Hello Ian Again

Time flies when you're having no fucking fun at all.

The undatable man hits fifty in less than two weeks and today I run face first, smack-bang into yet another bloody Hello Ian day with all its attendant crappiness.

Only a couple of you are old enough to remember, but two years ago I launched the very first Date Dive appeal with this post.

For those who can't be arsed to click a link (that'll be all of you), this was when I fessed up to my predeliction for those spooky, kooky, sexy weemen in the pointy hats and set out on a fruitless quest to date one.

My deep and admittedly creepy yearning for the incomparably cute and sexy Willow Rosenberg you are all familiar with, but any old witch can make me twitch; be it twinkly-nosed Samantha from Bewitched or Connie Booth with a parsnip tied to her face in Python's Holy Grail; even Hermione "Chlamydia Disappearum!" Granger, now she's grown up enough to throw a decent strop can make me ache in alarming places.

But as usual on this particular day of each year I end up lamenting three all too familiar failings:

1 - None of the above are real (a tricky hurdle to get over on a date as I know from long and bitter experience);

2 - They'd never date me if they were; and

3 - The modern Wiccan is - in my experience of sitting with my latte and croissant, hiding behind the Guardian book review and watching the browsers at the "alternative lifestyle" section of my bookshop - lacking in that elusively sexy essence of witchiness that lures me Wiccawards at this time of year.

Today's browser at the witchy bookshelves appears to come in three unfortunate flavours, none of them even remotely Willow-like:

- First up are stupid tweenie kids whose exposure to the wonderful world of literature consists solely of the Harry Potter books.
Spotty or fat or otherwise "differently attractive" enough to need to hide from the world in sad fictional delusions, they come giggling into the bookshop in protective groups, scanning the shelves for spell books containing love philtres or a cure for acne or chlamydia (usually both, by the look of them) and totally unprepared for any form of reality.
God help them when they have to leave school and get a job and a life.
Or a date.

- Next up we encounter the vast majority of modern Wiccans; dumpy and frumpy middle-aged women with the slightly dazed expression of the terminally confused, wearing enough bangles to give them arms like stevedores and crappy lumps of crystal hanging round their necks.
They are invariably dressed in layers of long, flowy "gypsy" clothing to which the phrase "concealing to appeal" is horribly apt.
In their mirrors (as they trowel on fistfuls of mascara) they see a young Stevie Nicks but in the flesh they resemble mad bag-ladies.

- The sole exception to those two Wiccan flavours was one pale and interesting goth girl who glared disgustedly at me as if I were some kind of … er … creepy middle-aged man with a pervy hankering for a pale and interesting goth girl; which was remarkably astute of her.

So … the dating potential of these groups:

Tempting as it may seem to don a tatty cape and prey upon spotty, insecure and feeble-minded teenage girls, I may be desperate for a date but I am not an icky creep (well not totally, anyway), so the pædo option is a non-starter.

As for the deluded and lonely middle-aged women …
Sheesh!
Listen up, laydees:

(a) You are NOT Stevie Nicks. She dressed that way because she could, not because she had to.

(b) Crystals … For fuck's sake! They may be pretty to look at but they have no more healing power than any other lump of rock.
As you'll discover if you drop one on your foot.

(c) Astrology … Duh! Anybody who believes the relative positions of the stars and planets at the time they were born has any significance whatsoever is clearly delusional and probably deranged.
This means you.
I never, EVER date anyone who tells me their "star sign". Your average root vegetable will be capable of far more scintillating and intellectual conversation. And it will taste better.

(d) Use the word "aura" around me and you'll get a whack upside the head with that fucking spell book.

(e) The thought of any one of you flabby harridans dancing naked around a standing stone is enough to put me off sex for life.

Which leaves me with the goth.
I like goths.
That may have something to do with my own lifelong habit of spending sunny summer days skulking indoors with the curtains shut, listening to songs about suicide.
And dressing in black.
Or it may be simply that goth girls are usually gorgeous.
I have always preferred pale and interesting over brash and trashy.
My problem is that pale and interesting girls are never interested in me.
And my looming fiftieth birthday makes it increasingly unlikely that they ever will be.

So … Witches and goths are probably not the best places to look for a date.
Hey ho.

While I go dig a hole in the garden to stick my head in and cry, I'll leave you with this delightful ditty from the lovely Neil Hannon: The Happy Goth.



Anyone with the cheek to rhyme "goth" with "Hoth" (a cheer there from the Star Wars fans) gets my vote.
I particularly love the trippy-happy string section toward the end.
Hee hee.
Please excuse the appalling video but it was the only version I could find.

Happy Hello Ian from undatable Dive!

Let's Make A Racket - XXXI

Hey, nonny nonny.

Tis Thursday and that means Racket day.
Tis also fucking freezing so I've been forced at last to put the heating on.

To compensate for last week's downer, here's a very silly song. It's Michael, Steve, Jason, Laurie and me belting out a quite ludicrous boogie-woogie version of that old blues standard "Owl Stew" (which Michael assures me is one of those bluesman's euphemisms; in this case for the Lingus family's lovely daughter, Connie … ahem).

I just had to go back and edit this in GarageBand and chop the end off as I realised Steve gives a rundown of the musicians and my "real identity" was on it.
Which is why it now cuts off neatly after Jason's name.

So … Sing along to a song about everybody's favourite snack.



The rest of you can ignore these, but Neetzy has asked if she can try painting a guitar from one of my photos.
Of course you can, Neetzy. Paint whatever you want.
There are lots of photos if you follow the "guitar" link at the bottom of the post but here are four just for me, as I can never get enough of staring at my beautiful PRS.

Sigh …

Mmmmmmm …

Yummy …

Er … Sorry about this one; it's from way back in the day when for some reason bloggers were posting nekkid photos of themselves.
It's a nice one of the guitar, though, and that's what it looks like from my perspective when I play it.

Happy Thursday, Blogville.

Noisy

Bollocks to being stupidly busy.

I badly needed a break so yesterday I took a somewhat creatively extended "lunch hour" and decamped with Phil to Woodshack - Woody's studio in Wymondham - for some therapeutic racket-making mayhem.

My PRS and my Fender you already know, but I'd like you to meet Phil's spiffy new drum kit.

It's a Pearl "Reference" kit, which basically means it costs the same as the average house … in fact you could buy several suburbs of Detroit with it in the current market.
No doubt he'll tell you more about it in the comments box but basically it is an extremely expensive and complex bunch of things to hit.

To make noise.

A lot of noise.

And here he is doing just that, the noisy fucker.

The new kit has lots of complicated and shiny pieces of metal attached to it, as well as some nice sparkly bits.

Phil is two and a half years younger than me, so sometime in mid 2012 his bald patch will be as big as mine.
We all need something to look forward to.

So anyhoo … We spent a few hours making one hell of a racket and then one of my fingers started bleeding (I'm retired from all this crap and I've not played seriously in over a year) so we had to call it a day.

Coffee … The musicians' friend.

Along with alcohol, recreational drugs and ugly girls offering you a blowie in the car park between sets … but we stuck with just the coffee.

Luckily for you guys we didn't record any of the crap we played but maybe if I can get hold of a bass player who can handle jazz (properly) we might do this again some time and post the result.

Normal Service Will Be … Etc.

I can do nothing but apologise for this week.
Things have got so ridiculously busy that I have had no time to do my rounds of everybody's blogs and no time to write anything of my own.
Hopefully things will start to ease off by the end of the week but today all I have time for is another couple of parky shots and yet another crappy old post revisited.
Sorry, folks.

So …
Yesterday morning again and the disappointing lack of autumn in Green Park and St.James's Park.

This one's looking the other way from yesterday's shot, toward the Parasite House (so Lynn doesn't get a pout on).

And this is the lake in St.James's Park, looking decidedly non-autumnal. Sure, a couple of trees are making an effort but the rest just can't be bothered to shift their lazy arses and get changed into their autumn clothes.

Hopefully in a couple of weeks we'll see something better.

In the meantime, here we go back into the archives for another bowl of re-fried crap.
This one's an episode from my student days when I learned of a surprising and unfortunate reaction that some people have to marijuana …

The post was called:
"Students, Drugs and Arse-Gravy."

Hokay.
It seems you lot are fixated on laxatives today, so I'll take this opportunity to add my own (true) tale of arse-gravy mayhem.

This one involves V……, now a prominent local Architect who will never forgive me if he finds me relating this sorry tale on the interweb, but hey ho.

Way back in the mists of time, in celebration of completing our final Architecture exam, V……, Bruce and myself found ourselves in the shabby gloryhole that was Norwich's Golden Star pub (their proud boast: "Not so much a pub, more of a bucket"). It has since been cleaned up and "theme-pubbed" but back then was the real 'spit and sawdust' experience … except without the sawdust.

After a couple of pints of the finest effluent from their own backyard brewery (from memory it was called Royal Flush and had a cartoon of the Queen on the loo on the beer pump - classy), V…… was up for further celebrations.
Nigel - one of the local dealers - was in the house and V…… decided it was about time he discovered just why the rest of us liked the occasional spliff.
So … a quick chat with our Nige (my band played his wedding and the bride's father got out of his tree on hash cake but that's another story) and, suitably grassed up we sashayed down to the river to relax.

I'll get to the point eventually but let me set the scene a little first.
The riverside walk at Norwich is extremely pretty and as this was midsummer was crowded with holidaymakers. Alongside the river is a mediæval defensive tower called Cow Tower, a bloody great circular ruin. We lounged beside this and skinned up.
A few puffs later and Bruce and me lay happily on the grass watching the little fluffy white clouds. We passed the rest of the joint to V…… to try.

I have since discovered that it has this effect on a small number of people. But the first we knew of it, however, was when V…… leapt up, yelling at us that he needed to crap, REALLY urgently.
There are no toilets anywhere near there so I told him to go in the tower.
Panicking, he yelled "But what can I use for toilet paper?"
"Just grab a handful of leaves." I said.
So …
Roused somewhat from our reverie, we watched in mild amusement as V……, in a stoned panic, tore along the footpath to the nearest bush and yanked the whole thing out of the ground, roots and all before dashing into the tower, screaming at us not to look.
Well, what would you do?
We gave him a few seconds and wandered in … to find poor V…… squatting in an alcove, moaning loadly in the throes of a most impressive display of explosive diarrhoea.
Of course, we did what any true friend would do and grabbed his shrub and high-tailed it out of there.

We certainly learned a few new words and descriptive phrases from V…… as we rolled about on the grass in hysterics. Only to have to get up and run as V…… emerged from the tower, brandishing his trousers and informing the world - including a crowd of passing holidaymakers - that he had been forced to wipe his arse on his underpants.

Naked from the waist down he realised his predicament and dashed back inside the tower, followed (absolutely true) by the holidaying family's dog which was in turn followed by their little girl, who was inevitably followed by the bellowing father. V…… caught up with us as we ran, which was a difficult thing to do when you're laughing so hard you can't breathe and one of you is trying to put on his trousers.

Ah, shadenfreude.
Bloody students, eh?

Let that be a lesson to you.

Monday

It's Monday. Everybody sing.

This morning, to clear my head of the last shreds of yesterday's fucking headache I took a lazy amble through the parks on my way in to the office.

It's autumn in Norfolk so I thought I'd make the most of a sunny day and take lots of lovely photos of the beautiful red and gold leaves in Green Park and St.James's Park.

I always forget; London has it's own microclimate and doesn't really bother with autumn until November, so things are still pretty green around here.

Take a look at this to see what it will look like in a couple of weeks.

We'll just have to wait for that. In the meantime we have this instead:

This is only a few feet from where Katie and I sat in the warm sunshine eating sushi less than three weeks ago.
It's bloody cold now she's taken the warmth back home with her to California.

And this is the path in Green Park that leads to the Parasite House. I usually take photos of that for our resident royalist Lynn but this morning - as I still have the vestiges of a headache - I'm grumpily facing the other way.

Another reason for me wearing my grumpy-trousers today is that I have to endure a semen hour this afternoon.

For the edification of Lucio and the other newbies who have alighted here following Katie on her travels (and because I'm really too busy to write anything else), here is what I have previously written on that particular subject (I know, I know, this is the second time just lately I've taken the lazy-assed option and re-posted and old post but I appear to have temporarily mislaid my mojo so you'll just have to put up with it …); a clarification of the term "semen hour" and what it means in this office:

I'm sure I've not missed it …
In fact I'm convinced I know my Dante well enough to be certain that re-reading Purgatorio word by word I will still not find it.
Yet somewhere on that dreadful mount midst Heaven and Hell there must lay hidden a door leading - via seldom trod tunnels - to a pitiful circle of Purgatory unnoticed by Dante and Virgil, wherein dwell those desolate lost souls whose only path to Grace lies in numberless years of miserable earthbound penance … presenting seminars.

I spent most of yesterday stuck in a seminar with two of these poor, benighted and utterly wretched bastards.
What an awful penance they have to suffer.
Trapped in a room with twenty or so grouchy people who are only here because we need to log the hours as "Continuing Professional Development" and all we really want from them is lunch and any goodies they've brought along to bribe us into attendance.

The look on their faces as the day slowly wears away would evoke pity from Beelzebub himself. These are faces with no hope left save through a lifetime of soul-destroying seminar-presenting.
Day after dreary day, week after weary week, they can see their lives stretching away hopelessly before them; forced to endure decade after decade in a desolate emotional wasteland of dull, grey boardrooms with chilly air-conditioning and the bored, blank faces of their audiences.

The seminar … semen-hour we call it as it's usually a bunch of wank … is an utterly pointless waste of time and life; spending an hour (or sometimes a whole day) watching these poor, bereft wretches trying to wring something new and interesting from a crappy Powerpoint presentation (has that ever been possible?) and endlessly reciting their tired lines in hollow, dead voices, long-drained of emotion.

Luckily for us, we have our own entertainment in the form of our elderly and confused deputy leader, the Jedi Master of inscrutable incomprehensibility, Chris B.
Chris leads a daredevil life, playing the shawm and the serpent in a mediæval music ensemble and he is also an enthusiastic Morris dancer. Donning clogs and bells he lays about his pals with a hanky and a pig's bladder on a stick.
He is very good at it. His troupe perform at the Lord Mayor's show in London every year and are slated for a part in the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics.
The remainder of his life, however, is sadly devoid of excitement and he has spent the whole of the presentation rapt with attention, scribbling copious notes.

At last we reach the bit of the semen hour where we all perk up, the bit where the hapless saps ask if there are any questions.
As one, all heads swivel to stare at our Chris.

He raises a hand and clears his throat and the poor seminarians look at him with pathetic hope dawning in their eyes; the forlorn hope of an interesting and relevant question to justify their wretched existence; a hope that will be cruelly and terribly dashed as it gradually dawns on them that this man is not their salvation but their tormentor, a dæmon (albeit a slightly fusty one in an egg-stained bow tie and tweeds) sent from Hell to drag them back down to their doom.

And now he starts …
A small fit of coughing prefaces a confused tumbling of half-words and phrases, gradually building into an avalanche of bumbling obfuscation.
"What I … erm … I suppose what I'm trying to put across here is …"
And he's off again.
A couple of minutes of this and some of the more alert among us (or at least the more awake) begin to discern the faintest vestige of a question forming.
But that fleeting glimpse of comprehension is swept away by an unstoppable tsunami of tosh as Chris gets a tad over-excited and completely loses any connection with reality.
He will not be gainsaid, however devoid of meaning his blathering may be.
Try to anticipate his question and start to answer and he will angrily shout you down.
There is now no escape for the poor lost souls and I settle back in my chair to enjoy the show.

Chris's voice leaps randomly from dreary baritone drone to alarming high-pitched squeaks and outbursts of raging incoherence but he starts off soft and reassuring, like an elderly and flatulent labrador draped saggily over a sofa, only gradually burbling and sputtering into life.
Once he gets into his stride, however, he is awesome to behold.

He wheedles and whines; he spuffles and blusters; he wibbles and dribbles; he harangues; he declaims … He would make a wonderful orator if only he - or anybody else - knew what on earth he was talking about.
He has never been known to finish a sentence.
His face the mask of a startled and somewhat resentful lungfish, he launches forth with a blistering attack of stuttering dead-ends, incoherent mumbling, pish, rhubarb and balderdash, harumphs, blathering, poppycock and piffle.

I watch with glee as yesterday's two victims turn to one another in complete confusion and dawning horror.

Like a drunken butterfly Chris can flutter around a subject for hours without ever quite alighting on anything so dangerous as the merest scintilla of meaning, let alone a fully formed intelligible notion.
Managing to string more than four complete words together (or at least words that have some relevance to one another) is a foreign and apparently alarming concept to him.

To accompany and perhaps to emphasise the complete incomprehensibility of the meaningless gibberish he is spouting; wielding his pen aloft he performs a series of wild, flailing gesticulations, frenzied stabbing movements and inexplicable hand-flappings.
He looks for all the world like a semaphore signaller suffering prolonged electrocution …
or perhaps - given his facial expressions - being surprised with a sudden enema.

The look on the faces of his victims is even more satisfying.

And he stays long after the seminars have finished, sometimes for hours on end, trapping his hapless victims by debating trivial minutiæ while they desperately edge toward the door, only for Chris to say something so quiet that they are tricked into taking a couple of steps back toward him, their faces contorted in pained realisation.
He is a master torturer and I love watching him at work.

So, girls and boys …
Be good and you might go to Heaven; be bad and you'll probably go to Hell, but whatever you do, don't ever be boring or you may wind up in Purgatory, presenting seminars.
Truly a fate worse than death.

Another Big Fat Bunch Of Nothing

Yet another filler post today.

I don't know if you get this in your job but I tend to do a lot of the conceptual side of my work either on the train or at home in my own time. The sort of thing that I can't really justify wasting office time on but that - if it works - means big kudos with the bosses.

So anyhoo; I woke up early this morning with one of those "Ooh! Ooh! Wouldn't it be a great idea if …" thoughts spinning round my brain so I hitched myself up to the big Mac, plugged my espresso maker into my intravenous drip and got down to some serious architectural 3D nonsense.

The result of which - several hours later - is a pounding fucking headache and the realisation that there's a lot more work involved in this one that I'd thought.

So while I crawl off back to bed with some painkillers, here are a couple of photos from yesterday showing that trick nature pulls every year when it makes everything real pretty before suckering us with six months of arctic fucking weather.

This one's Norwich market looking toward the castle.

And this is the view from my front doorstep.
Looks like it's time to break out the ol' leaf rake …

No Time To Blog

Sheesh!
There was ice all over the car this morning for the first time this autumn. Thank goodness for quick-clear windscreens. I'll soon have to park the thing in the garage every night.
Hey ho.

I forgot to post anything today and I've spent so long over breakfast and chatting and shopping in the city that I really don't have the time - or the inclination - to write anything worth reading.

So here's a happy, happy, singalong song for Saturday to round off my week of non-dating woe; the beautiful Susanna Wallumrød (you know I have a thing for weird Scandinavian chanteuses) singing "Love Will Tear Us Apart", from Susanna and the Magical Orchestra's astonishingly lovely album of covers from a couple of years back, "Melody Mountain".

If you're waiting for the drums and guitars to come in you've got a bloody long wait.
Susanna deconstructs classic rock songs into things of stark minimalist beauty.
Her versions of Prince's "Condition of the Heart" and Laughing Lenny Cohen's "Halleluiah" rip out my still beating heart, tear it into tiny pieces and leave them strewn about the carpet.

Go buy it. And all her other stuff, too.
Because I said so.
And I am always right.

Revisiting The Church Of Fornication

Hey, nonny nonny.
It's one of those days at the office …
You know the sort of day I mean; when every single person in the world suffering from a bowel disorder is standing in front of my fan and all straining at once.

You can make your own sound effect for that one.

So I'm going to cop out today and simply re-post something from two years ago; a post that has at least a tenuous link to Old Dive's not-dating dilemma and one which the newbies won't have seen.
Plus it makes me giggle.

Before we start I'd just like to ask Shan to please not go off on one; this was written a long time ago before I learned that not all US evangelical churches are scary crackpot cults.

Though this one is …

So … let's go back in time and have some fun with the Church of Fornication …
Every word of this is true:

I drove past Norwich's big, scary evangelical Christian church this morning. Or at least the building site, as somebody burnt it to the ground a little while back.
The rebuilding is taking place at an astonishing pace; perhaps we should award the construction contract for the 2012 Olympics to the evangelists, as the government are so pants that they will never get it built on time.

Now I have never really given much thought to the evangelists, to the extent that I'm still at a loss to know what branch of what church they profess to being (they're commonly known around here as "that big old cult [that's c-u-L-t] place up on the ring road near Mousehold").
The only time their path crosses mine is the event of their annual cultathon (or whatever they call it), where they take over the football stadium for the weekend and bring the city to a standstill. The roads are gridlocked with tens of thousands of extremely polite Americans dressed like extras from the Waltons, which means I either avoid the city altogether or end up with smiley-noddy syndrome from all the excessive politeness.

Then it all changes …

I am travelling back from London on the train. It is packed as usual, but I manage to get a window seat and settle in for the long crawl back to Norwich.
Beside me is what can only be termed a lovely little old lady. Grey hair in a bun; old fashioned frock; reading quietly.
Halfway home; I've finished the paper and the crossword and am about to start on my book when along comes the trolley and the little old lady orders a coffee. Now, I've got a couple of free coffee vouchers in my wallet and, to reward her for not being a fat, elbowy businessman shouting into a mobile phone, I offer to treat her to coffee (big mistake).
She has a charming smile and thanks me sweetly as she accepts.
The trolley squeaks off down the aisle and she turns to me and says:

"That was really very kind of you. Are you a Christian?"

Not wishing to offend her with "Well I was brought up as a Christian, but when my brain started to work I rebelled and became the Godless heathen you see before you", I nod and say "Yes".

And suddenly people are turning and staring. A dozen faces all around me focus on my own. The blank eyes and rictus smiles of … uh, oh … evangelists!

"We're Christians" says the little old lady. "Which Church are you from?"
I start to dissemble. I'm stuck with these people for the next hour at least, and I really don't want to upset the little old lady, so I talk about my old church from childhood.
Luckily, she goes off on a long one about the lovely day they've all had in London at a "miracle ministry" or somesuch. I nod and smile in what I judge to be the right places. The scary faces are still locked on mine. Surely their necks must ache from being twisted round like that …

My heart sinks still further when she rummages in her bag and presses a bundle of tracts into my hand.
"You really must come along to our Church."
I hazard a guess: "Is that the big one up near Mousehold?"
I'm blinded by a communal BEAM from the surrounding faces.

The little old lady continues, but by now I am trying to make excuses, so she goes to plan 'B'.
She has noticed that I don't have a wedding ring and I fess up to my single status …
"This is my daughter, Emma."
And she waves to a drop-dead gorgeous girl in her twenties, who flashes me the kind of shy smile I wouldn't even get in my wildest fantasies.
"Emma is a member of our Church. She doesn't have a young man …"

WHAT?
I mean WHAT THE FUCK?

An increasingly surreal conversation follows, with the gorgeous girl smiling at me and her mad pimp mother telling me about all the young women who attend the Church, and how so many of them are reaching "marriageable age" with no "young men" of their own …

I want to tell her to look closely at me. I am a man in my forties. Would she really want me interfering with her daughter?

I want to yell at her; to tell her that in my experience, the Christian Church does not recruit members by offering strange, middle-aged men the chance to fornicate with the young women of their congregation.

The trouble is, Emma is … er … well, let's just say that she has got me all unneccessary. Even though I know that the beautiful girl's smile is the last thing I will see before the brainwashing starts and my bank account develops a Church-sized hole, I am almost tempted …

Somehow, I manage to last the rest of the journey without actually signing any banker's drafts, but the hard sell continues full force, and as I wave farewell to the group at the station and to the beautiful, smiling Emma, I realise I have agreed to attend a service there the next weekend. They certainly know how to prey on weak and lonely men …

Perhaps there is some kind of twisted deity watching over me, because that very week the big old culty Church burns to the ground …

And I T … W A S … N O T … M E !

Honest …

And even when it's rebuilt, there's no amount of gorgeous young girls gonna drag me in there!
I promise … Really … I do … er …

Let's Make A Racket - XXX

From the sublime to the ridiculous today.

It's Thursday Racket time and today is another two-track bonus special.
I think you deserve it after all the crap of the past few days.

However, in keeping with the week's theme of bleakness our song will be Steve's "Lay By Me."

Some of you may remember that one of the rules of Blues Club is that at least one song per evening must be totally made up on the spot, lyrics and all.

The first version of Lay By Me you'll hear is the one Steve made up on the spot the week he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease.
It's a song for his wonderful wife, Sonia, basically saying "what do we do now?"

One day you go in for a checkup and the next thing you know you're told you have a terminal and terrifying ravaging disease that will in all likelihood be inherited by your three sons.

You'll know Steve's story from past posts so I won't go into any more detail here.
Suffice to say that this version brought out some fine playing by all concerned.
This was the night when Blues Club went from being just a bit of fun to becoming a serious money-raising event for research into a disease which as yet not only has no cure but doesn't even have any palliative treatment.

Here's the first version, being written as we played it:



Fortunately, Steve has never been one to turn down a laugh when one's available and the second version comes from a year or so later, when - in his infinite wisdom (and his sparkly new electric wheelchair that he said gave "taking the dog for a run" a hilarious if sadistic new meaning) - he decided we should play the song reggae style.



He's still with us, hanging on and playing when he's up to it.
Enjoy the song. It means a lot to all of us.

Coincidences

Boy, howdy, what a wonderful postbag you guys presented me with yesterday; full to the brim with sage advice and heartwarming tales of romance, for which I am truly grateful. Some of the advice I may even act upon.

I'll get back to that in a minute or two but first I want to spook you out with a couple of boffo coincidences that happened to me yesterday.

First up: I was chatting with Joy about the crappiness of winter and the efficacy of SAD lamps.
Joy was lamenting the fact that they don't seem to work on her and I reminded her that Peahen has one and it has worked miracles with her SAD.

Just at that moment a message plopped into my inbox which turned out to be a comment from Pea (who I hadn't heard from in ages) saying how great her SAD lamp is now the daylight's disappearing.

I love coincidence.
Mind you, I'm not one of those feeble-minded delusional fuckwits who leap up with "God" or "Fate" or "Karma" in their eyes, stand over a big plate of sculpted mashed potato and say "This MEANS something!"

It means Jack Shit but it's fun when it happens.

I had another one yesterday.
Coincidence, that is …
I clicked on my daily Natalie Dee cartoon link and this one popped up:

It wasn't so much the cartoon that tickled me as the title of it: "It's not easy being fucking gross."
Which just happens to chime perfectly with my mood at the moment.

Having said that, the idea of orange flavoured mouthwash doesn't gross me out.
What truly grosses me out (apart from the contents of my mirror) is the garlic, stale tobacco and rotten teeth flavoured mouthwash that everybody on the tube seems to gargle with just before breathing in my face.

All of which has nothing to do with the coincidence.
The coincidence happened as I was reading the pathetically sad little "I'm So Lonely" line in the cartoon …

Whammo! Right at that moment my iTunes (set to random) started playing The Beatles' "Yer Blues" off the White Album with Lennon belting out the line "I'm so lonely."

I always loved that song.
The line "I'm so lonely. Wanna die." has been my motto and mantra for decades.
Plus it's got that line "… just like Dylan's Mister Jones", linking it to another favourite: "Ballad of a Thin Man".

Which leads me - in an awkward, lurching attempt at a segue - back to yesterday's postbag and a great video of Yer Blues.

Several of you have wisely cautioned me to look for a woman of my own age and I fully concur with that advice.
I have had relationships with younger women before and - while they are exceedingly decorative and … er … limber - things usually start to fall apart when I'm talking about some gig or session I played with somebody their dad was a fan of and they chirp up with "I wasn't even BORN then!"
Shit! I'd been living the sexanddrugsandrockandroll, "Almost Famous" lifestyle for years and her parents hadn't even started dating.
Holy crap, that always makes me feel so old.
So … no more younger weemen.

I need shared cultural reference points.

I need someone who knows who "Dylan's Mister Jones" is.

I need someone who remembers the Cold War.
Who remembers watching the moon landings.
Who remembers the first colour tellies.
Who remembers William Hartnell as Doctor Who.
Who knows what the sculpted mashed potato means.
Who - when shown a photo of my first car (a powder blue Ford Anglia) says "Cool!" and NOT "That's just like the one in Harry Potter".

I need someone who bought The Beatles singles as they came out.

I need someone who'd get all excited seeing this: John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Mitch Mitchell jamming Yer Blues at the end of the sixties.



And yes, Maria; of course I need someone who loves books.
I wish I could take your advice and spend more time in bookshops but I'm afraid I already spend way too MUCH time (and money) in them.
The staff in every one of my favourite bookshops all know me, and any women customers just see me as "that creepy guy who's always hanging around in here".

Besides which; when I hang around in bookshops I'm looking for books.
I DO talk to women in bookshops about books. I have even talked to several attractive women in there but have been so appalled by the crap they are buying that I would never want to ask them on a date.

I'll keep trying.
And I really am most grateful for all the advice.
But still those two lines plague me:
"I'm so lonely", and "It's not easy being fucking gross."

Question Time

Okerly-dokerly …

Moving on a step from yesterday:
We all know I am my own worst enemy and will probably be too shit-scared to act on any of the excellent advice you put forward.

One of the very few crappy things about living in rural Norfolk is that I cannot take Mark's advice and attend a "singles" cooking evening.
Regrettably we do not have a "singles" culture here.
There are no "singles" bars, no "singles" nights at clubs or restaurants, no "singles" anything.
The lonely hearts column in the local paper is populated exclusively by farmboys wanting to date something that doesn't leave them smelling of bacon; there are no women in there.
At least there are none looking for a man about to turn fifty.
If you're single in Norfolk you are expected to stay that way.

As for the description of my ideal woman; that was purely for laughs (you should know me by now) … my ideal woman is any woman willing to date me, so please don't go on about my expectations being too high.

Plus the self-deprecating thing was pretty facetious, too; I'm a nice guy (well "Dive" isn't, but I am); I have a great job; I'm pretty smart and a good musician and artist and I know it. Plus I can cook and iron … woohoo! But I'm not going to slime my way up to a woman and introduce myself as such. That's just too icky.
Like I said to Lucio in yesterday's comments: I get on great with women (witness the Katie posts) but as soon as it comes to asking one on a date it all falls flat; the closest I ever get is that tired old line that they'd rather have me as a friend.

And so here we come to step two: How to actually find and approach somebody so that I can let them know what a catch I am (I heard that snigger).

The "finding" part of that equation is harder than it looks:
- my circle of friends doesn't include any unattached women;
- the train is full of grumpy old businessmen and the few regular women commuters are vicious harridans (the fact that men outnumber women on the 5:40 AM to London by at least 12 to 1 shows just how far we still have to go to break the glass ceiling … either that or it shows that women don't like getting up early);
- the office is NOT the place for romance … especially as the closest anyone there lives to me is three hours away and he's called Mike, dating him would be impractical and kind of expensive … plus, he's married;
- I can't go out in the evenings as my commuting schedule means I must be in bed by nine so I can get up in the middle of the night and hit the road. The one exception to that is the occasional weekend gig, and …
- women who come up and speak to me after gigs are usually asking for guitar lessons for their kids; as for the others: the type of girl who goes out to clubs and hits on the lead guitarist is not the type of girl that I want anywhere near my life. Not even with rubber gloves on.

We did an experiment a couple of years back when Lynn suggested I go out to a nice country pub and see who I might find.
I went out to the Maltsters at Ranworth (a wonderful pub and restaurant overlooking beautiful Ranworth Broad) and found the barman and two old farmhands playing darts.
I know I live in Deliverance country but that's going a little too far.

What I really need are some practical examples to give me some idea of what to do next.
And this is where you guys come in …

Here's a teensy leetle questionnaire I'd like you to fill in if you'd be so kind:

1) How did you come to first meet your partner (present or favourite; whatever)?

2) Who approached whom, where and how?

3) What did they/you say to kick things off?

You know it's in a good cause.

Shit! Is It That Time Of Year Already?

First up: while I write this, Katie is sitting in the airport with - according to her notes - fifty pounds of books and some assorted bread products, about to set off from Paris on her long, loooonng journey back to Berkeley and the sunshine of San Francisco Bay.

Bon Voyage, Katie.
I miss you like crazy, as do all who had the pleasure of meeting you on your European adventure.

For the chattering types among you (and you know who you are, especially those of you who have been emailing Katie on the subject), that is not the reason I've been moping around the house and playing old vinyl; much as I appreciate the compliment of being "romantically" linked with someone as way out of my league as Katie we are friends and nothing more.
I've been reading back in my archives and it seems I suffer an attack of the lonelies around this time every year.
So you (and regrettably me, too) are going to have to put up with it for a while.

Hokay … so we return yet again to the perennial, miserably dreary subject of Old Dive's long-standing lack of a love life.

Here's the rub:
Saggy, balding, ugly middle-aged git would like to meet smart, cool, funny, academic-yet-arty woman with a view to living happily ever after.

He: cooks, cleans, is fully domesticated and as a bonus, leaves the house in the middle of the night and doesn't come home until bedtime.

She: would preferably be pretty (in a long dark hair and glasses, sexy librarian way), on the skinny side and slightly kooky.

She should not:
- smoke;
- be covered in tattoos like an elderly sailor;
- chew food with her mouth open (I once dated a girl who did that; the silver lining being that I lost a lot of weight as I couldn't sit at the same table as her without gagging);
- leave crap all over the house and the towels screwed up on the bathroom floor;
- enjoy TV soap operas and "reality" shows;
- come with kids and pets attached;
- have a hairier back than me;
- be called Biff …

Though to tell the truth I'll date anything that still twitches when you kick it.

If any of you know of a woman like that - or indeed any desperate, lonely woman with poor eyesight and low self-esteem - please let me know so we can move on to stage two of Dive's dilemma, where I actually get to meet an attractive woman and my brain immediately freezes, leaving me standing there with a glazed expression and my mouth flapping open while I try to form the word "Durr".

Stage three is my inevitable rejection. I'm particularly experienced at that one.

Sorry to rehash this same old crap but it's as much a part of autumn as falling leaves and delayed trains.

Vinyl Day

Bleah …
It's Sunday morning. I should be enjoying myself, merrily dancing around the house with vacuum and duster, watching all the little cartoon woodland animals do my housework for me while singing in a vaguely irritating manner.

But I made the mistake of having a lie-in and now I am a lethargic lump of misery with a headache and and 'itchy-brain' and I possess all the patience of a two-year-old, binge-eating food additives.

Plus the weather's shite and it's that time of year when Old Dive gets a case of the lonelies.

So it looks like it's going to be a "vinyl" day … moping around the house with old jazz records and sad songs on the turntable.

Here's one to start us off …

What's Cooking With Dive? Squid Heaven

That's where I want to go when I die.
Let's face it; who among us has never wished they were a squid at some point in their lives?
er …
Hokay, so perhaps that's only me, then.
Hey ho.

What a fucking weird life that must be …
I mean look at these two: more arms and legs than they can possibly keep track of and a beak (yes, a beak) to eat with. Intelligent design, my arse!
And sexual organs on the ends of their arms; what the fuck is that all about?
Having said that; it seems a far more logical place to put them than where mine are.

And of course, they taste Goooood!

So … Squiddies.
What shall we do with them?

Well, as the French Market is in town I'll probably use some of this.
Any PDP people reading this should click on this to enlarge it and check out the name on the label.

Right! Back to our squiddies.
These are local squid from our frozen northern waters and are deliciously tender, unlike most squid you get from the Mediterranean which are tough and chewy and put a lot of people off what is in fact a fantastic fish (strictly a cephalopod but you try finding a cephalopodmonger in your town).

Rummaging around in David the Fishmonger's stock of fresh local squid I find a couple of good big ones. Ideal for stuffing and baking and that's just what we'll be doing today.
Unfortunately, one of them has burst its ink sac but that doesn't really matter as I'm not making risotto or any other dish that needs the ink; all it means is that things are gonna get messy.

Fun!

So … Let's get gross!

For anyone who's never prepared, cleaned and gutted squid, you'll need a bowl of water, a sense of humour and … er … some squid.

First up, grasp your squid just behind the eyes with one hand and get a firm grip on its baggy end with the other.
Then simply pull … gently to start with unless you want squid guts sprayed up your kitchen walls.

Et voila! The whole thing comes apart as easily as a celebrity marriage.
If you look closely you can see a kind of see-through plasticky bit poking out of the end of the nearest bag. That's how squid are assembled.
Deep under the sea in mermaid workshops, mer-child-labourers work day and night poking the plasticky rod into the bag end and then jamming the head assembly onto the other end.

The plasticky bit is called the quill and you can tug it out of the bag as easily as you pulled the head and guts off it.

Okey-dokey; we've disassembled our squid. Now to get gory and cut the head off.

We won't be needing the ink today but you can see where the ink sac is by the fact that it has burst on the squid at the top of this photo. Should you need it for risotto or making kinky black pasta, simply puncture it and squeeze the good stuff out.

To cut away the delicious tentacles, take a hold of the head and slice through a little bit in front of the eyes. Cut too far back and you'll end up with the beak as well.
It doesn't really matter as the squid beak can simply be pulled away from the tentacles … these things are really shoddily put together; never buy anything more complicated than a squid from a mermaid as it will fall to pieces as soon as you try to use it.

Right … Now discard the head and guts; either in the bin or in the cats, and wash out the bag and the tentacles in your bowl of cold water.
Like I said; this is really shoddy workmanship so the skin simply rubs off in your hands leaving a shiny, clean white bag.
The rear fins (some people call them "ears", but those people have such a rudimentary grasp of anatomy that you should never have sex with them or allow them to perform surgery on you) can - once again - be simply pulled away from the baggy bit, rinsed and the skin peeled away.

Which leaves us - once the tentacles are cut up - with a scene like this: squid carnage.
If you're frying these, simply slice the bags into rings and heat up your oil.
Today we shall be stuffing and baking them so we need the bags intact.

To make the stuffing I'm in a Provençal kind of mood and so I'll be using some of Eric's lovely French purple garlic, a strong organic local onion, some tomatoes, some ripped up basil and coriander leaf (cilantro) and a handful of black olives, stoned and cut in two.
Plonk these all in a bowl with the tentacles and the rear fins (having cut them into smallish bits), splosh on a good gloop of your most fantastic olive oil and get messy with your fingers.

Stuff the baggy bits with some of this mixture but be careful not to overfill them as they may burst and make an awful mess of your oven.
I filled mine about three-quarters full and then sewed up the ends, leaving a tiny bit of space for air to get out.
Lightly oil the bottom of a heavy fish casserole (le Creuset is good) and place the squid in there.

Into the bowl containing the remainder of the stuffing add a couple more tomatoes and a biggish glass of exceedingly good red wine.
Don't scrimp, because (a) cheap wine will ruin the dish, and (b) you've got to drink the rest of the bottle; so I used a nice St.Emilion (around £18 a bottle; you don't need to go crazy, just make it good).
Pour that mixture over and around the squid and it's ready to bake.

This lot needs to be covered (I used kitchen foil crimped around the dish) and baked in the oven at gas mark 3 (or whatever the equivalent might be in an electric oven or an Aga) for around one and a half hours.
This is a handy dish to make if you've got guests as it gives you plenty of time to make and eat a starter while it bakes.

Once it's done, whip off the covering and grate a generous amount of good organic Parmesan over the top then flash it under the grill until the cheese is melted and bubbling and turning golden brown.

Dish it up and eat the fucker.
Boy howdy this is tasty! Ludicrously healthy, fantastic fun to make and just as good to eat.
Yummy squid heaven, with love from Old Dive.
Enjoy!

Amanda Spots A Bargain

Ah, me …
I love being in my office, especially on days when the Dadaist Fairy has sprinkled its twisted magic dust everywhere.

Do you remember Amanda?
For any newbies, Amanda endeared herself to us shortly after she joined the company earlier this year.
I burned her an interactive CAD training DVD which she took home to study and when Caroline and Andy started work here a short time later I asked if she would bring it back in for them to use.

She told me the DVD was still in her laptop drive at her house but that she would definitely bring it in on Monday.

So …
That Friday night, she goes home, presses eject, stuffs the DVD into an envelope and puts it in her bag.
First thing Monday morning she hands it to Caroline who loads it up onto her computer and - with the rest of us sitting around watching, proceeds to entertain us with a DVD of hardcore lesbian action …

Amanda learns a valuable lesson about labelling DVDs and keeping them in the correct cases and we all learn a lot about Amanda.

Since that … er … ice-breaker, Amanda's workstation has gradually become more of a trashy floordrobe for her binge-drinking forays into the nether world of London's less salubrious twilight establishments; currently there are a number of sparkly dresses, skirts and tops in a state of disarray on her chairs and shelves and seventeen (count 'em) assorted pairs of "fuck me" high heeled shoes under her desk.

And this morning she has found a new way to entertain us.
This morning she has become a yoghurt-pusher.

She appears - as usual after a night out - still in her party gear with make-up smeared all over her face and hair like a rats' nest.
Before heading up to the shower to clean up and change into her work suit she wafts over to me in a cloud of stale fag-breath.
"Would you like a yoghurt?" is her innocent opener.
This is followed by the opening of a huge bag full of cartons.
"I bought a hundred and ten cartons."

Yup … That's what she said. A hundred and ten cartons of yoghurt.

I express some bafflement and she explains:
"They were on special in Tesco. I bought fifty pounds worth for twenty pounds. That's a bargain!"

I ponder the word "bargain" …

"And they're my favourite flavour: banana choc-o-flakes … though I'm a bit bored with them now. I ate too many last night."

One of the things in this world that I least want to put in my mouth is banana choc-o-flakes yoghurt so I enquire:
"Will you be able to eat them all before their expiry date?"

Amanda looks even blanker than usual …
"Expiry date?"
Having checked the first dozen or so she has a moment of clarity.

"Shit! I'm going away next week and they all expire before I come back!"
There are twenty-seven cartons in her carrier bags; the rest - bar the six she managed to eat last night before going out - completely fill her fridge (she shows me a photo she had taken with her phone … there is NOTHING but yoghurt in her fridge).

She is currently wandering around the office, forlornly pushing yoghurt.
People seem initially enthusiastic … until they see that the only flavour on offer is banana choc-o-flakes.

Does anyone want to go to a yoghurt party at Amanda's house this weekend?

My Head Is Empty

Writing about Katie all last week kinda used up all the words I had in my head so it's just rattly in there right now.
It has a good echo, though.

So thanks to Maria for once again rescuing me with a meme when I'm all crapped out with not a creative thought in my brain.

The usual rules apply:
- If you feel like doing this, do it;
- Don't tag anyone or I'll come round and punch you hard in the head.
- That's it.

FAVOURITE THINGS MEME

1)Favourite clothes shop

Anywhere that sells black stuff cheap.

2)Favourite furniture shop

I don't buy furniture. I wait for people to die and I steal theirs (true).

3)Favourite sweet

Is scotch a sweet? If not, then Green and Black's Maya Gold.

4)Favourite city

London. It stinks but I like it.

5)Favourite drink

Scotch, coffee or green tea. Depends on how crappy I'm feeling at the time.

6) Favourite music

Miles Davis' Kind of Blue album. It's the only thing ever recorded that I'd happily listen to over and over for the rest of my life … except Bach of course.

7)Favourite TV series

Fuck TV. It's all crap.

8)Favourite film

Right at this minute? Doctor Strangelove.

9) Favourite workout

Favourite what? Fuck off!

10)Favourite pastries

I hate pastries.

11) Favourite coffee

Cuban. Strong. Black.

That's your lot. Like I said; I'm empty.

Let's Make A Racket - IXXX

Shit!
What the hell am I going to write about now?
I've spent seven solid days writing up "The Adventures of Katie and Dive" and now it's all over I feel somewhat adrift.

Thank goodness it's Thursday so I can simply cop out and just post some trashy music.

Here's yet another one from the "miscellaneous odds and sods" recordings from the Blues Club; a jolly little ditty about hunting down the devil and kicking him up the arse.



For any newbies who can't be bothered to follow links and find 'em, I'll include a bonus track from one of the earlier posts (which were a lot better as I was still interested in my new project back then).



Here's the original post in case anyone's interested. It's got pretty pictures of guitars on it.

Katie And Dive Do London Pt.7

Oh, woe is me!
Alas and alack for today is the final post in our Katie series and I have to bite back the tears as she heads off to Paris and eventually back to San Francisco and home to Berkeley, taking the sunshine - and a little piece of the hearts of everyone who has met her - back to that beautiful city on the bay.

Yesterday left us walking hastily away from my office toward the river, where we find Tate Britain, our last gallery of the day.

Much to Katie's bemusement, Martin Creed's latest work is still going on in the main hall (and will be for a few weeks more yet).
"Work no.850" involves an athlete running the length of the gallery every thirty seconds.
Supposedly some kind of link to the 2012 Olympics and the silly idea of making it a "Cultural Olympics" to draw in more tourists, the first day saw all the famous athletes and medal winners from Beijing hurtling headlong past the press cameras; now we are down to the hopefuls for 2012 and the gallery is considerably less crowded, so we are disappointed in our expectation of seeing a runner smashing full tilt into a crowd of visitors.
Hey ho.

We are really here to see the "late works" room in the Turner galleries but why waste the opportunity of having a good poke around?
Aha!
Katie immediately spots a mosaic and - as photography is not allowed, we sneak off non-flash photos when nobody is looking.

I make a point of introducing Katie to the creepy Cholmondeley Sisters, one of the strangest and most disturbing paintings ever; and hanging next to it of course, Robyn's famous "That man's got no trousers on!" painting.

Millais' Mariana and Ophelia - which usually hang side by side - are out on loan at the moment, which is a pity as they are my companions on many a rainy lunchtime, but there is plenty more to marvel at.
For one thing, Katie has never seen any Gwen John paintings until today.

After a good look around we head for the wing that houses the Clore Gallery where the Turners are kept.
Upstairs there is a cute little interactive exhibition illustrating Turner's techniques and use of colour and a room full of paper and pencils where you are invited to copy Turner's drawings and display them.

Here is Katie on the upstairs balcony above the main Turner room, trying to stay still as it is pretty dark in here and the exposure takes ages without flash.

This is a little bit of my favourite room at Tate Britain. It is hung with a selection of Turner's late and unfinished "mad" paintings; those glorious attempts of the batty, half-blind old codger to "paint light".

Everybody who visits London should see this room and marvel at the sheer intensity of Turner's vision.
Unfortunately we didn't have time when Mme and MB visited, but I recall "Eustacia", Elizabeth and mum resting their weary legs, flaked out on that seat while Robyn and myself explored the paintings and shared a little bit of the magic of this wonderful place.

And now it is "chucking out time". Katie and I have outstayed our welcome and we exit the gallery beside the Thames as the late afternoon sun glints off the Spook House (MI6 HQ; somewhere in there is Miss. Moneypenny's office).

Looking east, the Eye is bathed in warm sunshine and the river - for once - looks something other than its usual fœtid brown.
It is such a lovely evening that we decide to wander slowly back toward the West End and hunt for a restaurant in the back-streets of Soho.

Just along the river is this little garden beside the Palace of Westminster where the evening sun is lighting up the gorgeous sandstone of Victoria Tower with a beautiful, buttery glow.
I swear I didn't see that girl in the miniskirt until I downloaded the photos. Honest!

While we are here I simply must sneak into the corner of the garden and check to see if I was hallucinating the last time I was here.
Woohoo!
It is still there!
La Vache!
I've yet to figure this one out … What on earth is a statue of a cow doing in Victoria Tower Garden? And why is it dressed in the robes of the House of Lords?
It seems happy enough to be there so we leave it to its ruminations.

By this time the day is drawing to an end and the Eye and Westminster Bridge are suffused with the warmth of the dying light of an autumn evening.

Katie calls out "That's The Burghers Of Calais, isn't it?" and heads for the statue by Victoria Tower.
As she gets closer her smile broadens …
"I know my Rodin!"
And she is right, of course. What a smartypants!

The Burghers do look pretty wretched and miserable awaiting execution, having sacrificed themselves to save their townsfolk, but then they weren't to know at that moment that Philippa of Hainault would spare their lives.
Rodin apparently never completed the second statue "The Burghers Of Calais Celebrate Their Reprieve By Getting Totally Shitfaced And Dancing Like Your Dad."

Katie and Dive head back yet again across Parliament Square and on into St.James's Park, stopping briefly to watch the sun set over the Parasite House.
The pelicans are already asleep on their island and as night falls around us it is time to hit the bright lights of Piccadilly Circus and find somewhere to have dinner.

Wending our curious way through the narrow, darkened streets and alleys, past shouty, singing drunks and through thronging crowds of party people, we check out the plethora of international cuisines available in the maze of back-streets that is Soho; that ancient den of iniquity and … er … lapdancing clubs where all the good little restaurants tend to cluster.

Head waiters leap from entrances as soon as we start reading their menus but we resist their blandishments and decide to plump for the Mumbai in Denman Street.

Katie has never had "proper Indian" as we call the Bangladeshi cuisine that constitutes most of England's national dishes.
The Raj lasted for so long that Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi cuisine and culture is as much a part of England as steak and kidney pie and London buses.

This - sadly - is my last photo of Katie (sob).
Here we have just enjoyed a yummy starter of prawn puri; a deliciously spiced dish served up on that most buttery of puffy, fried breads with a cucumber raitha.

We avoid the stupidly hot dishes as this is Katie's first foray into the sub-continent and she chooses a prawn Madras while I have an excellent fish bhuna; which we accompany with mouth-watering side dishes of sag aloo, bindhi and brinjal bhajis and sag paneer, plus beautifully sweet pewshwari naan and basmati rice.
Oh, and Indian Kingfisher lager, of course!

And we talk and talk and talk …

At last it is time to go home and we catch a tube at Piccadilly Circus that will carry Katie safely back to Bloomsbury and her hotel.
We say farewell at Holborn tube station with hugs and smiles and a promise to meet up in Paris this time next year …
… and then she is gone.
Whisked away toward St.Pancras …
A sad Dive walks the escalators toward the Central Line on my way to catch the late train home.
I sigh and smile at all the happy memories of the past two days but it's going to be a long, cold and lonely journey back to my empty house.

Katie will still be in London until the following afternoon, meeting Rose from Canterbury Daily Photo for a meal and a trip on the Eye.

Old Dive sits on the train in the dark, smiling as I flick through the photos on my little screen.

The day after next, with Katie back in Paris, Rose sends me a wonderful present, entitled "Katie Reading Dive's Blog".

Here is Katie out to lunch with Rose in Covent Garden, reading my first "Katie And Dive Do London" post on Rose's iPhone.

It has been a marvellous couple of days. We have walked several thousand miles and enjoyed so many galleries, exhibitions and mosaics and done so much sightseeing we have almost worn our eyes out.

Most importantly we have become friends and next autumn in Paris I know we shall strengthen that friendship.

A million thanks, Katie!
See you in Paris!

Katie And Dive Do London Pt.6

In today's post, Katie and Dive find the last mosaics on our list and they don't disappoint us.
Dive also gets a teensy bit sweary and offensive (so what's new?), so be warned; you might just want to look at the pictures instead of reading.

Leaving Downing Street - where we finished up yesterday - to be refurbished by Murphy's the builders, we amble back across Parliament Square (for the umpteenth but not the last time) and wander off toward Victoria, stopping on our way at Broad Sanctuary to photograph this …

Yup: tourist time again, it's Westminster Abbey of course.
Robyn should recognise this scene as it is right there on the corner behind those taxis that we first met. And of course Mme. and MB, who I dragged here on our way to the Eye.

Toddling off along Victoria Street in the direction of New Scotland Yard Katie points out this spiffy window display and we pose for a photo together (the only one we've got, so make the most of it).

A little further along the street I get jittery as Strutton Ground market appears on the left (my office is just down there).
Suppressing a shudder at the sudden urge to pop in and check my emails we soldier on until we come to a large square, at the back of which glowers the bizarro façade of the most incongruous looking Christian church you're ever likely to see: the snappily named Metropolitan Cathedral Of The Precious Blood, known to most as Westminster Cathedral, London's Roman Catholic mothership.

I've walked past this startling edifice twice a day for more years than most people have been alive but until today I have never ventured inside.
Thanks to Katie's mosaic quest I am about to be surprised and delighted.

By the way, just off to the left of this photo lurk the inevitable Murphy's builders vans.
This beautiful Cathedral was built just over a hundred years ago, at the tail end of Europe's fascination with all things Byzantine.
With its huge dome - modelled on Hagia Sophia - it looks to today's eyes to be Islamic, but of course Hagia Sophia was originally a Christian church and this building (conceived at a time when Islamic culture was rightly admired rather than ignorantly feared) was intended to hark back to the glory days of Christian Constantinople, seat of the Holy Roman Empire before the revelations of the Prophet.

The mosaic above the entrance is impressive enough, but what greets us inside is astonishing.

It soon dawns on us that this church is very much a work in progress (and not just because Murphy's the builders are knocking the shit out of it).
Even though the structure is over a hundred years old, around half of the interior is still bare brickwork - a tabula rasa awaiting decoration - soot-blackened from decades of candle-flames.
Every few years, somebody bequeaths enough money to install another section of mosaic and when this work is completed - at least a hundred years hence - the effect will be magnificent beyond words.

Whatever your views on the Catholic Church, you have to admit that the sale of indulgences has resulted - if nothing else - in some fabulous artworks.
And apologies to any Catholics who may be reading this but I've spent quite enough time laying into American Christian fundamentalists (sorry, Shan), so now it's your turn.
Question: What is it with earthly redemption from sin? I've never quite been able to grasp that concept.
I can appreciate transubstantiation - not of course in any physical way but in the way a person's belief can transcend reality for them; but having your sins forgiven by a man? That's just too much to swallow.

From my readings of The Bible it seems to go like this:
You sin; you wait for God to judge you and in all likelihood you go to Hell … at least you do if you believe in all that Heaven and Hell stuff that I was brainwashed with as a kid.

But who on earth came up with the idea that you can sin and then go fess up about it to some creepy guy hiding in a box who may well be raping your children in his spare time and who'll have you believe that he'll intercede personally with God on your behalf if you recite a few pat phrases?
Sweet cheeses of Nazareth, what a fucked up world we live in.

But holy moley; what a great money-making idea the sale of indulgences was … I can picture Pope Leo X grinning to himself as he declared to a delighted aristocracy: "No matter how vicious, cruel and barbaric you are; no matter how sinful and debauched you murdering, raping and thieving utterly shitty bastards may be; if you give me lots and lots of money you can go straight to Heaven!"

So Europe's mediæval Catholic rulers taxed and robbed the people blind to pay for magnificent chapels to their own glory whilst Leo and the Borgia Popes partied until they shat gold (extracted from "Old Dive's History Of Moaning At The Godbotherers, Vol.2"), all of which kinda gave the Catholic Church a bad name.

Katie soon points out a mosaic panel pleading "Pray for the donor", and indeed most of the side chapels seem dedicated to some obscenely rich and rapacious dickhead trying to buy forgiveness for their life of sin with a token "good work" (a bit like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation … Listen up, Bill: no amount of charity work will ever atone for selling people "Windows" … Oh, the suffering you have caused).
Panel after panel of beautiful mosaic exhorts us to pray for the soul of someone loathsome.

But at least the mosaics that all these greedy and grasping sucklers at the filthy teat of Mammon have left us are pretty bloody awesome!

Hokay, I shall stop knocking the Godbotherers and the "aristocracy" (for a moment) and step back to admire the beautiful works of art that surround us.

These golden mosaics are not glass tesseræ applied over gold leaf - as at Ravenna - but little blocks of gold-leaf-encrusted stone and tile pressed into a wet base.

Katie can tell you much more about the history and the techniques involved.
She explains a lot to me, pointing out how this method gives a deliberately uneven finish that causes the tesseræ to catch the sunlight and the flickering candles in a myriad different ways and - you have to go there and see for yourself to get the true, breathtaking effect - makes the whole lot glitter fabulously.

Unfortunately I forget most of what Katie teaches me as each new chapel finds me gazing, mouth agape in wonder at the sheer beauty of the mosaics and the unbelievable amount of work involved in creating them.

As each new scene is revealed I also have considerable trouble keeping the words "Holy crap!" from flying out of my mouth in front of the smattering of worshippers bent in prayer and contemplation.

Katie points out one figure in particular (regrettably in a nook too dark to photograph), commenting on what a "hot chick" she is.
Inevitably this turns out to be Mary Magdalen and hot she undoubtedly is!
Whooee! Whoever made that panel must have got pretty steamed up while they did it!
This diaphanous vision of Art Nouveau erotic beauty is located (for the curious) around halfway along the right aisle but on a section of wall facing forward toward the altar so any horny member of the congregation would have to crane their neck all the way around to check it out and would therefore be spotted straight away; the priest's voice bellowing out "And if Mister Dive would care to tear his eyes away from the obvious delights of Ms. Magdalen for a moment I am sure we would all be most grateful for his attention."

All things considered I have to admit that this wildly overindulgent display of obscene wealth is a much prettier and longer-lasting way to waste mountains of money than bailing out a load of fatcat bankers.

And so we take our leave (via the shop, where Katie stocks up on postcards) and wander down the side of the Cathedral, past Winston Churchill's old London flat (just behind us in this photo).
During the early part of the Blitz, Winnie would sit up on the roof here in the evenings (often with various dinner guests, including Roosevelt long before the US joined the fight), reclining in his deckchair and fortified with a bottle of brandy and a fat cigar as he angrily watched the East End getting bombed to oblivion and drafted his speeches of defiance.

At the bottom of the road is my office, which we carefully skirt, only stopping for a moment to wave to Fernando the security guy before heading back toward the river and … well, you shall see tomorrow in what shall be - extremely regrettably - my last Katie and Dive post (at least for this year).