The Gang's Anniversary Cometh

Cripes!

Dive on the seventh of August;
Robyn on the eighth of August;
Sassy on the twenty-eighth of August;
… and Rich "sometime in August" but since he's taken his archives off his blog I'm buggered if I'm going to troll all the way back via the "Older Posts" button, so please check and let us know, Rich.

Our original little gang has been blogging for almost a year!

That's scary.

Blogville has grown so much over the past twelve months and is now chock full of wonderful people (you know who you are), but for me it all started with the strange and motley collective of Robyn, Sassy, Rich and Dive.

I think it's time I donned protective clothing and lowered myself into the murky and fœtid nether parts of the gang's archives.
Expect something disturbing to emerge in a week or so.

Stuff This

Ambling through Castle Mall at the weekend I am tempted by an unusual invitation.

… er … though not that tempted …

What I like to do in the privacy of my own home or local farmyard and what is deemed acceptable behaviour in full view of children in a public shopping mall are two quite different things.

Monday Melee

Something of a predictable Fracas Monday Melee this week after Robyn's visit.
I miss her and I'm glum.
However, don't miss next week's glistening and throbbing episode where Groover has challenged us to "Say It With Lyrics"!

1: The Misanthropic.
(Name something - about humanity - you absolutely hate).
This week I have been mostly hating humanity's inability to arrange it so that blogpals live in Blogville, where we can simply pop round for a cuppa and not have to save up for bloody plane tickets.

2: The Meretricious:
(Expose someone or something that's phony, fraudulent or bogus).
The pain in the arse of getting a new, crappy "biometric" passport (I think it means it's made out of live yoghurt), booking plane tickets online when your connection cuts out every minute, then standing in an airport for four days.
That's why I wait for my blogpals to visit London.
I'm a lazy cheapskate.

3: The Malcontent:
(Name something you're unhappy with).
Robyn's in Ohio.
And Ame's in California.
In fact all of you are out of reach.
Except wonderful Peahen who is only three and a half hours away.

4: The Meritorious.
(Give someone credit for something and name it if you can).
Robyn, for a splendid day out last week.
And for being Robyn.

5: The Mirror.
(See something good about yourself and name it).
My shoes are nice.

6: The Make-Believe:
(Name something you wish for).
Room 56.
And no, that's not a hotel room; it's a disconnected piece of trivia. I'll give 100 trivia points if anyone gets it, but I somehow doubt you will. Hee hee.

Miscellaneous London Guff

A compact and bijou gallimaufry of photos left over from our trip to meet Robyn last week.

Mum in St.James's Park just before it started tipping it down.
I often walk to work this way, as you know, and this is always a lovely place to pause. Looking down the lake has the added benefit of pointing my arse at the Parasite House.

Swans. Nuff said.

I'm always on the lookout for baps and peepees for Ame, so here are some rather fetching man-baps from Easter island.

And my favourite horsie from Elgin's stolen horde.

And that cute temple just outside the Parthenon Room at the B.M.

Some useless bling.
Sure it looks great until you put it on and you can't move your arms.
Crap!

And just for a change, a picture of Jesus NOT riding a dinosaur!

One For Ame, One For Peahen, One For Lynn

Robyn's flying back home to the States in the early hours of tomorrow morning.
Sigh …
I miss her already.

So as I'm a bit of a tart I'll make mysef feel better by doing a post for some other lovely ladies.

One for Ame.

Woohoo! One of London's gay taxis that you love so much.

One for Peahen.

The Tiffany corner of the Art Deco room at the British museum.

And one for Lynn.

The missing caryatid from the Erectheion in Athens, stolen by Lord Elgin. The model for your lovely "Cheltenham Ladies".

Hey guys. I'm lonely. Who's coming to visit next?

Robyn

So …

I know this isn't Robyn; it's my Mum.
We are wandering along The Embankment, as I do on my normal walk to work, except we are heading to Westminster Abbey to meet Robyn.

And here's the Abbey.
In front of which a taxi (disappointingly not pink, Ame) disgorges Robyn's Mother-in-Law, Elizabeth; Robyns' Daughter No.2 and Robyn herself!
Woohoo!

These three rather cute butts belong to: (from left to right):
Daughter No.2, Robyn and Dive.

And these four rather cute fronts belong to: (again, from left to right):
Elizabeth, Dive's Mum, Robyn and Daughter No.2.
Doing the touristy bit as Americans are wont to do in front of Parliament.

Above Daughter No.2's head proudly stands one of my heroes, Ollie Cromwell, facing the Parasite house, sword in hand, just in case the monarchy gets any uppity ideas.

The Abbey's ass is much prettier than its face.
Much like Dive.
Hey ho.

And here IS a pretty face. The lovely Robyn, marching along the riverside toward Tate Britain.

Unfortunately, we chose places to meet where cameras aren't allowed, so there are no shots of us in the Abbey, where we had a lovely time in Poets' Corner, found lots of fun people's graves and discovered a French Horn sitting in Handel's lap (symbolic of what, I wonder).

More touristy posing to make up for the lack of photographs of Robyn and Dive standing over David Livingstone's grave (well we presumed it was his … sorry) and Elizabeth joking that she remembered him from school.
Or of Dive (the man who irons tea towels and boxer shorts) complaining about all the dust on the statuary inside the Abbey.
I may well break in there one night and clean it.
Also there's some beautiful stained glass for Peahen to check out, especially the peacock blue window with Oscar Wilde's memorial in it.

We also discover that some poor guy named Vincent, who had led a sufficiently honourable and upright life to warrant being buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey has now had a coffee shop built over him. The counter actually cuts his gravestone in half so we cannot discover his surname.
Ah, Mammon … Welcome to the House of God …

And so on to Tate Britain, one of Dive's regular lunchtime haunts (my office is only a couple of hundred yards away).

We have to skip the modern art because Mum only stands in the middle of the room and moans loudly about how she can't understand any of it.
In fact we do pass a Blomberg by accident and even that sets her off.
Thank goodness Jake and Dinos's "Machines for Living" exhibit has been removed … all those prosthetic genitals and rubber chickens would have produced apoplexy.

If you ever need to find me on a rainy lunchtime, a good place to look is in front of Millais' Mariana and Ophelia, which hang together side by side and which I have loved all my life. Being able to visit them daily and spend time with them is so much cheaper than buying them.

Or down in the Clore Galley, in the little room with Turner's late and unfinished "light" paintings.

Oh, and in the Tate café you can get miso salmon on a bed of wild rice with wasabi dressing for under a fiver and a good selection of green teas.
Boffo!
I eat that.
The girls order quiche … WHY?

Robyn and Elizabeth outside the Tate with Dive trying to look tall by standing on a step.

Smile!

How cheeky is that grin, young Robyn?

And so, reluctantly and all too soon, we wave Robyn off in a taxi, back to her hotel.
Rats.

But we did have a lovely time. I only wish it could have been longer.
And no we are not touching one another's bums in this photo!

Station Break

Well.
Tomorrow's the day.
I won't be posting because I'll be dragging my old carcass down to London Town to meet the cute little girl with the big ball; our lovely blogpal Robyn.

When Blogs Collide.

There will be photos.
But probably not until Thursday.

Not The Monday Melee

You know I love Mondays so it's kinda hard to feel grumpy enough for a melee every week.
And this week, Robyn is in Olde London Town, so I'm looking forward to meeting her and photographing her for your prurient entertainment.

But the main reason I am not my usual miserable self is that my lovely little mediæval city of Norwich has just been elevated to join the ranks of such places as Kyoto and Venice.
We have become the first city in England to be admitted to the World League of Historical Cities, which seeks to conserve and regenerate some of the most beautiful places on the planet.

Many thanks to good old adopted Brit Bill Bryson, who lives just down the road and who lobbied hard on our behalf.
And not forgetting nyaa-nyaa to York and fuck you, Canterbury!

Anyone wanting to see why we're the best (not that I'm gloating, oh no) can check my two part photo guide to the most picturesque and historic parts of Dive's yummy little home city: Part 1 and Part 2, together with the slightly sillier stuff.

So next time Ame or Robyn or anyone else comes to visit, forget London; come and have a coffee with me in England's best historic city.

Okay, so I'm smirking. What of it?

The End Of The World Has Been Postponed. Fuck!

My usual Saturday morning coffee and breakfast at the bookshop was enlivened today by the deliciously glistening prospect of Judgement Day actually arriving and happening in the street outside.
My lovely little mediæval city has been invaded by the armies of Good and Evil.
It was fucking scary!

Hokay.
It's half-eight this morning and I'm indulging in my usual macho drag race from the lights on the A146 / A47 junction, along the dual carriageway into the heart of the city.
Suddenly it's chaos!
Slamming on the brakes I am confronted by a scene from a zombie movie: tens of thousands of people are milling all over the road.

They are all in family groups.

They are smiling politely at enraged motorists.

They are all dressed in gaudy Sunday Best fashions that are straight out of 1962.

Oh fuck! It's the CULTATHON!

Those lovely evangelical folk from the Church of Fornication with their rictus grins and pretty daughters (if you've not read the story, follow the link; it's a doozy) are having their annual miracle event in the football stadium.

God is protecting them, so they are free to totally ignore the footpaths and crossings and thousands of the serenely smiling bastards are milling about all over the dual carriageway!
As you know I am an extremely tolerant and polite person (what do you mean, "HA!"?), especially where cult religion is concerned, so I thoughtfully restrain myself from blasphemy and merely let rip with some loud and extremely creative profanity - together with my car horn and much threatening revving - to slowly weave my way through the zombie crowds with their awful rictus smiles.
There are policemen on the pavements trying desperately to shepherd the idiots off the road but they are ignored as these people are PROTECTED BY GOD.

Eventually I emerge from the scrum unscathed and continue into the city. After a mile or so several police cars and a couple of ambulances are screaming the other way, back toward the cultists.
I learn later from the local radio that a bunch of them have walked straight out in front of a truck and are now in hospital with an assortment of broken bits.
Well, they had come for a miracle; let's see the fuckers walk out of hospital tomorrow.

So I park up and walk to the bookshop only to be confronted by another and equally scary horde.
I'd forgotten (sorry Kate) that the last Harry Potter book (there was a lovely skit on Mock The Week last night, where Hermione is found in the bathroom reciting the spell "Chlamydia Dissapearum!") had been released at midnight and the bookstores had been open all night holding parties. The place is awash with the dark and twisted forces of EVIL … lots of adolescent girls dressed as wizards and witches.

Mercifully, the coffee shop has been cordoned off, so we sit and relax, glancing out of the window and waiting for the End Of The World.

But it didn't come.

Bastards!
We wanted a great big fight!
Christianity versus Paganism, right there on the street.
Rivers of blood!
Mountains of gore!
Bits of teenage girl left laying about, that I could … er … take home with me.
For the first time ever the city had been invaded by thousands of culty hardline Christians and thousands of girly nutjobs in pointy hats.
And they completely ignored one another!

I don't think I've ever been more disappointed. What a wasted opportunity!
We could have had carnage. Ten thousand screaming American families waving Bibles, charging toward hordes of teenage girls armed with little pointy sticks (and one extremely well made up and unfeasibly large Hagrid).
How fucking cool that would have been?

What a let down.
And I don't even know who complain to …

It Puts The Lotion In The Basket

A piece of junk mail awaited me on my return home last night.
Apparently our lovely rail franchise is running a competition to win first class tickets from Norwich to London at weekends.
I could be a lucky winner.
They have also spent tens of thousands of pounds of my own and my fellow commuters' season ticket money on an embarrassing campaign of TV ads promoting weekend breaks in London by train.

and yet …

The rail line is closed at weekends for "essential engineering works" (which is why I'm late in every Monday morning due to "over-running engineering works").
The "essential engineering works" have been going on for over four years now.
They run a replacement bus service at weekends.
Which takes hours longer and is many times more expensive than sitting on a scheduled coach from National Express (whose own dubious delights were so memorably and hilariously "praised" by the Divine Comedy in the song "National Express").

Before I walk to the station and start shooting people I'll just run through the salient points again:
Our rail franchise company has spent tens of thousands of pounds advertising weekend train breaks in London.
There are no trains at weekends.

PUTTHEFUCKINGLOTIONINTHEFUCKINGBASKET!

And you wonder why I twitch.

Summer's Here

Sing along, everyone:
"Summer's here and the time is right for wading in the streets" …

This morning's gentle rain (this is St.James's Park on the way into the office today, with the swans being antisocial) has got a bit grouchy and mutated into another one of the lovely thunderstorms we have been having for weeks on end.

This is Rochester Row, just outside my office, about five minutes ago.

I did say to Robyn before she set off from sunny Ohio, "Bring a brolly".
Some swimwear might be handy, too.
And wading boots (sexy).

Ame had the good sense to come to London in February, when the weather was fine and there were no queues for anything.
Robyn will spend most of next week queueing for stuff in the rain.
But hey! That's what British Summer is all about.

Ricketybus

Meet the Ricketybus.

This is decidedly NOT the sort of thing Robyn has just flown across the Atlantic in.

This is the old Rig Air DC3 of my childhood; the "hop over to Holland if there's no headwind" Ricketybus mentioned in the previous post. The one with old plastic bus seats screwed to a plain plywood floor, no toilet and no food or drink except for a grumpy man handing out barley sugars when we came in to land.

It used to take us one and a half hours to get from the WWII airstrip at Norwich to gleaming modern Schiphol Airport outside Amsterdam, and two and a half hours coming back against the prevailing wind.

The sputtery old warhorse's main job was ferrying oil and gas workers to and from Scotland to be helicoptered out to the offshore rigs; hence "Rig Air", and it cost £9 return to Amsterdam (those were the days).

It felt kind of embarrassing parking this thing in amongst the gleaming TWA Boeing 707s and BEA Vickers VC10s, especially for a plane mad kid like me.

The date on the back of this photo puts me at nine years old. Yikes! Was I ever that young?
One thing I do remember about Schiphol Airport was my first encounter with automatic doors. I didn't want to drive into Amsterdam; I just wanted to run in and out of the airport to make the doors open and close. Wheeee!

Hey ho.

Class

Watch the skies.
Today is the day when the US launches the long awaited phase two (the "Surge") of its invasion of Europe (if you remember, phase one resulted in a troop withdrawal after some bastard stole Ame's handbag).

Our very own blogpal Robyn and her indomitable troops will be heading for the airport in a few hours.
In a chilling - but hopefully more comfortable - re-enactment of the D-Day landings they will be invading France; garlic-scented land of cheese-eating surrender-monkeys and … er … freedom fries, where they will take the advice of the US government in that hostile country and constantly mutter the mantra "Nous sommes Canadiens" to everyone they meet.

Once insurgent France has been subdued and a Bush-approved "democratically" elected government installed Robyn's invasion force will tunnel their way to Blighty, where they will encounter old Dive and get comprehensively photographed for your entertainment.

Robyn will of course be flying first class.
In all my decades of carefree and wholesale dumping of greenhouse gases into the upper atmosphere I have flown in a startling array of aircraft, from the ramshackle to the downright dangerous, but never yet have I sampled the rarefied atmosphere of "First Class".

I first flew in 1959, in a Viscount turboprop with proper curtains at the windows (I can't remember if it had a fireplace but it probably did).
The "hop over to Holland as long as there's no headwind" rickety DC3 of my childhood had old hard plastic bus seats screwed to the floor and no toilet and the height of luxury we attained was being offered a barley sugar to suck (yes, they really did used to do that).
That was when Norwich Airport was a grass airstrip with a portacabin for customs, containing a plywood desk and an old weighing machine from Norwich railway station.
Ah, the pioneering days of aviation.

I asked Robyn what first class is like.
Apparently they don't have to spend eighteen hours queueing at a complaints desk at the airport; they actually have comfy chairs to sit in and flunkeys to kill any screaming children.
Then once they are in the air a flight attendant actually attends to them!
They are given booze!
Within the huge, ultra-comfy chairs are concealed tiny Thai ladyboys who massage their every extremity!
And they have real FOOD!
Tonight while I sleep, Robyn will be hurtling across the Atlantic feasting on larks' tongues and otters' noses and delicately nibbling her still twitching braised baby panda on a stick, while small third world children in rags blow on her if she's too warm or crouch in front of her seat so she can put her feet up.

Me? I fly Marxist class.
And I stopped eating airline food decades ago.
Here's the reason why:

I have eaten and thoroughly enjoyed some truly disgusting things in my life, from raw whalemeat to wasabi chocolate (although I am proud never to have set foot in a McD or a KFC and I will never let that crap anywhere near me … I have to draw the line somewhere).

But the "meal" that stopped me eating airline food was on a charter flight to Portugal in the eighties. I was veggie back then and it was so long ago that the airlines hadn't got a clue about veggie food.
With truly awe-inspiring professionalism that kind of gave the game away about the level of efficient organisation we were dealing with, the stewardess asked for all the vegetarians to raise their hands.
Inevitably there were far more raised hands than veggie meals on the plane as regardless of the number of people specifying the "vegetarian option" when booking our tickets, the airline always provided three (count 'em) veggie meals per flight.

Normally I wouldn't have bothered on a short haul flight but this time I was hungry, so after much argument I was eventually handed a small plastic tray about the size of a paperback book with a "V" scrawled on the top.
Upon examination it was found to contain a spoonful of cold sweetcorn and a spoonful of grated carrot (the non-veggies had the same thing but with a bit of cold grey gristly stuff in the corner and for no discernible reason an olive).
It came with another, slightly smaller tray containing the "side salad". Which, when poked in a desultory fashion turned out to consist of a spoonful of cold sweetcorn and a spoonful of grated carrot.
Absolutely true.

Robyn, enjoy your flight.
See you next Wednesday.*

*Ha! That's one for the film nerds.
Anyone (except Full) want to claim ten credibility points by explaining it?
And don't "Wiki" it; you're only cheating yourself.

The US Invasion Of Westminster

Westminster Abbey this morning

This is where Dive and his dear old Mum will be meeting Robyn and her American invasion force next Wednesday morning.
Cameras will be brandished and I'll post up the results.

We will have elderly folk and Robyn's number two daughter with us so don't expect an Ame style "Baps and Peepees" experience.
We don't want to get thrown out of the Abbey (though Robyn has expressed an interest in Thomas Hardy's body parts … ahem).

Groover's Monday Photo Melee

Hey, ho. It's Fracas Monday Melee.

Now new and improved, thanks to The Groover and her fabulous Photo-Melee idea, which I have so shamelessly nicked.
Vic; you obviously put a lot of thought into yours, so as I'm a fat, lazy bastard I'm just going to do mine from crappy stock photos.

First off: you've been promising me a shot of your lovely new guitar ever since it was a lovely new guitar (it's heading for "vintage" now).
So I'll show you mine if you show me yours, okay?

Right. Here we go:
1: The Misanthropic.
(Name something - about humanity - you absolutely hate).


2: The Meretricious:
(Expose someone or something that's phony, fraudulent or bogus).


3: The Malcontent:
(Name something you're unhappy with).
The fact that the East Anglian chapter of the League of Giant House Spiders is currently holding its annual conference in my bedroom.


4: The Meritorious.
(Give someone credit for something and name it if you can).


Jesus. For the sermon on the mount.
Now if only the people who profess to Christianity would actually go read it …
Oh … and for riding on dinosaurs, too. How cool is that?

5: The Mirror.
(See something good about yourself and name it).

I have a nice oak coffee table

6: The Make-Believe:
(Name something you wish for).

Your correspondent in happier days.
All this is gone now; why do you think I'm such a miserable bastard?

Happy Monday.

Merry Norfolk Folk

A knock on the door and there stands the ever wonderful Peahen …

and the equally wonderful Joan and Vic, Pea's parents. Big hugs all round.


They have been walking at Salhouse Broad and as it is pretty damned close to Planet Dive, they descend for caffeine and merry tales.

Vic's expression kind of gives away the fact that he is the type of person who will gleefully drag a warm, comfortable and well-fed household (and a visiting Dive) out late on a Christmas afternoon to walk for several miles up the coast from Happisburgh to Walcott in the pitch dark, in the teeth of a howling northerly sleet-storm tearing straight down from the North Pole while the raging sea does its screaming best to pound us into the shingle and we end up with our faces frozen into icy masks of horror … as a pleasant after-dinner stroll.
He's great.
The upshot of being raised to consider that kind of thing normal can be seen on Peahen's excellent walking blog, where she indulges in punishing death marches for pleasure.

Might Is No Longer Right

First he appoints ex. UN deputy secretary and pain in Bush's arse Lord Malloch-Brown as Foreign Minister.
Then Fat Gordie sends Douglas Alexander, the new Trade and Development Secretary, to speak to the Yanks:

"In the twentieth century a country's might was too often measured by what they could destroy. In the twenty-first century strength should be measured by what we can build together. And so we must form new alliances, based on common values, ones not just to protect us from the world, but ones which reach out to the world."

Fuck me! Don't tell me we actually have a Prime Minister with a brain!

Only time will tell.

The Pariah Club Again

The Pariah Club has been an unexpected success. Kate has even designed us a lovely logo; it's down in the sidebar if any club members want to nick it.

If anyone's not been paying attention, up until a few days ago I thought I was the only person to have been ostracised by my family for having laughed when I heard Diana had died.
Once I learned that I was not alone I threw open club membership to anyone who has shamed their family and friends by laughing at news of a national tragedy.

The results have been rather splendid.
So far, we have three Diana's, two 9/11s, one Queen Mum and a Kennedy.

Jolly good show, folks!

Smelly Facets

Maria writes beautifully and can always be relied upon to come up with a startling simile or a turn of phrase that makes me giggle.
In her latest post she refers to my "smelly facets".

I must admit I'd never noticed them, but with the assistance of several small mirrors and a complicated arrangement of levers and pulleys I soon found the aromatic little buggers.
Maria's post includes a meme which I've stolen so I can reveal yet more of them.

Four jobs that I have had in my life.

- Butcher's skivvy (while still at school - why I became veggie for decades);
- Photographer (until I found that doing something you love for a living ruins it);
- Musician (session musician, failed Rock God and washed-up has-been)
- Architect (designing girls' schools for a living - and consequently spending a lot of my time hanging around with schoolgirls - is probably not the wisest career choice for those mid-life crisis years, but hey).

Four movies I would watch over and over.
- The Bed Sitting Room. The trippiest movie to come out of the sixties and the only reason I've still got a video player as I can't get it on Brit-zoned DVD for love nor money.
- Lost In Translation (same as Maria). Any movie that starts with a lingering shot of Scarlett Johansson's arse gets my vote. And I can practice my Japanese while watching it. Cool. Great soundtrack, too.
- Kiss Me Deadly. Noir heaven. A naked Chloris Leachman getting tortured, cool cars, cool weemen, nukes, Va-Va-Voom, a plethora of femmes fatales and the best private dick ever.
- Chinatown. More noir, this time in beautiful colour so bright it hurts. Perfection.

Four places I have lived.

- Malta;
- A caravan (yup, I'm trailer trash);
- On the coast next door to Daphne Rubbernoids;
- Currently residing in Norfolk - England's "Deliverance Country". The motto at County Hall reads "You sure got a puurty mouth, city boy."

Four favorite foods.

- Sashimi;
- Miso Shiro;
- Seaweed onigiri;
- Green and Black's Maya Gold chocolate;
- Maria and I both share another favourite snack, but if you missed it the first time round that's your loss.

Four places I would rather be now.

- Hanging round はらじゅくえき in Tokyo, ogling こがる。
- In bed, at that lovely moment just before falling asleep;
- Sittin' on the dock of the bay;
- Back in baby's arms (Otis Redding and Patsy Cline fans will have those stuck in their heads all day now).

I'm tagging everyone who hates memes.

The Pariah Club

This is great!
Going through the comments from the last post it seems I am by no means alone in having laughed when I heard Diana had died.
Perhaps we should form some kind of club - The Pariah Club - for social outcasts too despicable to allowed into normal society.
Hee hee hee.
So far it's Fresh Hell, Maria and me.
I'll also make Peahen an honourable member for her cartoon of Stan, Kyle and Cartman standing on a grassy knoll saying "Oh my God! They killed Kennedy".
If anyone else wants to join you've got to provide at least anecdotal evidence of sick laughter in the face of hilarious national tragedy.

Hey! We had a terrorist alert at Liverpool Street Station this morning.
As I got off the train the platform was swarming with police in their sexy yellow minidresses and sub-machine guns, and some poor Asian guy with a beard and a rucksack was being given a - how shall I put it - "stern talking-to".
At least they've learned to yell at people and slap them about rather than simply shoot them in the head these days.
Hey ho.
Robyn's coming to London in a couple of weeks. She better not bring a rucksack and a false beard.

Back On The Couch Again

I thought that with the cum eating episode I had done enough confessionals, but Fresh Hell (bless her cotton socks … or more specifically her rather cute toes) thinks otherwise and has tagged me with a "spill the beans" meme.

If any one of you sicko cod-psychoanalysts is bored or curious enough to want to dissect old Dive and poke the bits with a stick, more hot poop and embarrassing revelations can be found here and here, and even here, with divers miscellanea under the tags "À la recherche du temps perdu" and "Sexual Fantasies".

Fresh Hell's meme is the one asking for eight (count 'em) items of autobiographical gallimaufry.
I'm not even sure if I can find eight leftover bits after all the horrors contained in the above confessionals, but here goes:
Forgive me Blogger for I have sinned:

1. A girl named Sonia once insisted I go see Titanic with her at the multiplex in Norwich Castle Mall (the one with the permanently sticky floor). We sat to one side by ourselves and as the ship went down, so did she.
The only embarrassing part about this is that I actually paid to see Titanic. These days I am old enough to know better.
At least di Caprio has now redeemed himself in Scorsese's The Departed, and Winslet in Extras (hee hee).

2. I find Deanna Durbin totally hot.

They don't make 'em like this any more … sigh

3. Someone once left a fully working game of Pong in the attic of a house I moved into. A massive lump of plastic that plugs into the back of the telly and has two joysticks. Arcade heaven!
Cool!
I still have it.
Touch it and I kill you.
It is my precious.

4. Shit. How do I find eight autobiographical morsel-ettes when I've already fessed up everything I can think of?
Hokay: let's get boring. My first car was a pale blue Ford Anglia just like the one in the Harry Potter movies (except it didn't fly quite so well).
I broke the back axle racing our local village policeman's son over that fabulously twisty five mile stretch of road between Hales and Haddiscoe in Norfolk (bikers will know the bit I mean … that bit where Steve went into a tree and had to have his spleen removed).
I still beat him, even with the car lurching sideways over every bump.
Ha! Up yours, Matthew!

5. Before I removed the polystyrene packaging around my unused brain, read the instruction manual and got the thing started I used to believe in God and an afterlife and an everlasting soul.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha … etc.

6. When I was seven I was Miss Gibson's "teacher's pet" at school.
The sadistic old witch put me forward a year which I hated as my friends thought I was a girly swot and the older kids I was stuck with spent all year trying to beat me back down again.
The worst thing about Miss Gibson was that she loved to have me read aloud in class. Which was fine except that she was obsessed with the caning scenes in Billy Bunter books and had me read those out over and over, gleefully joining in with every "Yarroo!" as the cane striped the buttocks of the fat owl of the dorm.
There was something seriously wrong with that woman.
The damage it did to me can be gauged by reading through my archives. Scary.

7. The biggest spider I ever found in my house was a giant house spider about the size of a side plate. The giant house spider is not cuddly like a tarantula. It is FAST and it likes to run straight at you.

At that time, little brother Full was lodging with us and eating us out of every cake and biscuit we had.
I got home from work to find Ming The Menstrual shrieking and flapping in the front garden, having been scared out of the house by this monster spider on the landing.
"Yeah, yeah." I thought as I entered the house (I can deal with spiders).
Then "Fuck!" as I saw IT.
IT was up at the top of the landing where I couldn't reach so I got a broom and tied a stick to the end so I could get to the fucker and knocked it down into a cardboard box I propped on the stairs.
I closed the lid of the box and put it on the kitchen worktop with a piece of paper on top saying "CAKE". and waited for Full to come home.
Oh joy unbounded!
Actually, he coped pretty well and didn't kill me.
Kate the cat then leapt on the spider and crunched it up which was pretty gross. Hey ho.

8. I laughed when Diana died.
Mum called me (I didn't have a TV back then). She was in floods of tears and I was desperate to know what was wrong.
When she told me Diana was dead I laughed (sorry, but that was my genuine reaction).
I don't think she's ever forgiven me.
As I tried to explain to her, I didn't particularly want to see the psychotic bint dead, I just didn't want to see her full stop. Back then she was such a manic self-publicist, hi-jacking good causes like the landmine victims' charity and generally being a sickening freak and the papers were full of her.
Unfortunately they were even more full of her once she was dead.
I just can't win.

So …
I'm not going to tag anyone with this as most of you have done it anyway. But what I will say is "Hey! I've fessed up to all sorts of embarrassing crap. Now it's your turn. C'mon! Give it up!"

UFO Confectionery

This is for Robyn and Sassy.
Sherbet flying saucers! Woohoo!


These things were everywhere when I was a kid but now I can't find 'em for love nor money.
They were basically rice paper with a little bit of sherbet inside; the rice paper would stick to the roof of your mouth and the sherbet would choke you.
Bliss.

Klaatu Barada Nikto!

Monday Melee

As Old Knudsen foresaw with astonishing prescience in the comments to my last post, it's Monday and it's another fucking meme.
Time once again for the festering pile of crapulent moaning known to the world as Fracas Monday Melee.
I know you're fed up with me loving Mondays so today I will make a special effort to be as miserable as the rest of you goitres.
Hey ho, here we go …

1: The Misanthropic.
(Name something - about humanity - you absolutely hate).
This week I have been mostly hating humanity's sheer trashy tastelessness and in particular the wearing of those stupid fucking trousers that stop short halfway down your shin. What the fuck do you people think you look like? Drooling fucking idiots with stumpy legs; that's what.
They are an offence against all that is good and decent in this world.

Guys: Ten years from now you will see those photos of yourselves in stupid short fucking clown trousers and sandals (SANDALS!) and shoot yourselves in the head in shame. Save time and do it now. It's a mercy killing, believe me.

And girls: These things are about as far from elegant as it is possible to get. They make even great legs look ugly. When you wear them you are saying :"Look at my dumpy, short, stupid, ugly legs. I am a moron with no sense of style whatsoever and should be shunned and not allowed out in daylight."

Just so you know.

2: The Meretricious:
(Expose someone or something that's phony, fraudulent or bogus).
Canyajustitis.
My boss is a severe sufferer from this bogus disease that affects incompetent managers.
He'll wait until after the departmental scheduling meetings (Departmental Meeting: A meeting where you go in sane but depart mental), when I am fully booked up with an insane workload for the next month, then sidle up in his pointy-headed little way and say "Can you just do this?", "Can you just do that?", "Can you just fit this little job in?" and try to fit several more crappy little jobs that he should really be doing in to my already overloaded schedule.
Bastard.

3: The Malcontent:
(Name something you're unhappy with).
The word "taupe".
That's not a proper colour. I've never seen taupe in a fucking rainbow.
Get rid of it.
Now.

4: The Meritorious.
(Give someone credit for something and name it if you can).
My neighbours, Jerry on one side and Marion and John on the other, for restocking my wine rack when all I did was feed the cats and water the plants for them. Lovely people.

5: The Mirror.
(See something good about yourself and name it).
I'm going to die one day. Woohoo!

6: The Make-Believe:
(Name something you wish for).
Sherbet flying saucers.
I can't find the little buggers anywhere these days.

Scenes From The Class Struggle In 日本語

Fuck me!
I've done a whole year of Japanese classes!

So here are some photos from our final lesson … er … party:

Class of '07
l-r: Sam, Dive, Lyn, Louisa, Camilla, Dead Dude, Shona, Gandy,
and the lovely Mayuko, our long-suffering Sensei trying to hide under the table.

Camilla and Louisa. God, I love being back in school!

Gandy makes "Mochi-Man".

Mayuko Sensei and her yummy sushi.

Mochi-Girl.
A new breed of superhero.

Shona makes lemonade interesting.

And we play silly games.
Yaaaay!
Can you guess who the competitive ones are?

Camilla, Dead Dude and Shona get dancing to Camilla's J-Pop CDs.

er … I think this is some weird sex thing …

Sayonnara until September, guys.