Duck … Here Comes Another Year.

Hokay.
I for one will be going to bed at my usual time of nine o'clock this evening. Bollocks to all this crappy New Year's Eve toss.

I'll kick off my last post of 2007 by checking my resolutions from last year to see how I did:

On New Year's Eve last year, I resolved to:

- Be less of a miserable old bugger;
- Well. That one never stood a fucking chance, did it?
- Stop kicking children in supermarkets;
- Neither did that. Take away all my fun why don't ya?
- Get a girlfriend (Hah!);
- Astonishingly, that actually happened in February and is still happening!
- Keep blogging;
- I flagged a bit during the summer, but I'm still here, so that's two resolutions kept.
- Keep getting 100 percent in my Japanese exams;
- Easy Peasy! Still an unbroken 100% record.
- Take up a new hobby; maybe macramé, caravanning or puffin-frottage.
- Nope. Didn't do that.
- Eat a dolphin;
- Nor that. I couldn't even get hold of any whale sashimi this year. Arse!

Those were the "official" resolutions and I actually made three out of seven, which surprised me greatly.
My "unofficial" resolutions were to:

- Offend people;
- Swing wildly between black misery and overexcited childish euphoria, with nothing in between;
- Spend more time stuck on trains;

And all three of those I kept assiduously.

Here's a quote(ish) from last year's "New Year's Eve" post to remind you why I shall not be partaking of drunken revelry tonight (nor any other New Year's Eve as long as I live):

"The one thing I shall NOT be doing is going out tonight.

Between the ages of nine and forty-five, I spent every single Old Year's Night (musicians always call it Old Year's Night, rather than New Year's Eve because New Year's Eve suggests hope and Old Year's Nights are festering pits of hopeless black despair and miserable fucking despondency) on stage and believe me, there's no better aversion therapy than that.

Here's a typical Old Year's Night for Old Dive:

Stay sober all day!

Pack up all the gear and drive to the studio (or wherever, depending on the year). Unpack all the gear and load it into the truck/van/bus.

Drive for hours to some posh fucking hotel.

Carry all the gear up endless flights of stairs and down miles of dingy corridors, then set it all up and soundcheck everything (including such immeasurable joys as listening to the drummer hit the snare drum once a second for five minutes while Rod gets the fucking levels right).

Sit in some miserable fucking hotel room, stone cold sober, munching crap snacks and drinking crap hotel coffee and watching suicidally dire crap TV from five (when we have to be out of the ballroom so they can set the tables) until eleven pm, by which time we are all ready to kill someone and wired from all the caffeine.

Get changed into fucking dickie bows.

Go on stage and play (SOBER) until three in the fucking morning, sometimes backing some fucking washed-up chart has-been who thinks they're God (The Bachelors are exempt from that … supposedly old and embarrassingly naff, they turned out to be virtuoso musicians, great fun and fucking good company … the only Old Year's Night gig I've ever enjoyed), all the while having to stare at disgusting fucking drunks in party hats who are ripped to the tits, pawing and slobbering over equally pissed pretty girls you'll never, ever get to paw and slobber over, who are trying pathetically to dance and falling all over the monitor speakers (I hate you all forever).

Pull fucking party poppers off hot amps before they catch fire.
Smile (the worst bit of all).

Make our miserable fucking way back upstairs and change again, then wait hours for the drunks to piss off before spending a soul-destroying hour breaking down all the gear and packing it away.

Drive back to the studio, soberly waving at all the traffic police who are just as fucking miserable at having to work all night on the set of "Night Of The Living Drunks".

Repack all the stuff in our cars.
Drive home, sober and homicidal at breakfast time vowing NEVER to do it again.

(er … I'm not sounding just a teensy bit bitter here, am I? … Yes? … Good!) …

Much to the falling-over amazement of all my session musician buddies (I'll think of your suffering as I snuggle into my pillow, you poor sods), I made a break for it at forty-six and have been on the run ever since, refusing all offers, no matter how desperate and cash-laden they have been (and they have been).
The upshot of which is that for the past two years (Three years now!), my Old Year's Nights have been blissfully relaxing and I've been asleep well before midnight.
Tonight I will be doing the same again. I'll watch a DVD after dinner, then take a book and a scotch to bed around nine. Ahhh … bliss …

So enjoy your drunken revelries one and all. You're more than welcome to them."

So now you know.
Decades of aversion therapy have left me with a deeply ingrained and truly seething hatred of New Year's Eve and all who sail in her.
I have stood, year after year, decade after decade, soberly watching with mounting disgust and abhorrence the binge-drunk antics of New Year's Eve revellers and feeling the deep hatred and bile-bitter loathing settle heavily on my cold black heart.

I make no resolutions for 2008.
It's just another fucking year.
Enjoy tonight if you must, but spare a thought for those poor fuckers up on stage.
God, I hate it all!

Helly and Pea

Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without an invasion by our lovely Peahen and equally lovely sister Helly.


There was much playing with computers (and stupid PS2 games like GTA and Lara), munching of nibblies, slurping of green tea and yummy damson smoothies, laughing at Rip Torn's sex scenes in The Man Who Fell To Earth, looking at Helly's belly (nice), palpating of avocados, dog walking, guitar playing (Peahen plays guitar, as well as trumpet, cornet and piano … girls … huh!), neighbour-visiting and general larking about.
I love it when blogs collide.

Filler Post

More wet stuff from my wanderings.

What do you think might be going on here?
Other than swans learning how to detonate farts with a delayed action fuse …

Interlude

Housework today.
And I'm expecting company.
So hum some light music and relax your eyes with a couple of shots from before Christmas that I didn't get the opportunity to post.

These are from my wanders around London looking for water shots.

Unfortunately, they remind me that I'll be back at work soon.

Hey ho.

Suffer, You Bastards!

Well, that's that crap over for another year.
What's next?
Ah … Winter.
Life is a never-ending joyous carnival of things I'd rather avoid.
Hey ho.
Roll on death.

Even worse than death, here's another meme!
Thanks, Maria. Let's make the meme-haters suffer!


Maria's Numbers Meme.

Ten Favourites.

1) Favourite colour:
Black (It's a colour if I say it's a colour)!

2) Favourite food:
Sashimi.

3) Favourite song:
"Prayer To God" by Shellac.

4) Favourite movie:
Anything black and white that makes me cry like a girl.

5) Favourite sport:
Rugby Union.

6) Favourite season:
Spring. Autumn's pretty good, too. Summer and winter suck ass.

7) Favourite day of the week:
Monday. Hah!

8) Favourite ice cream:
Ben and Jerry's rainforest crunch. They stopped doing it years ago, the fat, beardy bastards.

9) Favourite time of day:
Dawn.

10) Favourite month:
May.

Nine Lasts:

1) Last cigarette:
I've never smoked tobacco. Grass, yes, but tobacco? Why the fuck would anyone want to smoke that shit? It stinks.

2) Last drink:
I've got a coffee on the go right now, but I had a scotch last night to celebrate Christmas being over.

3) Last car ride:
Last night, coming back from Mum's.

4) Last kiss:
It was in London. I'm grumpy because it won't be repeated until next year. Fuck these stupid Christmas holidays.

5) Last movie seen:
Diarios de Motocicleta. Last night.

6) Last DVD:
David Lean's wonderful, black and white Great Expectations on Christmas Eve. Winter is the season for Dickens and for black and white movies.

7) Last Phone Call:
I called Mum last night to tell her I'd got home okay (Mums are Mums all over the world).

8) Last CD Played:
Currently playing: Berg's opera: "Lulu."

9) Last Dance:
I dance all the time. Probably the last time was around the kitchen while I was brewing coffee just now. As I've said before: I dance like your dad; only worse. You don't want to see that.

Eight currents.

1) Current mood:
Grumpy. You couldn't guess?

2) Current taste:
Coffee. Other than that I have impeccable taste, as you well know.

3) Current clothes:
A Sock Monkey teeshirt with Drinky Crow on the front and a pair of glasses. Yes, that's all and yes, that's my penis.

4) Current desktop:
Some swirly water from St.James's Park.

5) Current toenail colour:
They look kinda toenail colour. I don't know what I'd call that.

6) Current time:
8:45AM on Boxing Day morning.

7) Current Surroundings:
Sitting at my downstairs computer in the dining room (where I was sitting in yesterday's photo).

8) Current Thoughts:
Relief that Christmas is over, tinged with grumpiness that I miss my girlfriend. We can video chat but we won't be together again until next year, which sucks.

Seven Firsts.

1) First Best Friend:
Malcolm. We grew up from babies together. I suffered one of my first big reality checks with Malcy; we had lovingly made a two man (well … two four-year-old) submarine out of scrap wood. We took it to the river, got in it and it sank very successfully but didn't seem to want to surface until we got out. We just couldn't figure it. Try as we might, the fucker would only go "down", never "up".
I think a big part of the problem with today's kids is that their parents wouldn't allow a pair of four-year-olds to play with saws and hammers and nails and to go unaccompanied down to the river in a home-made submarine. Shame on them. We had a fucking marvellous time! Hi, Malcy. I wonder where the hell you are now?

2) First Kiss:
Judith Flaxman. Yummy.

3) First Screen Name:
Screen name? What's a screen name?

4) First Pet:
Jasper. A ginger Tom out in Malta when I was a baby. He took a scorpion sting for me, pouncing on the fucker in my cradle. What a hero.

5) First Piercing:
Other than surgical stab wounds, the only thing I've had pierced is my eardrums from Ming The Menstrual's nagging.

6) First Crush:
Debbie Smith. Sigh …

7) First Cd:
Shit that makes me feel old. My first seven-inch single was Adam Faith singing "A Message To Martha" in 1962; my first LP, saved for for months with my pocket money, was The Beatles' "Revolver" in '66. My first CD was Sonny Landreth's "South of I-10" in '95. I'm a vinyl junkie; I resisted digital for years.

Six have-you-evers.

1) Have you ever dated one of your guy/girlfriends?
No, though one of my ex.girlfriends is still a very close friend.

2) Have you ever broken the law?
Sheet! Check out my past blog confessions. Let's see now … I blew a load of shit up in my bomb-making youth, including a hilarious telephone box detonation. I've driven under the influence of alcohol, marijana and blow-jobs (though not recently, I hasten to add). I once followed a police car round Norwich with a Camberwell Carrot on the go for about twenty minutes, waving it at them whenever we were stationary in traffic (that was fun). Lots more, but you'd have to trawl through the archives for 'em and I can't be arsed right now.

3) Have you ever been arrested?
Not once. Hee hee hee.

4) Have you ever skinny dipped?
Yup. Though these days you really wouldn't want to see that.

5) Have you ever been on TV?
Yup. Various little crappy things. I've blogged before about "What I did in the nuclear war" and "The crappest TV theme tune I ever recorded". Both of those are doozies.

6) Have you ever kissed someone you didn't know?
I'm a musician. It comes with the territory.

Five Things

1) Thing you are wearing:
I told you that already.

2) Things you've done today:
Housework. A shit, a shave and a shower. Listened to opera. Drunk coffee. Blogged.

3) Things you can hear right now:
Berg's opera, "Lulu" and if I turn the sound down (hang on) … absolutely nothing else. I love living in the middle of nowhere.

4) Things you can't live without:
My old Les Paul. My girlfriend (I didn't mean to type them in that order! OW!) … Shit, I'm in trouble now. Oh, and books.

5) Things you do when you are bored:
Hunt down men with comb-overs and kill them humanely.

Four places you have been today.
Duh! My bedroom, my bathroom, my kitchen, my dining room.

Three people you can tell anything to:
1) Me
2) My girlfriend.
3) er … That's it.

Two choices:

1) Black or White?
Black, black, BLACK!

2) Hot or Cold?
Hot.

One thing you want to do before you die?
Finish my coffee, please.

Shite Christmas

A very Merry Christmas to the lost and the lonely from the miserable old man in the piss hat.


May all your Christmases be merrier than Old Dive's.

More Festive Crap

Thanks to Peahen for reminding me of last year's Dive Christmas card.
As I am feeling particularly grumpy and head-achey and can't be arsed to write anything, I'm re-posting last year's card and my favourite piece of festive Engrish.



Wishing you all a splendid Christmas.
With love and best wishes from the grumpy old fucker.

Dive's Christmas Card

As so many of you are disappearing over Christmas, I thought I'd better get my festive greeting done early.
So here's this year's card:


Click on it for bigger dino-action.
Merry Christmas one and all.

The Office Christmas Party

Oh, fuck …

Shitty, fucking, fuckity-fucking fuck.
Oh, by the way, I'd better warn you there'll be some swearing in this post.
Yesterday witnessed that copious vom-fest of abhorrence; that suppurating hæmorrhoid on Satan's festering arse; the Office Christmas Party.

I had managed to avoid the Departmental Christmas Party by the simple and time-honoured method of telling my boss "Bollocks to that! Fuck Christmas and all who sail in it." and not going.
But the biggie - the company party - is unavoidable.
For weeks now I've been sitting like a rabbit in the road at night, staring fixedly into the oncoming headlights that spell "party roadkill".
I hate Christmas.
I hate parties.
I especially hate Christmas parties.
They are a whole new circle of Hell from which Dante would have run screaming.

Whilst I like working with the people I work with I would prefer to gnaw off my own leg than to socialise with them.
They talk of happy families and babies, babies, babies.
I hate their simpering, cretinous partners and their ugly, shrieking, puking, shitty little brats.
They talk of football.
I hate football.
They talk of television soaps and "reality shows".
I hate dumb-fuck television.
They talk of fuck-all else.
I hate bores.
You can see where this is going, can't you?
The office Christmas Party is never the happiest day of Old Dive's year.

It started early …
Nine o'clock sees Old Dive merrily going through my emails while munching on what for once turns out to be a normal croissant and not a stupid suicide croissant, and slurping up my latte.

The ominous sound of squealing and giggling from the girls prompts me to stick my head up above the parapet, only to witness the arrival of a case of champagne and a trolley heavily laden with mince pies, chocolates and "party food" (those bizarre little lumps of congealed grease, ground-up gristle/gut/hoof/fur/feathers, and flavoured soya, coated in a disguise of breadcrumbs and left on a plate to tempt the unwary into three days of arse-gravy mayhem and projectile vomiting).

By nine-fifteen the girls are onto their second bottle of champagne.
By noon the case is finished.
As are several bottles of red and white wine.
There are twelve girls and three other guys in my office. They have drunk at least a bottle each before lunch.
Being the life and soul of the party/a miserable bastard (delete where applicable), I stick to coffee.
If I drank like the rest of them I would be puking my guts up all afternoon.
They have kept it all down by emptying the huge boxes of chocolates into their gaping maws and stuffing their distended gizzards with disgusting "party food".

Some of us have work to do …
Work is not made any easier by having a drunken Polish girl draped around my neck trying to force Christmas kisses on "Old Scrooge" and attempting to decorate me with tinsel and fucking paper hats.
Aga, you are SO going to regret that in the new year.

So you can guess that by lunchtime, when I eventually manage to get my work finished and sent out, I am not the happiest of bunnies.

And so, poor Old Dive, languishing in a slimy pit of anguish and despair is dragged down the the "branch office" (The Jugged Hare in Olde Westminster), where the upper floor is already heaving with the entire workforce, their families and friends and hangers-on; each and every one either falling-down drunk or heading straight for it, guzzling wine, beer, champagne, spirits and those neon-coloured, sugar, rotting fruit and alcohol concoctions that young people drink because it makes for amusingly coloured, fizzy vomit, and all of them shrieking at the tops of their voices.
It is dark.
It is incredibly noisy.
It is sauna-hot after the frost outside.

As I walk in, the wall of stale fag-breath, booze and disgusting perfume almost knocks me back down the stairs.
I am immediately grabbed by my disgrace of a boss, who announces to the mob that Scrooge has arrived and forces a quart pot of London Pride into one of my hands and a glass of champagne into the other and slurs at me that I must be happy because it's Christmas.
This is happy?
I ditch the booze at the nearest table and grit my teeth before plunging into the fray to carry out the sickening duty that I must perform if I am to escape this festering, fucking shit-hole.
Fixing my face into the rictus grin of a faked smile, I head for Aga - who is official photographer - and drag her around to photograph me chatting gaily to the CEO, to various management creeps and to Donna from HR.
That's all I need to do.
Nobody ever remembers what happened at these bilious orgies of binge-drinking, inappropriate sexual behaviour and mind-buggering hypocrisy, so as long as the photos show I was there I can sneak out.

As I reach the top of the stairs, the tragically mis-named "catering staff" are carrying trays of steaming crap upstairs to help soak up some of the booze and to give form to the inevitable vomit to come.
I described the food last year as "microwaved catering packs of amusingly shaped fat with salmonella, delicately encased in grease and garnished with burnt bits".
To which they have added this year a tray of what looks for all the world like the type of cat food that comes in "meaty chunks with gravy", decorated with pieces of gristle on sticks. Even the hardened drinkers shudder and flinch as it passes. Anyone putting that shit in their mouths is going to be racked up for days, moaning their miserable way through their hangovers, sitting on the toilet for hour after hour as their bottoms continually dribble stinging gravy …

And suddenly there is light. There is fresh air – well, as close as London air gets to fresh - and Old Dive, having escaped with only a flesh wound, is jogging across the city to get a train out of there.

In the new year I will hear such tales as can be remembered.
Who got taken to hospital unconscious in their own vomit.
Who had sex with who and how horrified they were when they woke up.
Who will "not be returning to work" having disgraced themselves even more than the binge-drinkers. It happened last year, and the year before; it will happen this year.

And Old Dive will lie and say cheerfully "Yes, I was there. Look! That's me in the photos".

Though not in this one. These are some festive drunks. Pauline, T.T. and Aga, working on some vomiting and hangovers.

I hate Christmas parties.

The Inevitable Festive Meme

I stole this from Tiina's blog, though it has been infused with a tincture of humbug from last year's Christmas meme, too.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?
This year, hemp carrier bags they can use for shopping.

2. Real tree or artificial?
None.

3. When do you put up the tree?
Duh! Didn't you read the last answer?

4. When do you take the tree down?
Double-duh!

5. Do you like eggnog?
Of course I don't. It is the suckle of Beelzebub and looks like vomit even before it's sicked back up again.

6. Favorite gift received as a child?
A microscope from my parents when I was six. I still have it. You can look at so many gross things with a microscope; all kids should have one.

7. Do you have a nativity scene?
No, but Stouffer has been trying to persuade me to buy some really tacky, light-up religious figurines from the lunatic evangelist websites and some bizarre and inappropriate animals and make some kind of obscene tableau for the front window to scare kids with.
Maybe next year.

8. Hardest person to buy for?
Me. Because it's so difficult to surprise myself. Though my habit of getting an idea just before I drop off to sleep and quickly ordering stuff off the internet helps, because I go straight back to bed and forget that I ordered it. The upshot being that postie quite often brings me delightful surprises … and an occasional box of "what the fuck is this crap?"

9. Easiest person to buy for?
Me. Book token.

10. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
A (and this is true. I just wish I hadn't trashed it as I don't have a photo to startle you with) bisque, revolving musical Pierrot a foot high. Hi, Sally. What the fuck were you thinking?

11. Mail or email Christmas cards?
A blog card. And this year's will be a doozy. I made it last night.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie?
Any old black and white sentimental hooey.

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?
Too late, as always.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?
No, but I've trashed quite a few.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?
Reindeer.

16. Clear lights or colored on the tree?
Actually, I would have done a sweary bit at this one except that Peahen had such a wonderful idea for tree decoration that I can only say read this and then copy it.

17. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
Santa just eats all the goodies and drinks the sherry that's left out, then goes upstairs and peers creepily at your children.
And he doesn't employ elves; that's just a cover up. All his production these days is done by child labour hired out from GAP while the Fat Man wields the whip.

18. Travel for Christmas or stay at home?
Stay in, lock the door, mute the phone, drink 'til it's all over.

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer?
No, but I can eat them.

20. Angel on the tree top or a star?
Oh, for fuck's sake.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?
Christmas morning around eleven, for no particular reason.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of year?
The fact that it happens every year.

23. What I love most about Christmas?
Looking back from the safety of January and saying "Thank fuck that's all over for another year."

24. Do you hang mistletoe?
Only in effigy. I'm way too ugly to get a kiss at Christmas.

25. Favourite holiday memory as a child?
The fell winter of 1963. The snow was a mile deep and we had proper snowmen and proper snowballs and proper sledges, not the crap we have now with global warming.

26. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
I am Santa Claus.

27. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
Nope. That's just greed. Besides, I only get two gifts these days, so it would be kinda stupid.

28. Can you ice skate?
Yes, if you allow for lots of falling over and cursing. Our office goes ice skating every Christmas at Somerset House by the Thames. Mostly this involves watching the girls fall over while getting drunk at the side of the rink.

29. What's the most important thing about the holidays for you?
Not having to set the alarm clocks for 4:40am and commute for seven fucking hours every bloody day.

30. What is your favourite holiday tradition?
Wandering around the city, pointing and laughing at Christmas shoppers as they try desperately not to have a nervous breakdown and kill their children.

31. Which do you prefer; giving or receiving?
Giving makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and smug. Receiving generally involves covering my disappointment with a fake smile and insincere thanks for some piece of tat bought with no thought whatsoever … so "giving".

32. What is your favourite Christmas Song?
Fairytale of New York: The Pogues with the late and sorely missed Kirsty Mc.Coll.

33. Candy Canes! yuck or yummy?
Yuck!

Wet And Wibbly

I rather enjoyed the photo I took of the wet stuff in St.James's Park the other day, so I've been ambling around the nether parts of London, pointing my camera at swirlies.





Actually, this is pretty addictive, so expect more of the same on an occasional basis.

Mmm … Humbugs

Much as I hate being dragged back into last year's addiction to these stupid fucking quiz things, I simply couldn't resist this one.

Your Christmas Sprit Level: 0%

Your Christmas spirit is there, but it's very faint. If you celebrate Christmas at all, it's only when you truly want to. It's okay if you're not really into the whole Christmas thing. Don't worry about not having enough spirit. Pushing yourself to do more will only turn you into a Grinch!

Do You Have the Christmas Spirit?

Even this one lies to me:
"Your Christmas spirit is there, but it's very faint."

Bollocks! I have NO Christmas spirit.

"Pushing yourself to do more will only turn you into a Grinch!"

The Grinch is a wuss. A sweet-natured, charitable, Christmas-loving soppy twat.

My only concession to Christmas this year will be to eat reindeer steak sometime over the holiday.

It's just another fucking day … except the TV is even crappier than usual.

A What?

Following on from Robyn's vocabulary, quiz, here's one that I found both hilarious and depressing.

It was so obviously written by Americans.

You Are a Liberal for Life

You've got a bleeding heart - and you're proud of it. For you, liberal means being compassionate, pro-government, and anti-business. You believe in equality for every person, and you consider yourself universally empathetic. Helping others is not just political for you ... it's very personal too.

What's Your Political Persuasion?

A liberal for life?

Fuck off!

I am a Marxist!
A tried and true Socialist, way off to the left of Class War.
Even the most "liberal" American is so far to the right of what passes for right wing over here that I can't see the fuckers with a telescope.

And for a country that laughably claims to separate church and state, a whole bunch of the questions were about bible-bashing.
Total twaddle.

Hey ho.

Now I'm annoyed. Can't people write a proper quiz?

Another Bunch Of Arse

Thanks to Robyn for this.

These stupid quizzes really annoy me, especially this one as Robyn knew full well I wouldn't be able to resist it …
Rats … I'm Mister Predictable.

Your Vocabulary Score: A

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person.

How's Your Vocabulary?

Stupid damned quizzes.

Old Joke Break

Roll on January.

Here I sit, listening to the fucking singing reindeer belting out "We Wish You A Merry Fucking Christmas" a la Barney Gumble, while the girls squeal and run around and giggle and festoon one another with tinsel and it's only nine o'clock.

Groan …
Four more days of this.
Now I know why people jump under trains.
And also why they make tinsel non-flammable these days, damn them!

At least I've had a couple of hours of cynical comedy podcasts on the train to fortify me.
Good old Steve Punt (who I often see loitering around Wimbledon tube station in a manner not really befitting a radio comic) cheered me up no end by explaining how to play "Bedroom Rodeo" …
"When making love to your wife/girlfriend, call out her sister's name at the height of passion …
… and then see how long you can stay on for."

It's probably an old joke but it made me chuckle.
Whether or not it will keep the festive misery at bay all day I shall just have to wait and see.

Sigh …

Sex, Chocolate And Young Girls

Now there's a combination that I never seem to get right …

Anyhoo … Hoorah for Squeaky Kate!

We get shedloads of chocolates sent in at Christmas from contractors and suppliers (unfortunately, because we are mostly staffed by weemen, they send chocolate rather than booze, dammit).
Usually these get carted off by management and we don't get a sniff of 'em.
This year, however, Squeaky Kate kicked up a stink and management have grudgingly handed back enough for us to have a box each.
This morning at coffee time - good girl that she is - Squeaky Kate organised a chocolate lottery (woohoo)!

How utterly civilised.

Did I win one of the several boxes of yummy Green and Black's?
Did I buggery …
Old Dive has won a box of "Eden, by Thorntons" "Divinely Sinful" choccies.
They come in the gayest shocking pink box imaginable; one that would have Waylon Smithers squealing with delight; and consist of the flavours: "Original Sin", "Lust", "Desire", Passion", "Temptation", "Obsession" and "Seduction"; flavours which are of course synonymous with fat, ugly, balding middle-aged men like myself.

Before handing over the box, Squeaky Kate read out the flavours so that all the girls could point and laugh at me.

Being old and saggy sucks in a roomful of young girls.
I'm going to go home and pig the whole damned box.

Look Up. Pt.10

Ever wondered what happened to Bambi?

As I'm stuck with blogger's block at the moment I will resume my occasional series of weird things I've found at the tops of buildings.

"Okay, so I got up here; now how the hell do I get back down again?"

This wasn't always Tony the hairdresser and a Thai restaurant; it used to be a gun shop. Hence Bambi on the roof.

Olive Of India

Just a quickie filler post for Monsieur Benaut before I toddle off to the city for breakfast.
Clive of India came up in his post yesterday and brought to mind his statue in Westminster with the plinth that reads "OLIVE" at first glance (you may need to click on it to read it).

Say hi to Ame!
"Hi, Ame!!!!"

Gay Snowman

I'm busy today and I have a headache, so I've copped out of posting properly by dipping in to my big bag of old scans to find myself back in the early 1960s, building a suspiciously gay-looking snowman.

Nice boots and a cute butt … Where did it all go wrong?

Nemesis

Walking to work can be pretty at this time of the year.
At least it can after I've woken screaming in the middle of the night, chipped the car out of a solid block of ice, driven to the station and endured several hours on an unheated train in sub-zero temperatures.

Sometimes I walk along the Embankment, watching the Thames roll by as the sun comes up; other times I take a couple of tubes out to Green Park and wander in to work through Green Park and St.James's Park.
Either way is nice. It takes the sting out of the commute.
This is the lake in St.James's Park yet again. I love photographing it.


And here is the bizarre, gloriously overblown confection of the Victoria Monument out the front of the Parasite house.
There she sits, watching the traffic jams along The Mall.

How our Empire has fallen …
Victoria was once Empress of India … Now that's just the name of a curry house a few minutes walk from here.

Yet another view of the Parasite House. Ick.

And just across the road is Horseguards' Barracks. This is the Queen's alarm clock. A bunch of un-horsed Horseguards square-bashing and shouting and banging a bloody great drum.
Boy, do they make a racket!

But then it all comes unstuck …
All the pretty scenery and nice, refreshing thoughts of regicide come crashing down when I enter the office and am faced by my nemesis …

The fucking singing reindeer.

AAAAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHH …
He watches me all day and sings crappy Christmas songs at me.
He is the source of so much misery.
He is the reason I hunch, sobbing over my desk.
Until next Friday …

Next Friday I will abduct him, burn him and hurl the flaming (and still singing) remains into the Thames.
You've got a week to live, sucker! Hehehehehehehe …

Exits, cackling like a mad hag …

Motoring For The Dickless

Earlier this week I posted a photograph of a man with a fifty foot stiffy.
Those of us of more modest proportions tend to compensate for our lack of giraffe-genitalia by employing a strap-on of some description; usually a flash sports car.

Now I've always been of the opinion that the only people you're going to attract in a flash sports car are immature, teenaged boys.
If that's where your predeliction lies, then by all means buy that Porsche.
I, however, like pretty girls and I'm quite happy with my penis; therefore I drive a small, cute car.

Today I turn to the distaff side and put a question to you, dear citizens of Blogville (and especially to Vic, Maria and Bing for reasons that may become slightly clearer later), that has been vexing me many a year:

As you know, I design girls' schools for a living and apart from the grumpy old men in the architects' department the company I work for is staffed and run mostly by weemen.

Our senior management (other than capo di tutti capi Babs, our CEO, who drives an übercool vintage Fiat 500 - seen below in the background, nestled cutely in parking bay number one) are all of the middle-aged, bull-dyke persuasion.
The top floor resounds to the sound of swishing tweed trousers and an aggressive barking not unlike that of maddened walruses as the large ladies of management chase twittering, pretty young secretaries around their desks (I exaggerate only slightly … believe me; it's scary up there if you're in a skirt. That's the main reason I don't wear a kilt to work).

To illustrate the point of my question I took these photographs of their cars in our underground car park earlier this week:



All of these monster, macho motors are owned and driven by our lovely lesbian leaders.

As well as the GT40 (how the fuck much money do we PAY these people?) and the lovely E-Type and the stupid TVR, the überfemmes drive M-series Beemers and AMG Mercs and one of them smears her ample butt over a fat Harley.

Whenever you see a male driving one of these, you know instinctively that he has no dick.
The same (obviously) applies to the fragrant ladies of our senior management team.

My question therefore is this:
As they have no need of a dick, what on earth are they compensating for by driving around in these ridiculous macho strap-ons?

It bugs me. I need to know.

Wibbly Wobbly Waves

Walking through St.James's Park on the way to work I heard a swan coming in.
It hit the lake with a huge, messy sploosh!
I reached for my camera but was too late to catch the splashdown.
I did, however, capture the aftershocks and managed to photograph the past tense of "sploosh" … the still surface suffering swirly perturbations producing pretty patterns (and some unnecessary alliteration, but I'm a sucker for that as you well know).

Trippy.

And yes, it was as cold as it looks.

Festive Danglies

A huge hoorah to our lovely Peahen for her utterly splendid Christmas decorations.
Go take a look.
How fucking cool is that?

As I can't compete with Pea, I'll let nature have a go instead.
These were some of the festive danglies on the plane trees in Green Park this morning.

Nature's own baubles.

Pretty, huh?

One For The Ladies

Spotted from the corner of Buckingham Gate opposite the Parasite House this morning.
I hope he's just a window cleaner who's afraid of heights; otherwise I'm going to feel rather inadequate.

More Humbug

Bah!
Humbug!

I'd have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for those pesky kids.
I'd have had a nice, relaxing Monday morning.

I enjoyed a lovely lie-in on the train, dozing to Melvyn Bragg's podcasts while we crawled through the chaos of over-running engineering works.
Then a beautiful, fresh walk along the Thames … okay; it was bloody freezing and drizzly but still a nice way to stretch my legs.
I picked up my latte and croissant and wandered in to the office only to find that the girls had stayed late on Friday evening.

Oh, horrors!

It looks like the aftermath of a suicide elf blowing itself up in Santa's grotto.

There are fucking Santas and snowmen over all the workstations, tinsel and fairy lights everywhere (I cleared all the crap away from my workstation before I even took off my coat).
Annoyingly, just within my line of sight sits a fucking great spruce tree, decorated with a degree of tackiness that only young admin. assistants can achieve …

… and there, lurking by the door, grinning at me like a corpse …
My nemesis …
the fucking singing reindeer!

AAAAAAUUUUUUGGHHH …

Kill me now.

The culprits, caught in the act: Aga and Squeaky Kate

'Tis The Season To Be Lazy

Christmas?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't we have one of those bastards last year?

I went shopping yesterday to buy presents.
Surrounded by a glittering celebration of selfishness and greed I got all caught up in the atmosphere, shoved my shopping list in my pocket and bought a bunch of books for myself.

I took Phil to see the purple plastic puke-bucket that stands in for a nativity scene down at Mammon Mall (and that Joy has - quite coincidentally - posted about today). He was suitably sickened.
Kids these days don't crawl from their stinking beds before noon, so at that time of the morning the thing was all locked up. Grim and silent. Out front was a booth where festively dressed muggers would soon be fleecing overstressed parents of their last groats.
Disgusting.

Bollocks to it all.
Once again this year I shall have no Christmas tree, no decorations, no cards, no festive crap whatsoever in the house.
I'm determined to work up a good head of rantiness, but this weekend I'm pooped, so I'll take the cheap and lazy way out and - having reminded people that an anagram of "Christmas Day" is "mad, scary shit", simply re-post last year's Christmas Appeal:

Adopts Radio 4 presenter's voice … ahem …

"Around this time of year we are bombarded with Christmas appeals.
There are so many groups who are in need and it's nice to give something so that someone will have a less shitty time of it at the peak of the suicide season.
I like to slip my Big Issue guy a twenty pound note for the Christmas Issue, and my big 'pennies' jar (£170 odd this year) has gone toward Motor Neurone research, which also goes toward making me feel less shitty about myself. And there are lots of others …

This year, when you set aside a moment to consider those less fortunate, I'd like to remind you of a group who get left out year after year; snubbed and ignored, especially around the "party season" when everyone else is so happy.

So Dive's Christmas Appeal for 2006 (and now 2007, too, as I am a lazy bastard) is:
"Spare a thought for the ugly this Christmas".

I admit to a special interest here as I am a longstanding and fully paid up member of this group. Take it from one who knows: Christmas is a fucking awful time to be ugly.
I mean, I'm not hideous (well not very), but when I walk into a party and people turn to see who it is, I can feel a palpable flinch from all the unattached women in the room.
We ugs are the people who put the "N" in "hello" …
We say "Hello" to a woman and her mind forms it automatically into "Hell No".

And even if one of us somehow makes it into a relationship, we get the feeling that we're as sexually attractive as yesterday's washing-up … You know, you see it all piled up and stinky in the sink and you know somebody's got to do it, but … (shudder). No way! Not even with Marigolds on …

And mistletoe. Fuck all round that.

And stupid drunk office girls in Santa hats snogging everything that moves … everything but an ug, of course.

And stupid "feel good" Christmas crap fucking TV. Where are the ugs? Nowhere.
Except for "fake ug", like Ugly Betty … Listen, you TV twats: putting a brace and glasses on a pretty girl does not make her ugly. Ug is Ug. If TV used real ugs, nobody would watch. Just like real life … Bastards!

And "the youth of today", pretty girls binge-drinking 'til they puke, then fucking in their own stink and leaving pools of chlamydia wherever they sit. But even semi-conscious from booze, they won't go near an ug.

And sicky-sicky married couples with their "lovely" kids. Do we ugs get to be attractive married couples? Do we bollocks! So don't invite us over at Christmas; seeing you so happy only makes us more fucking miserable when we get home alone to our dark empty houses.

And girlfriends who are 'friends who happen to be girls'. I've got girlfriends coming out of my fucking ears, but they'd all puke at the thought of dating me. (Ugs make girlfriends as easily as gay guys do; we're "safe" … Hah!).

And Christmas parties? Don't get me started … really … don't.

There's no love in our ugly lives and no prospect of any, so Christmas really sucks huge ass.

We ugs even have our own anthem. The lovely Mister Mozza wrote it for us; How Soon Is Now (sing along):

I am the son
And the heir
Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar
I am the son and the heir
Of nothing in particular

You shut your mouth
How can you say
I go about things the wrong way
I am Human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does

There's a club, if you'd like to go
You could meet somebody who really loves you
So you go, and you stand on your own
And you leave on your own
And you go home
And you cry
And you want to die

When you say it's gonna happen now,
Well, when exactly do you mean?
See I've already waited too long
And all my hope is gone

You shut your mouth
How can you say
I go about things the wrong way
I am Human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does

So, this is Dive's Christmas Appeal:
Embittered, lonely, rejected, heartbroken and self-pityingly miserable as we are, please spare a thought for the ugly this Christmas.

Grit your teeth, pucker up and kiss one of us. You can have some chocolate after to take the taste away.
And you can enjoy your Christmas knowing you've done your good deed."

The scary thing is that I've now found someone willing to kiss me and not ask for money or threaten to press charges.
And yesterday, when the coffee shop started playing Christmas muzak, I did not slam my latte down on the table and march out, ne'er to return until January (as happened last year), but - much to Phil's amazement - sat and listened until I'd finished breakfast.
Okay, so it was Nat King Cole's Christmas album … Anything else and I'd have stormed out. You can't hate Nat.
But I'm getting frightened …
I can't seem to work up the rantiness I usually manage at this most sickening season.
Am I weakening in my old age?
Will I one day find myself buying tinsel?
Will I actually watch a "seasonal" television programme?

If I were to do that, the world would end.
Actually, that's pretty tempting …

A Pox On Railways

Graaargh!
It took me five hours and twelve minutes to get to the office this morning, because a fire alarm went off in the main signalling room at London Liverpool Street Station.
I just checked the train website and now (as it's a slightly breezy day) all the power lines have blown down at Ingatestone (yet again) so I'll be lucky if I get home at all tonight.
Arse!

At least when I got in I found that Angela (bless her) has installed a nice, shiny new Mac Pro, pimped to the max for me to play with.
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee …

It's got two DVD drives.
Why on earth would I want two DVD drives?
As they're too high off the desk to be of practical use as a cup holder, I'm thinking of putting a pot plant in the one I don't use.

No time to write anything else as I'm desperately trying to make up for all the time lost on the poxy train.

Hey ho.

A Gift For Kate (Half-Nekkid Thursday)

As I don't really have the time to post today, and as Kate has expressed a desire for me to mail my little brother to Australia so she can play with him; here - for your delectation or otherwise, Kate - is a photo of Phil's backside.

Cute, huh?

This is me, cousin Claire and Phil on holiday at Whitstable beach, sometime in the early to mid sixties.
I do have grosser photos of Phil, but there are also grosser ones of me in existence, so I'll stop at this one to prevent an all-out embarrassing-photo-posting war.

Autopilot

I thought I'd start something new.
As I'm an old fart now, instead of simply ranting I will vary things a little by introducing posts that just drone on like a dribbling old lady on a bus.
This comes from Monday's post about getting old and forgetting things. When I was writing it I forgot to put this bit in … so here it is.

I find from Monday's comments box that I'm not alone in forgetting where the hell I am or what I'm doing. So do any of you other guys suffer from "autopilot"?

A couple of examples in case you're unsure what I'm droning on about:
First up: when I used to work in Norwich I would be sat in rush hour traffic for an hour or so every morning. Anyway, this one morning I remember sitting there, listening to music, and the next thing I know I wake up in Dereham, driving through the middle of a town fifteen miles away. It's about an hour later and I have no idea what I'm doing there or how I got there.
I didn't even know where "there" was until I found my way out of the stupid town and saw a sign. I didn't recognise it because there's no reason for anybody ever to want to go to Dereham; it's a shithole.
So I found a main road and made my way to work, where the boss told me I was a dork.

The best one though, happened when I had left that firm and had been working at a new place for eighteen months.
I drove in to Norwich, parked up, bought my paper and walked to the office.
I keyed in the security code, walked up the stairs, said "Hi, Mel" to my secretary, who smiled and said "Hi" back.
I made coffee, walked in to my office and sat at my drawing board, wishing Norman "Good morning."

It wasn't until I had been sitting there for several minutes, chatting to Norm and trying to remember what I had been working on the previous day that good old Norman turned around and said.
"Dive … er … You don't work here any more."

I'd left the place eighteen months beforehand.
Being crap, they hadn't changed the entry codes, and Mel (bless her) was never the sharpest tool in the box (she collected "collector" plates and Star Trek "collectibles" and though she was pretty, she could never seem to get a boyfriend), and Norm was near to retirement, but it took him several minutes of casual chat before he cottoned on to what was wrong.
Mel giggled and said "I thought you looked different." Duh …

So I hung around for a bit until I'd finished my coffee, getting laughed at by my old work colleagues, then went to my new office where my boss told me I was a dork.

Is it just me? Or does "autopilot" happen to you guys, too?

Paperless Office, My Arse!

I finished my last post with the well-worn phrase "Fuck, fuck, fuckity fucking fuck!" and it seems apt to start this one with it.

I get up at 4:40AM this morning, same as usual; shower, hair-wash, dress, grab my stuff and head off on the three and a half hour commute to Westminster.

So far, so hoopy …

Getting to work I find I cannot log in to my computer.
As more people trail in, we discover that the whole office has the same problem.

That's okay. Occasionally we get a server glitch that locks us out and all we need to do is wait until IT start arriving (usually after nine) and get someone to put it right.
So the atmosphere in the office is jolly. Lattes are drunk, croissants are consumed and bitchy gossip is exchanged.

Angela arrives and finds me waiting outside the IT department with the news.
"Hokay." She smiles. "No problem."

A few minutes later and she is running from IT offices to server rooms, to my office, to the other departments and more of her lazy-assed cohorts are drafted in as they arrive.

As time drags and nerds run around shrieking and flapping like someone set fire to a battery chicken farm, it is becoming apparent that this is going to be one of those days.
After a longish while it turns out that this is not the sort of problem that will go away if you simply throw nerds at it (fun though nerd-throwing can be).

Bugger all round that. Angela lets slip it could be all day at least before things are up and running, so those of us who can work from home skedaddle pronto.

Which is why you find me just arrived home and ranty at one in the afternoon, having been up for almost eight and a half hours and having achieved precisely zip.

Paperless office? My fat, hairy arse!

Depleted 'C'ranium

Maria's post yesterday on being old and forgetful struck an all too painful chord with this saggy old bastard.

For example, this happens with alarming frequency:
I'm sitting downstairs and I get a sudden urge for a book that's upstairs in the bedroom, or I decide to go for a spin on the exercise bike that's up there, or maybe record something in the studio …
A few seconds later and I stand there at the top of the stairs and wonder, "What the heck did I come all the way up HERE for?"
Then I look down at my socks and think, "Ah! Slippers!" and head on down the landing to the main bedroom, dig out my slippers from their hiding place under the dresser, put 'em on and amble back downstairs again, only to reach the bottom step and remember just what I went up there for in the first place.
It wasn't slippers.
It never is.
I don't even WEAR slippers.
I've only got some because somebody bought me a pipe, slippers and flat cap and scarf for Christmas once as a joke about getting old (thanks, Steve) and I never got round to throwing them out.

Maybe it's something to do with atmospheric pressure.
The decrease in pressure due to the rise in altitude of climbing the stairs affects the addled and cobwebby remains of my brain and tilts the pointer to the word "slippers".
Maybe it's something buried deep in my past that I've suppressed, that involves a need to … er … wear slippers.

And it's not just the slippers … words go missing, too.
I spend an increasing amount of my time waving my hands about and whining "Hang on … It's on the tip of my tongue".
The worst missing word episode happened while I was on site at one of my buildings, shouting at the contractors about something and a word slipped quietly out the back door and wasn't there when I needed it.
I was left doing frantic "charades"-style hand gestures while the building contractors and the quantity surveyor and the structural engineers all tried to figure out what complicated concept I was trying to get across.
I walked over to the nearest stack, picked one off the top and waved it at them, yelling, "This! I can't remember the word. What the fuck is it?"
The missing word was "brick".
I am an Architect.
I've never lived that one down.

Worst of all, however, is the entire decade of my life that got wiped from my memory.
And I didn't even know until I was in a music shop a few years back and someone was hassling me.

I was getting pretty pissed off with him and did my best to ignore his attentions until I heard him tell the guy behind the counter he used to be in a band with me.
I'd never seen this guy before in my entire life, so I snapped and told him that and a whole lot more in front of shop staff and customers in no uncertain fashion, leaving him to trail out the door looking decidedly embarrassed.

It wasn't until a couple of weeks later when Chris was chuntering on in the studio about some guy who we used to play with who had been given a bizarre ranty, fuck off by me in a music shop that I started to get concerned.
Chris then trawled through his files and came up with photos, tapes, even videos of me happily playing alongside this guy.
Apparently we were in a band together for several months in the early nineties. Almost successfully.
We laugh about it now and are good friends (yes, Dave; I know … ha, bloody ha … Just wait 'til you get this old), but try as he might to remind me I simply cannot remember a thing about it. Or indeed ever meeting him before the music shop debacle. The photos and stuff are proof, but my memory is completely fucked.
Scary.
And now I'm getting old, too, so I can expect a whole lot more of that crap.
Whoopee …

I've also reached the stage when, every time I get up out of a chair or the sofa I make a noise like Grandpa Simpson.

Fuck, fuck, fuckity fucking fuck.

Monday Melee

It must be several weeks since I've done a Fracas Monday Melee: so I'd better atone.
Here goes nothing:

1: The Misanthropic.
(Name something - about humanity - you absolutely hate).

"I and all the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return"

W.H. Auden: "September 1st. 1939"


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

Bystanders. Fuck 'em.

"Washing ones hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful.

Paulo Freire. Brazilian educator and Christian Socialist


3: The Malcontent:
(Name something you're unhappy with).

"It's very different from living in academia in Oxford.
We called someone vicious in the Times Literary Supplement.
We didn't know what vicious was."

Aung San Suu Kyi: on returning to Burma from England, 25th. September, 1988


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

Hugh Kingsmill: Writer, for:

"Friends: God's apology for relations."
Christmas is coming. People are already starting to wince in anticipation of family get-togethers.


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

I've remembered to do a Monday Melee for the first time in ages.


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

Spring.

That's your lot. I'm out of practice. I'll need a couple of weeks to build up a good head of steam before the bile starts flying again.

Sunday Bathtime Stupid Question

I do love a nice long soak in a hot bath of a weekend.

I don't have the time during the week; it's strictly showers only, so when the weekend rolls around I find myself called by the deep, primæval urge to soak; to luxuriate in the sensual yumminess of my bathtub and to let my mind wander whither it will.
A big mug of coffee and maybe a few squares of Green and Black's chocolate and I drift off into realms of weirdness unplumbed outside of that steamy haven.

Last week I lay in the bath thinking about Jesus - and you know what that led to.
Next up, it was quantum mechanics … Hey, I happen to like quantum mechanics! And I am fortunate enough to possess the arithmetical chops required to ponder the subject in the bath. It is not boring!

Today it was - somewhat more prosaically - "How the fuck did all the fish get to the Lake District?"
Hokay, so it's rather more mundane than Jesus or quantum mechanics, but my mind has many and varied dusty corners and that's what came creeping out this morning.
So: freshwater fish …
We have river fish and we have lake and pond fish. And a lot of these lakes and ponds are ultimately connected into river systems that reach the sea. So I can see how fish got into those.
But …

The Lake District.
Ten thousand years ago, at the end of the last ice age, the glaciers retreated to leave a series of valleys with pretty melt-water lakes in the bottom. All very picturesque and great fun for old Wordsworth and his chums, but not in any way connected to a river system (okay, Phil; I know that technically only one of them is a "lake" and the others are "waters", but semantics aside, the point I am trying to get across here is that they are a just bunch of overambitious ponds with no aqueous link to any possible piscine parental source).

So somebody tell me please, how the fuck did they get to be so full of fish?

Don't try to tell me Og and Ug decided to catch loads of river fish in their stone nets, put them in their stone buckets and haul the buggers up to the inhospitable heights of the Lake District and tip 'em in there.

And don't tell me God did it. There's not a HA! in the whole wide world big enough to pour scorn on THAT one!

Just please, for my Sunday sanity's sake, give me a plausible explanation.

Three-Way Blog Collision

Yesterday morning, Waterstone's bookshop coffee-bar hosted a three-way, breakfast-time blog collision between Norwich Daily Photo, The Monkey God and Old Dive.

Phil (latte), you know, and you met Joy (fruit juice) last week, but today - kicked out of bed at an unearthly hour - we are joined by the unfeasibly young and handsome Thom (Earl Grey).

Poor old homebody Dive had to endure the three of them swapping tales of tropical paradise holidays (yes, Jules; you came up, too), and the fact that Joy and Thom are soon off to the Philippines for Christmas, and Joy had to endure Phil and Dive pointing at America and laughing. All jolly good fun.

Joy and Thom are splendid company and after breakfast we hit the Christmas Market to take hordes of blog photos and to heap abuse on the French.

Geese Is The Word

(Go on … sing it … You know you want to).

Norwich has a better class of street litter than most cities. Someone appears to have discarded a large, marble brain in the plaza beside St.Peter Mancroft.
We took loads more photos but those will leak out when we are short of blogging material.

What I want to know (see the last photo) is how Joy can wear open-toed sandals in sub-zero temeperatures?
Brrr …

Have a great holiday, you two.

I'm Right; It's The World That's Wrong

Fuck!
It's December!
Who left the door open and let that bastard in here?
Brrr …

Anyway; bollocks to December, let's talk crap instead.

You know I'm a BBC Radio 3 man; I loathe television. I've spent most of my life without one and am going to bin the bloody thing again when they switch off the analogue signal in a year or two.
Television has now dumbed down to the extent that my brain actually seizes if I sit in front of it for more than a few minutes.
It's only once or twice every decade or so that the idiot box throws up something that's worth the effort of switching it on and pointing my eyes at it.
To date we've had The Simpsons, Frasier and the sublime Buffy from the States, and Black Books, Green Wing and Q.I. from Brit TV; all of which I have on DVD and can watch on my Mac, so I don't really need a telly any more, as there's fuck-all else on.

Anyhoo, loath as I am to quote from a TV programme, Q.I. last night made me forget that it is December and that Christmas misery looms, when quizmaster and world's sexiest man Stephen Fry asked what the middle initial stood for in Ulysses S. Grant and Dara O'Briain suggested that it might be "Sugar-tits". I'm still suffering the giggly aftershocks of that one.

Ah, if only the world worked like that … sigh …
It would certainly explain why the old curmudgeon looks so grumpy on all those civil war photographs.
Annoyingly - as any fule kno - he was born Hiram Ulysses Grant and the S. stood for absolutely nothing; he changed his name to stop children pointing out that his initials spelled "hug" - a huge embarrassment for a curmudgeon; although it had the further effect of forcing Robert E. Lee to retaliate with a middle initial of his own (which stood for Emily, though this was later covered up by revisionist historians).

All of which nonsense leads - somewhat confusingly - to the tiny alternate reality that is the Small Glass Planet.
Inside my head, deep in the world of Dive, Ulysses Sugar-tits Grant is now a real historical character and this goes a long way toward explaining the result of the civil war. What soldier wouldn't fight like a devil and happily lay down his life for a man named Sugar-tits? I know I would.

And it also leads - even more circuitously - to the list of other delightful things that I consider are real and the rest of the world is wrong about.

Way back in the swirling mists of time, when the Small Glass Planet was still a primordial soup of rants and strangeness I used to append a "Today's Fact" to the end of each post.
Robyn - who had been rather unwisely delving into the murky and fœtid pismire of my archives - reminded me of these and suggested I start doing it again.

Being a lazy-arsed git and not really wanting the bother of having to think up new ones, here are some of those old "facts".
These can safely be used to enhance your dinner party conversations or to tell to small children. They are the way the world should work.
Some of these are true in your world; all of them are true in mine:

Up until 1919, every fifth US President was left-handed.

Wood only floats when people are looking.

The Portuguese have no word for gravy.

If a pregnant woman strokes a pig, there is a thirty-seven percent chance her child will be born short-sighted (Statistical Bureau of the USA).

In the northern hemisphere, a freewheeling bicycle will naturally veer slightly to the left; in the southern hemisphere, to the right.

Photocopiers are intrinsically evil.

All cats are born with an innate sense of rhythm.

Every biscuit has an immortal soul.

The number "four" cannot be added to, subtracted from, multiplied by or divided by any other number.

The Bedouin have only one word for sand.

Shoes are an invention of the devil.

The rennet used in the manufacture of Limburger cheese is distilled from the tears of little orphans.

Washing a German can cure hiccups.

Walking backwards actually reverses time (try it)!

Gold is actually a vegetable.

Blancmange is the suckle of Beelzebub.

Puffins cannot sneeze.

Shredded Wheat is not made from wheat, but is actually the cocoon of a large, crunchy moth.

As men get older, their dancing becomes more sexually alluring. To what, however, is still a mystery.

Krakatoa is, in fact, quite a long way west of Java.

Before crossing the road in Norway, you must rub yourself against the nearest building.

Beetroot juice can be used to remove minor stains from upholstery.

Never, EVER, look up!

All goldfish are called Bob (just ask 'em).

So now you know. I hope that has been of some use to you. At least it may make my world a little less baffling to you.
Your world certainly baffles me …