be off on a tangent. A tangent, a tangent, my kingdom for a tangent! I must stay focused and stop this tangential thinking.

Sorry, that was a terrible misquote from Richard III, “A horse, a horse..” but does remind me of another story where my brother-in-law, who was a manager of a country house-cum hotel-cum-restaurant and, as the nights began to draw in, was in charge of organising an enormous marquee to be erected in the grounds for forthcoming events, such as a proposed November 5th fireworks party, Halloween all-nighter and various wedding functions leading up to Christmas. He was not happy, and his mood was not improved when I offered another Richard III misquote: “Now is the winter of our disco tents”.

Our mate Bill can also lay claim to inspiring any number of modern classics, not least of which is West Side Story, a re-work of Romeo and Juliet where the Tony, the leader of the Jets gang falls in love with Maria, the sister of rival Sharks gang leader. If you recognise nothing else, you’ll have heard “America” :

I like to be in America
OK by me in America
Everything free in America
For a small fee in America

And less obvious are the many Star Trek stories that have taken inspiration, or at very least their titles, from Shakespeare:

Star Trek VI – The Undiscovered Country
Dagger of the Mind
By Any Other Name (see above)
Thine Own Self (see above)
All Our Yesterdays
Remember Data asking, “If you prick me, do I not...leak?”

And in Time’s Arrow, the crew have to pose a travelling players and quote from The Dream, with Mrs Carmichael, their temporary landlady recruited to play Puck and Pickard (Patrick Stewart being a fully-fledged Shakespearean actor) joining her to deliver the following:

Picard/Oberon: Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.

Carmichael/Titania: What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence:
I have forsworn his bed and company.

What you might not know is that Hamlet was NOT an original work and that Shakespeare is widely believed to have stolen it from the original Klingon text (speakers of Klingonese will recognise the beginning of the famous To be or not to be soliloquy) :

taH pagh taHbe'. DaH mu'tlheghvam vIqelnIS.
quv'a', yabDaq San vaQ cha, pu' je SIQDI'?
pagh, Seng bIQ'a'Hey SuvmeH nuHmey SuqDI',
'ej, Suvmo', rInmoHDI'? Hegh. Qong --- Qong neH ---
'ej QongDI', tIq 'oy', wa'SanID Daw''e' je
cho'nISbogh porghDaj rInmoHlaH net Har.

By now you will know I’m a huge Blackadder fan, with the second series being my absolute favourite, and littered with Shakespeare quotes. Also there was the actual meeting between Edmund and Bill in Back and Forth:

Blackadder: [punches Shakespeare] That is for every schoolboy and schoolgirl for the next 400 years. Have you any idea how much suffering you're going to cause? Hours spent at school desks trying to find one joke in "A Midsummer's Night Dream", wearing stupid tights in school plays and saying things like, "What ho, my Lord," and, "Oh, look, here comes Othello talking total crap as usual."

(He quoted it wrong of course, it is "A Midsummer Night's Dream" not "A Midsummer's Night Dream)

The choice of Oberon was further influenced by the fact that Will was himself of somewhat ambiguous sexual persuasion and scholars still debate the degree of his bisexuality. For me the evidence lies very firmly in his sonnets and in particular No 144:

Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend
Suspect I may, but not directly tell;
But being both from me, both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another's hell:
Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

Even with any potential linguistic differences I’d say that is pretty conclusive stuff. Buggery bollocks, Bill the Bard was a bloody bender!

And if any final affirmation is required about the suitability of the name Oberon for a (somewhat dysfunctional, but still surviving) gay male, consider this: The name Oberon was chosen for a moon of one of the solar system’s planets; Oberon can be found in perpetual orbit around Uranus! But it is such stuff that dreams are made on!

2009-07-01T12:51:00.006+01:00

July duly descends and we enter the second half of the year with gusto, or a grimace, depending on how well you are coping with the heatwave. Yesterday was a humid, muggy day, too hot to handle. But what am I doing talking about the weather when there is so much else to cogitate? So we mark the passing of the first six months of 2009 and welcome the sextet which stands before us. As apparently has been the custom in many years past. For the first day of July seems to be a day for new beginnings: Way back in 1916 the Coca-Cola company introduced the coke formula that is still used today. Makes you want to start singing, “I’d like to buy the world a coke...” That said, some may recall that on April 23, 1985, Coca-Cola, amid much publicity, attempted to change the formula of the drink with "New Coke". Follow-up taste tests revealed that most consumers preferred the taste of New Coke to both Coke and Pepsi, but Coca-Cola management was unprepared for the public's nostalgia for the old drink, leading to a massive backlash and the company gave in to protests and returned to the old formula under the name Coca-Cola Classic on July 10, 1985. Coke is also widely credited with creating the contemporary imagery of Santa Claus, but I guess that thoughts of Christmas need to be locked firmly away for a few months yet.

1 July 1937 is also a date of note as on that day Britain started using the 999 emergency phone number. In the UK you can also use the pan-European version, 112. So why 999? Well, this was mainly because of the design of public coin-operated phone boxes, which already allowed you to dial 0 without inserting any money (0 for operator services). It was relatively easy to convert these boxes to also allow the preceding digit, 9, to be dialled for free. Also, at the time, the digits 2 – 8 were used somewhere in the UK as the first number in a subscriber’s code. I remember as a child I was shown around the telephone exchange in our home town, Newmarket. I think it was on Station Road, where it intersected the High Street. I guess this will have been somewhere round 1974. Our phone number was just Newmarket 3554, my Grandparents were 4038. The exchange was, as per any vintage film, banks of plug-boards with flashing lights and teams of operators, all women, with headphones, mics and remarkably big hair-dos. The depths of the building contained acres of clicking machinery, cogs, wheels, miles of wire; a long way from our wireless network and digital exchanges these days. I have very few nostalgic memories of Newmarket, but that is certainly one. Remind me later and I’ll tell you some others. But I must just mention the fact that I lived next door to the National Stud! (And THAT is a guaranteed route into an inferiority complex!)

Today also marks the anniversary of the introduction of the Sony Walkman. I think I had a cheap equivalent, the size of a brick, guaranteed to chew up and spit out any tape you cared to feed it, with a battery life slightly less than the average cassette album and sound quality so poor that people for yards around benefitted from better acoustics than the person wearing the headphones. I remember making mix tapes and recording the top 40 off the radio. There was an art in pressing STOP a millisecond before Jimmie Saville or whoever jumped in with “That was Black Lace sliding down the charts to number 11 with ‘Agadoo’”. I had no means to edit, beyond actually splicing the tape (and yes, I DID do that, with a razor blade and special cassette-wide sticky tape). We had none of this digital malarkey, no graphic equalisers and pitch control. You sat there with your C60 tape in your Mum’s recorder with a plastic microphone banged up against the “music system’s” speaker, watching the cog-driven counter and hoping that you’d been clever enough to zero it at the end of the tape. Stereo? Yeah right! We were pleased to get the same mono signal coming out of two speakers! I remember nearly wetting myself with joy when I bought my first cassette player that had a 5-pin DIN socket and meant that I could connect it straight into the ‘gramophone’ and record “LPs” straight to tape without the need for a mic. This was high-end, high-tech, hi-fidelity! I remember one of the first albums I bought was “The Sounds of Star Wars” by The Sonic All-Stars (Nothing to do with a blue hedgehog, I promise). I still have it in the loft!

Which brings me neatly to a quick birthday mention for Dave Prowse – in my early youth he was the Green Cross Code man, reminding children everywhere to cross the road when they saw a little man flashing. He is probably more widely seen as the chap who played [the physical] Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy – see the link there? You’d almost think I planned this crap! That was back before episode IV was renamed “A New Hope” and all nine instalments of “The Journal of Whills [the Whills eventually turned into The Force]” were planned. I make the ‘physical’ distinction because Mr Prowse was indeed the man in the black mask, but his voice was never used. He was over-dubbed by James Earl Jones on account of DP having a distinct west-country accent. “Luke, you are my son, my lovely”... Attacking the rebels on an Imperial Combine Harvester whilst drinking Cider?

Happy do-dar-day to dead Di (did Di Die with Dodi?) who would have been 48 today. I could write pages about Di and the events leading up to the funeral, which I found absolutely fascinating, not least of which being the public reaction and subsequent out-pouring of imagined grief. To digress for a moment though, my best friend at the time, Malcolm, who is sadly no longer with us, was in hospital at the time of the ‘incident’, having open-heart surgery. I’ll never forget his fury when, still pumped full of morphine, he woke up after the op and heard about the deaths and plunged into a massive sulk, proclaiming, “Today was supposed to be about ME! Nobody’s talking about ME! They come into my room and they don’t ask, ‘How are you, Malcolm?’, they say, ‘Have you heard the news about Di?” I don’t think he ever forgave her for stealing his thunder. Now I like a good conspiracy story as much as the next man, in fact I’m quite enjoying all the ones surrounding Wacko Jacko at the moment. But Di did, and does, seem to offer opportunities for such questions to be asked. Let me ponder a couple of things. How was Di recognisable? Her hair and her fashion. Put her in a frumpy frock, dye her hair brown and cut it differently and she would not stand out from the crowd. Stage a tragic accident and whip her off to a remote chalet in Switzerland, with enough cash to keep her quiet and a promise that she could see her kids whenever they holidayed in the Alps. No conclusive photos of the crash. Sealed coffin. Discredited driver. The power of one of the richest families alive. Just a thought. And my second consideration is that of the parentage of young Harry. James Hewitt? You tell me!

My final thought for the day, as I wilt in the heat (I was going to say ‘melt’ but will restrain myself in deference to 20% of the Jackson 5, who must, by now, be looking decidedly waxy) is that on this day in 1997 we returned Hong Kong to China. Britain gained control of Hong Kong at the end of the First Opium War in 1841 – gotta love those opiates! Actually, when I was ill in hospital, morphine did nothing for me. The nurses kept saying things like, “we’ll give you a double-dose and you’ll be asleep in seconds” and I just lay there for hours waiting to feel any benefit at all! So Hong Kong is no longer a British colony. How’s that for a Chinese Take Away?

2009-06-30T12:37:00.002+01:00

The room was dimly lit as I was led in and told to lie down on the bed. Dark shadows, figures moving in and out of the half-light, strange items of equipment the use of which I could barely guess; trying to figure out their purpose sent a shiver down my spine. I’d find out soon enough. Restraints, ready in the event of a struggle. Quiet. Just the sound of my heart beat, the blood pulsing through my body. Fear rising, threatening to take a hold of me. I swallowed and tried to control my breathing, knowing there was no way out. I’d wanted this. I’d made my choice. Now all that was left was to submit to the inevitable.

From behind me strong arms held me down, pinning me to the bed. Firm, muscular arms, pressing my shoulders, keeping me still, showing me that to struggle would be futile.

And then I saw Him. He stepped from the shadow, silhouetted by a single bright light. His features were obscured by a heavy mask but His eyes spoke for him, telling me that He would enjoy this, that I was His plaything, that His will would prevail.

A click, a whirr, from somewhere in the distance the sounds of equipment coming to life. My fear was tangible, a cold, biting terror of the unknown. A screen came to life too far away for me to see clearly and I realised that He was going to record my ordeal. No doubt He did the same with all His victims, cataloguing their pain so He could watch their suffering over and over. What twisted mind stood before me? How had I come to this?

And then He spoke. His voice as dry as a corpse, menacing, commanding, the voice of a man in total control. “This will not be...” He searched for the word, selecting just the right phrase to prove His dominance and send another wave for dread through my shaking body. “This will not be...comfortable”. A satanic glint in His eye. The confidence of someone who knew what they were about to do.

“Is this your first time?” He asked, His voice so cold yet edged with the stain of anticipated pleasure. I nodded and He leaned closer, so I caught the foul stench of His breath. His eyes flicked to a nearby tray which carried an assortment of syringes, needles and a tourniquet. “I could give you something to make it easier...” He rasped, indicating the spread of drugs. His hand moved to the largest syringe, loaded with a thick, yellow liquid, some potent sedative no doubt, used to incapacitate His victims, keep them quiet so they didn’t scream. His eyes sparkled with a mischievous gleam and He pushed the tray away. He finished His thought, “...But then you’d not remember. Let’s try it first without the drug.” I tried to pull away.

Behind me, another voice, this time from the one who was holding me down: “Don’t struggle. You’ll only make it worse for yourself...”

A gag was placed in my mouth, forcing my jaw open. Tears welled in my eyes and my vision blurred. But I kept still, trying to be strong, trying to force the fear back down to the pit of my stomach. The lights were turned down more, darkness now apart from the single point of brilliance, casting sharp white light which pierced the black, giving terrifying glimpses of the equipment He had laid out before Him -the tools of His sinister trade, items not out of place in a medieval torture chamber, the cold glint of metal in the harsh, painful light. Another wave of fear crashed over me, carrying me with it in a maelstrom of nightmarish panic. “Be still!” I tried to steady my breathing, concentrating on the rise and fall of my chest, blocking out my thoughts of the horror that awaited.

The hands still pressed my shoulders, imprisoning me as effectively as any rope or chain and yet more ominous when applied by another human being. He stood, for a moment blocking the light, His back turned to me, withdrawing something, revealing it slowly, almost worshiping it in its sleek elegance. As He turned back I saw that in His gloved hand He held His tool and my heart skipped a beat. The pounding in my ears grew louder as blood coursed through my body and He stood with His instrument of torture in His hand. It was so much longer than I had expected, thicker too, and He seemed to be stroking it, caressing its length, playing with it. “I’m going to put this inside you,” He said. “Are you ready?”

I had no choice. I had thought I wanted this. I thought it would give me answers. Now all I wanted was for this waking nightmare to be over. I was in too far, I was not ready for this!

He pressed closer now, His body touching mine, getting ready to penetrate me, to force me to submit to His fiendish will. I was drenched in sweat, the damp envelopment of pure terror as adrenalin rushed through my veins. He was so close now I could not focus and I felt strong hands grip my jaw. “You might gag,” He said, “when it touches the back of your throat. Everybody gags.” I could hear in His tone the pleasure He drew from my plight. I wished He would just get on with it, instead of teasing me, playing with me, heightening my fear and making all my senses fire with anticipation of what He was about to do to me.

And then it happened. I felt it enter me, filling my mouth, making it hard to breathe. So big! So much more than I had thought possible. I couldn’t take it, it was too much! I gagged, wanting it out of my mouth, tears rolling down my cheeks. From behind, a voice: “Try to relax. Don’t resist. Breathe.”

The man, now in absolute control of me, looked down and spoke in little more than a whisper. “You need to swallow.” His command was absolute. I had no choice as He thrust forward, pushing deeper and deeper inside me. I tried to gulp it down, taking it all, totally unable to defy his will.

I don’t know how long it lasted. Seconds seemed like minutes, time lost all meaning as I drifted beyond sense in that hell. I was aware of His movements as He pushed harder, pulled back, changing position, thrusting forward and then withdrawing slightly, a perpetual rhythm, in and out, in and out, exploring my very essence, laying bare my inner-most secrets, revealing me in the most intimate way.

And then, when He had reached full satisfaction, He withdrew completely, wiping His tool as He pulled it out. I could see in His eyes that He was spent, that the encounter was concluded.

The lights came on, blinding, disorientating, and I was released.

He removed his mask and smiled, knowing we had shared something that I would never forget. And He spoke once more, as I sat up and the truth of what had happened began to coalesce into reality. His words filled me with joy. “I could see no abnormalities in your upper digestive tract, nothing to worry about there at all. There is no sign of ulceration, it all looks fine.”

The doctor went on to say that there was still quite an amount of food in my stomach which after six hours of fasting would normally have gone, and suggested that I may just have a slow digestive system. This is probably caused by some of the medication I am taking but explains my nausea. A change of pills will probably help.

The burley nurse helped me to my feet and told me I had done extremely well, especially without sedation, and checked that I was alright. Half an hour later and we were home, having a cup of tea.

So, that was my gastroscopy – it’s fun, you should try one!

2009-06-26T12:56:00.011+01:00

"We’re all following a strange melody
We’re all summonsed by a tune
We’re following the Piper
And we dance beneath the moon."

Let me tell you a story, you have heard it before no doubt, as a childhood fairytale, a rhyme or song. About a town in Germany, on the banks of the River Weser. A town plagued by vermin, an overwhelming infestation of rats, destroying the crops, eating the food supplies, killing livestock and bringing disease. And a townsfolk at the end of their endurance, starving, falling ill, unable to rid their town of this invasion of rats. You know how it goes: a stranger appears and offers to help, to remove the rats, to end the problem. His price is high, he wants payment in gold, but what use is gold when you have no food, when your water supply has been contaminated, when your world is being destroyed? So an agreement is reached and the mysterious man takes up his flute and as he plays the rats are mesmerised and slowly start to follow the sound, down the streets, past the fields, towards the river, where eventually they all drown. When the Piper returns to collect his dues the town’s people refuse payment, after all, their problem has been solved, the rats are gone, and they have no incentive to give up their gold. Later, when all the adults are worshiping in church, the Piper returns and plays his tune again, this time spellbinding the children, leading them away, over the hills and valleys, where they are imprisoned and left to die in a mountain cave.

So why am I blabbering on about a fairy tale? Am I notably deficient in the marble department today? Have my screws been loosened? Indeed not! You should know me better than that by now. For today is the anniversary of the day when 130 children were led out of Hamelin, never to be seen again. What’s more it’s a BIG anniversary – 725 years. I’m guessing that today is not the day to be a flautist wearing pied clothing in Germany! They say there is truth to the story, albeit allegorical, although the actual events are open to debate. One proposal is that the Pied Piper was a psychopathic paedophile who kidnapped 130 children from the Saxon village and used them in "unspeakable ways." Another relates the story of a plague that wiped out the infant population. But I like connections, links, the way experiences sometimes merge and so I choose to believe the more commonly accepted version in which some scholars suggest ‘the children of Hamelin’ means the people of the town, and that this is a story of mass migration, tempted by the lure of land and prosperity in Eastern Europe. And the connection I mention? Part of the ‘Eastern Europe’ in question was undoubtedly the land which we know today as Hungary. So maybe Gerda and the other people we met in Budapest last weekend are all distantly related to the children of Hamelin. I think I prefer that outcome to the paedophile version.

I have also this week been thinking about humour, not least because last night David and I had tickets to see Russell Howard at the Apollo Theatre. I’m afraid the iPhone didn’t cope too well with the spotlight and all you can really see is what looks like a blob of luminous ectoplasm. Sorry. I tried. But he was very good though. I love live theatre, be it music, comedy or play. There is a connection that you just don’t get elsewhere. We really must make an effort to see more shows. Comedy is especially good for the soul. I was quite ill yesterday, in a bad mood, and of poor humour, but I’m really pleased we made the effort to go to see Russ (I feel I can call him that now), as it did make me feel better.

They say laughter is the best medicine (admittedly probably not when you have stitches) and I can see why. In fact we have a whole linguistic code built around humour which I find fascinating. We often say, “In good humour”, meaning “In a good mood” or “being jovial, funny” and in fact the etymology of the word ‘humour’ is fascinating. We borrowed it from Latin, meaning liquid – it is the same root that gives us humid. The ancient philosophers believed that four liquids entered into the makeup of our bodies, and that our temperament was determined by the proportions of these four fluids, or humours, which they listed as blood, phlegm, bile, and black bile. The humours were themselves associated with the elements – fire, air, water and earth. (Blood has the qualities of being hot and moist, so is associated with air, whilst yellow bile was linked to fire, and an imbalance caused the patient to be hot and dry, and often ill-tempered!) These humours were supposed to be in balance and an over-proportion of one would cause certain behaviour. Someone with an excess of blood, the sanguine humour, is generally light-hearted, fun loving, loves to entertain, will be amorous, irresponsible, is affected by flights of whimsy and heated passion. Whereas someone with an abundance of black bile is melancholic so can become introspective, overly pre-occupied with the tragedy and cruelty in the world, thus becoming depressed. Hence, "In a black humour" or "Black Mood". Medieval medicine was concerned with returning balance to the humours.

I’m reminded of the Blackadder episode in which Edmund falls in love with Bob, and goes to visit his doctor for advice. The recommended ‘course of leeches’ would probably have been pretty close to the actual prescription at the time, as they would suck blood and reduce the associated humour.

We watched “Supersize Me” at the start of the week with Sue Perkins (she who I mistook for a brand of cigarettes - superkings), where they talked about medieval food and started me along this line of thinking. In accordance with the humour theory, most plants, food substances, and commonly found house items were specified as either cold, hot, dry, or wet so that they could be used to modify the amounts of humours within a person. The word ‘humour’, therefore was associated with imbalance and oddness, so eventually it took on the meaning of a humorous person, or a crank. Finally we adopted the current meaning of laughter, fun and good spirits.

My humour is being tested today though. Next door (not the invading Chinese army, but Chris and Debbie who we like), have had the decorators in. I’m not speaking euphemistically – we don’t know them that well to be able to predict menstrual cycles – that would be just too weird! Uhhhh I feel dirty just at the fact you had those thoughts! And anyway, Debbie is away in the States at the moment, obviously leaving Chris in charge of renovations. It appears to me to be a couple of women who arrive each morning and I hear talking about “getting it primed” and "giving it a good rub down" when I’m outside in the garden. Jeez, maybe it is me who has applied the decorating assumption here! Maybe when they talked about stripping they didn’t mean wallpaper! Maybe “That hole needs filling” has a different connotation to the one I had thought. “Don’t drip on the shag” “I’m going for another roll” “Wash it under warm water before it dries” “Of course it will go stiff if you leave it out all night” – HELP! It’s an orgy!

I digress. That is not the reason for my disgruntlement. (Not that I was aware of having been gruntled in the first place). It is this: The decorating dungaree dykes have, for the past three days, parked their car outside the semi (again, not a euphemism). But rather than straddling the curb, half on the road and half on the path, they have driven right up the path and are parked half on our lawn! Here, look!
The cheek! And this means that I can’t cut the grass. Each day I have had that in the back of my mind as a ‘must do’ job. And I’m thwarted. The eagle-eyed amongst you will also have spotted Chinese-Woman-Over-The-Road’s knicker display too – top right of the photo. You might need to click the image for the larger version.

I can’t let today go by without mentioning Michael Jackson who died last night. It would be very easy to poke humour at him, make accusations of paedophilia (even to the point of drawing connections with the story at the start of this entry - he DID record a song entitled "Ben" about a boy who befriends a giant rat! Weird how things connect!) I won't question his mental state or his grip on reality - you will have your own views on that. I grew up when his music was big (or bad?), and I guess I never really got into him (STEADY! Minds out of the gutter!). That’s the thing though, he was like Marmite, you either loved him or hated him. Still, at least Marmite has managed to stay brown!

2009-06-25T13:04:00.003+01:00

A quick roundup of events today before I start my main thesis. We’re quite happy today as we have tickets to see Russell Howard at the Apollo tonight. You know who I mean, don’t you? No, not the “Titter ye not” guy from Up Pompeii – that was Frankie Howard. Certainly not Henry VIII’s wife, Catherine Howard (or is that Sree from Big Brother at the moment?). Howard Jones, 80’s singer/songwriter: no! Russell Howard, off the telly, does stand-up, always on Mock The Week. Floppy blond hair. Well, him. So that should be fun. Whilst on the subject of comedy quiz show whores, happy birthday to Phill Jupitus too. Never sent him a card, but there again he missed my birthday this year, and didn’t send for my bonkday yesterday either.

It is also George Michael’s birthday. He’s gone to pot recently, bless him. I heard he’d invited all his mates to join him in a mass debate in a cottage in Devon, but hardly anyone came and most of them couldn’t give a toss. Still you gotta have faith.

It is also the anniversary of Juan Peron being elected President of Argentina in 1972. Damn – if we’d still been in Budapest we could have done a re-enactment. I’d look good on a balcony.

And a mention of note too for George Orwell, he of Animal Farm, and 1984 fame. He’d be 106 today and probably feeling double-plus-un-good at the prospect of no longer being able to keep his aspidistra flying! Mind you, in this temperature pretty much anything is likely to go droopy!

And what the heck is going on? I’m not happy. I feel a strongly-worded letter of complaint coming on, but I’m not quite sure who to send it to. Something is seriously amiss, and I demand a full enquiry. Do these people not understand that we have rules in England? We have certain expectation of what is right and what is wrong. Ways of doing things. How things work, or rather don’t work.

Let me explain. This is the first week of Wimbledon. And what does that mean? Torrential rain. All week. And what do we get? Glorious sunshine! Yesterday it was hot enough outside to melt aluminium! NOT wet enough to start investing in ark manufacturers! Come on, this is just not done. It’s not British! Every year, without fail, the first week of Wimbledon is a complete wash-out.; so much so that this year they have built a fancy new retractable roof over the centre court. That’s the bit that really rattles my cage though. We have a tradition to maintain here. You see, what is supposed to happen is this:

We plough unfathomable amounts of money into a large engineering project (ideally something that the vast majority don’t want but we have committed to anyway). We then take forever to plan and start construction, run almost instantly into financial difficulties causing further delays, have to bring in outside help and finally deliver a project over budget and late. The final few points of perfection require that the end result is either useless, dangerous or at least just doesn’t work. That is the glory of being British and applies to pretty much any building project much bigger than a loft extension, small conservatory or garden pond (although all of these present their own opportunities).

Our land is riddled with examples – you’re probably already thinking of the Minnellium Dome (sic) and the facilities for the 2012 London Olympics which look set to cost at least £6 billion, rather than the £2.4 billion first quoted. Brilliant! It’s not just the English though – recall for a moment the wonderfully troubled Scottish Parliament building, which cost ten times its estimate and was delivered three years late. The new tram lines supposed to be completed in Edinburgh for 2010 are already months behind schedule and projections suggest they will be millions of pounds over budget.

The privately-financed Channel Tunnel opened a year behind schedule in 1994, at a cost of £10bn - more than double the original budget. All right and proper. That is what we expect to happen. Even looking around my own region I see the Manchester skyline now jagged with the half-built carcasses of new blocks of flats, which were committed prior to the credit crunch and now do not have the funding for completion.

Of course sometimes we get it wrong by getting it right. The shining example of this being the Millennium Wheel – which was only intended to see out 2000 and never meant as a permanent installation. By rights it should have fallen down by now, so someone screwed up big time! That said, in its defence, it WAS late in opening and missed the Millennium celebrations by three months and was regarded as a political embarrassment. Now the re-named London Eye is the capital’s biggest paying tourist attraction – something of a blot on our landscape of failure, but nevertheless costing a king’s ransom in maintenance (£12.5 Billion has just been set aside to replace the ‘pods’), so I’ll let it off on a technicality.

The new British Library opened in 1997 at a cost of £511m. It was three times over-budget - and construction work had overrun by five years.

Not wishing to be racist, I can’t miss out the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff – only ¾ complete when the first game was played there – ‘wet paint’ notices in the dressing rooms I should think. “Please don’t use the showers, the tiles aren’t set”. Amusingly, during its construction Welsh football and rugby games were hosted at Wembley; a favour that Cardiff was able to return when the new Wembley Stadium plummeted behind schedule. I used to work for an organisation who supplied IT facilities for Multiplex, the construction company behind Wembley, so their lack of progress was a matter of some interest to us. In the end, the contractual wrangling in respect of late payment charges and additional funding were a tangle of loose ends, crossed wires and general mayhem akin to the worst knotted mess you might find behind any British home TV/DVD system! But that is what happens in the UK. Hell, these things have implications beyond sport or entertainment or even the comfort of our politicians – we have a whole workforce of lawyers to keep in employment too. What would happen to them if things just started to go to plan? Specialists in conveyancing, procurement law, arbitration and conciliation all out of work. Can this country cope with a deluge of pin-striped tramps called Tarquin, in des-res cardboard box houses (constructed to the highest degree of health and safety legislation I’m sure)?

We know where we are when things go wrong. It is built into a very being. It’s who we ARE. We are known the world over for our stiff upper lip, it’s iconic. We built an empire on it. People go for collagen injections just to maintain it! But you don’t need a ‘stiff upper lip’ when all is running according to plan. We’d loose our national identity. Civilization as we know it would fall into the entropic void.

Back to Wimbledon via the minor digression of a Tweet from Sue Perkins last night that made me smile: ”When will the incessant she-grunting of Wimbledon be over? I play a spot of swingball, and I don't mind saying I've never come close to a full throated hog-yodel, even on a tricky backhand.” Perfect attitude. In any given year Wimbledon serves but a few genuine purposes:

To provide a source of endless humour, often involving Cliff Richard, Lesbian tennis players or excessive grunting – maybe all three. (By the way, could Transvestites enter the mixed doubles by themselves?)
For those who go to complain about the price of the strawberries, and those who don’t go to complain about those who do go and then complain about the price of the strawberries.
To provide another opportunity to demonstrate how the Brits have a singular talent for inventing a game, sharing it with the world and being shit at it. (Still, at least OUR world championships are open to people from abroad – which is more than can be said for the Americans!)
As an unfailing guarantee of rain

And it is point 4 where the problem arises. No rain. So no goddamned opportunity for the roof to fail. I know they tested it, but things always go fine in tests – dress rehearsals are all well and good but no use if the actors all get swine flu for opening night! What they need is a real, live, critical application of the roof, so it can show its full lack of potential. Not some drizzle but a storm of biblical proportions, so heavy that the centre court fills up like a huge bucket before the 3000-ton roof can be coaxed into place, drowning thousands amid the flotsam and jetsam of flailing ball-boys, Robinsons Barley drink bottles, empty Pimms glasses and John McEnroe’s collection of sweaty wrist bands. Or, failing that, just as soon as the roof is fully deployed, the sun comes out and we discover that the translucent ceiling acts as a massive magnifying glass and burns Princess Michael of Kent to a crisp. (Do you think she’s known to her close friends and family just as Mike?) .

We finished the roof on time, so we’ve got to redress the balance somehow. It just isn’t meant to go so smoothly. It’s not meant to work. It is meant to be an unmitigated disaster. Poor show Wimbledon: It’s just not cricket!

2009-06-24T12:25:00.000+01:00

I read my horoscope this morning, don’t know why. I don’t really hold much truck with them anyway and have a few theories of my own. I think they are usually cleverly written to be so generic that you can find significance in them even though there is no direct correlation to the prediction and your life. It is usually things like, “Take care when meeting new people today – things may not be quite as they seem” or “Your energy will build today but try to not do too much or you’ll end up tired”. Meaningless or just stating the bloody obvious. That isn’t to say I don’t think there could be some practitioners out there who are able to tap into deeper forces, but I doubt the newspaper predictions are anything more than random phrases generated by a computer! Take by way of example my reading for today: “You could easily slip into an old relationship pattern as the Moon in your 7th House of Partners conjoins the karmic South Node of the Moon” – Well I’m bloody glad I knew about THAT before I tucked into my boiled eggs!

Here’s a thought to run up your flagpole and see if it flies proud and erect or hangs limp and flaccid: I wonder if we’ve not made an error in one of the basic assumptions of astrology. We read our stars and make predictions based on the date and time of our birth. But it seems to me that the more relevant date (but harder to prove) is that of our conception. Stay with me – I’m trying to take a more scientific approach here. I was born in February, although I was premature and really should have made my grand entrance into the world in March, had I gone full term. I was probably conceived in June. The date I popped out was random, could have been influenced by many factors, Mother eating a particularly spicy radish, driving over a vicious pothole in the road, a funny episode of “The Liver Birds” or heaven forbid, Ena Sharples, Minnie Caldwell, Martha Longhurst and Hilda Ogden caught up in an edge-of-the-seat drama centring around a pint of milk stout and a pressing need to riddle clinkers and scythe pots! Anything could have set her off. But the date that I was conceived is absolute. Mr Sperm met Miss Egg at a fixed point in time (I’m assuming he brought champagne, flowers and at very least a box of Milk Tray, but knowing my father it was probably a couple of Dahlia heads he’d plucked in passing from mother’s garden – mother always kept her garden very tidy!! And maybe a half-eaten spam sandwich).

So, and here we come to the clever bit, I was conceived in June, in the Summer. Now that was way back in the days when we had proper summers, with knotted hankies, cricket on the green, sun loungers that would remove your leg as soon as look at you, knitted bathing costumes and a complete ineptitude for getting skin cancer no matter how hard we damned well tried. Hose pipe ban? Bahhh – it wasn’t summer unless the lawn had turned into a grassless, cracked expanse of compacted dirt more arid that depths of the Gobi Desert. So there’s this poor little embryo stuck inside my mother, suffering from the gestatory equivalent of boil-in-the-bag, being force fed the muffled tones of Dusty Springfield, Cliff Richard, The Mamas and The Papas and bloody Ken Diddy Men Dodd and a diet of cheese fondue, Prawn Cocktail and Babysham. Then, to add insult to injury, just as I’m starting to grow into a perfectly-formed mini-me and cognitive processes are starting to develop, BANG, it’s Winter, the temperature plummets and I go from par-boil to freeze-dried in less time than it takes to harvest a decent batch of stem cells! My point in all this is that the prevailing conditions, temperatures, pressure systems, socio-economic climate and so forth must all have had an impact on the embryonic me, and will have played some small part in governing the design of the resulting sproglet. Yes, we inherit much from our parents through genetics and behavioural models but surely the conditions of our gestation are influential too? And if that is the case, then our birth date is of less significance than our date of conception. A baby conceived in a torrid summer holiday romance and consequently being born in the winter will have undergone a different sequence of external conditions to a baby conceived at the office Christmas party. And yes, there ARE population peaks nine months after Christmas and the Summer Holidays (or similar vacations in other countries) - give people a few days off work, a couple of bottles of Tesco’s vin de plonk and hey presto, the human race has another statistic to ponder.

Maybe we should be paying more attention to the astrological significance of our conception dates and not our ‘wombic evacuation’ anniversary. In which case, by my reckoning, I was conceived round about 43 years ago to this very day. Why are you not singing “Happy Bonk Day To You”? Where’s my Bonkday cake? I expect a card!

Although, if I extrapolate just a step further, I guess that would make my star sign ironic in its predictive abilities and painfully appropriate. June 22 to July 22: Cancer!

2009-06-23T16:59:00.007+01:00

Back in Blighty, buggered, bewitched and bewildered after Budapest, and now being Bill Bryson! Hungary was not at all what we expected (although we didn’t know what to expect really – just not what we found). We had a good time though, and Budapest was fascinating.

Flight out delayed by an hour – points failure at Brent Cross or some such excuse. Maybe the wrong type of leaves on the runway or inappropriate catering conditions. But no matter, as we had to put clocks forward an hour anyway so had absolutely no idea what time we were supposed to land at Ferihegy. I really don't cope well with temporal displacement! Great views of the Danube as we flew in – decidedly NOT blue though. I guess “On the banks of the Muddy-Brown Danube” doesn’t sound quite as romantic. Transfer to hotel uneventful but I was nagged with a strange feeling that I had seen the architecture somewhere before.

Some consternation at hotel reception. Two men wanting a double room? Flap, panic, gibber away in Hungarian assuming that we had no idea what they were saying. But, “Are you sure? A DOUBLE? But they are both men! They must mean Twin. No, it says here, Double. They must be homosexualists. Yikes!” has pretty much the same body language anywhere in the world regardless of native tongue! Much frantic phoning around to “Check that your room is ready” and eventually we got a key card. It was quite funny, especially in light of the fact that Hungary has passed legislation which means that starting from July 1, 2009 same-sex couples can enter into registered partnership, as per the UK. The law gives the same rights to registered partners as to spouses – just don’t ask for a double room in a five-star hotel! It was a stunning building though - marble everywhere, very plush.

We had nibbles and corporate small-talk that evening, it being a work gathering with David's fellow 'achievers' - the vast majority of whom were sales people from other sectors of the business. I was happy; plenty of olives, nuts and bread sticks. Strange pointy ‘biscuit-cum-pastry’ things for dipping into the guacamole – we worked out later that they were triangles of deep-fried pancake! The meet-and-greet was on a terraced balcony onto which our bedroom’s French Doors opened – which was handy and meant we could liberate a couple of bottles of water without having to pay the £9 for the one they left in our room!

Breakfast on Saturday was fabulous – pretty much anything you could want was there from full English to Continental, fruit, cereals, breads, omelettes cooked on demand and even champagne for Bucks Fizz (still making my mind up about Bucks Fizz!). Can’t fault the catering in the hotel at all.

We were then taken on an organised coach tour around the city, hosted by a local guide called Gerda (pronounced the same as in iron Bru), who was very amusing if only in the fact that she didn’t have a good word to say about her home country! We were deluged with lots of stats (everything of significance is 96m tall, has 96 steps or lived to be 96 years old), saw lots of statues (mostly of people with beards, and that’s just the women) and did lots of touristy gawping. Gerda shepherded her flock with a folded umbrella raised high – the significance (or rather error) of this will be explained later.

The main historical lesson seems to be that whenever there has been a war, skirmish or general disagreement, Hungary has picked the wrong side. I guess I had an image of the country under Communist rule, as would most people of my age, but Gerda was keen to point out that this is only a very small period in their history and they have been invaded by plenty of other people besides the Ruskies!

Remember I said I had a feeling that I recognised Budapest? Well the forint finally fell (see what I did there?) and I drew the connection: Evita! They filmed many of the crowd scenes and the funeral procession in Budapest. They shot a lot around Hero’s square - I guess it made a change for the shooting to be film and not guns! I’d like to claim that we have followed the same route as Madonna, but I doubt she was actually IN the coffin as it processed up the main boulevard – probably busy catalogue shopping for a new baby/husband/leotard/mansion.

Our guide was full of anecdotes, mostly self-deprecating, but quite fun. For example, when the Opera house was built they hadn’t really thought things through and come the first performance it turned out that a third of the audience couldn’t see the stage. Another third couldn’t hear. But the Mayor was not to be thwarted and decreed that those seats could be sold at a discount to deaf and blind people! Now that’s lateral problem solving for you. The coach took us past the zoo where they boast a pair of hippos who have, against the odds, bred in captivity – leading to much frivolity concerning happy hefty horny Hungarian hippos. Maybe if Gerda hadn’t pronounced it “hee-pohs” we might not have been so infantile!
We also learnt that Hungarian people put their surname before their given name and that Curtis Tony’s family was from there. Not sure how the naming convention works for people with a middle name – I suppose it’d be Pooh The Winnie! Struggling to list many famous Hungarians – Zsa Zsa Gabor was born in Budapest and Johnny Weissmuller (for me the quintessential Tarzan in the same way as Tom Baker was the best Doctor Who). Musically there is Béla Bartók and Franz Liszt, but beyond that I’m struggling to name many names. Not surprising I guess in a nation of people that seems to have always been pretty constantly revolting!

The city is split into two areas – Pest, the flat, commercial/residential area and Buda, the old, hilly, castle district. We coached over the Danube to Buda where the main party went on a walking tour to the royal palace. We opted out – I’d already done a fair amount of walking and couldn’t cope with too much more. We had a little meander around and took a few photos – the funicular railway and a panorama of the riverside – a series of photos that I then stitched together to make this one:

We had to meet the main party to head off for lunch together. By this time it had started to rain. Gerta appeared with her attendant ducklings in tow and headed off at breakneck pace for the restaurant. Remember her tour-guide umbrella? Really not much help in the pouring rain when hundreds of other people suddenly produced identical brollies and made more problematic by the fact that she went trotting off at a speed way beyond my abilities. So we were left lagging and stumbling over the very uneven cobbles. Made it eventually though, but in quite a bit of pain which was exacerbated by the next part of our ‘experience’. Before the meal we were shown the champagne cellars – dug into the hillside under the restaurant and down about five sets of stairs: The underworld in more ways than one!

The rotund and ruddy vintner took a major strop when David and I both turned down a free glass of bubbly. I think he would have been less shocked if we’d dropped our trousers and called him Mary! To call this a ‘tour of the cellars’ was really stretching the point. We stood in a group and looked at some upturned bottles while he showed us a presentation cupboard containing bottles of bubbly signed by famous people who had visited (but I think he had trouble remembering their names and pretty much only managed Antonio Banderas – during Evita filming I guess - and a couple of obscure Hungarian musicians with names that even HE couldn’t pronounce). Then we hiked all the way back up to ground level (I’m assuming up 96 steps) for the lunch. I was somewhat frazzled!

The food was, I think, supposed to be representative of Hungarian cuisine. We had a lovely Hungarian Goulash soup, followed by chicken breast with cheese-stuffed pancakes. The pancakes were unusual. I’ve made them as part of a savoury dish before (rolled up and filled with bolognaise and then covered in cheese sauce) but never presented in this way. This was followed with yet more pancakes, this time stuffed with apple and ice cream. Everyone else in the party was well-plied with wine and, to their credit, the restaurant provided David and me with plenty of soft drinks. Coffee strong enough to strip the enamel off your teeth concluded the meal.

We headed back to the coaches although this time they were parked at the foot of the hill and so we had more steps to descend, which, following the rain, were slippery and for me somewhat treacherous. The coaches took us back to the hotel and we had a few hours then to freshen up and dress for the evening. David had a cheeky nap and I did the ironing!

So now I have to confess to something about which I feel extremely foolish. Anyone who has been following my blog, or indeed my Twitter updates, will know that we went on a special shopping expedition to buy me some new post-chemo trousers so I’d have something smart to don for the formal meal. Guess which muppet packed the wrong trousers!? I confess: t’was me. A year ago I bought some new trousers for work, and they were a perfect fit (SO unusual for me). A fortnight later, thinking along the bird-hand-bush lines, we went back and bought a second pair. However I never actually wore them as that was just before I was rushed into hospital. So they were hanging in the wardrobe, still with their shop tags on. I guess that when packing I grabbed the trousers which were still tagged, thinking them to be the most recently purchased pair. Wrong! Thus, I’m standing in a Budapest hotel room with a 28” waist enjoying the unparalleled spaciousness of 32” trousers! Now an extra 4” can be problematic in any country let alone a place far from home with very little chance of there being a branch of M&S within easy tottering distance. Luckily the hotel provided complimentary sewing kits and so with anguished fervour I set about making alterations. I managed to botch a compromise where the trousers didn’t actually just fall down, but also where there was not so much gathered fabric that they looked like they were pleated. Well, there’s a limit to what you can do in 20 minutes with a yard of thread, a flimsy needle, no scissors or thimble and inadequate mood lighting. That is to say the lighting was inadequate, not my mood. I had plenty of mood. Mood to spare in fact. Anyway, the trousers looked and functioned ok provided I kept my shirt only loosely tucked in and my hands in my pockets when walking anywhere. So – trousers round ankles or hands in pockets looking like I’m playing with myself? I love these win/win scenarios!

We were due to walk to the restaurant for the evening meal but it was absolutely tanking down and so the organisers sorted coaches. That was fantastic of them and must have been a challenge at short notice. We were eating at a place a few hundred yards down the road but we’d have been drenched. As it was, the one-way system seemed to take us miles around the city – I mean it, we must have done a few miles to cover a few hundred yards walking distance. I think those brave souls who did walk must have considered it a real possibility that we’d ‘done a bunk’!

Now, the next time you pop over to Hungary, as I know you do every few weeks, you really must see the Café New York “Deep Water” - what an amazing place. A combination of gold, crystal, marble and cherrywood, with every vertical surface and ceiling decorated with plaster mouldings and classical paintings. We are talking serious neck strain just from trying to take in the decor. One can never have too many cherubs!

The food was lovely and paced at a speed that allowed me sufficient time to eat slowly and not end up being sick. I have to admit my worst nightmare was that I’d have one of my unannounced and instantaneous stomach upsets; cherubs with chunks is not a decorating style the place was likely to welcome! But I was fine. Didn’t eat everything but that was through a need to limit my intake and not any complaint with the food. We all noted that the main dish was heavy on meat and minimalist in terms of veg, but Gerda (our ebullient coach guide) explained that is the Hungarian way. It seems that traditionally meat was cheap and plentiful to produce whereas veg were not – although I can’t see how a cow is easier to farm than a potato. That said, the steaks, although beautiful, were only just a step up from actively grazing. I’m sure mine let out a little moo at one point! It certainly still had a pulse.

The wine drinkers were all a little perturbed by the very small measures they were given, although glasses were topped up whenever they asked. And they should consider those who did not drink wine and were offered no alternative beyond a jug of water that was already on the table. That really is my only criticism: with our not drinking wine, it would have been nice if David and I had been offered an alternative. It was a very enjoyable night and the rain had stopped when we left the venue so we walked back to our Hotel which really wasn’t far away at all. Others went on to various clubs, casinos and dens of iniquity but neither of us is big on that sort of thing and we were happy to head back for some sleep.

Sunday turned out to be a miserable, wet, grey day. Our transfer to the airport was at 4pm so we had time to kill – and kill it we did, slowly and with determination . We had a damp stroll up to the main tourist street, Andrássy út, and then took the [second oldest in the world] underground metro system to the river. Sadly the weather was just too miserable to do very much; we would have liked to take a boat cruise along the Danube to see more of the waterfront architecture but that would have been pointless with the conditions deteriorating.
We did poodle around a bit, dodging the worst of the rain and sheltering under trees wherever possible. It was a shame as some of the buildings are stunning. There is a mix of styles; Baroque, Classicist, Romanesque, Gothic and Art Nouveau – plus a few ‘carbuncles’ that probably seemed a good idea at the time but on hindsight are out of place and jarring. I gather that there is a big Venetian influence too and at one point there were plans to have a network of canals running up the middle of the main streets – instead they now have trams, which don’t have quite the same romantic appeal as gondolas! On reflection I wish we had booked in for a spa treatment on the Sunday, as the city has a number of thermal pools and that would have been a great experience – well, better than being rained on anyway.

Back at the hotel via a quick meal in a local cafe and some more rocket-fuel coffee, we met up with the others flying to Manchester and headed out for the airport to be gifted with an hour’s delay. Add to that the fact that we had to lose the extra hour we’d acquired on the trip out and we were well knackered by the time we arrived home. Still, this time last year there was a very real chance I’d not make it to the end of the week, let alone be well enough to travel abroad and for that I count my blessings. Reality bites deep and hard. ‘Chinese woman opposite’ is still flaunting her knickers in the bedroom window. Cats still need feeding. Garden demands watering. Washing out on line and then it rains. Cooking. Cleaning. David’s back at work tomorrow, but despite all that it is good to be home.

2009-06-18T09:37:00.003+01:00

What of today?

Well I’m sure you will want to join me in wishing a very happy birthday to Delia Smith. Do you think she makes her own birthday cakes? Half-baked, over-egged, whipped but not beaten, slightly soggy bottom, a bit crispy round the edges, well past the best-before date but turned out ok all things considered? And the cake will be nice as well. I should also mention Paul McCartney who was born on this day too – although carbon dating has yet to reveal which century BC we’re talking about. Heather Mills was once a model? Oh come on! She’s no Naomi Campbell. Or does she have Airfix stamped on her back? Maybe by ‘model’ they mean like the ones I made as a kid out of Play-Doh and which bore no resemblance to anything that has ever actually walked this Earth. [Reaches for tub of Play-Doh kept forever to hand in case I need to be transported instantly back to my childhood with a single sniff] And my birthday honours list would be as incomplete as a jigsaw bought at a car boot sale if I didn’t mention Paul Eddington, born today, had a Good Life and went on to become Prime Minister. The Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister shows were, in my opinion, British comedy at its best. Sharp, intelligent, witty, beautifully performed and such superb observational comedy, proven more-so by the fact that they remain astutely accurate and shockingly relevant even today.

Take for example:

Head of MI5: We can't have unfounded, arrogant press speculation. That's the last thing we want.
Hacker: Even if it's accurate?
Head of MI5: Oh, especially if it's accurate.

Must watch the DVDs again. They just don’t make comedy like that these days.

I want to make amends for the anti-American comments I made a few days back (about how they were much more palatable when stampeding across the prairie shooting each other with bows and arrows, in black and white). To wit I shall ponder for a moment on the fact that today marks the anniversary of the day that American air pioneer Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. She was not the pilot on that flight though. I’m assuming she spent the flight wandering up and down, smiling inanely, asking, “Tea? Coffee? Would you like anything from the Duty Free Trolley?” – who knows?! She didn’t make her own solo transatlantic crossing until 1932. Presumably she’d got bored with pointing out directions to the Emergency Exits, located her, here and here. She should perhaps have paid more attention during the safety announcements and may have known that the straps on the life jacket pass behind your back and tie in a bow, like so. It could have made all the difference since in 1937 her plane disappeared without trace. She might have survived if she’d removed her stiletto heels, put on her own life jacket (before helping anyone else), tugged on the oxygen mask which dropped from the ceiling and, at very least, known that there is a whistle for attracting attention.

I mention this because at about this time tomorrow David and I will be in the air en-route for Budapest, so matters of aviation are paramount in my mind. Whilst I do not have a current copy of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (my iPhone being the nearest approximation available) I do recall what it says on the subject of how to fly:

There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] suggests, and try it.

The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it's going to hurt.

That is, it's going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.
Clearly, it is the second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.

One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It's no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won't. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you're halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it's going to hurt if you fail to miss it.

I’m guessing Amelia got confused and didn’t realise that ‘failing to miss the ground’ is, for the sake of this thesis, exactly the same as ‘failing to miss the sea’. Or maybe she was just distracted by a damn good in-flight movie, some 1930s chick-flick featuring women who wore dead foxes round their necks and smoked French ‘tabs’ through 16 inch cigarette holders and slick-back haired men in suits with creases so sharp you could cut cardboard and moustaches manicured to within an inch of their lives. Must have been a bugger getting the organ into the cockpit [Matron!] though!

Still thinking of things that fly, It is funny how time flies (like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana – Groucho Marx, but currently being quoted by Wogan every half hour on the telly) or “tempus fugit” if you want the earliest Latin version, which actually translates as “time flees” and is often mistranslated due to the similar phrase tempus volat hora fugit ("time flies, the hour flees"). See, you learn something by coming here, even if you don’t bally well want to! This shit doesn’t just happen you know, I research and everything! Focus, Adrian, focus! Where was I, yes, time flies and it seems that the trip to Hungary has approached at breakneck speed, leaving me with the penultimate day’s packing ahead of me. Clear the decks boys, I’m going in! I’ll need the spare room clearing out so I can make piles. I’ll need the scales readily available to check luggage allowances at 15-minute intervals. I’ll need my electronic list to hand. I’ll need you to anticipate what I need you to bring, but not a second before I require it. I’ll also need you to know that since I asked for you to get ‘the blue one’ I have decided that ‘the red one’ would be more appropriate and you’ll need to have anticipated this. I’ll need cups of tea bringing. I’ll need the itinerary to cross reference to my list. Get me 20ccs of Morphine. Damn, I’m flat-lining. I’m going into shock! Quick! Quick! I’m losing it! IV Adrenalin, STAT!

2009-06-17T11:35:00.002+01:00

Good morrow fair reader, for you are most welcome in my little cloud amid the blogosphere. I trust this day finds you full of joy with a spring in your step and the careless gambol of a new-born lamb? No? Drink more water – they say that’s the answer!

I have to report on a development on the FuxTunes front – that “wonder-software” that completely screwed up my iTunes music collection - and there were some tracks in there I’d never be able to replace, I mean, Joe Dulce and “Shaddap You Face”, René and Renato’s timeless “Save Your Love”, Barry Manilow’s “Bermuda Triange” (It’s his birthday today so I DEMAND that you stop what you are doing and sing at least the chorus from Copacobana – and don’t try to tell me you don’t know the words...

“At the Copa, Copacabana,
The hottest spot north of Havana,
At the Copa, Copacbana,
Music and passion were always the fashion,
At the Copa....they fell in love”

You’ll be singing that all day now – God I’m a bastard!) Well, true to my word I did write to the company who distribute the software, explaining my grievance and only just falling short of suggesting that I should visit their offices and leave them in a similar state to the post-apocalyptic disaster area that their software seemed to think was appropriate for my music. This is what their website proclaims:

FixTunes is an easy and powerful program that will fix any missing or misspelled song details, add album artwork, remove duplicates songs and organize your music.

Now doesn’t THAT sound fantastic?! I told you yesterday about the reality though and the text should in fact read:

FuxTunes is a difficult and annoying program that will take ages to run, thus slowing down your computer to the point of un-usability, fuck any missing or misspelled song details as well as ones that are perfectly correct, add album artwork but not necessarily for the right album and if you already have the right artwork it will probably remove that too, remove random songs and completely un-organize your music.

But I do pride myself in being able to take the moral high ground. When you’re 5ft 4’ (ish, it fluctuates) you tend to opt for the higher path whenever one is available, as a matter of course, if only for the novelty value of seeing people’s heads instead of being roughly at nipple height, and I will say now, in writing, that Kelly the very nice lady at FuxTunes has actually refunded the cost of the software. Halleluiah. Choirs of over-excited angels sing in praise, like they've each drunk a litre of Sunny-D at the Last Night of the Proms. Triumphant seraphim proclaim the existence of one good soul on Earth. Cherubs are, as I write, swooping around the room, playing flutes and harps. The Angel Gabriel is knocking on the door, which either means proof of divine intervention or possibly I’m due an immaculate conception! (Or maybe that jam I had at breakfast had started to ferment a bit and I’m in the early stages of something akin to an acid trip?) So, well done Kelly at cloudbrain.com and thank you (but no, I won’t be trying your pending new version when it comes out).

Something I will try though is the TweetDeck app for the iPhone – I like twittering twaddle, although half the time I don’t know what I am doing! I’m an unashamed celebrity stalker – follow lots of the lovvies. Just found Sue Perkins (apt I guess as we watched her in Supersize Me the other day), but when I saw her tweet I didn’t recognise her from her username and nearly blocked her. Well, she’s @sueperkins – I misread it completely and thought she was a brand of cigarettes, @superkings! Doh! I must be tea-deficient, need a cuppa. OMG, just had a dreadful thought: we’re off to Hungary on Friday for the weekend – what if they don’t have proper tea there?!? Shit, will have to add tea-bags to my packing list, or we could end up drinking some local concoction made from dried courgette strained through the perforated skin of an Aubergine. Or maybe my preconceptions of Hungarian cuisine will be proved wrong. Well, not wrong, I don’t do wrong, lets just say “in need of an upgrade”.

It’s as black as your hat here at the moment, and hats off to the weather which looks like it’ll pour down at the drop of a hat! Enough to make you throw your hat in. But you don’t need to listen to this old hat; I’m talking through my hat anyway, which is what comes of being as mad as a hatter! (Do you think I ran a bit too far with the hat metaphors? Sorry, I got a bee in my bonnet!) Seriously though, it’s dark, cold, windy and generally very gloomy today; a far cry from the glorious sunshine of yesterday. That is the yesterday that I spent indoors, unable to enjoy the splendid weather, in hospital, hanging around for hours in the sweltering heat waiting for blood test results and to see my oncology consultant. Why couldn’t yesterday have been miserable and today nice and sunny? But hey, this is England and the last thing we should expect is cooperative meteorology! However, despite being baked alive in the hospital waiting room, yesterday’s visit did prove worthwhile.

You may recall that since early February I have been waiting for a PET scan. In simple terms they inject you with glucose laced with radiation. Cancerous cells need more energy than normal cells, so they use more of the glucose and consequently cause concentrations of the radiation – ‘hot spots’ that can then be detected. Most other scans, Ultrasound, MRI, CT etc look for hard tissue mass, but not necessarily active cancer. Because my lymphoma was so widespread, in my soft tissue and my bones, my consultant (who I shall call Dr Dolittle – not for his ability to talk to animals but for reasons that will soon be revealed) said back in February that he thought I should have a PET scan to make sure that the cancer had been eradicated. This had to be done at a different hospital – Christies – as it is a specialised test but, he reassured me, because it is so specialised there is practically no waiting list and he would see me for the results in three weeks time. No appointment arrived, despite me camping out at the letter box each day waiting for the post. I contacted Dr Dolittle and he said he would chase it. Four more weeks passed and still no date from Christies. At my next check-up I (diplomatically and with much sensitivity) suggested that maybe Christies had lost my details and Dr Dolittle went a shade of red best left to very ripe tomatoes, and said that he had in fact not arranged the appointment. Ooops – he’d do that straight away. I shall edit out a few more check-ups for the sake of a jaunty narrative and with absolute faith that you can fill in the blanks yourselves. In the intervening months I have had armfuls of blood taken, several other tests and repeat ultrasound scans – as a reaction to raised enzymes and some damage to my liver which will eventually need treatment but not for a year or so. So at yesterday’s check-up the subject of the PET scan was raised once again. This time Dr Dolittle said that “I don’t think you need to have that now. Your blood test results are looking much better, your white cell production is recovering well [chemo destroys your bone marrow and thus your ability to produce antibodies], your ultrasound was totally clear, there is no evidence of cancer at all, so we’ll not request the PET scan. No need.” Now, this is fantastic news, don’t get me wrong, and I’m over the moon, but does that not rather smack of an admission that four months later and he had still not actually put me forward for the scan? That’s four months of worrying, thinking “He wouldn’t’ be sending me for this ‘specialised’ test if he didn’t think there was a chance that there may still be active cancer on my body” He was effectively saying so much time has passed now that I must be okay because I’ve not got worse! Well, I suppose ‘leave him and see if he dies’ is one diagnostic technique in the NHS arsenal – actually Hugh Laurie uses it all the time in ‘House’ but you kinda don’t want to think that actually happens. Still, the Do Little approach is probably quite cost-effective and I’m sure I have had more than my fair share of NHS expenditure over the last year – and a personal thanks to everyone for paying taxes that has made this possible. You all helped save my life. I mean that. Thank you!

2009-06-16T07:56:00.005+01:00

You may recall that yesterday I talked about some software to reorganise my iTunes music library and I used the analogy of a shed or spare room, a little cluttered, half-piles of stuff, bit untidy and needing a good sort out? Well that is exactly what this software is supposed to do. Although now, having run it overnight and for most of yesterday I see that the results on my music library are roughly akin to the impact of allowing two rutting stags loose in aforementioned shed, after calling each of them a bit of a girl and questioning the moral rectitude of their mothers! Chaos – complete disaster! Piles of poo everywhere, bits of blood and guts sprayed liberally around the landscape and any semblance or organisation now shot to kingdom come! I have quite a few compilation albums, greatest hits collections and so on. So it has taken each song, worked out which album it originally came from, created that album and shoved the song in there. So now, instead of “Now that’s what I call music 50” I have 25 albums each with a single track, each by a different artist. Oh, and for most of THOSE albums it hasn’t found the right artwork! So let my lesson be a warning to you – never use a thing called FixTunes . I think they meant FuxTunes! And what really gets my goat is we actually PAID for this crap. I’m going to write a letter. It will probably be very long, but have in it lots of very short words (although I may choose to jumble the words a bit, remove a few, change some others, disassemble all sentences into their constituent nouns, verbs, pronouns, adverbs etc and then spit them out with acute unawareness of any sort of common sense. So, to start, “Sir dear, software shit your is. Arse your up it stick. Load what a of wank. “

Maybe this is all punishment for something bad I did in a previous existence? Maybe I inflicted some terrible ill on humankind and this is Karma (I assume not of the chameleon variety) putting things right. I do sometimes get a weird feeling that I have lived before. Not Déjà Vu, more complex than that. For example just occasionally I could kill for a cigarette, I need the hit, I know what it feels like to take the first drag after a long wait for a roll-up. But I’ve never smoked in my life. Not once. So there is no way I could know these things. And I’ve described them to a smoker before and told I was spot on with what I was saying. So, a smoker in a previous life then. Someone who caused immeasurable suffering to the people of this fair isle and who’s spirit is destined to forever inhabit the bodies of those prone to misadventure, unreliable network access, dodgy software and a “Chinese Woman Opposite” with a knicker exposure fetish. Got it. I must have been Sir Walter Raleigh – he of the alleged tobacco, potato and chopper bike fame. Come to think of it, we had some spuds the other day that were decidedly dodgy. Now this makes sense - I mean, he would be destined to an endless life of torturous misery; think how much damage has been done by cigarettes, either in terms of national health or even such things as increased costs on the fire brigade and the inflated costs of sofas which now all have to be retardant! Still I suppose it is all part of the rich tapestry (now dutifully fire-proofed and certified to British standards of spark retardancy) of life. And don’t get me started on the evils of the potato! Vegetables that grow eyes? THAT’s not natural! Hell they come from the same family as Deadly Nightshade (the clue there is in the name... Deadly!) and if ingested in sufficient quantities (well, green spuds anyway) they contain poisons that can cause vomiting, diarrhoea, headaches and even paralysis of the central nervous system. It’s true. It says it on the interweb. What’s more, and follow my logic here, if Raleigh (or whoever) hadn’t introduced potatoes to Britain then there could have been no potatoes to get blight in Ireland, no famine caused by lost potato crops, no mass migration, especially not to America and probably Americans would still be galloping around on horses, eating Bison, living in Teepees (I watch QI – I know the difference between a Teepee and a Wigwam) killing each other with bows and arrows and adopting silly names like Flying Red Bull and Makes Noise of Heap Big Flatulence. Which seems to me to be a far better way for them to carry on that they have been doing of late! I shouldn’t come over as so racist. I do like some Americans – Marge Simpson, Stewie from Family Guy, Bambi...

And whilst I’m paddling round the subject of potatoes, like a signet caught in a whirlpool, I’m reminded that my step father once grew blue potatoes – honestly. No kidding. If you don’t believe me, ask him. He’ll tell you all about them. For hours. Best have a wee before you start the conversation. You don't need to listen, just nod in the right places. It can be a good time to do other mental activities while your brain isn't fully engaged - maybe the world's biggest suduko puzzle, or perhaps solve a couple of complex mathematical equations that have been bugging you since childhood. Point being, any conversation with my Step Father requires only physical presence, so daydreaming is encouraged, and in fact more conducive to your ongoing sanity. People have gestated babies in the time it can take him to tell a story. And carrots were originally purple. Don’t believe me? Here – have a look at this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1991768.stm - there you see! We’ve just bred the purple out in favour of the expected orange colouring. Sometimes you can still see a faint purple tinge at the top of the carrot where the leaves sprout. And THAT my friends is called genetic engineering – breeding one trait out and one trait in. Its just that we have been doing it for hundreds of years instead of in a lab over a matter of weeks. Same difference though. Nobody questions whether or not orange carrots are supposed to be in the food chain. Who know what damage they are doing! Hell, the purple colour could contain a chemical which, upon prolonged exposure, would protect us from cancer, the common cold – or maybe give us superpowers! Think of THAT next time you make a stew or eat a slice of carrot cake and go all prim and proper on whether or not we should clone sheep. Don't you think THEY have been modified over the years to produce either the best wool or the best chops? I had better rest my case before I start on global warming!

2009-06-15T13:05:00.002+01:00

Monday and a rude awakening to the week. No doubt a portent of things to come! We ordered some more membership cards for the club night – think credit card without the financial ruin! They arrived this morning, not long after David had left for work and I’d fallen back into a deep sleep – dreaming about wall-papering in some bazaar metaphorical way. Cracks in my life I want to cover over? Possibly, but NOT with burgundy flock! Never! Anyway, I’m poised with plumb line and paste brush when the doorbell rang with the seeming volume of a full concert orchestra. Why does Interlink deliver here so early? We must be near a hub.

Still, there have been worse Mondays than this. Ask the Boomtown Rats! Or The Bangles for that matter – they seemed to have a similar problem with Mondays! For example, on this day in 2002 a near earth asteroid - 2002 MN - missed the Earth by 75,000 miles (120,000 km), about one-third of the distance between the Earth and the Moon. In astronomical terms that is a midges’’ dick away! OK, technically 15th June 2002 wasn’t a Monday, just in case anyone out there was pedantic enough to check (heck, I was!), but the date is right and it’s the thought that counts. Unless you’re about to be struck by an asteroid, in which case worrying about which day of the week it is will probably not figure highly on your to-do list! Still, it makes you think how fragile everything really is when compared to the cosmic forces at play all around us. I blame Newton – if he’d not invented gravity we’d all have been in ignorant bliss of such matters! Gravity just pulls you down!

Speaking of to-do lists, I was in seventh heaven yesterday when I found an app for the iPhone that is designed to generate holiday packing lists. It’s very good, everything sub-categorised to within an inch of its life, things to do in advance, people to inform, things to take (all broken down into further sub-divisions) – pure bliss. Packing trousers? What length? Shorts, ½ length, or full-length? Casual or formal? Need a belt? What colour? I suspect if I kept drilling down I could specify at a molecular level! I’m gratified that finally someone else has understood the correct way to plan a trip abroad. They must have got wind of my way of doing things and decided to share this invaluable wisdom in the form of an app. Of course, I wasn’t credited, at least not on the high level list of people who had input to the production of the app, but I’m sure that somewhere in there my name will appear – maybe at sub-atomic level?

Our network seems to be up and down like a manic depressive on a trampoline. Starting to think the problem is the isp, pissing about with the connectivity during the daytime. Brand new router, more technology than NASA, makes theUSS Enterprise look like a 1960s sci-fi space ship (er, ok, got me on that one) - Or... maybe there is something more sinister afoot. “Chinese Woman Opposite” – her of the knickers-in-the-window fame – maybe she has somehow tapped into the fibre-optic cable and is using it to conduct the latest phase in her world domination plan. The knickers in the window being some sort of secret message to her 'underworld' associates. Big red pants means "I have the weapon primed" and small blue ones mean "Advance to stage two". My (world wide) web has been infiltreated!

I also found a tool to ‘fix’ my iTunes library – remove repetition, fill in blank information about songs, download the correct album art, generally tidy up the mess that has accumulated over the years. Think of my iTunes library a bit like the spare room, garage, or shed. Bunged full of stuff that one day I will have paramount need to access, but arranged in ‘sort-of groups’ – you know, a pile of similar stuff here and a pile of other similar stuff there. Some piles have duplicates, some have things missing. Some piles are just the stuff that didn’t seem to belong in any other piles. Well this software promises that I’ll have a wonderfully organised library, with everything correctly arranged and up to date. I am yet to be convinced as already it seems to have taken some tracks out of their original albums (which were correct) and put them in brand new ones. I told you – I DON’T LIKE MONDAYS!!!

2009-06-14T10:36:00.005+01:00

Yesterday was, despite all weather forecasts, a lovely day – sunny and not a spot of the promised rain. As expected it was fraught with challenges, although I have to say that these were met mostly by David! The dishwasher played up, door refused to close, no obvious reason why. David emptied it and cleaned the sills, jiggled and joggled and put it back together again without really doing anything and it was fine. Praise be – I was half expecting to have to get a new one. And they are two of life’s luxuries I never want to be without – A David AND a Dishwasher. I do love it when he’s here. Weekends are so much easier, just having him around.

Cats have collectively decided to stop eating about half the varieties for food we give them. They go through fads like that but it ends up costing a fortune when the suddenly just go off something. 9 out of 10 cats prefer Whiskers, my arse! Sometimes, maybe, but not today thanks very much and how dare you feed us such shit?! Not even I am that fussy!

Did a job that I’ve wanted to sort for ages but have been putting off. For Christmas, David bought me a lovely new watch, but the metal strap was far too big and needed some links removing. I’d waited and waited to do this, mostly because when I came out of hospital I was SO thin, my arms were like sticks and had no flesh on them at all. I’ve been trying to put on weight and get back to a more reasonable body shape – 'Ethiopian/catwalk model' really didn’t suit me. I could write pages about standing in front of a mirror and crying because I was unrecognisable. That was such a horrible experience, so scary, so very scary. But, hey, that was then and this is now, and there are only two photos in existence of me from that time, both of which are kept well under locks. So now as I’m getting better I have finally had the links in the watch removed and I get to wear it. It feels so good to have a watch back on my wrist. I’m one of those weird people who wear a watch on the ‘wrong’ hand. I’m right-handed and most ‘righties’ tend to wear their watch on the left wrist – I have mine on the right. Why? When I was at Art College and did a fair bit of painting at an easel, I held the paint palette in the left hand, so turning it over to see the time would have resulted in paint all over the floor!
Takes me back, all that talk of painting. It has been far too long since I did anything like that. I’ll have to look out a few of my pictures, or take a few photos. I did a nice series of Star Trek paintings once – only small, but each one linked to the next in an endless loop, so you could display them in line starting with any one of them and the set would still make a full frieze. I'll fish out a few others and post in the next few days.

Yesterday I also took up my new jeans, ready for Hungary on Friday. That seems to have come around very quickly. I should, by now, have several lists on the go. Lists of things to do, lists of things to take, lists of lists I need – I may be a bit anal about such things but we never find ourselves away without something we need. So far though I have been lax: no lists. Ug! Better start scribbling or it is quite possible that the world may come to a very nasty end! Lists for foreign countries that you’veen to are bad enough, but this is somewhere we have never touched foot – funny money, not even the Euro – Thank goodness the iPhone has a currency conversion App. Ahhh – I wonder if it has an App for holiday lists....

Didn’t find anything much more than To-Do lists, but got a little side-tracked downloading a few games. Sorry. Must pay attention. Concentrate. Focus! Games good though – a few word games to keep me busy on the flight and a rollercoaster game which looks like it’ll take some getting used to. I’m used to a keyboard, a mouse or at least a stylus – all this tapping, pinching swiping and flicking the screen is a new language to me and seems akin to undertaking some sort of erotic fingering of my mobile! Maybe the phone gets off on being pinched and flicked and gently caressed but its doing nothing for me!

New stalker today – Francis from Ghana. This one wants £100 for a passport so he can come to England and be my lover! Sometimes I really have to wonder how stupid these people think we are in England. Do any of them ever get the money/visa/sponsorship that they are obviously trying to extort? I shall, of course, be quite polite but spend ages now winding him up. If he wastes my time, I can waste his – for longer and much more humorously. Who shall I be today? The Rev Mike Hunt? Lord Willie Wonker? Ben Dover? Michael Fitzpatrick, or Patrick Fitzmichael? Or maybe I’m the Irish double-glazing salesman Paddy O’Doors? A bit of fun methinks with a parasite from Ghana.

We finished yesterday with a barbecue - only a couple of burgers but somehow you feel like you're getting something special when it is cooked outside - like you've cheated the weather's predisposition for liquidity! It should be fine today too, so might get the grass cut. Or might not!

Yes, we did go out last night - resplendent in my new jeans and t-shirt - to Legends. That used to be the place to be and is the venue where we hold out club nights. There was a time when you could go out any Saturday night and know there would be a dozen mates out as well, great atmosphere, loads of fun, guaranteed busy. Last night when we arrived there was the two of us and one other punter. More staff than visitors. Makes me so sad. Credit crunch be buggered - this is people who just don't bother any more. We make a point of trying to support Legends, on the basis of 'use it or lose it' but it seems that others don't have quite the same philosophy. As Joni Mitchell once said, "You don't know what you've got 'til it.s gone"

2009-06-13T11:10:00.002+01:00

Saturday, and today really is the 13th. I await with trepidation all the little practical jokes the day has in store; expect many, prepared for but a few!

What to tell? Friday continued in much the same vain as it started, poking fun at me and sticking its leg out to trip me up whenever my attention was diverted elsewhere. Little bugger. Network intermittent until David came home with new gizmo, unplugged, plugged, configured, wiggled, pinged, fiddled, swore, coaxed, threatened and generally waved a multitude of magic wands. Thus we now have guaranteed 100% reliable home network and internet access that will never ever fail, astonishing upload and download speeds, file transfer rates that actually exceed the laws of physics and probably a mini-hadron collider poised on the brink of discovering the Higgs Boson particle. (Why did my spell-checker want to change that from hadron to hard on? Such smut!) We’re but a step away from sending out an inverse tachyon pulse through the main deflector array into the quantum singularity causing a cascade of chronotron particles and possibly destroying all life as we know it in this sector of the galaxy! Someone beam me up! Please!

Good day for blog hits yesterday – thanks to everyone who stopped by – it was the busiest day yet. Or was it just that it was Friday and you were all bored? I don’t care; I’m turning into a blog-hits whore, happy to prostitute myself on the back of imagined popularity. Oh, I’m SO cheap! I hope I gave a few laughs at least, if not with me then at me. Feel free to add comments – I can take it! (I only seem to be in a fragile mental state, bordering on a complete meltdown. Honest. The voices keep telling me I’m ok!)

Letter from United Utilities offering to insure my external pluming. I say it’s not the external stuff that needs attention! It’s what is happening inside that is the current cause for scientific speculation, but maybe when they send down a camera we’ll find out if I need extra lagging, or perhaps there’s some sediment that’s settled when my back was turned, maybe a burst valve? Anyway, I’ve been round the U-bend for years. I’ve had a camera go up before, so only seems right I should go for the matching pair and have one go down. God, I hope they use different cameras...

Today I have a real itch to go out and do something fun tonight. I get quite isolated in the house all week, and most weekends our only trips out are to do shopping – hardly fun times. So this urge comes over me from time to time – want to go do something ‘gay’. I don’t mean standing on a bar in the Village dancing to YMCA with the drag queens, I mean just being around other gay people. It can still be quite an isolating world – even with current improvements to legislation, David and I still can’t walk round M&S holding hands. So it is important for us to sometimes get to places where we can do that. Hence the desire for a good night out, but that’s never a good feeling as it usually leads to frustration and dashed hopes. Manchester has really taken a nose-dive in recent months – well the last year or two really. So few places we want to go, no clubs other than our own that we’d like to attend, and if we do make an effort and drag ourselves out (not drag up, drag out!) then the place tends to be practically deserted. Bad show Manchester. Get it sorted. Two gay guys here want a good night out that doesn’t involve ‘camp bingo’, bucket-loads of sequins, floppy hair and straight women on hen nights, “Cos we feel safe here, innit like.” That said, I guess I’m as much an obstacle – can’t really go dancing with a gammy foot that permits about 10 minutes of standing per hour before throbbing to buggery and causing general misery. Gets you down being constantly aware of pain, although some days it is much more manageable than others. Now, as I’m typing this, it is not much more than a tingle, but sometimes you’d think I was having needles stuck in the balls of my foot! Still, shouldn’t complain. It IS getting better, albeit slowly. Not used a wheelchair for three months now, and at least I’m mobile about the house and enough to potter round shops, so that’s a blessing. Long way off disco dancing though, so I guess Essential, the gay(ish) night club tonight is out of the question! Besides, I don’t have anything in gold spandex to wear!

2009-06-12T11:42:00.004+01:00

So, it's Friday 13th today! Ok, ok, I know it is really the 12th, but in all other ways it is without a doubt a Friday 13th. As Mr Spock once said, "A difference that makes no difference, is no difference"! Do you ever have those days when as soon as you get up you know things are going to go wrong, and the day lives up to such expectation?

My major gripe today is technological, something of a theme of late. But before I talk about today any more I'll bring you up to speed on the remainder of yesterday. You'll recall I was having major grief with iTunes syncing to the iPhone? Well David, saint that he is, thinks he has now resolved the problem. We have all our music stored on a home server (which is then backed up a zillion times). My iTunes was pointing to the files on the server - fine and dandy, shouldn't be a problem. But things get a bit more tricky when you take into account the connectivity between my laptop and that server - I link to a switch which links to a router (which connects out to the interweb) and the server also connects back to the router. We have a fair few devices also joined to the network, such as David's PC and the printer. It seems that iTunes was timing out when trying to sync and we thing (hope and pray) that this was because the connection to the server was falling over. Hold that thought...

This morning I had no internet connection and no connection at all within the home network. With David's text-message support we've managed to bypass the switch and I can now see the world (or you'd not be seeing this). Seems like the switch is kaput and the router is on its last legs. Shopping trip tomorrow I think. But that also explains why iTunes was developing twisted-knicker syndrome!

Did someone mention knickers? "Chinese woman opposite" has only got t-shirts and kiddie dresses hanging in her window today - no large pants. Maybe she didn't wear any yesterday - dirty cow!

We, on the other hand, have managed three loads of washing (I say 'we' because David put one load in the machine last night which was waiting for me to peg out on the line this morning). It's a beautiful day here at the moment - sunny, warm, bees buzzing, Summery. Our pants are following the more traditional procedure of hanging on a line in the privacy of our back garden.

Just had a letter from the hospital to arrange my endoscopy/gastroscopy (?) - lots of being passed from one departmental phone to the next but eventually got it sorted for 29th June - not long to wait. They try two things, the first is a spray to numb the throat and if that works (whole procedure done in 15 minutes) I can come home and don't need an escort, but if that is not successful then they give sedation which takes 2 hours and does need a responsible adult to be with me. So I have to assume it won't work and ask David to take time off work. At least it is progress to knowing if the news is good or bad.

Sweet peas are coming up in their tub, even if the eating peas are not showing any signs. If they don't get a move on we'll be having frosts before the pods have formed! Percy Thrower never had these problems, but there again, I don't have an Italian Sunken Garden to tend. (Blue Peter reference there in case you didn't know). I once won a Blue Peter badge for entering a "Don't Drop Litter" poster competition - came runner up. My Mum managed to launder the badge though and it fell to bits. I cried for days. Apparently it was MY fault that SHE didn't check my jumper before washing it! Parents can have such an odd take on things! I couldn't be expected to play all day AND do her jobs for her!

I was admonished yesterday because my blog has an adult content warning at the start and as yet the material has not been of an explicit nature. Hmmm. What to do about that? Some rude words maybe? Ok: This morning, while trying to insert my tab into an appropriate flange (bloody self- assembly - I can never get it up!) I discovered I had a nasty prick - maybe from all the screwing I did yesterday. I was having a gay time stroking two pussies - one of them spat at me and the other dribbled a little. Out the window I saw a pair of tits, and heard a noise like a cock being mis-handled. Its a horrible cock - nasty pecker. I rushed out the door to see what the excitement was all about and had to give my knob a really hard twist because it was very stiff. Squeezing up my back passage were two bitches - I don't know where they had come from; Lesbos maybe? I thrusted forward and tried to poke them with some wood, I but my wood was not long enough. It was all too hard! Next I tried cracking my hands together but the bitches were not worried by the clap. I thought, "What is needed here is a good long bang". I made a snatch for my tool thinking I'd be successful with a good hammering, but it had a slippery shaft and I dropped it. I'm forever troubled by such weighty boobs! Banging away was ineffective so I grabbed my hose, which I keep near an overgrown bush, but that didn't work even when I sprayed all over the bitches (they were ugly old dogs). I saw two enormous jugs (each were beautifully rimmed) and whacked them together with an impressive dong. No luck. The jugs I then tossed, like a pair of old balls, over the bush into next door's garden which is dry and barren, but where I have sometimes seen a beaver. I gave up and went indoors where I had waiting for me two juicy melons and a nice fresh shag, which was only laid yesterday.

And on that note, I'll bid you all good day!

2009-06-11T10:30:00.007+01:00

All that shimmers is not gold!

11th June. Where did THAT come from? I think someone's got a big tombola drum full of dates and is plucking them at random. It can't be 11th June already, surely?! (And I didn't call you Shirley)

Well, according to the calculations of Eratosthenes, today marks the anniversary of the sacking of Troy in 1184 BC - so beware Greeks bearing gifts! (The actual quote is “Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes” - or “Whatever it is, I fear Greeks even when they bring gifts.”) That thought prompted me to take a photo of my Trojan Cow...

A fair few years ago now, well Summer 2004, Manchester welcomed the CowParade - it is a huge international event held in over 50 cities worldwide since 1999 including Chicago (1999), New York City (2000), London (2002), Tokyo (2003), and Brussels (2003). Dublin (2003), Prague (2004), and Stockholm (2004), Mexico City (2005), Sao Paulo (2005), Buenos Aires (2006), Boston (2006) Paris (2006), Milan (2007, and Istanbul (2007). Possibly odd concept, but great fun: life-size model cows are decorated by local people, artists, schools etc and placed around the city, outside shopping centres, at airports, abseiling down the side of buildings (seriously). Huge fun to try to spot them. Lots of money raised for good causes too as they sell off the full-sized models afterwards. I think there is currently a parade in Hong Kong, with planned events in Rome and Lima, Peru, on the horizon. If you're interested, the main web page for more information is http://www.cowparade.com/ and more details of the Manchester event can be found at http://manchester.cowparade.com/ which includes some in-situ photos just in case you don't believe me. Actually, hand on there just a cotton-pick'en minute, I can do better than that! When David and I went on holiday to Gran Canaria in the Summer of '04 there was a cow at Manchester Airport - Alphadite - the Goddess of Shopping! Some of them have fantastic names - I've mentioned the Trojan Cow, but how about TutenCowMoo-n, Moo-lin the wizard, Al Cow-pone the gangster, one celebrating local Salford 'Matchstick Man' LS Lowry - Cow-ry, D.I.S.C.O.W. - resplendent in gold sequins, which stood in Canal Street, Moo-dolf the red-nosed reindeer, Cow-liflower, Moo-lin Rouge... the list of pun names goes on for ages, a bit like me really! You can buy porcelain and plastic miniature replicas of some of the designs. We've got a whole collection of them although sadly at the moment they are mostly kept in the loft.

So, I bet you are all waiting with baited breath to hear how my new relationship is panning out. You know David and I are currently opening our partnership up a little, for some variety and extra excitement. We both now have 'significant others'. Things seems to be going better for David than for me. I think he is falling in love. Me, its not so easy. You see, David likes to have a good fiddle, he's not afraid to try new things, be adventurous. With me, well, I'm happy enough to plod along, better-the-devil-you-know style. My new commitment, I have to say, isn't turning out too well. Maybe just the strangeness of unfamiliarity, or maybe I'm just too darn old to embrace change. Of course I'm talking about the iPhones here. What did you think I meant?

I'm not a bunny of the happy variety. Having loads of problems syncing my phone to iTunes, which either times out or just hangs. I'm not trying to do anything clever at all - just sync my calendar, contacts and a single playlist, and be able to transfer photos between the laptop and the phone. Simples. That is what it is supposed to do. I've not fiddled, I've not installed anything that hasn't come directly from Apple (like they let you anyway!), I'm really not asking it to do half of what it is supposed to be designed for. It's like having a dishwasher that you have to coax into working each time, stroking its ego, telling it how beautiful it is, and then only washing mugs in it, in case it doesn't like pans or cutlery! I knew this was all a huge mistake. Took me ages this morning to tease the Cow photo off the phone. Gentle persuasion, screaming and in the end a threat to throw the whole thing in the compost bin (the best place for rotten Apples if you ask me) and eventually, with obvious resentment and massive reluctance it deigned to let me have MY photo!

That said and to be fair, I had other problems last night following a Windows update which screwed up the right speaker on my laptop - made a rasping sound every time an audio file was played (so every ping of the computer was followed by the PC equivalent of a hacking cough). Had to rollback to a previous backup from prior to the update. What is more, David discovered that this was a known issue with the update, but MS had decided to roll it out anyway. Well thank you very much Mr Gates, you annoying little American Twerp.

Two pairs of knickers today hanging in window of "Chinese woman opposite". I'll not try to take a photo - you KNOW I'm telling the truth and I don't think my nerves can take another battle with the shitePhone! I need a cup of tea.

2009-06-09T14:01:00.011+01:00

So, Wednesday slipped in without too much fuss or an abundance of lubrication. I'm sure old Woden would have been proud of himself. And a date in history to be reckoned with, or not, depending on how bored you are I guess:

1834 - HMS Beagle/Charles Darwin sails Pacific Ocean - think he's the bloke wot discovered monkeys
1916 - Great Arab Revolt begin - so much potential for 'revolting' jokes here, but I'll not stoop
1939 - Barney Bear, cartoon character, by MGM, debuts - That was no boo-boo!
1957 - Harold MacMillan becomes British PM - so there's historical precedent for a change of leadership on this day. Mr Brown, take heed!
1977 - Apple Computer ships its 1st Apple II - spooky - just got an iPhone! I still maintain Macs are best suited to dirty old men

And it's Judy Garland's birthday. She'd be 87, but still scared of lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

Yesterday started out with promise, as so many days often do, but had a very real slump around lunchtime when I was poorly sick again. Don't know what is causing this - it is most peculiar! No real notice - this time I was sitting in the garden, sling-shot in hand, waiting for unsuspecting slugs to dare show themselves - and blop, there I am, with pre-nausea mouth-watering and unable to coax breakfast back down again. Oh well, maybe slugs like macerated poached egg on toast. Not looking forward to endoscopy, whenever that happens, as have terrible gag reflex anyway and even cleaning my teeth too far to the back of my mouth can end up with unpleasantness. Also, naturally, worried that they might find something else wrong with me. Doctor seemed to suspect an ulcer, which would be fine and dandy to cure. Send me good thoughts and healing energy and lets get this thing sorted! The gardening time was also spent sowing out the pea seeds that I soaked yesterday. They swelled up fine, to look like just-podded peas, so I'm hoping that extra umph will give them a chance to germinate quickly (or at all). Some outside, some on kitchen windowsill, some uncovered, some in plastic bags for heat and moisture retention. Think I have covered most bases. Bound to fail!

Spent some time working on a few more t-short designs and sent them off in first draft for my mate to see. Hope he likes. Was a very sketchy brief. Speaking of briefs (as often I seem to do these days), three pairs on display in window opposite yesterday. So that's 6 pairs in 2 days - which seems an excessive daily throughput by anyone's standards. And I've seen the ads on telly for knicker bolt-ons designed for ladies with leaky pluming, so she can't blame a faulty valve on her flow regulator causing conspicuous pooling either, least not in my book! While I was fiddling around with PaintShop I re-visited the poster I'd designed for our club night which coincides with Manchester Pride in August. (Friday 28th for our night and that weekend for the Pride march if you want to come along and throw fruit at the passing, er, fruit!) Made some of the text 3D with bevelled edges. Looks quite good, so I went on and produced a postcard version too, suitable for promo in advance of the event. Pride is our busiest night but also our most costly. The cats, bless them, are currently fast asleep on David's sofa, in the 69 position, with their heads up each other's arses. They may just be gay.

We got the iPhones! I wasn't sure if O2 would give us a contract, having previously been on Orange and with with a credit rating that must be "You're having a laugh" or maybe "There's less risk involved in flying Air France"! But no problemo! All sorted. We had to leave hefty deposits (that could sound rude), but we'll get that back after 3 months. I have to say that so far the iPhone has not in any way lived up to my expectations. Which is a good thing! I was expecting it to be awful, feature-deprived, troublesome and fussy, but so far it has failed to tick any of these boxes. It even syncs to my laptop (and therefore my calendar, contacts and web favourites) without any difficulty. Different interface to anything I have used before but it is generally quite intuitive. Great screen size and the photo quality is much better than the HTC Touch I've been using to date. The garden image was taken this morning. Can't complain at the quality from a phone camera. I've got things set up for Facebook and Twitter, so can update on the move, and the photo integration to both seems very straightforward. Maybe there will be some good photo opportunities in Hungary and I can upload a few decent pictures during the trip. Can't change the image resolution though and need an app for any manipulation, but its not MEANT to be a laptop/PC replacement. Web browsing is cool - FAR superior to the HTC, faster and renders pages properly.

if I have any faults they would be:

Keyboard not fantastic and easy to miss-key. That might just be that I need to get used to it.
No on-phone file management. Seems odd that. Yes you can manage photos, apps, music and video via iTunes but there is nothing to deal with other types of documents. Methinks an app-search is required

Just been having a fiddle, as you do, with Flight Control. OMG! How hard?! I'll have RSI before the end of the day! Beef casserole for dinner - or stew if you don't profess delusions of grandeur! David's out training, so it has to be a quick turn-round and so something that just needs whipping out of the oven and spooning into a bowl is ideal.'Spose I'd better do some spuds though, 'ya wee maan' being from 'de emerald isle', so he is. But he's NOT Irish!

Need to do lots more playing so I may add a bit more to this entry later today or if not, then tomorrow.

2009-06-09T10:01:00.015+01:00

Tuesday anyone? I seem to have a spare one if anybody lost theirs. This one has started sunny but holds little promise. Tuesday officially most depressing day of the week, which I always think is a cheery thought to start the day!

Yesterday was kinda uneventful, which to be honest is absolutely fine! As I've said many times before, we've had more than enough edge-of-the-commode excitement over the last year for boring to seem positively blissful! David contacted the person at his work who is organising the Budapest trip, to ask a list of questions and her reply was very reassuring. I think now she has a better understanding of my level of disability she'll do everything she can to make things easy for us - taxis instead of walking places etc. I feel so much better about things now and hopefully, we'll be able to have a great time without me needing to spend the duration in pain!

Garden is looking well, although the peas have just not germinated (I had a broddle around in the pots yesterday and no sign of anything) so I'm trying a different tack and have had some seed soaking in water for 24 hours. That may just give them the encouragement to buck their ideas up and start growing. Will plant later. I'll post a pic or two later in the week, weather permitting. Other stuff is doing well, although lots of slugs about. Won't be long until I can pull some radishes, if the slimy buggers don't get them first. The 'pet-friendly' slug pellets seem to be of no use at all so I'm on slug patrol. Pick it, unstick it, flick it! Threw one over the fence yesterday just as a jogger was going past. So will watch out on news tonight for story of mysterious flying invertebrates discovered in Salford Suburbs! I blame the jogger. Too fit you see. If it had been me you'd have heard the puffing, wheezing and panting well in advance. Not that I'm going to be jogging any time soon. Just about manage a sort of flailing stumble if I try to do much more than shuffle!

Thought I'd show you the Google Maps view of our little empire. I've marked the corner of the tennis courts on all three images for a frame of reference. (Click on the picture for a bigger version) For somewhere 2 miles from the city centre it is remarkably rural here! We back onto a fitness centre (exclusive use of residents, pool, gym, sauna, very nice) and tennis courts, around which the unfortunate jogger found himself molested!

There used to be low-rise flats here but they were knocked down sometime in the 80s I think. Now it is very open and green. The tennis court at least means we'll never have any building out the back that can overlook us, and sitting in the garden it can feel remarkably like you are in the countryside.

Beyond the court there is a field and then the river Irwell which bends in a huge horseshoe forming a U shaped area of field/wasteland. This U shape forms part of the flood defences for the river - they just let it fill up into an enormous lake, but that protects the lower-lying houses (including ours). It is quite spectacular when it does flood and pretty scary. I would tell you about the huge dike that also holds back the waters, but she doesn't like the publicity. We're apparently only a very low risk for flooding and the home contents insurance is assessed based on a scale, 1 - very likely to flood, 2 - possibility of flooding, 3 - very little likelihood of flooding. We're rated 3, and that means no need for extra flood protection premiums and so on. Still, we have a large inflatable mattress to hand just in case!

Yesterday I also spent a bit of time playing with some t-shirt designs for a friend - a job I have been promising to do for ages but never felt too inspired. Came up with about a dozen options with a few more ideas yet to try. At least it keeps me thinking about design so my creative juices don't dry up completely. David was kick-boxing last night but came home early as there were not enough stopping for the second session. I was terrible and spent ages teasing him about going to get the iPhones, which he almost sacrificed his training to go and do. Fingers crossed we'll get them tonight if all goes through with the payment plan approval etc. So no doubt tomorrow I'll have decided I hate mine and will have something to rant about!

2009-06-08T12:58:00.003+01:00

Well, it's Monday. Sunny, despite the forecast and dry, at least for the time being.

Last night was quite chilled - we seemed to spend a fair while looking for interesting iPhone apps. Well, free ones anyway as I won't spend any money until we have the phones in our hands! But have found a few games and some tools - a couple of Twitter apps to try as well. That said I quite like the funky Twitter app on my current phone, so I have a benchmark against which to test any new ones. We played hairdressers last night too. If I get a chance to snap a pic of the results I will do so and publish on here. It was a big session; trimming the tips of the Mohawk (or else it is too long and I end up with go-faster stripes on the ceiling of my car), shaving the non-Mohawk parts David's head, trying to coax the whole thing back into a straight line (after a few trims it can wander and looks more like a meandering river than a straight-cut stripe) and then going at it with the peroxide! David has naturally very dark hair so it usually takes two bleaches if we want to avoid a sort of apricot mid-stage. It is a complete kerfuffle but looks good when it is done. I was complacent this time though and missed the opportunity to press my groin against his elbow and ask, "Have you been on your holidays yet?" in appropriate hairdresser camp.

We had a take-away for dinner - I cook most days so it is a treat for me to not have to worry and it usually leaves enough for lunch the next day which saves too. On the way there, just as you have come off the estate, you drive up Littleton Road, quite a wide arterial road into Salford although not too busy out side of rush hour. They have, for the last three months, been putting in a pedestrian crossing - pelican variety. I have to laugh though. The beacons are not yet activated, so covered in black bags. Fair enough I guess. But the funny thing is that the actual crossing area - the zebra stripes, is fenced off so you can't use it. You can cross anywhere else on the road, unrestricted, running into whatever traffic you like, but NOT on the actual crossing. You can't see that well from the photo, but how mad is that? I guess, because the beacons are not working, if anyone crossed there and there was an accident, the council would be liable, so the very obvious crossing area, which is raised and for which you have to slow down in a car anyway, and even without the beacons is probably the safest crossing point on the road, is out of bounds! Ludicrous.

I recently had a fantastic reply to a complaint I sent to Sainsburys. I'm a bit of a pedant when it comes to language, and especially when used in TV advertising. I am usually pretty quick to spot advertising 'escape clauses' - where the claim they seem to be making is not actually what they are saying. I especially like "Nothing works faster than X" - so use NOTHING - it works faster than X and is a damn sight cheaper! Sainsburys recently ran an add for new potatoes which they said would be available for "a few short weeks". Well that was red rag to a bull and I sent emails off to their marketing department and the company responsible for the advert. All very tongue-in-cheek, but it made the point. My email and the reply below!

To whom it may concern, (and please pass this on to the relevant manager)

I write in reference to a Sainsbury’s TV ad campaign which is currently running in the North West UK region, and for which I believe you may be responsible.

I am confused. According to this current advertising campaign, Sainsbury’s have new potatoes available at their best for, "a few short weeks". This causes me some concern as I have always believed that the length of any given week is the same as all the others. In what way are you able to shorten these weeks? Can you please explain exactly which part of the week is being sacrificed? I hope the shrinkage is happening during the standard working week. I'm sure people would be most disgruntled if they found out that some of their weekend had been removed.

My initial thought was that maybe Sainsbury’s was in conspiracy with the Government; by reducing the length of a week one could naturally assume that this would also represent savings in many areas, such as fuel used for heating and lighting, hours worked by government bodies, the Police, and other Service agencies, however upon further reflection I feel that this would have an economically detrimental impact, with people having less time to spend money in the shops and consequently boost our country’s fortunes within world financial arenas.

My next concern was that maybe this was in some way linked with the current MP expenses debacle. Has Hazel Blears been stealing minutes from the usual 24/7 pattern, as well as fixing her expenses?

Of course, you may be suggesting Einstein's theory of relativity here, however that would imply that humankind is due to leave the Earth and travel faster than light speed, and indeed, upon our return to Earth it would appear that less time had passed for us than for the earth-bound Sainsbury's stores. However I suspect that the costs of achieving this would probably outweigh the savings on the odd bag of potatoes.

I am gratified to hear that this anomaly is only expect to last for a few of these shortened weeks, but please will you let me know if this is in fact planned to be an annual event, such as daylight saving times, and indeed whether Sainsbury’s plans to return the missing temporal quotient, perhaps during a few LONG weeks in the Winter?

Please can we have our old week-length back? I'm rather fond of it.

Dear Mr Perrett

Thanks for your email about our recent TV advert. I can understand your concern about the short weeks we mention.

I’d like to assure you that we are not part of a government conspiracy to reduce costs, nor are we helping MPs to claim time along with their expenses. If we were dabbling with Einstein’s theories, we certainly wouldn’t want to reduce the weekends because we know this wouldn’t be in anyone’s best interests.

As I’m sure you’re aware, time flies when you’re having fun. What you might not know is that time also flies when you’re growing new potatoes. This, of course, is to do with the perception of time passing and this was what we were referring to when we talked about the short weeks. Sadly, we don’t yet have the technology to alter actual time so you can rest assured that weeks will remain at the standard length of 7 days.

I’m grateful to you for making us aware of the confusion our advert caused and I hope you will enjoy our new potatoes during the few regular length weeks that they are at their best.

Yours sincerely

Jodi Hollingsworth

Executive Office

2009-06-07T16:00:00.000+01:00

Saturday was an interesting day all round. Highs and lows. Ups and downs. No, we didn't go to Altern Towers, but sometimes it felt like it! Friday finished a bit uncomfortably. David had received an updated itinerary for the Hungary trip in a fortnight, and there were a few things on there that threw us a bit. Firstly, it said that the hotel asks for a credit card to swipe at Reception, so they have somewhere to charge any extra room charges etc. When i was first made redundant we got rid of all credit cards. We only have a pre-paid card that you top up and can only spend what you put on it. They don't pre-authorise like a Visa will. So that'll need sorting somehow. Secondly, despite David having had confirmation previously that dress for dinner would be casual, the itinerary now states that this is smart - only a small thing, but a pain in the posterior for me. As mentioned, I've lost loads of weight and don't have any 'posh' clothes that fit any more. You can't look good in 32" trousers when you are down to a 28" waist! I've tried very hard to put on weight (so was probably at one stage no more than 26"!!!) and also to not buy clothes, which hopefully will be too small in a little while as I get better. So I've managed with trackie-bottoms and elasticated waist-bands! So yesterday's shopping trip increased in difficulty to now include TWO pairs of trousers, one being a nightmare, and two some sort of Hell on Earth. There were a few other things on the itinerary that bug me, such as the 'short walk' to the restaurant for the meal on the Saturday night. This is then also referred to as a 'stroll'. Semantics I know, but important ones for someone who's every step causes shooting pains and who was until recently in a wheelchair! So they will just all have to walk at my pace! So, what with all that, having separate seats on the plane, stumping up for additional travel/medical insurance to cover pre-existing medical conditions (you'd think I was guaranteed to have bits drop off, fail or explode from the moment we get on the flight) and the general hassle, it seems like less of a prize and more of an inconvenience. As David said, it feels like they have somehow managed at every step of the way to make things difficult for me. Which is such a shame as I really want us to be able to have a good time. David deserves it so much and a break away would do us so much good! The hotel though looks lovely - five-star and a bed that you need a map to navigate. I WILL be stealing the shampoo, even though I have a shaved head!

Saturday, I managed to get an app for Twitter to load and run on my mobile phone. Its really good. That said, if I don't close it down from the program manager it remains active, receiving Tweets, and bumping up the data costs! Need to watch for that. On the plus side, it has a really cool feature to integrate Twitter, Tweetpic and the phone's camera, so you can tweet, take a photo and send it all in one go. How fun is that?! This prompted discussions around phone plans and data costs. David has been itching to upgrade his phone for ages. The ones we have are pretty good in terms of features and there is a newer version available, but I feel that the extra cost does not justify what is really just a prettier case. So if we did upgrade it would need to be to something with a step up in features and a reduction in data costs. All that sort of points to an iPhone. We made some enquiries at the O2 shop and we can get iPhones for about the same monthly payment plan as we are on, but with unlimited data transfer. What's more, the Orange contract expires in a few weeks and they are fine for us to leave without penalty. We've applied for the PAC codes. O2 were fine but they want a £100 deposit per phone - that's OK, as we'll get it back, and is because the card they took for authorisation is pre-paid rather than a credit card (see previous comments on THAT!), so I guess they need some security. Anyway, we didn't have £200 loaded onto the card, so David will have to sort that on Monday and we'll go get the phones on Tuesday. David thinks we'll have the PAC codes by then (so we can keep the same numbers) but I very much doubt that Orange will work that quickly, let alone the post! I have reservations about the iPhone, mostly though because it's Apple! More ranting about that later!

Shopping: Cheshire Oaks - designer outlet centre. Rain. Lots of walking. Pain. But some degree of success. The M&S outlet had some formal trousers in the right waist and almost the right leg length. In fact they are close enough to get away without needing taking up - floppy bottoms being trendy. And my bottom is, by extrapolation, very trendy! Not bad for £16. Also bought an XSML polo shirt, as most of my current Fred Perry's are all a bit big. But sadly, no jeans. There's a usually-reliable Levi shop there, but they had nothing below a 30" waist unless boot- or baggy-cut, both of which look ridiculous on me. Might as well wear a skirt. Actually that's am idea. I suppose a skirt would count as formal enough... and I'm all for challenging stereotypes! No, maybe not, I'd have to shave my legs and the hairs have only just grown back after the chemo! (They don't mention that on Casualty! You don't just lose your head hair! It was weird not having eyebrows, but fantastic not having to shave head or face!).

Back home and we realised that if we're getting these iPhones they sync to our computers via iTunes. I hate iTunes with a passion! It is the worst software ever written. I have had nothing but trouble with it. We both have iPods (useful for club night as we can have a 6-hour playlist and not worry about it, or a backup in case the DJ is late). We've just had so much grief with mine, syncing it, losing music, it re-arranging perfectly sensible menu structures into its own totally illogical system and generally being a pain! For example, something like the album Now!21 might have on it tracks by Phil Collins, Westlife, The Corrs etc. Instead of one folder with the tracks it creates one folder for each artist, and sub-folders for the albums their tracks appear on! Then I guess assumes you'll put them all back into playlists. Anyway, for a year now, and having changed laptops twice, I've not asked David to install iTunes - figuring that we had all the files backed up and things were reasonably sorted in the iPod as I wanted. Knew it would be grief if we did anything at all with iTunes. But the phones dictate the software and so David valiantly started the process. Sure enough, everything is shot to pieces - iTunes won't point to the files, and somehow we have about 6 copies of some folders, sprayed randomly over a number of directories. Much screaming, wailing and gnashing of teeth. Eventually and to his very great credit, David managed to get iTunes to see most of the files and pull back my playlists. They're not perfect, not complete and there are still some orphan files that we'll need to handle, but at least things should be working to some degree. Did I mention how much I hate iTunes? I just hope that syncing to my contacts and calendar will not be as much of a PITFA!

Finished the day watching back-episodes of House. Enjoying it, even though some elements take me back to being in hospital. Not many episodes pass when I can't say, "I was on that drug", or, "I had that test"! There was a scene of someone having an MRI scan which really hit a nerve when the clicks and bangs started. Horrible scan - fixed in a head-brace, with industrial-strength ear defenders, told to not move a muscle, shoved into a metal tube with the weirdest noises from the machine. 30 minutes in that was about 29 minutes too much. Horrible. The funny story though is what happened to me prior to the MRI. I had two nipple rings. Tungsten. (NOT magnetic). The doctors wouldn't let me have the scan with them in though, as a precaution, in case there was any magnetism at all, which they said could end up with the MRI ripping them out of my body. These were quite heavy gauge rings - about 2.8mm thick, circular, sprung closed onto a little ball bearing which had dimples in to hold the hoop. As per the picture - but mine were titanium silver, not blue. Now these had been in for quite a few years, never removed. The tool to remove them is what I would call 'inverse pliers' - sprung loaded and as you close the handles the 'mouth' opens. They prise the circle of the ring open, and the ball just drops out. They are very common tools for piercers. Not so for hospitals. The doctors were amazed that I didn't have such a tool on my person! Credit to the doctor who took charge though. She sent down to A&E to see if they had anything, thinking that that department would have come across something like this before. They had nothing and neither did anywhere else in the hospital. Now this doctor, bless her, decided that the rings would have to be cut off. Again, A&E had nothing to do this - no heavy wire cutters or suchlike. I'm sure that if they had phoned one of the city piercers they could have acquired some pliers, and I'd even have paid for them! But super-doc had a brainwave and decided that there was only one course of action. So, half an hour later my hospital room was full of three nurses, two doctors, and four FIREMEN! Full uniform, helmets, boots, the works. One in the doorway passing various tools, one at the foot of the bed taking charge and one either side of me, each equipped with a pair of normal pliers, each trying to get a grip on one side of the ring, and pull it apart. The guy at the end was there shouting commands, "Pull now. A bit harder. More to the left. You're too high! Stop! You'll rip his nipple! Right, take the strain again...pull!" It was SO funny. Took them 20 minutes to do the left one. They thought that they'd sussed it and the right one would be simple, but no! Nearly half an hour on that one! Hilarious. I couldn't stop laughing. What a palaver! News of this debacle spread round the hospital faster than a bad case of MRSA, with nurses (of both genders) asking if the firemen were hunky and if they had shiny helmets. I was forever after know as 'the one with the nipple rings'. So, dear reader, let that be a lesson to you: never affix jewellery to your bodily parts without ALWAYS travelling with the means to remove it!

The other anecdote from hospital worth telling is of the time when I was having my chemo observed by a student nurse. The Staff Nurse was administering, and explaining everything that she was doing, the different drugs that made up the combination and why they were administered in a certain order. Now, the student was, to say the least, a little camp. Walked with enough mince to make a shepherd's pie and every sentence he said started with a dainty little clicking sound as he pursed his lips. So, Staff Nurse is imparting words of wisdom and asking him questions, to which he is giving text-book answers that he has clearly learned by heart. "Yes that is because the third molecule bonds to the nucleus of the protein forming a cohesive anti-pathogenic wotsit thingy. Oh, and I loooove you hair Sandra, is that Burnt Sienna or Mahogany Madness?" You get the picture. Staff Nurse turned to him after a while and said, "What was it you studied at College, Justin?" And without a moment's pause, as proud as punch, Justin replied, "Chemistry, Biology and Expressive Dance!" I nearly wet myself! At least I know that if he ever has to impart bad news to a patient he will have a choice of ways to present it. Not all of them requiring the donning of a leotard!

Sunday today and we've been into the city to try to complete the clothes shopping. Long story short, I got some OK jeans (only OK, but beggars can't wear Levis it seems). They fit round the waist but will need taking/turning up. I may see if I can get away with ironing in some turn-ups. Now something that the ladies won't appreciate - it seems that they cut men's' trousers proportionally based upon the waist size. So as the waist decreases, so does the amount of 'packing' space at the front. Maybe they think that anyone with a 28" waist must be pre-pubescent and the cut reflects that! So I won't be able to sit down and even if I had functioning 'man fruit' they'd be forced back inside but by heck I'll look well-endowed! One fewer pair of socks to pack anyway! David wanted to get a smaller kit bag for his kick-boxing stuff, as the one he has at the moment if it had wheels would qualify for DVLA consideration. So he bought a new one, got it home, only to find it is just a tad bigger than the old one! Pleased to be home though. Bloody knackered after trawling round the Arndale Centre and waiting for lifts that seemed to have minds of their own and only came down to the first floor when they were already packed full of prams, large ladies in burkhas, or fat men who smelled of moth balls. Very pleased to be home!

Chinese woman opposite is at it again. Knickers in the window. Why? It just isn't done in this country! We have washing lines and clothes horses and radiators and even, at a push, banisters for such things - a whole culture built up around NOT displaying your gussets to the street! Grrrr. Hope you can see what I mean from the photo. If not, I'm sure I'll have plenty of opportunities to take more.

2009-06-05T11:08:00.008+01:00

You know, these Fridays come around with startling regularity. I am starting to think there may be a pattern. I think more study is required, but I'd swear we had a Friday about a week ago. I blame the credit crunch - we're having to recycle days now!

So, what news? Well Big Brother was pretty much as I expected - a bunch of broken people chosen to get on each other's nerves (ours too), and with no redeeming features among the lot of them. WHY do they have to pick such gay gays? Jeez, no wonder people hate puffs when TV only ever shows the most extreme examples. It is like the TV coverage of any Gay Pride event - will they show the thousands of 'normal' people, marching for rights and dignity and pride? No, they will pick on a the campest pretty-young-thing with arms like a windmill and a voice that could curdle milk, and a couple of drag queens with half of Tesco's fruit counter in their hair. I can't think of a gay BB contestant to date that has actually been representative of the community to which I belong. Liked Lisa the Lesbian though - but probably because she has exactly the same hair style as David and that opens the door to endless jibes! Maybe THIS will be the 'in road' I need to persuade him to ditch the Mohawk... Not that I don't like it, I do, but you see it isn't HIM that has to cut it in, keep it trimmed, bleach it, re-shape it, and get it to look straight even though he has more crowns than the Royal family! But of course HE is the one who gets the compliments, "Oh, your hair is fabulous! That must take you ages to do!" No, it bloody doesn't, it takes ME ages to do! And I'm just the short emaciated semi-crip tagging along overshadowed by the technicolour day-glo glory! Still, on the plus side, it makes him easy to spot in a crowd, so I don't lose him that often!

Quick progress reports from yesterday: My banned Philippine Freak created a new profile and I had 7 messages waiting for me from it this morning. All wanting to know when the money would arrive. I've reported the new profile, and just as I was doing that I got a message from yet another of his countrymen. Maybe I'm some sort of twat-magnet? And the other update is on the toad-in-the-hole conundrum. You remember? Yorkshire with the sausage, or in a dish on its own? I was literally not inundated with helpful comments to make the decision any easier. So in the complete absence of any feedback I decided that I would NOT wimp out and would do the whole lot together. I even bowed to the superior godliness that is Dame Delia and followed her commandments to the letter - Thou shalt sieve thy flour, thou shalt measure out 150ml of semi-skimmed milk etc. To this end I even 'put thy baking tray on direct heat until thy fat is shimmering like the sea of Galilee on a particularly splendid morning' - not something I usually do I must admit. Well, you can see the results. Nice enough, but hardly the mountains of crunchy pudding in Delia's photo. Thanks a lot. I knew I should have stayed loyal to Jamie!

Tis remarkably sunny here at the moment, which is odd because according to every weather forecast I've seen it should be tanking down, leaving us all rushing for canoes and sand bags. The day is young I suppose, although a good down-pour might drive some of the annoying screechy brats back into their houses! And save me watering. Should I maybe try to encourage the rain by getting the mower out? Mmm, lawn and David's Mohawk with one simple implement... Can you compost human hair without the risk of some forensic investigation in later years deciding your back garden had been the scene of ritualistic murders...?

Later: Glorious sunshine all morning and so, with loins suitably girded, I set out on my adventure with the mower. Front lawn all now spic and span. For me, with a gammy leg and the energy levels of one of those toy rabbits that DIDN'T get a Duracell battery, that is all quite an achievement. I'm quite proud of myself. And what is even more satisfying is that it has now gone very dark and either there's an unexpected eclipse starting or its about to piss down. Composted the clippings so being kind to the planet too. Is smugness ever endearing? Also sprayed my various pots and tubs with soapy water as there seems to be an outbreak of aphids munching away at my tender bits! They say soapy water is as good as anything, so we'll see what happens. Probably nothing if the rain washes all the soap away!

Spag Bol for dinner I think, because I can't be arsed to stand around faffing with the doings for Shepherds' Pie. Chinese banging away down their back passage again this afternoon - and what sounded like power tools but may have been industrial vibrators! And no knickers from her opposite for a few days. It has been quite nice to be able to look out at a gusset-less avenue. Streets are just not supposed to have a Visible Pantie Line!

2009-06-04T10:38:00.009+01:00

So we made it to Thursday! Who'd have thought? I was wondering whether the heat wave from the last few days was in fact the start of devastating solar activity heralding apocalyptic times - well, maybe it IS for Gordon Brown, and I suspect that Blazing Blears - bless - is feeling a little crispy round the edges. Would you like your MP rare, medium or well done sir?

Quick update on the Filipino - I reported it to the administration team of the site concerned and received a lovely email back from them explaining how difficult it is to remain parasite-free and thanking me for telling them. Because I provided logs they instantly deleted the account in question. It'll be back with a different name, but I'll be waiting. I have several planned alter-egos that I can wheel out - I think the next may be Sir Willie Warmer.

Re: pots and cat activity from yesterday... No disturbances today, although all pots are now fortified with 12" canes arranged at jaunty angles. If that fails I have chicken wire! Planted some more peas in a big pot I found at the back of the shed. I was bullied into doing it by that Fearnley-Whitinstall person on channel 4, who was on The One Show, guilt-tripping me with his, "and it's not too late in the season to sow peas outdoors for a crop in October or November" - only to repeat the same again an hour later on C4! He wore me down. Middle of the blasted night I'm out there with compost and somewhat dessicated-looking pea 'seeds'. Thank God I'm not as swayed by TV advertising, or I'd have a cupboard full of Tena Lady, Shreddies, female intimate freshness products and disposable nappies. I hold out little hope for these peas anyway as from the last lot I planted, about 20 in total, I've only got one shooting, and it has been weeks already! Duff seeds? Poor Gardener? Still I suppose I'd not be in a hurry to make an appearance if I knew my destiny in life was to have my pods popped!

Domestic God day today. First line of washing done and hung out. I'm old fashioned; I have this strange backwards view that washing dries perfectly well on a line in the back garden without the need to expose my smalls to the world via my bedroom window. Maybe I'm just not cosmopolitan enough! First wash: David's kick-boxing kit. That needs priority, as if it hangs around too long it spawns life and could probably enter competitions on its own.

I have planned the makings for Toad-in-the-hole tonight, although I'm debating doing the Yorkshire independent from the sausages. Well, it never rises as well for me if they are all in the same tin. What do you think? Risk it or play safe? Maybe, living in Lancashire, it is sacrilege to make Yorkshire puddings anyway!

We watched Desperate Housewives last night - well we ARE puffs for chrissakes! We're allowed SOME camp in our lives! Who did Mike Marry, Susan, Katherine? In my mind it is a two-horse race. I think the clever money is on either Mrs McCluskey or Andrew Van de Kamp! And I'm NEVER wrong about these things!

Big Brother starts tonight. I guess I'll end up watching it. Trouble is, when BB is on, the rest of the Telly is crap, I mean really crap. Come that time of night I really just want to relax, veg out a bit and be entertained. So I get sucked in. Well, most years. There have been a few when it has been SO boring I've turned it off and gone and done something constructive like counting the number of hairs on my elbow. Although maybe this year there will be a bit of fun on Twitter to watch too. Hope so. Although that said, for weeks there has been an excess of Tweets about Britain's Got Trolls and The Apprentits (sic).

Should I vote today? It's not the same without Hazel. She was someone to look up to.

David just found out that some of the managers are reading staff emails at work. So I thought I'd keep them amused and sent this:

Subject: Strange and embarrassing facts about David Bloxham that I don’t want his colleagues to know about

He sometimes wears his socks inside out

When he grows up he wants to be a Smurf

His favourite food is Pen Lids

He can speak 16 languages, and writes Japanese Haikus for relaxation

His favourite colour is Burnt Chestnut

He once dated a Rubik Cube called Valerie

His hobby is to collect white lines from the middle of roads. He has 27 miles so far.

He hates people who hate things

His favourite film is Kodachrome ASA1000

He owns an acre of the moon

His middle name is Tarquin

His favourite book is the Littlewoods catalogue, Summer 1981

He once climbed a ladder

He is the world record holder for spelling the word, “A”

He has five toes on his left foot but only two arms.

He was once abducted by an alien called Ffarg

He never eats hedgehog

He has a pet banana called Granville

He has no nipples

He once played Katherine Janeway’s right thigh in Star Trek

He was abandoned as a child and brought up by mice

His favourite sandwich is cheese and Lego

He once wrote an episode of EastEnders

He never says the word, “poncho”

His spirit guide is a water buffalo

He was born on the cusp

He is neither albino nor called Shirley

His favourite holiday resort is Albania, in December

He once represented Norway in the Eurovision Song Contest

He was recently diagnosed with hair

His ears are super-sensitive and he can hear a wasp fart

He sometimes wears a wimple

His last car was a batmobile

He hates Mondays at 11:37

His blood is pure IronBru

He has a fear of door handles

He collects jellyfish

He has never killed a baboon

He was once married to Toyah Wilcox

He has a tattoo of Henry V111 on his left buttock

His favourite character from Friends is Ugly Naked Man

He drinks Castrol GTX

He loves the smell of joy and hates the smell of misunderstanding

He can’t wear anything made from recycled lemonade bottles

He was once carbon dated

He loves all sports, especially extreme knitting

He can rip an envelope with his bare hands

He has never invented a perpetual motion machine

He is a member of the Welsh Pigeon-fanciers Society

He holds a degree in exo-biology, specialising in terraforming

He has never owned a green pogo-stick

His favourite actor is Morph

He can’t count above 17

He has a collection of staples from around the world

He once drove all the way there and back again in the same day

If he had a superpower it would be the power to turn things purple

He has started to watch Jaws 79 times but never seen the ending

He can see in daylight

He thinks all dogs should wear nappies

He once gave birth to a microwave oven

On weekends he likes to be called Petunia

He can’t use a telephone

He once slept with Leonardo DaVinci and is believed to be the real model for the Mona Lisa

He thinks carrots would be better if they were blue

He can’t understand Twitter

He has no nasal hair

His favourite supermarket is closed for renovation

He believes the Credit Crunch is a breakfast cereal

He once met a future version of himself in a lift in Watford

He thinks grapes are silly

He has an extra bone in his left leg

He is exempt from VAT

He is drip-dry only and should be washed separately

He is scared of zips

He misses rationing

He has never made anything with a washing-up bottle or sticky-backed plastic

He has nightmares about doors

He once appeared on Big Brother as the Diary Room chair

He wants to change his name by deed-poll to “Zaphod”

He knows all the verses to God Save the Queen

He has an OBE for services to the linoleum industry

He hates people called Judy

He has never missed an episode of Casualty

He smells faintly of liquorice

He once supported Michael Jackson in concert

He wears clothes

He is physically unable to write the word, “tiddle”

He once died of bubonic plague

His head is larger than either of his thumbs

He believes in free mushrooms for everyone

He practices voodoo

His least favourite letter of the alphabet is H

He can play the Asda jingle on spoons

He has no opinion on Turkmenistan politics

His real age is a mystery known only to him and the Dali Lama

He eats squirrel

Later: Oh wonderous Joy! I have another Phillipine pillock trying to fleece me for money. This one is after £3000 to come to England. Bye Bye!

Cat just appeared with dead bird. And after just being fed too! They KNOW not to bring wildlife into the house. Love the cats to bits, but I'm a puff - I don't LIKE Tits, blue or any other colour! Done some design work today, nothing special, just a graphic for a friend, but it kept me amused for a while and I enjoy doing stuff like that. Wish I could get back into painting. I have a half-finished portrait of David that I just don't seem to be able to get inspired enough to complete. Think I have lost my muse - or is that mojo? I'm feeling myself becoming emotionally more stable these days, less prone to the drug-induced bouts of depression caused by the chemo, and I'm managing to be a bit more creative. Laughing a lot more too, and think I have a bit of my sense of humour back at last. Well, back to what it was, anyway. No? Huhh! Every one's a critic!

2009-06-03T10:19:00.009+01:00

There are two types of people in the world: Those who make lists, and those who would allow civilization as we know it to degrade into abject anarchy.

So I think today I'll start working out what we need to take to Hungary at the end of the Month. David's efforts at work have been rewarded with an Employee of the Year accolade and a prize of a weekend in Budapest (not an obvious location, but that is good as it is not somewhere we'd ever have thought of visiting under any other circumstances). OK, so it is only 2 nights but I still have lots to consider, not least of which is what clothes to take, and indeed if I need to buy some more! No, seriously, it is a big issue. In the last year I have gone from a 32" waist to 28" (if you want a diet that REALLY works, try late-diagnosis of lymphoma!) so none of my decent clothes fit at all. Jeans just drop off, and if I use a belt there is so much gathered fabric I look like I'm wearing culottes. I hate buying clothes at the best of times. Trousers ALWAYS need at least 6" taking off the legs and if I get a shirt that fits my shoulders the arms hand down below my knees. But I can't honestly go stay in a five-star hotel and wear trackie bottoms and a sweatshirt to dinner. Maybe I should just buy a burkha and to hell with looking frumpy! Then there is all the joy of taking medication abroad - I have to have the hospital prescriptions as proof of requirement and have to take pills in original packaging (so instead of taking 2 of each lot I have to take the full packet of 60, plus the packaging). So instead of 16 pills in a little bag, I'll have to take over 400, in boxes and bottles. Now THAT screws your hand luggage options to buggery! Bitter? Me? Well, maybe a bit.

Odd day already today. Didn't sleep well, and ended up getting up a good two hours earlier than normal to put out bins, so it is going to seem like a very long day. Amusingly David and I got each other identical Anniversary cards. Bugger, we could have saved half the total cost and both just signed the same one. One needs to consider such economies in these financially challenging times. Ah well, it was lovely to get a card anyway, and I suppose it shows we have similar taste (or that Birthdays just doesn't cater adequately for same-sex anniversaries). David's at work and it'll be a quick turn-round when he gets home as he'll be off kick-boxing and doing MMA-type things. So another 'special' day farts in my face and scampers off never to be seen again. Bitter? Me? Well, maybe a bit.

Garden pots strangely disturbed this morning. Possible cat frolicking judging by the flattening of the mint, but not sure about that - some pots overturned, although all but the mint seems relatively unharmed. I'm not ruling out peculiar behaviour from Chinese next door. Odd bunch at the best of times. They don't recycle. No excuse for that these days. They were outside until late yesterday, wood-staining the huge erection that has been built in the back garden. As orange erections go, it is quite unique. Not ruled out possibility that they intend to use it for breeding, or maybe move in additional relatives. Turn the whole street into Chinese ghetto. Bitter? Me? Well, maybe a bit.

I'm being stalked on one of the contact sites by a Filipino idiot. I usually get 4 or 5 a week, either from there or Ghana, who clearly just want either to harvest email addresses or con Brits into helping them get a visa. My profiles all say very clearly that if they appear to be doing that I will just waste their time and wind them up. The last one, I pretended to be a rich philanthropist working for a charity called Teenagers With Acute Traumas and got as far as persuading him to send me a photo of himself wearing a T-shirt with TWAT written on it. Serves him right. Parasite. These people really annoy me. They think that they can find an entry route into the UK so that they can sponge off our welfare state. This one today, after 3 messages had proclaimed his love for me and proposed marriage! Ah, it needs help with the fare to visit the UK. Fancy that! Should I string it on for a few hours, see how much of a fool it can make of itself? Should I ignore it? Should I report it for inappropriate behaviour? Oh, a bit of fun I think. Which is nothing more or less than I say I will do in my profile and nothing but what he deserves. Bitter? Me? Well, maybe a bit. I'll keep you posted.

Later....
Quick update on today before David gets home from work. Well, I strung the Philippino along for most of the day, tying him up in his own [lack of] logic. It transpired that he was trying to get me to transfer 60,000 pesos, about £770 via Western Union, having only spoken to me for the first time this morning. Somehow he was reluctant to send ME 2000 pesos, to prove he was genuine, and which I would, of course, have refunded! I've reported him now for trying to extort money. I posed as a cousin of the Queen, Lord Ivor Biggun. Well, it has to be fun for me as well as educational for them too!

Most upset that my Hazel Blears limerick is more than 140 characters and so won't fit on Twitter. Had to settle for Facebook alone. Bah!

There once was a woman called Blears

Who’s taxes were shown in arrears

She protested her case

But got egg on her face

And resigned in a frenzy of tears

Right, best check on dinner - braised steak, new potatoes, carrots, brocholli and leeks, if you were wondering.

2009-06-02T14:34:00.000+01:00

Well, Baldrick was fun last night, although I didn't feel they really revealed THAT much more about the Henge. Shame really.

Its been very hot here for the last few days - too hot to sit out. Chinese people next door are spending every daylight hour working on some monstrous erection in their back garden. Possibly a shed, but weirdest construction if it is. I'm thinking maybe a DIY conservatory. The noise is somewhat annoying; it is usually peaceful round here, at least out the back, but now lots of yapping and hammering. God I hope that doesn't mean they are planning to breed. Too many blasted kids round here already, and the 'imported' ones are SO flipping loud! And then there's the little bugger who has obviously been expelled from school. He's been about, wandering up and down and playing with himself (literally and figuratively) for a couple of months now. Makes me really cross. Expulsion isn't an answer. He's not learning anything the way he is at the minute. How will he ever become a useful member of society? There should be some sort of compulsory alternative for expelled children - uber-detention where they are taught by people specialised in dealing with problem children.

Other Chinese woman who lives opposite is continuing to hang knickers in the stree-facing bedroom window. Its SO un-English! I really don't like it. I know she is doing it to get clothes dry, but has she not heard of clothes airers or washing lines? This is a respectable neighbourhood! Well, ish. Present company excluded, of course.

Ventured out to the shops today to get an anniversary card for David. Three years tomorrow since our Civil Partnership. Three rollercoaster years which saw us marry, move from Middlesbrough to Manchester, take on a Lodger, get rid of a lodger (LONG story, probably best not published) and my year of hell battling through lymphoma. Thank God I’ve had someone as wonderful as David. He’s been magnificent. Really, if it wasn’t for him and my Mum I don’t think I’d be alive now. That’s not to play down the superb medical treatment I have received, but having David there for me every day gave me a reason to want to live. And he never complained, despite all we have been through, and the difficulties of caring for a very ill partner. I love him so much.

So, shops for a card and called in at Wilkinsons for a couple of tubs so I can plant on a few of the experiments I’m growing in the back garden. Have a load of tubs and pots with a variety of herbs and veg. Not sure that it is any greener or more economical when you do the sums, but it is giving me something to do and having plants to tend helps me shift my focus sometimes when I’m feeling down. I started all this late in the season – I wasn’t well enough to get an early start, so it is touch and go as to what will be a success. Have lots of radishes up though, and some potatoes. The onions are doing ok, as are leeks, sweetcorn and tomatoes. Looks like the tomatoes are putting out their first sets, so we should get some sort of crop. Lots of herbs coming up and planted some more parsley today. Also the beetroot is germinated and has first leaves, so that is pleasing. David likes beet – I can’t stand the stuff; more mess than worth the effort if you ask me! And good news – it looks like I have at least one pea germinated! I was worrying as they have been ages showing any shoots, but the first one is just breaking the surface now, so I’m dead chuffed. The strawberries are starting to swell and may be a reasonable crop this year, if the blasted slugs don't get them. Slugs seem to be an incurable problem here - they love pellets! Finally today I sowed some sweet peas, as a contrast to all the edibles and because I love their scent. If they grow they’ll be lovely. Its a dwarf variety designed for pots, and according to the packet is heavily fragranced. Wish me luck!

More Twittering, although it is quiet online today. I think people are being sensible and enjoying the sunshine while it lasts, which, according to the forecast, won’t be for much longer. Probably back to jumpers tomorrow!

2009-06-01T20:53:00.001+01:00

Well, I thought I'd have a go at blogging. This is a totally new venture for me, but I'll give it a go and see where it leads. Who knows, someone might find what I have to say interesting. I have a somewhat idiosyncratic sense of humour, which some may find offensive. No offence or harm is intended. It's all just a bit of fun!

I'm not going to give a huge history in this blog - I'm guessing that things will reveal themselves as I write. There's plenty of history there, good and bad, but probably more fun if that seeps out of its own volition. I'm not sure yet why I'm doing this, or if it will continue. I've never kept a diary, or felt there was much going on in my life worth recording, but thinking back I guess a record may have been interesting - to see if my memory of my life matches any record I keep.

Just about to watch the Time Team special on Stone Henge. I have a fascination for such things and have been to several prehistoric sites: Stone Henge, Castlerigg Stone Circle in Cumbria, Newgrange in Ireland, Carnac in France, plus several more smaller sites. I guess we'll probably never be able to answer with any certainty the questions that such places raise. I have no doubt that there is much more going on at these places than we understand - they DO have an energy and a quality that seems somehow outside normal experience.