Bonhomie

The fact that this blog has finally lost its treasured Triple A rating is in no way a cause for a change of direction. All it means is that I am more determined than ever to continue with the current difficult course of action. Even though I have repeatedly stated clearly that the loss of this rating was the single most important measure of my success or failure, I now maintain that I have succeeded more successfully than if the AAA rating had remained. One could say (and that is just what I'm going to do) that the downgrade is actually an indication that I have exceeded expectations. Not many people can be as tough as I am in the face of so many difficulties, but I will not stray from the path, which is the right one, even though it leads straight off the edge of the biggest cliff you have ever seen.



Now that the biting political satire is out of the way, it's on to the bloke who hands out copies of City AM outside St. James's Park station every weekday. For those unfamiliar, this particular rag is yet another free sheet, with a focus on 'City matters' (and I don't mean Manchester City, either) rather than the celebrity obsessed drivel that graces the Metro and the infuriating and unreadable comment of the Evening Standard. The man at the station makes a point of saying good morning to every person who passes him as they enter or exit. His staccato tone is impossible to miss, as is his unremitting cheerfulness:

"Good morning sirhave a nice daythank you very much. Good morning sirhave a nice daythank you very much. Good morning madamhave a nice daythank you very much..." as he hands over his free fucking newspapers.

There are a couple of things which really wind me up about this. One is the constant barrage of jolly, forced customer service white noise which forms such a backdrop to the modern world. And he's only giving away a paper FFS! The other is the falseness of the greeting, ejaculated a million times a day. Perhaps curmudgeonly of me, but I find myself gnashing my teeth every time I walk past him.

Hopefully, gnashing of the teeth, along with wailing and rending of cloth, will not be a part of the experience when we travel up to Brum on Monday. A good win over Chelsea on Sunday in the end (though thank Christ Joe saved that pen) which should give us some confidence. A win there is vital to keep the rampant Spurs at bay just as it is vital to keep the tiny spark of the championship challenge alive. My prediction: 2-0 City. Sadly (for Stephen Fry as much as anyone else) I don't think the Rags will have much to do to beat Norwich, although they may be tempted to insult the East Anglians by holding back the cream of the crop for the Madrid tie. Still hanging in there, by the most gossamer of threads...

Getting there

The chap's face was almost comical. His eyes were half-lidded and a slightly crooked smile seemed to be playing on his lips. It's a dangerous game to make assumptions I know, but we all do it, and I had him taped as a cross between Harry Belafonte on the Muppet Show and a sardonic geezer you might meet down the pub, sipping on a rum and coke. The tube carriage was absolutely packed, and people were trying, as best they could, to squeeze on and get to work. A stressful time for all. But, as the train was pulling into Turnpike Lane and the doors opened to admit yet more people on, Mr Belafonte began to make grumbling noises.

"For fuck's sake!" he moaned, grudgingly making way, upsetting some of those poor souls who had committed no crime greater than getting the tube at Turnpike Lane instead of Arnos Grove or Wood Green. One man, a slightly battered looking ginger bloke with long hair and a balding pate, looked as if he might take further umbrage and start some vebal aggression at the very least. But it didn't happen. Everyone just got a little prickly and the journey continued.

(I'm sure Kun looks tired in this photo. Can you see the bags under his eyes?)

None of this was touching me too much after last night's stirring fightback against Chelsea; a game in which Samir Nasri at last started to justify some of his enormous transfer fee and showed that he can indeed be a world class player if the mood takes him. Typically French, one might say. All the headlines, for a team which has never been too far from the limelight in any case, were naturally about the Argentine prodigal son (if that is the right term to use) and his sumptuous lay-off enabling Nasri's dink to win the match. I didn't manage to watch, and yet again Talk Sport had the exclusive radio rights, which I find absolutely infuriating. Despite my support for Collymore in the recent racist tweet episode, I can't rate him as a commentator. He talks over his (even more irritating) co-commentator and regularly stumbles over and fluffs his lines in a feeble attempt at football commentary poetry. What's worse, and a sad sign of the times, is the way in which ads are woven into the stuff they say, rather than being suitably quarantined. In the middle of reporting a phase of play, they will suddenly mention some betting shop or other, urging us to punt our hard-earned cash on the next goalscorer or some other shite.

Anyway, the first hurdle is overcome, but there are many more to face before we can rest on our laurels. I can begin to feel a little more confident. Come on City!

Day of Decision

I couldn't make up my mind about going to the Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park today. Well, that's actually a rather major lie. I made my mind up NOT to go there as soon as I saw the armies of tee shirted volunteers spreading out around the Holloway/Tollington Road junction yesterday morning.

You may possibly be aware that organised religion does not play a major part in my life, though I was warmly touched by Rowan Williams' gesture (BTW, isn't 'orotund' a marvellous word?) the other day, coming in as it did for such pathetic opprobrium. How dare a man of god question war? Really!

I do find myself getting a little irked at the harmless Presbyterians (or whatever they are) trying to coax me into a Thursday lunchtime session at their chapel as I meander back from my baguette munching in the park, but this UCKG lot really do get my goat.

Foremost among their list of crimes is of course the exorcism shit, and the involvement of one of their pastors in the Victoria Climbie case. Any organisation which can foster this kind of crap needs to be closed down with immediate effect, is all I can say.

In addition to that, they have taken over the building mentioned above, and are now looking to get their claws into another in Walthamstow - though not without a fight. But really, I just can't stand the way they are so damn well prepared. Aforementioned volunteers were all uniformed up, with the burning D for Decision Day logo prominently displayed on their chests; the printed material of the very highest quality, and the whole thing smacking of a military operation. Where the hell do they get their money from? Bastards.

Snob

What the fuck is it with Sundial (I love it that there are used copies of puzzle books for sale on Amazon, btw)?

Not sure how many people who read this will be familiar with the brain-twisting quiz to be found in the Currant Bun every day, but it was always a staple (along with George & Lynne on sunbathing, sauna, or even 'housework' days) when I was a young pup. And we always return to our youth I'm told, so I dipped into the thing just this evening for a spot of nostalgia in these dangerous times.

For those who don't know, Sundial is a Reader's Digest type coffee break challenge (I always loved Rich Tea fingers liberally dabbled in milky Nescafe) printed daily in the nation's favourite rag. There are 9 letters, cunningly arranged in an old-skool phone dial shape with a slightly larger fonted letter in its middle. Your mission - should you choose to accept it - is to make as many words of four letters or more as possible whilst using the middle letter in each one. Plurals and proper names are not allowed, neither is using the same letter more than once. So far so good, you might think; but this would not be taking into account the propensity of the paper's editors to compute the maximum quantity of obscure words possible and then inflict humiliation on their readership by setting impossibly high standards.

I've always thought that my vocabulary - though not Churchillian - was at least not too shabby, but I have struggled to attain even the level of 'Great For Kids' on every occasion that I have bent my mind to this particular lexicographical teaser.

Below are some examples (those words with which I was not initially familiar but later remembered have been excluded, but please be assured that these were - to say the least - obscure) from yesterday's puzzler:

apgar (I dare you to find a definition without resorting to a proper dictionary, for I could not...)
napery (I'll give you this one. A collection of household linen!)
parang (without Google, not easy, and some ambiguity is evident)
parget (h'mm - though may go some way to explaining Pargeter)
paten
peart (?)
tapa (not the singular of tapas)
tarpan (Get real!)
trepang (Of course! How could I have not known that?)

It's always really rankled that I have rarely been able to achieve the aforementioned 'Great for Kids' score on Sundial, let alone a 'good' or 'excellent' rating for adults. I mean, no offence, but purveyors of the Bun are not exactly renowned for their extensive vocabularies, are they?

For the record, employing the dubious 'venti' I managed to achieve 23 without internet assistance, with a 'Great For Kids' bar set at 20 and a 'Good' rating at 26. The 'Excellent' standard of 31 was ridiculously out of reach.

But maybe I'm just being a bit of a sneb.

Bless me

I always try to resist the zeitgeist. I mean, what could I possibly add to the multitude of voices screaming about this shit or that shit? How will my voice ever be heard amid all that scramble? So I am deliberately contrary, most of the time. But just occasionally, events happen which make you contribute to the brouhaha, and so it was on this particular spring night.



As per, the Arsenal (fuck the Rags, btw, come on you Barca!) got in the way of my journey home and made the commute extra-specially hellish. Needless to say, the day I had had at work was absolutely tremendous, and really set me up for being squashed onto a jam-packed tube train with a load of sweaty Gooners and my laptop bag at half past five of an evening. I tweeted earlier about the plane trees, and their seedy residue which is the bane of our lives here in Central London. This year it seems more extensive than ever, filling the air with dense clumps of green seed pods, which catch in your hair, drop into your beer and turn into a staining dust on your clothes if you try and wipe them off. Eating lunch in the park is a no-no, unless you like your sandwich to be liberally sprinkled with plane tree seeds. Which I don't.


So today, amidst the Arsers, I squeezed on to the tube and tried my best not to get too close to anyone else whilst shuffling my bag between my feet, and ducking my head to avoid the closing doors. However, no sooner had the train moved off than I began to feel a tingling in my nostril. A tingling which was not to be lightly cast aside, unless I had endured the tough regime of a Horse Guard on full feather-under-the-nose tickling fatigue. My hands were occupied, so I followed the current DoH guidance and launched my sneeze into the crook of my elbow. This was ineffective against its unexpected force and some aerosol droplets ricocheted off and into the limited ether surrounding me. I could tell by the flinch of a woman standing next to me that there had been some impact of my bodily fluids where they were not wanted, a fact given extra credence by her pathetic attempts to edge away from me even though there was nowhere for her to go. I hastily, but too late, pulled a tissue from my pocket and swiped at the silvery line above my top lip.

It got worse though, and (wrenching my eyes away from the dark smear of snot spreading in the crook of my elbow) as we arrived at the next station and I noticed her hurriedly raise a finger to her cheek, performing a discreet wipe-away motion of her own. I realised then with my own sense of horror that I had emitted into her face! Albeit accidentally.

In a very English way, she tried to pretend that nothing had happened before scurrying into the newly vacated space in front of her, as far as possible away from me, the potential pandemic carrier.

What the?

As I was getting on the bus to go home this evening, I was waiting politely for the woman in front of me to board before shuffling through the bloody snow to stroke my Oyster on the reader. I realise that this (I mean the waiting politely part, as getting on buses after work is probably something I share with many people, whereas stroking Oysters may not be quite so shared an experience) is something of an alien concept for many, but - what can I say? I yam what I yam. First of all, another woman half-barged past me from behind just at the moment that I saw it was clear to move forward, which meant that I - unintentionally - blocked her path.



"Right, OK..." she said, in a very tutting sort of way, before stepping back to ostentatiously peer at the display panel, clearly changing her mind about the desperately urgent need to get on the Number 3 before anyone else did. I resisted the urge to smack her in the mouth and meekly followed the first woman on board. I could tell by her backpack that she worked in the same place as me, though I had never seen her before. And then came the dreaded error bleep. Plain for all to see, quite blunt in its language, the Oyster reader displayed the 'Not Enough Money' message. For a brief moment, my eyes met those of the driver (if I too had been sporting a moustache, who knows what might have happened?) and I hesitated before executing my own Oyster stroke. The cheapskate woman in front of me blithely proceeded down the bus after a brief double-take at the machine, and the driver knew that he had no option but to act.

"Excuse me..."

I Oystered myself out of the situation, but could not move forward, so stood watching her majestic progress towards the exit doors as she ignored the question. I had been in enough public transport stand-offs to know that - basically - anything could happen, so my breath was, as they say, bated.

"Excuse me..."

"What?" the woman replied - rather rudely, and (incidentally) Germanically I thought - glancing owlishly around as she stalked back to the driver. I slipped past her, dreading the possible outcome, and ensconced myself on the rear-facing back seats.

Up and down

Let's say nothing about Sunday's game. Other than GET HUGHES THE FUCK OUT! NOW!!!1 Whatever the hell was going on when he was appointed, I'll never know, and I can't stomach Mark Bright's smugness about City much longer.

But I won't go on about it. Just another weekend fucked, just another Sunday when I don't want to watch MOTD2 and just another Monday when I don't want to buy the Gruaniad for a lengthy perusal of the game stats and the tables. Just another shit week of pissing rain and freezing winds and hellish days at work unleavened by the small comfort of reliving a win. Thanks a lot Sparky for saying "The form is good." The form is good? What planet are you on, boyo? Fuckwit.

Anyway, no point in ranting about the Welsh rag git and his band of overpaid underperforming so-called stars putting in another piss-poor performance, only this time at home, with two players sent off (why the hell is Gelson Fernandes in the team (or any team for that matter) BTW?) No fucking point in the slightest.

So, I will move on. My observation for today is on the ovine nature of the human race. Yesterday, I went for my usual Sunday swim at Cally Pool. The pool is divided into slow, medium and fast lanes (For the record, I always stick to the middle lane, being neither too fast nor too slow) with the latter usually taken over for swimming lessons on Sunday mornings. Yesterday, for some reason, the fast lane was open for the dolphins among us until quite late, when one of the attendants came over and set out the 'Lane Closed - Lessons In Progress' sign. At the same time, he moved the directional notice in front of the other two lanes, so that the flow of swimming was now to be clockwise instead of anti-clockwise. I was halfway down the lane when this happened and could see those ahead of me suddenly bunching together at the wall. As I approached, I could hear some murmurings and was amazed when I finally approached the end that everyone had decided we must reverse our direction and follow the exhortation on the holy sign. There was no good reason to do this, but everyone did. Christ knows why.

Rhiwaboninho

Football and prostitutes. You can't trust them.

Interestingly enough I was having a shit in the local Weatherspoons this morning (I wasn't drinking in there, but I was desperate - hence the need to lug three bags of Waitrose's finest into the stinking cubicle) and having a quick glance over the back page of... the football section of the Screws while I did so. It was immensely unsatisfying, since you ask, as I had to virtually contort myself just to get a decent heave on - not to mention unfolding the Screws - but, needs must when the, er, devil drives.

Reading the paper, I was (as I often am) drawn to the stats (used to be called Carling Opta, but now called something far less sexy and not at all beer-related. I do wonder what these stats are based on. Do teams of people watch every game with a check sheet, marking off assists, pass completions, etc? If they do, do they get either free entry to games or free TV subscription? If so, I think I will be applying) on each section of the game. What happens if they need a piss or something? TiVO, probably.

Anyway, City players rarely feature on these lists for obvious reasons, but I noticed that the most glamorous section (the strikers of course!) featured a certain Brazilian in second place, just behind that little Portuguese cunt. Which was great, but really only to be expected for the princely sum paid for him. Many have opined that Robinho has not been worth the money (but, after all, who could be said to be worth that much money in any case?) but the stats do not lie. Or do they? The young lad with a strange clerical collar who thought he had signed for Utd is a consistent performer and blame cannot be laid at his door for the sack of shit which was today's game, IMHO.

No no. We can all see where the blame lies - firmly on the border of England & Wales, though obviously with a huge bias to the Welsh side.

Well done Lewis BTW.

Shifting sands

UPDATE: Do you see what I mean?

Do you??!!!

On the day that Ramadan begins as well.

What in the world are we coming to? How could things have changed so dramatically in such a short time? Everything these days is time-shifted so that we can avail ourselves of more choice, and yet we have ended up more in thrall than ever before. I wonder if Mr Bell could have had the faintest idea what monumental effects summoning Mr Watson in 1876 would lead to?

Here we are in a world where we can watch time-shifted TV programmes on our mobile phones via 3G - can save an entire series, if we have enough memory, to watch en bloc at our leisure. I have not yet got into TiVo or any of that stuff, because I honestly don't mind that much if I miss any programme on telly. It'll be on again in due course, and often a lot sweeter for it.

Of course, nowhere is the time-shift phenomenon more apparent than in the world of football. I mean, FFS, kicking off a game at 3.25 on a Thursday afternoon! Where's the sense in that? Also, far too early in the season to be biting your nails over a penalty shoot-out in some crappy sports bar off The Strand. But the best aspect of this Stargate style existence has to be the opportunity to return to a golden age. I was chatting with the checkout lady at Waitrose yesterday, who jokingly asked me if I was 21 (though the legal age to buy alcohol is 18, the Government has again launched a lame initiative called Challenge 21) as she put the wine through.

"Wish I was!" I said. She laughed, and said:

"Do you know, I'm not sure I do..." After a pause I said:

"Oh I definitely do." She didn't laugh again, but it was true, what I said to her. I really do wish I was 21 again. Not with any caveats, such as 'knowing what I know now' or anything, just... 21.

Come on City!

Dr Rance

A good deal of train travel over the past and coming days. What joy. A pleasant long weekend in Shropshire is at an end, with a trip to York tomorrow and a long haul up to Shropshire again next week.

At the risk of offending some of the gentler flowers among my readership, I'm afraid I must raise an issue with customer service today on the 13.30 Birmingham New Street to London Euston. The connecting train we were on only arrived 5 minutes before and, New Street being what it is, there was an element of panic about reaching the platform in time. No need, as the service had not yet pulled in, but the trials and tribulations were not over so easily.

We were in Coach C. Not bad, directly adjacent to the 'shop' and only a carriage away from the hallowed First Class, but our ingress was blocked by a yellow plastic crate toting drone who was replenishing the stock of overpriced sandwiches, and - needless to say - making a meal (let's say a banquet) of it. As I approached, pack-horse like, he waved me away wordlessly, so I shepherded the kids towards the throng who were pushing and shoving through the adjacent door, their own passage blocked by yellow crate boy, thus causing a slightly flustered bottleneck in the piss-stinking vestibule leading to Coach C.

As politely as I could, I pushed myself forward amid the whistles and mewling kids, only to hear a call from the platform behind me. I turned and peered over the top of my rucksack to see a greying, balding man gesticulating at me.

"If you don't move forward," he whined, "The train can't move!"

There was no way for me to move forward, blocked as I was by the tide of humanity awaiting the decant of the BLTs and Aberdeen Angus and Davidstow cheddar burgers. Indignantly and loudly, I told said oleaginous Virgin employee exactly what the situation was, but just as I spoke, the sandwich loading operation was completed, the delivery man alighted, and the sweating hordes started to move forward into the Nirvana of airline seating, free wi-fi and endless announcements.

And here's the cherry on the icing on the cake.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said loudly enough for all to hear, "He's here, on the platform!" At that moment, I have to say, I hated the little bastard. Can he justify speaking to a 'customer' in such a way? The kids were with me, so I bit my tongue, but, by Christ, I wanted to tear him off a strip.

Later, in his capacity as train manager, he came to validate our tickets. It so happened that we had managed to lose one of the kids' ones, but he let it go - though he did make a show of demanding to see the Family Railcard, which I produced with a flourish, while mentally noting the name on his Virgin Trains ID badge. That really did it. You may not believe me, but he was called Paul fucking Gascoigne.

Calm down

What is it with some people?

I was on the tube recently when the train I was on started to develop a problem. There were already severe delays, so the carriage was absolutely stuffed to the gills. A group of elderly people got on at Covent Garden, fresh from an Alan Ayckbourn matinee, heading back out to their suburban bolt-hole, somewhere beyond even Cockfosters. One of the ladies in the group had a panic-stricken look about her as she clutched on to one of the poles. Mercifully for her, a kindly person, noticing the state she was in, stood up and offered her his seat. She accepted with some haste and gritted her teeth as the train continued its tortuous way north.

As we pulled out of Holborn, the train stuttered several times in the way it does when someone is leaning on the doors, making that loud electrical bang each time it did so. This only served to deepen the poor woman's panic even further, and I began to fear that she would either faint or freak out. Ludicrously, given the sardine conditions, the driver tetchily told everyone off for leaning against the doors. We really had no choice, and he must have known that. Behind me, another man had recently boarded and he tutted and sighed every time the bang went off and the train shuddered to a standstill, becoming increasingly agitated.

At last, we came into Russell Square - a station where relatively few people alight, but where, due to the delays, a large crowd was waiting on the platform - and almost no further passengers could squeeze in. I thanked my lucky stars that I had secured a safe, if squashed, berth and waited for the train to move off. One more stop and all would be well. The door alarms sounded and the doors closed. But the train did not move. Again they opened. Exasperated man muttered "Jesus!" under his breath and frightened lady clutched her knees whilst looking skyward. Beep beep beep. Doors close. No movement. Doors open. Man sighs and tuts. Beep beep beep. Doors close. No movement. Driver warns passengers not to lean against doors. Doors open. Man says "God!" and tuts again. And so on.

Finally, the driver tells us that the train has developed a fault with its doors and will need to be taken out of service. The man becomes almost incandescent, picks up his bag and forces his way off the train onto the packed platform. I followed close behind and, realising the futility of waiting for another train, decide to fight my way to the exit, into the rain and onto the buses. In the lift, three young women on a shopping trip were discussing their options.

"I was forced to go on a bus once," said one.
"Was it hellish?" I asked ironically. A balding man who was standing by the door laughed at my little quip and I immediately felt guilty.

Animated

I have a friend who says he doesn't like animated films. The subject arose as a result of my visit to the local Odeon to see the latest Pixar outing, Ratatouille ("rat.a.too.ee" - how annoying is that? Are we really so dumb that we can't pronounce that word?)

Anyhoo, some of the reviews I've read were very complimentary about the film (in particular of Peter O'Toole, and who can argue with that?) saying (yet again) that it was as good as Toy Story. How many times that's been said I don't care to remember, and so far - including Ratatouille - it has proved to be false. So I took the kids along and was a little disappointed.

Don't get me wrong - this is an accomplished film, IMO - with some goodish gags, nice animation and reasonable characters. I'm not sure about the female love interest, and the fat brother could do with further development, if you see what I mean. He's fat. Ha ha. It just doesn't reach the heights of perfection that TS (and to a slightly lesser extent TS2) achieved. There are a couple of reasons for this, I think.

Notwithstanding the Great Mr O'Toole's performance, the idea of an arch-villain (I know that he doesn't end up as an arch-villain - hoping I'm not dropping a spoiler here - but he does take that role until just before the end) being a critic doesn't really curdle the blood or shiver the spine in the way that an arch-villain should. Think of Sid. No food critic he.

Second, and this is endemic these days, the film was too damn' long. Second act syndrome badly effected the pacing, and like most modern animations (and even live action) movies, it could and should have ended at least half an hour earlier than it did. I don't feel that it's right that I'm itching to get out of the cinema when I'm watching a children's movie.

But, it was better than The Incredibles (what's the point of that film?) better than Finding Nemo (good moments, not strong enough over the entire length) not as good as Monsters Inc... wait... Not only is this a little Pepsi Blue (and do Disney Pixar, like, need any more promotion?) I think it would also benefit from a little listifying.

So here, in reverse order, are my top 10 modern (since 1994, so that excludes Aladdin, The Little Mermaid and Beauty & The Beast - all good) and mainstream animated movies. Classics (this term does not include Oliver & Company, no matter what it says on the DVD packaging) are a whole other bottle of bees and for another day. As for my animation unfriendly friend. Pshaw! The films listed are at least as good as any live action movie, so there!

10. Small Soldiers. Scary. I like the bit where the dolls are climbing all over the girl, and the sinister corporation element is always a winner for me, no matter what the film.

9. The Hunchback Of Notre Dame. There are a couple of annoying things about this, namely the smudgy finish to Quasimodo's face and in particular his all-American voice and demeanour. However the darkness of Frollo is genuinely dark, he is a well rounded villain. And the early scene with Quasimodo's mother is wonderfully done.

8. Wallace & Grommit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit. English. Great gags. I'm extremely saddened that the Nick Park venture with Dreamworks didn't take off in the US, because we are talking pure quality. Nuff said.

7. Antz. Woody Allen. Bit of Ovitz digging at Mouschwitz. I need to watch it again.

6. Ice Age. Apart from Sid's too zany face (you don't have to try that hard, guys) this has some tremendous slapstick moments, a brilliant running gag with the squirrel, and a decent villain. Close contender with No. 5.

5. Monsters Inc. Some pointless filling I felt, but overall a real barrel of laughs. The door concept is superbly realised, and Billy Crystal excels.

4. Two in a row, followed by two in a row. Shrek 2. What's not to like about Mike Myers? Not even the Cat in the Hat. Although a little more mannered than the first in the franchise, it's still a stand-up film.

3. Shrek. Rightly generating a franchise. Having seen all three, the deterioration hasn't been too terrible at all. Shrek makes me laugh. A lot.

2. Not in the best tradition of Sir Jimmy Saville, I have removed the suspense from this countdown with my earlier comments. At Number 2 is the mighty Toy Story 2 (please read that link. There are some seriously crazy people in the USA, and the pastiche is not too far off the reality, I can assure you). Where it falls behind its even more illustrious forerunner is hard to define. I used to think it was to do with the music, but I love Jessy's song. Perhaps it's the overly retro nature of the Woody franchise... In any case, I'm splitting hairs.

1. Now then, now then guys and gals. In with a bullet, and not likely to be dislodged for some time yet, in a Bohemian Rhapsody kind of way... It's... Disney Pixar's timeless masterpiece... Toy Story. I thank yew.

disney

animation

Comment is Free?

Once again, I'm fucking narked with the Grauniad's CiF section. Why?

Because I read an excellent Catherine Bennett piece about David Cameron, his wife and family, and their blatant marketing of the various products they sell when they're out on the stump. I felt the need to comment on this, as I thought there were parallels to be drawn with Gordon Brown's nauseating cosying up to the City and the arms industry, and ultimately a point to be made about personality politics and the paucity of choice facing the average voter. The article, and those comments which were published, can be found here.

I was one of the earliest posters, so was fully expecting to see my comment, and was hoping for some responses to it, but it didn't materialise. At all. It is possible to imagine all sorts of reasons why this happened. Perhaps a shadowy figure from MI5 or SIS was standing at the right elbow of the moderator and grumbled darkly when my comment arrived in the inbox:

"This one cannot go through, it is too dangerous." Before flipping open his mobile phone and getting on to GCHQ.

Maybe even now, my keystrokes are being monitored by Putin's boys as part of a plan to use me in their ongoing plans for world domination.


Perhaps Emily Bell is being held against her will in a backroom at Farringdon Road, being prevented from allowing publication of the truly subversive material she really wants to by a gang of organised criminals working on behalf of Downing Street.

Or, even less credible than the scenarios above, the temp appointed by the Grauniad to moderate comments forgot to hit the publish button.

Who knows? It just really gets on my tits that the Guardian, OR ANYONE ELSE, can decide whether or not what I say is published or not.

Anyway, I'm very happy for Doris Lessing.

The Decline of Horror

Picture from The Hollywood News

I read an article in today's Grauniad which really pissed me off. Don't worry, I don't intend to launch into the church again - there's quite enough discussion on that front at the moment - although in some ways those weirdos are again behind the whole thing.

What I'm really incensed about is the creep of censorship, the insidious ways in which those who deem themselves better than us are controlling what we can watch, what we can read or listen to, and even how we can celebrate.

Now, as reported in the article I link to above, two major supermarkets (Sainsbury's and Asda - neither of which I would be seen dead [hurr-hurr] in anyway) are no longer going to sell traditional, horror-based stuff for Halloween, focusing instead on 'alternative items' - such as hair braids for god's sake - following representations from the Church of England. These idiots apparently want to see Halloween as a celebration of the victory of good over evil, whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean.

I detect common cause with the ever-anodyne Disney corporation. There's something creepy, something that makes me uneasy about Disney versions of Halloween costumes - perhaps more than any other of the commercialised, sanitized dross marketed to kids these days. Princesses have nothing whatsoever to do with the tradition of Halloween, and should be banned from the event all together. Am I alone in wanting to pull out a .44 Magnum when I see Disney's (NOT AA Milne's) Piglet peeking out from behind a Jack-o'-Lantern? And as for that execrable Lumpy... well, don't get me started, that's all.

When I was young, we used to hear about American rituals through the imported kids stuff we'd get, but we did things differently ourselves. I read with interest that the custom of Trick or Treating started in the British Isles, thinking of it as very much a Stateside thing. For me, it was the Guy Fawkes Emmanuel Goldstein-fest. We saved up our money-raising/ begging/ menacing of the old folks for the run-up to bonfire night (which of course has a considerably longer pedigree for us inhabitants of these Northern Isles) stuffing newspaper into some old clothes and standing next to it on street corners, or - if you were moved on by some local Biffa Bacon - pushing the rubbish effigy from door to door in an effort to raise much-needed funds for Mojos, etc. Though bastardised, and somewhat to my chagrin, the Trick or Treat ritual - with a heavy American accent - is strongly re-asserting itself now, if slightly dampened as a result of the rampant fear of paedophilia that permeates everything these days.

All of this milquetoast shite is symptomatic of the censorship malaise we are currently suffering from. Sky Movies is not - quite - the most infuriating example, although their 'guidelines' or whatever bollocks they choose to call them, are not just handed down from the bbfc - they also apply their own ratings. So, the Dirty Digger and his orcs are presuming to tell me whether or not one of their programmes is suitable for me to watch. They even put pictures of guns or syringes and crap like that on screen to 'help me make an informed choice'. The bastards.

Far worse are the po-faced little warnings on film trailers - even on utterly harmless fare like Ice Age or some such - telling us that the film contains scenes of 'mild peril'. Will somebody please tell me, in the name of Astarte, WHY? What possible purpose can such a warning serve? The film-makers have already subjected themselves to censorship in the making of the film, with the legal might of the studio then checking it out before release. All of this in order not to risk offending that freak Michael Powell at the FCC. (It has always bugged me, BTW, that his father pronounces his name 'Coal-in'. What's wrong with good old-fashioned Colin?) I am an adult, quite a childish one admittedly, but an adult nonetheless. I can make up my own mind, thank you very much.

Irritations

Update - 2/10/07. Google have responded to my phish report. The account was a spoof Gmail account in addition to being a phish. I hope they track 'em down and cut their balls off. That will make things better for people.

This week, I will write of passwords.

Like a lot of folks round here, I divide my UGC activities between home and (ahem) work. As I am a Mac user at home, and a Windows sufferer in the office, this means I am also cross-platform, though this is increasingly less of an issue.

One example is my Gmail account, which is probably the one I access most often. At home on the Mac, the little box next to 'Remember Me On This Computer' (BTW, I haven't checked the box on that last link. It may not be wise, but if you do so, please tell me what happened) is checked, but I recently changed all of my passwords and the Mac remembers the old one, so if I am not watchful, I have the (admittedly small) inconvenience of going to the password verification page once the first attempt fails. I have tried removing the check, thinking to enter the new password the next time and then to re-check the box, but still, the old password keeps auto-filling.

At work, auto-fill is not an option on almost all website logins (cookies and security or something - I do know that this can be a problem, especially in a shared workstation environment) BUT my Gmail login page remembers the new password anyway.

On the subject of Gmail, spam seems to be on the increase. Not a problem for a long while, but I've had 2 spasms recently, and 1 rather lame attempt at phishing (the email purported to be from The Bank Of America and, as a valued customer - snort - they were seeking to verify my account details. It came from another Gmail account - not even bankofamerica@gmail.com, but some cruddy name and number combination - and the copyright symbol at the bottom was actually a @)

Now, on to Twitter. On the Mac, Twitter autofills my user name and password as soon as I enter the first letter of the former - 3 keystrokes and I'm in. Lovely. At work, I have to tap away manually.

Metafilter - at home, I appear to have (missus) an automatic login - as soon as I hit Login hard enough, I'm straight in, which doesn't seem right as anyone could get in there far too easily. Know what I mean? MeFi doesn't even have a 'Remember Me On This Computer' option. Go figure. At work, manual entry is again required. On a daily basis.

Flickr is OK despite what some people I know have said about entering a lost password hell of Kafkaesque proportions. I log into 2 accounts, and at home, it simply remembers the last name I logged in under, with an option to change user name if necessary. At work, manual completion again. It's all very odd - no doubt due to IP addresses, firewall verifications, etc. etc.

Half moon glasses

A box of Spoon Size Shredded Wheat. This finally settles a long-running argument, which has unjustly gone against me for so long

Only a single strand for my irritation this week, bile fans, but it will be a carefully trodden path, as it is one strewn with landmines.

For verily, I speak of: CLOTHES!

Some of the people who read these musings will, I know, be spluttering into their spoon size Shredded Wheat at the very idea that I could write anything about clothing. No Hadley Freeman, me.

However, this is a specific style of dress about which I will speak, having observed a perpetrator of such yesterday. This is not one person, remember, this is a type. Let me paint a picture.

The man (it is always a man) is in his late 50s. He has grey hair, but it is spiked and styled in a manner more befitting someone 2o years younger. Ageism is not my thing, believe me, and I'm all for this grey revolution (not really) we are apparently undergoing (hordes of wealthy pensioners can be seen jumping straight from the Northern Rock queue to a week's kayaking in the Zambezi, I hear) but, let's be appropriate, shall we? Crew cut. OK - especially where coverage is reduced. Short business style, OK. Even (if you still have sufficient active follicles) slightly long and unkempt. OK. But not spiked. 'mK? 'mK??

Next up, the shoes. Again, they're simply not appropriate. Little, almost pointy, Merrells or some such. Brown, or distressed white with stripes if not the distinctive 'M'. Not too much wrong with that of itself, but when combined with the rest of the ensemble... No.

And it's NO if only for this one very good reason: Cargo pants. There must be a time and a place for these. Perhaps when piloting an aircraft? Think All Saints. That's all I'm saying.

There are only 3 more elements. The first is the most minor, but it all contributes. It's a t shirt. Maybe Firetrap, but I won't dwell on that.

The last two combined are the piece de resistance. A. Jumper. Over. The. Shoulders. A la French tourists. I mean, really! And to cap it all off, a pair of over-ornate half-moon glasses (Chanel, or equivalent marque) perched on the end of the nose.

Weekly irritations

Picture via Wikipedia - Andrew Ward (glafRo4s) from Biddeford, United States

Random irritations day has been delayed. Glad to see that I am now listed on the Best Ian Hyland Posts aggregator, as my opinion of him as a fifth rate hack is now being registered automatically.

Anyway, to press on. Random irritations last week:

Naomi Klein in the Guardian. Now, I happen to agree with many of NK's views, and it is perhaps a good thing that debate is being raised on some of the issues on which she speaks so eloquently, but... To echo some of the points made on CiF this week, she is somehow glossy. And the way the Guardian is running this whole Shock Doctrine thing seems to be self-contradictory. It comes across as an extended book plug. Also, a poster on MeFi said that reading NK's work felt like listening to Alanis Morisette. Heh.

Next up - High School Musical. Need I say more?

More Random Irritations

Ally Ross strikes again. Maybe I should make Fridays List Day, or Annoyances Day...

There are a lot of cyclists on the road at the moment. We are always reading (thanks Ken) that the numbers are going up year by year.

Two things.

People who ride with the saddle in too low a position. Can't they see it? I can. The knees up around the chest every time they turn the pedals. It hurts me just to look at it.

People who ride in too low a gear. For some reason I become infuriated when I see people riding along the flat on the lowest register imaginable. I could forgive them if they were doddery or infirm, but invariably they appear young and fit. Why do they do this? What do they do when confronted with a real hill?

bikes

I love a good list

There is a tradition, started by the occasionally fine Ally Ross, and pathetically mimicked by the rarely sort-of-readable-but-only-because-I-am-obsessed-with-reading-TV-reviews, Ian Hyland, of the random irritations/random gold listings.

Referring back to my previous post about coffee shops (I love self-referencing almost as much as I love lists) and to my previous post about the sudden appearance of a group of naked women on a bus (well, I did say...) I wanted to compile a list of random irritations about living in London, along with a list of random goodness about the same subject. Given the moebian nature of the web these days, I have no doubt that most (if not all) of the items listed will be instant old hat. But who cares, right? So here goes:

Random Irritations

Escalator (and even more so – bus) queue jumpers. There is a line!

Get IN THE LINE!!

Tube loiterers blocking corridors while staring open-mouthed at directional signage

Automated announcements on tube trains ("Please remember to take all your belongings with you when leaving the train at this station.")

No sleeping signs in shop windows

No drinking signs in parks



No smoking signs in shops where nobody has EVER smoked and where nobody ever WILL smoke.




Brass hat bullshit.

Over-enthusiastic chuggers (all chuggers)

Locked squares for residents only

The smell of McDonalds

The smell of Subway. Subway in general. Six inch or foot long? Cheese on both sides? Honey mustard dressing? WTF?

New Kent Road

Brewery Road

Random gold

Cycling through Regents Park in the morning (not in the evening)

Cycling over the Millennium bridge

Encountering good tube etiquette (is there no such thing as a bus alternative?)

The smell of the tube (really!)

The smell of a good greasy spoon. A good greasy spoon (strictly speaking, this is an Oswestry reference, but I just had to put it in) in general. Fresh crusty bread, nicely done bacon, an excellent cup of tea. Lovely.

Football matches in Finsbury Park (OK, so this is Hackney Marshes, but I couldn't find any pictures of a match in Finsbury Park)


The City of London dragons

The accordion player I once heard playing near the Pirate Castle on the canal in Camden. Beautiful, haunting sounds that echoed around on a Sunday morning.

Riverbuses

Turnagain Lane

Old Pye Street

Cold Bath Square

bikes

photos

Coffee shop bores

One thing that really gets on my tits is people who hold business meetings in coffee shops. I mean, don't these people have expensive offices they can use?

Oh sure, the old coffee houses used to be about business deals, back in the day when clay pipes were all the rage, but today's equivalent is pale by comparison. There's nothing worse than sitting next to a bunch of suits jabbering on about sales targets, marketing strategies, or whatever else occupies their facile minds. They don't even have the decency to lower their voices. And what, I ask you, could be worse than sitting at an outside table with a group of people, spreading out your paperwork and having a goddamn business meeting? Why not hold the meeting on the bus, complete with Powerpoint presentations on your bleeding Treo or whatever?

Get this: WE ARE NOT INTERESTED!

Coffee shops should be about romantic trysts, or sneaky skiving whilst reading your book or newspaper or Private Eye.