Mixed Pickles

What more is there to say?

2011-08-09T09:43:00.004Z

Everybody else has made their comments about the mindless thievery masquerading as social protest. Not much I can add except to say that the sheer nitwittery of it all can be summed up by the picture in the paper today of the bespectacled wannabe in the knitted tam-o-shanter and the mujahideen scarf carrying his personal proceeds from the looting in Hackney.

A rocking horse.

With broken rockers.

Caption: A moron, recently.

Too good to be forgotten?

2011-06-27T10:38:00.004+01:00

Of course, it's not only people I don't know approaching me that cause confusion (see previous post)...

There I was, walking down the Toll Road (the most salubrious location in Harrow), when I recognised a couple walking towards me. Hadn't seen them since 1976. Had been her flatmate's boyfriend for two years, had lived next door to her for a year, had been present on the day that he had moved into the road and met her for the first time.

"Chris? Anne?" I greeted them. "You haven't changed a bit, blah blah".

We agreed that no-one had changed, blahed for ages, they told me how their kids were doing, I told them about mine.

And all the time, I failed to notice that tiny gleam of panic in both their eyes. Not that they only had one eye each, but "all four of their eyes" seems like such an odd thing to say, doesn't it?

So when, having not seen them for 35 years, I then bumped into Chris a week later in Waitrose (do I have any life outside of Waitrose?) and greeted him with "Small world", he had to admit that neither he nor Anne had any idea who I was.

I have noticed them in the aisles of Waitrose a few times since then. As if by unspoken mutual arrangement, we avoid bumping into each other.

Brie Encounter

2011-06-20T11:15:00.005+01:00

Walking past the cheese counter in Waitrose, and a voice says...

"Mike? It is Mike, isn't it?"

I admit it. Why shouldn't I? It is true, and I haven't done anything to be ashamed of. Not recently, anyway.
It is a woman of a comparable age, vaguely familiar, who has attracted my attention.
"How are you, how have you been, it's been ages," she continues.
"Yes, but I'm sorry, I can't quite..."
She smiles understandingly, but offers no further clues.
I persist. "I am terrible with names."
She doesn't offer hers.
"You will have to remind me - how is it we know each other?" I enquire.
She continues to smile and keep her own counsel.
"Could it be through the Choir?" I venture.
"St. Mary's?" she responds.
It seems she does sing with a choir. But not the Harrow Apollo Male Voice Choir to which I once belonged. Unsurprisingly, really.
"Did your husband play rugby for Roxeth Manor?"
She denies the existence of a Mister Mysterwoman.
"Phoenix RFC? The Questors? The Open University? Ealing Arts Club? The Malcolm Saville Society? The British Science Fiction Association?" I am grasping at straws now.
She nods reassuringly, as if this random collection of organisations doesn't mark me out at some kind of intellectual gadfly. "None of those," she says, continuing "Wasn't it though Wager Street Social Services?"
"No, I haven't ever had anything to do with the Social Services." (As if!)
At this point my spouse turns up. "Aren't you going to introduce us?"
"Yes, this is.. an old acquaintance. My wife."
They nod cooly at each other.
"Anyway, nice to see you again, we must keep in touch."
"Yes, we must. Keep well."
We walk away and my GLW gives me that look that says "I don't know what you do, but I do wish you'd stop doing it."

And I still don't know who she was...

A comedy interlude.

2010-06-03T19:54:00.001+01:00

Q. What did the hoodie say when a panda threw up on his mate?

A. That's bear sick!

It's been a long time but, brothers and sisters, here I go again!

2010-06-02T21:45:00.004+01:00

Listen, I was only idly flicking through the channels. I'm not even usually in on a Wednesday evening (calm down, burglars, the house is well guarded - the GLW has a black belt; uses it to cinch the waist of her black dress - the one she wears to KICK BURGLAR BUTT!) but this evening I was lounging around the ...errmm... lounge. And I came across something called "Britain's Got Talent", which, on the evidence of this show, it patently don't.

One of the performers was something called a Pixie Lott. An unlikely Pixie (is it one of the Geldorfs? They all have names like that, don't they), and it sang. It sang... oh, I shudder, it sang a song in which it made the unforgiveable rhyme.

There are three unforgiveable rhymes in rock music.

1) Arms/charms. Listen - you might be in someones arms, but you are NOT, repeat, NOT "feeling their charms". In all probability you are feeling their shoulder blades, or, if a little more friendly, their gluteus maximus. Or their pointy bits pressing into you. Or your pointy bits pressing into them. Or even (and why not?) their pointy bits pressing into your pointy bits. But you ain't feeling their charms. Confess - you don't even know where the charm is located in the body, let alone whether it is a bone, a gland or an organ, do you? Thought not.

2) Knees/please. Even when a long established creator of classic folk/rock moments like "Homeward Bound", "The Boxer" and "The Lone Teen Ranger" (yeah, no kidding), Paul Simon still attended weekly classes in the art of songwriting. Probably realised that he needed to the day he hacked out "Cecelia, I'm down on my knees, begging you please..."Face facts, brothers and sisters, if you humiliate yourself with the knees in the dirt pleading schtick, there's only one place you are headed. And it isn't a lifetime of marital bliss and equality. Might as well slap on that apron and them marigolds, 'cause you'll be bottom of the household totem pole forever more.

3) And now, to the sin committed by the Pixie Lotts; I speak of
Waiting, and ...
...
...
oh, you know what's coming don't you?
...
...
Anticipating.

Not only one of the most overused rhymes in popular music, but also the most inappropriate.

Waiting - sitting round until something happens.
Anticipating - doing something BEFORE something happens.

So you cannot be both waiting for, and anticipating, the same bleeding thing, Ms Lott. Just can't happen. Throw away your rhyming dictionary, and buy a proper one that TELLS YOU WHAT WORDS MEAN!

Oh yes, brothers and sisters - I am back :o)

Genetic imperatives number two: spoon, pan; pan, spoon.

2010-02-07T09:54:00.002Z

In this (slowly) continuing series, in which I attempt to explain to women how we men can't help it, we are just made that way, I reach the tricky area of the kitchen and the man/spoon/pan interface.

It is well known that all the "great" chefs are male. There's a good reason for this. Only men would shout and swear in a crowded kitchen, thinking that this (a) is a good way to calm things down, and (b) is an efficient way to impart information, while (c) being aware that said s-and-s-ing gives the impression that what takes place in a kitchen is actually difficult, and not just a case of sticking the veg in a saucepan of boiling water the right number of minutes before you finish caramelising the outside of a lump of meat (ensuring, of course, that the frying pan occasionally catches fire like a Texas oil-well in a John Wayne movie, thus demonstrating that cooking is not only difficult, but downright dangerous too).

Women, on the other hand, make great cooks. That's not to say they necessarily are great cooks, but that they can make them. They write about it, or demonstrate how to do it, in calm tones, with simple instructions, and they write about things people want to eat. They de-mystify it ("You will never get out of a pan fundamentally better than what went into it, Cooking is not alchemy; there is no magic in the pot" - a woman said that) while at the same time making it fun (and yes, I do mean that kind of fun.)

And, believe it or not, we men understand that we do not necessarily know best in the kitchen. Even the most arrogant of us is willing to admit that women have a mastery of the kitchen that we can never hope to match. It's the multi-tasking thing, I suspect. Watch a man - he reads the recipe, measures all the herbs and spices into small pots ready for use, gets all the constituents chopped, prepared, and lined up, in the order in which they are to be used, and then proceeds down the line from left to right tipping in ingredients while timing intervals between additions with a stopwatch. A woman, however, reads a book while languidly opening cupboards, extracting packets and tipping them unsighted and unmeasured into the bubbling pot, while stimultaneously listening to Jenni Murray and ensure that the smallest child does not eat from the cat-food bowl.

There still remains, however, the one tricky area of the man/spoon/pan interface. It is the one place where we attempt to dominate the kitchen proceedings. Leave a pot bubbling, however gently, and a spoon nearby, and every man in the house will take it in turns to stick the spoon in whatever is cooking, and have a good old stir. every man. Husband, son, guest; they all know that the male is the sole effective wielder of the spoon (and seasoning adjuster - but that's another story). I'm sure it goes back to our hunter/gatherer days, when we used to break open termite hills and extract the contents on a length of bone with a conveniently hollowed out end, dashing back to the cave to show what we had collected before dumping them into the pot to contribute to the termite stew. Meanwhile caveman wife just calmly read a cave painting, milked a dinosaur, and ensured that the smallest cave child didn't clamber into the sabre-toothed tiger litter tray. And promised herself silently, that if he added just a single pinch of dried plant leaf, she'd give him one on the boko with the rolling club. And so it remains to this day.

And if you are planning on spending time in the kitchen today, may I just leave you with the sentiment once uttered by Johnny Craddock - "May all your doughnuts turn out like Fanny's".

For Better and Better.

2010-02-05T19:10:00.002Z

Rather pleased to hear that the "For better or Worse" production mentioned below (which features a snippet or two of my own writing *hem-hem*) has sold out so they have added an extra performance. So the First Night is now the closing night, and there's a new First Night on the preceding evening. End of advertisement.

Lucky, lucky, lucky...

2010-01-26T12:42:00.002Z

Opening night of ‘Bouncers’ at the Leicester Square Theatre Basement last night. This must be one of the most compact venues in the West End, a tiny room with a bar in one corner, forty or fifty seats arranged in two and two-half rows, and a playing area fifteen feet wide by eight feet deep. A friendly and supportive crowd filled the place – I seemed to be the only person who wasn’t on first-name terms with everyone else – as the room was filled with former classmates of a couple of the cast. Having your mates in the audience makes for an easy show, but the cast didn’t need them; this production would have stirred the most hostile crowd. Director/producer/actor Antony Law has made an excellent job of turning a fairly brief play (usually played in a double bill) into a value-for-money evening’s entertainment with some inventive physical business, and like Kung-Fu fighters, the cast deliver the lines with expert timing.

‘Bouncers’ is an actor’s delight. Four cast members switch back and forth between a multitude of characters - bouncers, punters both male and female, a rancid DJ, and more – at the drop of a handbag, and when played as well as this was, it is an audience’s delight too. Simon Higgins’s Judd gave the impression of only vaguely being aware what century it was, Luke Stevenson’s Les looked like a psychotic Tom Stoppard, Anthony Law’s Ralph looked as menacing as a rat with a flick-knife, while David Bauckham was given the plum role of “Lucky” Eric. Eric’s not so lucky after all – he’s the only character in the whole show who realises that there is a world outside the nightclub, and in four beautifully delivered monologues, silenced an hysterical audience and chilled them with his vision of what the bleak world of discos, alcopops, and casual sexuality really looks like; not so funny after all.

Sure, the play shows its age from place to place. The two punks come straight from “The Young Ones”, and young women on the prowl nowadays are much more predatory than the ones on display here (or so the CCTV/Police Action TV schedule stuffers would have us believe), but the disco classics used in the show are almost certainly still being played every night in some disco around the country to this day. And the thought that nothing has really changed for the better in the thirty years since the play was written is a bleak one that resonates long after the laughter has stopped.

For better or for worse...

2010-01-21T18:03:00.003Z

It's not that I like to blow my own trumpet. Oh, can the false modesty, I am as pleased as I can be to say that some stuff I wrote recently is going to be performed ON STAGE by PROFESSIONALS. I, and a whole bunch of other local writers, have provided monologues to come out of the mouths of actors. Said monologues have all been lovingly stitched together by the talented production/direction people at Finding the Plot Productions to create an entertainment called "For Better or For Worse", being presented for one night only at the Compass Theatre in Ruislip.
I shall be out this weekend shopping for a broad-brimmed hat, a Llaurence Llewwelllynnn Bowen floppy shirt, a velvet smoking jacket, and a malacca cane, so that I can attend the performance looking just like Oscar Wilde. Without the Reading Gaol-issue jimmy-jams and ball-and-chain, naturellement.

Tickets are selling like crucifixes at a vampire hunters' convention. Mostly to me, I suspect.

http://www.compasstheatre.co.uk/index.php?article=events&show=details&sid=508&eid=212

They are back!

2010-01-21T18:00:00.002Z

I don't know where they went to, but I sure am glad to see them back again. The "Followers" box has friendly faces in it once more. All's well with the world.

Why have my followers deserted me?

2010-01-20T18:30:00.002Z

Was it something I said? Was it asking for people to sign up as followers? Did they feel betrayed? Oh where have my followers gone?

Or have I just failed another basic computer literacy test and completed frazzled my blogvironment?

I think I shall make me a cup of tea in my "Three Little Kittens" mug.

Genetic imperatives number one: the fork dismantle.

2010-01-17T18:37:00.008Z

There are certain things that men are programmed to do. It's not learnt behaviour, but actually encoded in that ol' double helix. I plan to share a few of them with the more sensible gender so that they might come to realise that men are not idiots through choice or indolence, but are, in fact, slaves to their ancestry.

Todays' genetic imperative: the fork dismantle.

At some stage in every man's life he will own a bicycle (Baby Girl enquires why they are called "pushbikes" - I shrug and say "IMDB it"). Usually that bike will be owned during late puberty. And at some point the owner will grab a spanner and rotate the handlebars through 180 degrees in two planes - turning them upside down and back-to-front. "Customising", it might be called, or "marking ones territory".

Having successfully engineered a situation where the handlebars will suddenly invert themselves just as the rider is attempting to overtake a bendy bus on the inside (or, in the case if this gene-slave, while attempting to hitch a tow on the passenger rail of a number 23 Routemaster Bus belting towards Barking Station at about 90 mph), the imperative takes further hold. Stick transfers from Airfix models of Messcherschmidt Me190s on the crossbar? Already done it. Clothes peg a playing card to the back forks so your bike makes the sound of a fat man's trousers surrendering at the seams? Kids' play.

No, there is one major operation that every male biker owner can, and indeed must, perform.

He will take a spanner, and undo the nut that attaches the front fork to the frames. When separated, he will find a circle of ball-bearings in grease. He will poke the ball bearings with a pencil, a screwdriver or, best of all, a finger. One of the ball bearings will dislodge. In attempting to replace it, the would-be pushbike ride-pimper will watch it disappear onto the floor. If found at all, it will be covered in: toffee papers; grit; guinea-pig droppings; small parts from the undercarriage of the Airfix Messerschmidt Me109 (perm any three from four). It will never fit back in. The front forks will never operate smoothly again. The bike will develop a distinct, and irrestible, right-to-left tendency which will one day send the idiot male headfirst into a hedge, a telegraph pole, or the path of a shopping trolley.

We can't help it.

We are made that way.

Unlike the bike, of course.

Oh. it's good...

2010-01-16T15:11:00.002Z

... to be back on the WorldWideInterweb. Last Sunday evening, just acknowledging an email from Helen at bookersatz (http://bookersatz.blogspot.com/) and the Interweb went *pop*. And just for a moment, I thought it was me who had broken it. Imagine the shame, the guilt, the TV opportunities, of being the person who broke the Interweb.

And then I realised that the snow had played havok with the telephone and that it was nothing to do with me at all.

It took BT five days to get everything back and running, five days in which I have been taking surreptitious glances at the online world (or, at least, those parts of it which we are grown-up enough to be allowed to see) in the office at lunchtimes, and wishing that I could get back online, write a blog entry or two, update my bookblog (http://rashdallsmixedpicklesreviews.blogspot.com/), work on my Open University course... and now I can. Except I am just about to motor off to Suffolk for the next 24 hours, so all shall remain silence until at least tomorrow evening. Opportunity and accessibility - why can't they coincide?

So souk me

2010-01-03T10:47:00.004Z

Am I the last person to have adopted a recession mentality? I did something yesterday that I have never done before, and I think it is all because I have spent the best part of the year reading money-saving ideas in the Daily Telegraph's Saturday "Weekend" and "Your Ackers" sections. In fact, in ALL their sections. And all the other papers to. The recession have proved a Godsend to previously out-of-work scrimpage scribes who couldn't even sell a featurette to the Harrow Observer during the conspicuous consumption days that preceded Lehman Bros et al. But I digress.

I, as I said, have never done it before. The Baby Girl, my nest-flown youngest, has always been adept at it. Entering a "book" (did you see what I did there? "book" is predictive text spelling for "cool", hence the way forward for Standard English) boutique (ah, I show my age) she will find a dress that she really likes and then explain to the Beleagured Shop Manageress that as it is the last one on the rail, the BSM is going to be plagued by customers saying "Have you got this in red? Have you got it in a 14? Have you got it in this size and colour but with spots on?" and when the BSMA has to admit they don't, the plague of customers will leave, disgruntled and vowing never to return. Far better, TBG explains, to sell it to me for 25% of the ticket price, and save disappointing so many people. The BSM, grateful for having her turnover preserved, readily agress and, indeed, reduces the price even further in the hope that TBG will call again and save her from eventual financial ruin.

Me, I can't do that.

Strike that last and make it "Couldn't".

Went into a large-office-stationers-who-don't-only-sell-staples-despite-what-you-might-think and stared lovingly at a laptop for about ten minutes. My laptop is five years old, has 250mb of RAM a 25gb hard-drive of which 8gb is empty, crashes more frequently than a car insurance scammer, and takes so long to boot up that if I want to know how Brentford got on in an evening kick-off, it is quicker to get out the car and drive to the Royal Oak on the corner of the ground and find a gruntled or disgruntled supporter and ask them what the score was.

So I've been thinking about a new laptop for a while. And I looked and looked at the one in the shop that had the spec I wanted until one of the assistants came up to me and asked if he could help.

"Not really," I replied, "I was only thinking that if this laptop was £300 I'd be really tempted." He smiled, and said nothing. I smiled, and said nothing, but harder. Eventually he cracked. "I can't get it down to three hundred," he said, "but what about three-ten?"

So here I am, writing my last blog on my old laptop and about to set up my new one.

Am I cheap, or just hopping on the Souk Market bandwagon? I don't know, but I do feel quietly proud of myself. I'm sure TBG will give me a pat on the back too.

As the pirates say...

2009-12-31T22:48:00.002Z

at midnight on December 31st....

Happy New Yaaaaar!

I'm so bored...

2009-11-22T23:59:00.001Z

... with all this talk about football, and handball, and whether or not matches should have video referees.

Yes.

I am suffering from Thierry Ennui.

If you believe...

2009-10-01T11:44:00.002Z

... they put a clown on the moon (clown on the moon).
Well,not exactly the moon, but them pesky Ruskies have put a clown in space. Any clown-phobics out there? He's up there, looking down at you!

Nah, don't panic, he can't reach you with his squirty flower; if he pressed the squeezy bulb the reaction would send him flying off in the vague direction of Uranus (did you see what I did there?).

Speaking of which, in order to avoid offending the sensibilities of the Moral Majority, from 2010, Uranus is to be renamed...
Urectum.
That joke used by kind permission. Thanks, Luke. And now back to our regular broadcast.

The Russians didn't send him up there as some kind of Commmedia dell'arte skit - no, Mr Baggysleeves paid Brer Oligarch thirty million US red-noses (thats 22,000,000 battered boaters sterling) for the privilege.

Dat's an offal lotta buckets full of silver confetti being chucked at an audience, brothers and sister. Are we on a wavelength here?

You bet we are. I'm off to paint my face white with a teardrop trickling from the corner of my eye. That teardrop isn't make-up by the way. That's me crying 'cause I chose the wrong career.

Now where's that square-wheeled car of mine? (*parp*)

It's a small world...

2009-09-01T15:54:00.001Z

... and getting smaller every day.

Either that, or I've put some weight on.

One of the problems...

2009-08-29T14:46:00.001Z

with being so vain;
every time I go to cross the road, and it says "Look right", I stop and think "Yes, I do, don't I?"

A conundrum.

2009-08-16T18:49:00.001+01:00

Why are they called "energy-saving" light bulbs...

when my eyes have to work twice as hard to read anything under them?

Super, smashing, lovely.

2009-08-12T12:31:00.002+01:00

News reaches Pickle Towers of an English actor obtaining a part in a US superhero adaptation movie - and NOT playing the baddie!

Yep, it seems that the part of Odin the Allfather has gone to Brian Blessed, possibly the only actor who would have to turn down his natural speaking voice in order not to drown out the God of Thunder.

All of which makes me think; if I was casting The Mighty Avengers purely from our spectred isles, who would be in the running.

AntMan : Ray Winstone. Best line of dialogue "Oi mush! Watch where yer puttin' yer xxxxin' feet!"

The Winsome Wasp : Jeanette Krankie - no special effects needed to shrink her down to size.

The Might Thor : Lenny Henry. Controversial casting there, I know, but imagine what depths could be bought to the role by someone who could deliver King James Bible English in a Dudley/Jamaican mum accent?

The Incredible Hulk - That grumpy faced bloke with the Walrus moustache who does the adverts saying "Had an accident at work? Not your fault?". Face it - he's big, and you wouldn't like him when he got angry. Mind you, you probably don't like him when he isn't.

Iron Man - Stephen Moore. Qualifications - already experienced in playing metal men, and his Marvin catchphrase "I've got a terible pain in all the diodes down my left hand side" could easily be adapted for Tony "Shrapnel Nuts" Stark.

Captain America - John Barrowman. Face it, he's every-bloody-where else.

Can you tell I'm in a cynical mood?

2009-08-04T23:19:00.001+01:00

A problem shared...

... is a problem squared.

The ultimate in pointless, frustrating activities.

2009-08-02T13:34:00.003+01:00

Try this:

Lift your right foot about six inches of the ground.
Draw clockwise circles in the air with your big toe.
While still drawing those circles, write number 6 in the air with your right hand forefinger.

Yep - your foot is now drawing anti-clockwise circles, isn't it?

Just one more try and I'm giving up forever...

An optimist...

2009-07-25T06:54:00.001+01:00

An optimist is just a pessimist who isn't in full possession of the facts.

What goes around...

2009-07-23T20:18:00.002+01:00

... comes back in the nicest way. Esteemed quill-flourisher and HTML specialist Bernard O'Leary was kind (and clever) enough to turn my rudimentary Excel macro-driven Plottomator into a tasty little piece of HTML (eyes right, people). Then he pressed the button, got himself a prompt and wrote a short story based on it which has made runner up in the Guardian short fiction competition. Check out guardian.co.uk/books on August 1st. Check out the Plottomator any time. It can't make you a prize-winning author, but it might just give you the seeds of an idea.

Don't have a cow, man

2009-07-14T14:10:00.005+01:00

Lots of lip-flapping on the news this morning about the plight of the British veal farmer, and how our veal is less cruel than Continental veal (well it would be, wouldn't it?)

But tune in to me here, brothers and sisters; do you know where milk comes from? And Oxo cubes?

Take one cow, take one of those machines they use to crush cars that don't have road tax. Put the cow in the machine and press the "Go" button. Stand back and be amazed as milk pours out. And what's left? Now we are on a wavelength, brothers and sisters; an Oxo cube.

Don't believe me? Try this. Pour a pint of milk into a bowl. Drop in an Oxo cube. Stand well back.

PLUS

EQUALS

Nice Enough To eat

2009-07-08T22:59:00.008+01:00

I remember reading somewhere that if you own two hundred LPs, you already own a hundred LPs that you will never again listen to in their entirety. Now how much does that sentence date me?

Let's start the forensics: "LPs". Who knows what "LPs" are nowadays (and I'll excuse all readers of Record Collector Magazine and Mojo)? OK, let's talk about "albums" then. When I was... oh Lor' - I almost wrote "When I was a boy" there. Forgive me. Once upon a time, an artist released a collection of tracks in a single unit - probably ran to about 20 minutes a side*, maybe three quarters of an hour's entertainment once you had put the first side on, used the sleeve to (*ahem*) "skin up" on, found something to assuage the sudden hunger that seemed to onset just as the needle hit the runout groove, turned the LP over, giggled as the needle missed the vinyl and you grooved to 3 minutes of sapphire-on-rubber white noise, finally found the edge of side two, and let for face melt during the second half of the band's latest opus. There's a reason why Sergeant Pepper's second side is more wonky than side one. They knew you would be off your mash by the time you got to hear it. They knew it, and so they played to it.

Nowadays - maybe even for about the past fifteen years - no-one, but no-blimming-one, has ever bought a CD, stuck it on, and played it from one end to the other. They are all an hour long at least, you can't roll a funny fag on the jewel case, and they are full of filler. We stick 'em on our iPlod, rip 'em to our PCs and we don't even notice if Monkey Media never shuffles half the tracks onto our speakers. What a waste. A waste of time, a waste of plastic, and a waste of artistes' talents. Make music as expensive as it was in the Sixties, when an album cost the equivalent of about thirtyfive of your modern quids. Limit the bands to thirtyfive minutes, and then we'll see some Rock'n'Roll Darwinism. A quid a minute, that'd sort out the music scene.

That being said...
Just picked up Strangely Strange But Oddly Normal, An Island Anthology 1967-1972 in Harrow Library's Summer Sale. £1.50. This stuff just takes me back to the days when a guy in a greatcoat would sell you a "quid deal" which turned out to be half an Oxo cube wrapped in tin foil.

Maaaaan, Oxo cube crumbled into the contents of a Park Drive - now that was some trip.

And if any of that makes any sense to you, welcome to your fifties. I shall return to the subject of no-longer-listened-to LPs before too very long.

As soon as this beefstock buzz wears off...

* I actually own a Buddy Holly LP which barely makes ten minutes a side.

Mike's mix #2

2009-07-04T17:33:00.008+01:00

Here's another 80 minutes worth of music for your mind...

1 Sandy Wynn - A Touch of Venus 2:37
2 Spirit - Fresh Garbage 3:13
3 The Forum - The River Is Wide 2:48
4 Marshall Crenshaw - Whenever You're On My Mind 3:17
5 Teddy Bears - To Know Him Is to Love Him 2:24
6 Mylene Farmer - Mylene s'en fout 4:32
7 The Supremes - Reflections 2:51
8 Fun Lovin' Criminals - We Have All The Time In The World 3:41
9 Taj Mahal - A Lot of Love 3:56
10 The Beach Boys - Please Let Me Wonder 2:46
11 J.J.Barnes - Our Love Is In the Pocket 2:45
12 Doris Troy - I'll Do Anything (He Wants Me to Do) 2:39
13 Laurie Johnson - The Avengers 2:20
14 Freda Payne - Band of Gold 2:54
15 Righteous Brothers - You've Lost That Loving Feeling 3:34
16 Harry Nilsson - It's Been So Long 2:08
17 The Cardigans - Lovefool 3:13
18 Harry J Allstars - Liquidator 2:48
19 Ronnie Lane And Slim Chance - The Poacher 3:42
20 Robert John - If You Don't Want My Love 2:21
21 Super Furry Animals - Juxtaposed With U 3:08
22 Famous Blues Band - Nine By Nine 3:11
23 Fleetwood Mac - Green Manalishi 4:25
24 Massive Attack - Unfinished Sympathy 5:08
25 Maxine Brown - It's Torture 2:34

Shopping in Waitrose today

2009-07-04T13:10:00.004+01:00

... and keeping my eyes peeled for bargains, who did I spot filling their trolleys but ex-PM "Sunny" Jim Callaghan, Dick Van Dyke ("Diagnosis Murder" Dick, not "Meeery Puppins" Dick) and, responding enthusiastically to the offer to sample some wine, Leslie Phillips from about the time of "Carry On Constable".

"Blimey," I said to Elvis, who works on the deli counter, "you get all sorts in here don't you?"

He just replied "Uh-huh-huh, uh-huh-huh, oh yeah."

I think next week I'll shop in Morrison's.

Feeling hot, hot, hot.

2009-07-02T16:17:00.003+01:00

This clement weather has got me thinking, brothers and sisters; the closer you get to the source of the heat, the hotter you get, right?

So, when you climb to the top of a mountain, you are nearer the sun, n'est ce pas (and I trust you'll excuse the French? So, where do you go if you want to get up to some ski-ing? Are you tuning into me, brothers and sisters? Tell me this then; if it gets hotter the closer you get to the source of the heat, how come that the tops of mountains are full of light dustings, heavy falls, glaciers, and Abominable Snowmen?
I think we are on a wavelength here. Obviously, the source of the heat is not the sun, but the centre of the Earth. Am I right, or am I the Singing Detective?

In fact, I would not be at all surprised if we were actually nett exporters of hot. There's probably a whole bunch of people living on the Sun at this very moment (Sunnies? Solarians?) saying to each other "Oh, it's a really Earthy day, must remember to put on my Factor 40 Terrablock, don't want to get Earthburn," etc.

There's just no pleasing some people. Especially Solarians.

Both hands working again (well, just about enough to use a keyboard)...

2009-06-27T12:33:00.006+01:00

... and now it seems my ears have improved. After singing along to The Beatles' "She Loves You" for, oh, 46 years or thereabouts, it now transpires that the line I have been belting out as "In spite of her 'to-do' - apologise to her" was, I now realise, actually written by L & M as "Pride can hurt you too..."

So it seems that the drugs I am taking for the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome are sharpening my hearing too.

Pardon?

Parts of this blog..

2009-06-16T08:58:00.005+01:00

Parts of this blog have been edited and shown out of sequence in an attempt to make you think that something dramatic happened. Filmed with lash inserts. Post-production enhancements may lead you to believe this blog is effective. 83% agree (based on a survey of 27 people). This posting being shown at near-subliminal speed to satisfy the relevant Standards Authorities without actually letting you know what is going on.

Proof that “ITV Comedy” is an oxymoron

2009-06-15T09:14:00.004+01:00

Proof that the phrase “ITV Comedy” is an oxymoron: “May Contain Nuts”.

Reasons.
1) The title – it means nothing. It has no connection with the plot or characters. Now if it was a sitcom set in an underpants factory, or 18th century Bedlam then, OK, “May Contain Nuts” might be appropriate. But socially-aspiring, latte-drinking, Tarquin-offspringed, 50p tax-rated, gated-community dwellers? Where’s the link?
2) The setting – socially-aspiring, blah blah blah (see above). Does the word zeitgeist mean nothing?
3) The ‘jokes’ – don’t get me started (and, coincidentally, it seems that that was the scriptwriters’ motto). The main ‘comedy’ revolves around a forty-odd year old woman of diminutive stature (not a bit of Political Correctness there, she is just short) masquerading as her eleven-year-old daughter in order to take the entrance exam for a highly selective school. Let me tell you, she makes the least convincing eleven-year-old since Jeanette Krankie stuck a catapult in her back pocket and decided to go the Jimmy Clitheroe route.
4) (And I can still taste a tiny bit of bile riding in the back of my throat as I recall this) The scene where the forty-odd year old woman is trying on pre-teen slut gear (imagine Lesley “Birds of a Feather” Joseph dressed up like a Bratz doll) and her husband (and remember now, this woman is masquerading as their pre-teenage daughter) confesses to be a little ‘turned on’.

I have seen ITV sitcoms shuffle from semi-prime-time into the twilight viewing hours between the showing of the first and second episodes before now. This one, mercifully, is only a two-parter. Nonetheless, I am not sure that they can't find something to fill the schedule where the second part is supposed to be - a double bill of "Mind Your Language" and "On the Buses" might do the trick.

It's a marvel

2009-06-15T08:43:00.002+01:00

Time.

2009-06-15T08:30:00.002+01:00

Of course time is relative. That's why it is called a grandfather clock.

9% of people claim they have seen a UFO

2009-06-14T09:00:00.004+01:00

OK, so that's what the banner on the YouGov front page suggests.

But how many have been abducted? Let me tell you something...

I woke up the other morning to discover bloodstains on my pillow - I had experienced a spontaneous nocturnal nosebleed. That is something which has never happened to me before.

When do you get nosebleeds? That's right - when you go through some kind of decompression - like going up in an aeroplane - or perhaps something that reaches an even greater altitude. Are you tuning in to me yet, brothers and sisters?

Another odd thing; the whole room was entirely as it had been when I had gone to sleep the previous night. Now let me ask you this; if you were an alien, maybe a "grey", or something more like a futuristic hologram, or just that wobbly faced man from the end credits on the early Star Trek TV shows, and you were abducting someone, would you (a) make a right old mess of the place, opening drawers, swapping the socks around so all the pairs were odd, doing an alien-Banksy style graffito on the wall above the bedhead, etc., or (b) leave everything EXACTLY where it was, so there was absolutely no proof that you had been there.

I think we are on a wavelength here.

You got it, brothers and sisters; I had been abducted by aliens, and possibly (possibly? NO - probably!) been probed. And they didn't even have the decency to buy me dinner first. Sometimes you just can't win.

Mix Disk #1

2009-02-03T14:46:00.006Z

If I could, I'd give burn a mix CD fir everyone and give it away free with every copy of this blog. Failing that, here's a virtual playlist. This'll fit nicely on an 80 minute CD (as long as you burn without any gaps).

Mike's Mix - Volume 1
Maxine Brown - It's Torture
Evie Sands - I Can't Let Go
Prince - I Wish You Heaven
Johnny Kidd and the Pirates - Shakin' All Over
The Wailers - Trenchtown Rock
Pallmall - Is She All You want
Booker T and the MGs - Time is Tight (fast version)
Terry Callier - Look At Me Now
Crazy World of Arthur Brown - I Put A Spell On You
The Bystanders - Pattern People
Robert Johnson - They're Red Hot
Dino Valente - Time
John Fahey - Dance of the Inhabitants of the Palace of King Philip XIV of Spain
Timi Yuro - It'll Never Be Over For Me
Ben Fold Five - Kate
The Monkees - I'm A Believer
Laura Nyro - Eli's Comin'
Mood Mosaic - A Touch of Velvet, A Sting of Brass
Frank Wilson - Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)
Jackie de Shannon - Don't Turn Your Back On Me
Al Green - To Sir With Love
Shelby Lynne - Gotta Get back
Otis Redding - Try A Little Tenderness
The Carpenters - Goodbye To Love
John Carpenter - Assault on Precinct Thirteen

Digger

2008-11-15T23:49:00.004Z

My great-grandfather worked on the Black Gang digging tunnels beneath the river; a big man man whose wife regularly bent pokers over his head when they argued - if you can call his enduring silence one side of an argument, that is. He enjoyed nothing more than his peace and quiet, especially of a Saturday evening, when he would sit by the coal fire, his boots off, a clay pipe in his mouth and the evening paper open for inspection. They lived on the second floor of an East End tenement, and the front door was always open and perhaps it was no suprise that one Saturday a drunk, mistaking the tenement for his own, wandered in, sat down in the other armchair and began loudly demanding his supper. The old lady, wielder of pokers and skilled worker with the frying pan, gave him the 'sling yer 'ook' message, but he still demanded some grub. This carried on, and obviously for too long as far as the Ol Man was concerned. He carefully folded the newspaper, knocked his pipe out on the hearth, got
out of the chair and approached the drunk. He looked him up and down for a moment or two, shook his head more in dismay than despair, and, gathering the interloper's lapels in one big fist, lifted him out of the chair, off his feet and out onto the landing. There, he looked him up and down once more; the corners of his mouth turned down slightly as he estimated the worth of the josser who had obviously not spent the whole day underground. One heave, and he was suspended over the stairwell. The Old Man gave him one last look, straight in the eye, and released his grip. Without waiting for the thud of the man hitting the ground two floors below, he returned to his armchair, stuck the pipe back in his mouth, reopened the paper, and waited for his supper.

Da Coda

2008-11-15T14:26:00.001Z

The fat man sat hunched over the keyboard, concentrating, struggling to play the piece. Each time he got it wrong he returned to the beginning, determined to play the whole piece, just once, flawlessly.

The metronome stopped its tick-tack-ticking. He stood up, his joints protesting at having been in one position for so long, rewound the metronome, returned to his position and recommenced his practice...

‘If I had only’, he thought to himself for the oh, how many-th time? ‘If I had only… no. Not “I” – if She had only.’ He squinted, concentrated on getting the sequence right, a bead of sweat slugtrailing its way down his nose to fall and land with a fat, silent splash on the keys.

‘Practice makes perfect, practice makes perfect, but She’, he glanced over at the still form of his mother, ‘She “couldn’t stand the noise” – not after one of her special evenings’.

‘But then, every evening was one of your special evenings, wasn’t it?’ This last sentence, spoken aloud, broke his discipline. Losing his place, he had to start the sequence all over again.

‘If I had only… if I had only practiced, I could have been, I should have been… the great Marcus Seasalter, Marcus Seasalter the maestro, maestro Marcus Seasalter, piano virtuoso, if I had only… no. Not “I” – if She had only.’

The metronome stopped its tu-tu-tutting. He went across to it, his joints protesting, rewound it, resumed his position and recommenced.

‘I could have been, I should have been…’

In his imagination he saw himself, white-tailcoating his way across the stage to the grandest of grand pianos, there to take his place and play his signature piece.

‘Couldn’t stand the noise so she locked my piano away, locked it away, and wouldn’t let me play.’ And now, out loud again, ‘But now I have the key, and now I am playing, aren’t I, Mother? And what do you think of my playing?’

He almost smiled as Mother rocked her head in time to the music, almost smiled and then remembered that he had promised himself never to smile for her again.

‘I should have been the great Marcus Seasalter, on stage at the Albert Hall, the whole world at my fingertips, but She couldn’t stand the noise. If only I had practiced, if only She…’

The metronome stopped its pic-pic-picking. He went across to it, his knees cramped with biting pain.

‘If I had only’, he thought to himself for the oh, how many-th time? ‘If I had only… no. Not “I” – if She had only.’ He closed his eyes, visualizing the sequence of notes, determined on getting them right.

‘If She had only…’

Coda: getting no response to their knocks, the police forced the door. From the recesses of the house they heard a muttered mantra. They pushed open the door to the back room, searching for the source of the noise.

The first thing they saw was the woman. No; fairer to say that the first thing they smelled was the woman. She had evidently been dead for a number of days, her flesh mottled green and white like a succulent plant that has remained unwatered too long. In her cupped hands, rigid with rigor mortis, she held the base of a metronome. Its spike had been forced up through the soft underside of her chin into the interior of her skull where its regular to-and-froing kept her head, on its broken neck, bobbing from side-to-side in a parody of musical appreciation. And in the corner…

The fat man sat cross-legged on the floor, hunched over a keyboard, struggling to play. Each time he got it wrong he returned to the beginning, determined to play the whole piece, just once, flawlessly. As he hit the keys he repeated over and over the notes he played; ‘B, A, D. B, A, D.’

And the mechanism of the ‘Tiny Tots First Tunes Piano’ (“Twelve Real Notes To Set Your Child On The Road To Musical Accomplishment” the box declared, “Contains moving parts. Not suitable for under 18 months. Made in China.”), the mechanism of the toy, sticky with blood, sweat and shreds of man-meat continued bravely to offer a muffled response to the pressure of the tips of his fingers, worn bare of flesh now so that ivory bone clicked on imitation ivory keys: B, A, D; B, A, D…

The Woman Who Looked Like A tree

2008-11-14T19:56:00.001Z

From every direction, she looked like a tree. She tried to speak, but no-one would hear her. Every day she prayed for deliverance.
And then a handsome woodsman passed by and saw her. He admired her beauty, and caressed her.
“You,” he said, “will make a handsome addition to my household,” and swung his axe.
As she lay dying, she realised; she had never been a woman at all.

Pee-wee's Wrong Time Wragtime

2008-11-14T15:24:00.002Z

Pee-wee got a position as a jazz musician at a joint called Jumpin’ Joe’s
So he put new strings on his second-hand Fender and dressed in his hep-cat clothes.
He played up a sweat and in between sets he was sat at the bar all alone
When up came a gal with a five o’clock shadow who spoke in baritone.
She said: “Me, oh my, now Pee-wee honey, you caught my eye.
How about some conversation? Can I show you where I’m gonna have my operation?”
And Pee-wee said…
“Now hold on, sister, you look more like a Mister, and I think that’s how you were born.
I’m a one-string virtuoso, and I sure don’t play no horn”
She said “How you gonna fight me, when you weight about ninety, and I weight three-nine-nine?”
Poor little Pee-wee. How come he be in the wrong place, wrong time?

Now Pee-wee walking down a red-light street saw a sign said “We sell books”
He was holdin’ foldin’ in his pocket, so he thought he’d take a look.
Well the stairs were steep and the lights were dim and the customers all wore macs,
And the books were wrapped in plastic, all sitting on the racks.
Then a man with a gun said “I’m from Precint Eightyone.
Let’s go down to the station, tell the District Attorney your explanation.”
And Pee-wee said…
“I collect books by Kurt Vonnegut, I thought that I was gonna get a First Edition.
I was just building a collection, now I’m looking at a stretch and no chance of remission”.
The cop said “Man, you’re in luck, slip me a double sawbuck and I can turn a blind eye to your crime”
Poor little Pee-wee. How come he be in the wrong place, wrong time?

Now Pee-wee met a woman and married her the very same day.
She spent all his money, drank all his booze, stole his car and drove away.
Now he forgot all about her until she turned up knockin’ at the door
With an order from the court for child support for a kid he never seen before.
He said “That kid ain’t mine – you ain’t been around for twelve years and the kid ain’t nine”
She said “For your information, it was a very long gestation’
And Pee-Wee said…
“You can’t collect on me, I had a vasectomy in nineteen-eightyfour.
Don’t blame it on this pistol – I don’t shoot live rounds no more”
She said “You had your fun, I had your kid, now I’ll have your last thin dime”
Poor little Pee-wee, how come he be in the wrong place, wrong time?

Postcard

2008-11-14T11:34:00.001Z

I wrote my heart's thought on a postcard, and then I wrote your name.
I didn’t sign it or address it, but sent it just the same.
If you find a postcard on your doormat, the message will be clear.
You won’t know that I wish it but still-
“Wish you were here”.