All My Own Worn

Memory's...

2011-12-13T22:37:00.001Z

I used to play the violin.

And when I tell you that I used to play the violin, I mean I could still play the violin now, if I had a violin.

And a bow.

If I had a violin and bow right now I could make that violin make a noise. Without a bow I could pluck it, or even strum it, but in order to play it 'properly' I would need a bow. And possibly some resin. In the past I could have played it 'properly'. I used to be able to make a violin make a recognisable noise. Sounds, if you will. In the past I could make it 'sing' like a bird. All lilting and harmless and, dare I say, beautiful. Right now I could probably make it sing like someone who didn't want to do bird. All whiny and anxious and, dare I say, shit.

Because that was thirty years ago.

I had violin lessons at junior school. I must ask my Mum, "Why?", one day. It wasn't as if the school had an orchestra. Do you know what I mean?

I mean I could understand it if the school had an orchestra. When I went to secondary school I learned to play the French horn. At least, for a while. The school wrote to my parents suggesting that I was showing an aptitude for music, and that my specific musical skills - so far as they could tell - might lend themselves to me being a successful French horn player (is there any other kind?). Nothing to do with the fact that the school orchestra was running a bit low on numbers in this particular role. I'm not sure exactly what skills I was demonstrating at this juncture, other than "being able to carry a ludicrously shaped musical instrument on and off a coach twice a week in a ludicrously shaped case".

My shins have never been the same since.

Now I can imagine that just being a junior school teacher isn't necessarily enough for most if not some junior school teachers. In exactly the same way as someone who works in an office probably doesn't need to buy another manilla envelope ever again, even the apparent vocational nature of teaching would dictate that there have to be some perks. I've come to realise - in hindsight - that I accidentally witnessed one of these.

My violin lessons used to take place in the school staff room. I've no idea why. It was a small school and had a commensurate staff room. It always felt strangely voyeuristic being in there. Being somewhere only adults should be or have been, when you're less than ten years old, can make you feel vaguely pompous. But my bubble was well and truly burst one day when I glanced up at the wall during one of my violin lessons. Because there, on light green A3 cartridge paper, was the following:

Quote of the Week

"The planes raced off along the wrong way."

I wrote that once.

It's amazing the things you remember. I remember playing football in 1986 like it wasn't 25 years ago.

I remember the name of the team we were playing, and our team losing the game 4-3. I remember the three goals I scored, and I remember, before then, seeing Birmingham versus Nottingham Forest, and the same result. I remember Ian Wallace scoring a hat-trick and ending up on the losing side, and I remember how I imagine he must have felt. I remember half-time in our game. Distinctly. One of the lads - I remember his name - had a new watch. The watch had a stopwatch. And with that stopwatch he had calculated that the centre-back for the opposition was spitting, on average, every 27 seconds. Now I don't want to have to remember this. But it seems like it's one of my go-to memories. One of those things that no matter how long I live, I'll never forget. I might forget birthdays and anniversaries and car tax and car keys, but I'll never forget Richard Coombes. As much as I might want to try to forget - and it's equally and utterly amazing the things you forget - I never will. And when I'm old and senile and I'm clinging onto the very last true memories I have, I'll recall the tale of the spitting boy, and you can imagine the reaction I might get.

I started writing this piece in May 2011 and had nearly finished it at the start of October. Unfortunately I was admitted to hospital on the 19th of October and not discharged until the 18th of November.

The truth is that I don't quite remember where it was going.

I'll be back again sooner.

ROW

2011-08-02T05:52:00.003+01:00

nothing heartbreaking hurtful truthful childish crucial momentary liberating
exhilarating reckless ridiculous rebellious hateful spontaneous insolent
desperate abominable forgivable unforgivable unforgettable trying
paradoxical pertinent poignant landmark dark
necessary false provocative positive
everything trivial painful
unloving unrepeatable
unifying

#musicdiaryproject

2011-04-05T21:37:00.003+01:00

I am indebted to N. Southall Of Dawlish - a man whose passion for music is only outweighed by his inability to laugh like a human - for challenging his wife and the world to listen to music with their ears, and use their minds and fingers to record their experiences on the Internet.

His challenge can be found here.

Not only has he provided me with the inspiration to return to my blog, he has also inspired others.

He is a hepcatalyst.

A New Low

2010-11-07T23:23:00.003Z

I had my first comment in ages and it was from a spambot.

Maybe it's time to give up...

Lovestrokehate

2010-09-02T19:51:00.001+01:00

It's a fact that you're never very far from hating the people that you used to think you loved the most, and the people you're capable of making feel the happiest are the same people you're capable of making feel the most miserable.

Friday Night

2010-08-16T19:42:00.003+01:00

I am in the presence of confident and decent and attractive young men. They run nightclubs for hundreds of people. They drink. They dance. They do it all with consummate ease. They probably don't know their limits but they are comfortable and, for a second, or a minute, or a few hours, they don't care. Or, at least, nothing seems to matter to them because they are happy. They know all the songs and the words and the tunes. They can touch each other or anyone else, in more ways than one. The world is more than their oyster and the paint they carry is every shade of red. And they make me want to cry because they remind me of absolutely every single thing I miss about every single thing.

I must be getting old.

A Chapter In My Life

2010-08-02T07:15:00.001+01:00

I've just come back from Camp Bestival where I told the following tale as part of the early morning open mic slot in the Literary Tent. I wasn't going to post it on here - since about half of it is "old" - but on my way out of the festival, someone - a stranger - stopped me and congratulated me on my performance from earlier in the day. Which was nice...

______________________________________________________

My favourite book is The Catcher In The Rye.

A story probably needs a better first line than this. A chapter can just about get away with it. As long as it's not the first chapter. But a story probably does need a better first line, even if it's only "Once upon a time..."

So yeah, suffice to say that already, even now, even at this comparatively foetal stage in the proceedings, even when it might look like I have absolutely no idea where either I or this tale is going, that I am, effectively, beating around a bush which definitely hadn't been introduced, you were unaware existed, and therefore can't possibly feel any empathy for, I've already spent more time dwelling on this line than is either literally necessary or healthy. So you'll have to forgive the route the rest of this chapter takes.

And that is absolutely not a request, not that it's an order. I'm not rude. It's just the truth.

If I'm honest - and on this occasion I am being honest - I'm not even comfortable calling it a chapter. Calling it a chapter makes it seem somehow more insignificant or, at the very least, less significant. Like it's only a passing moment, like there was a time before it and there will be a time after it. And although I know there was, and although I know there almost certainly will be, that doesn't detract from the fact that the whole of my life, or at least the last three to thirty-five years, have, undeniably, effectively, and ultimately been building up to this point: this sentence: these words: this word, and all I'm asking you to do, if you wouldn't mind, is to cut me some collective slack. So with your permission I'm not going to call it a chapter, I'm going to call it a story. And since I've already mentioned the bush, now I want to tell you about the river and the flying crow.

Because you'll be overjoyed to hear that whilst it would no doubt be easier if this story was a flying crow, this story is actually a river.

In an ideal world all stories would be flying crows - a straight line in any direction it might choose to travel. That's how a river would flow in the same world. The reality is that worlds, as we all know, are rarely ideal, and water, as we all also know, finds the easiest route, and stories, as we also all know too, do something broadly similar. So as much as you or I would love this story to be a flying crow, it's not. It's a river. And whilst it could have started straight or might straighten up at certain points, it's largely a series of meanders with the occasional oxbow lake of irrelevance. This is why it will only sometimes appear to make sense.

I'm of the opinion that the best stories are better read out than read. Only a good book can make me think the opposite. I'm also of the opinion that it's better to be too cold rather than too hot. I remember when it was dead hot. Horrible sticky heat. Hot as in over twenty degrees. And I still miss the centigrade scale.

People annoy me.

I'm a Winter person. I like wearing lots of clothes. If wearing too many layers of clothes was a hanging offence then I'd be dead now. I'd have been hanged years ago. I'd have been dead for years. Hung.

And so you know. This story is largely about the weather. And the fact that there's nothing wrong with starting or finishing a sentence with the word and.

People annoy me when they complain that it's too cold. And I'm not talking about your pensioner who can't afford to put the heating on. In general they don't anyway. They're up to their armpits in shawls and blankets, up to their heads in balaclavas. They haven't got time to be bitter about the bitter weather. They're using their complaint gland to complain about the cost of heating. The people who complain about it being too cold can generally afford another jumper. They generally own gloves. They are generally the same people who complain when the weather's too hot. The weather isn't given a chance. It can't win.

I like extremes of temperature. When you're cold you can always wear more clothes, if you're hot and naked you have problems. Or at least, you know, you might have problems. Some of the time. It depends on other stuff.

I don't mind when it's hot. I still get accused of wearing too many layers of clothes, luckily I can't be formally charged. When it's hot there are hosepipe bans. When it's hot for more than two days it becomes a heatwave. Look it up if you don't believe me. Anyway, it had been dead hot recently and I was on the bus when it started. I don't mind the rain but when it's quite heavy you need a hat or an umbrella.

I'd bought a coat, before the hot spell.

I had needed a coat.

I'd looked for one for quite a while but, try as I might, I couldn't find one which fitted my brief.

It had to be:

1. Cheap
2. Warm
3. Any colour - even brown and
4. Waterproof

I looked everywhere, even in shops which didn't sell coats, all to no avail. I eventually found one which suited me down to the tops of my thighs. I thought twice about buying it straight away because of the label I found stuck to the inside pocket. Instead of not buying the coat I just ripped the label off, and everything was okay. Can you guess what the label said? It said, "NOT TO BE WORN IN THE RAIN".

Anyway, back on the bus, I was wearing my coat at the time, after all, it's never too hot for a coat, but the hood on it doesn't reach my head properly and if I have to put it up my shoulders somehow disappear. And I'm not a big fan of hats. The problem with hats is I don't have the neck for them. Ownership of a head is not actually a prerequisite for carrying off a hat - not in an aesthetic sense at least. You have to have the neck for hats. So I got off the bus and went to buy an umbrella. The thing was I only had a fiver on me and decent ones cost about twice as much. Or at least if anyone asked me how much a decent umbrella costs I'd tell them about a tenner. Not that anyone ever has, or probably ever will, but I think it's just as well to be prepared. I went straight into Debenhams, looking like the Atlantic, found an umbrella that fell within my budget, paid for it, and left.

It was only when I got outside that I realised my mistake. It was a girls one. I had paid five pounds for what was, in effect, a crap parasol. My walk to work only heightened my angst. There were umbrella sales going on everywhere. Decent ones. For less than a tenner. Even in Halfords. I might as well have held a five pound note over my head for all the use my new umbrella was. To be honest it was more of a psychological crutch. In fact it probably would have made a better crutch than an umbrella because the first gust of wind that came my way turned the umbrella inside out and ripped it apart. My umbrella left as a canvasless umbrella corpse. Lying in a bin. Spokes akimbo.

Incidentally, I saw a rainbow the other day and went looking for the crock of gold. When I found them they were complaining about the cost of heating.

So anyway, once upon a time my favourite book was "The Catcher In The Rye", and it still is. I'm loath to get involved discussions about favourites. Favourite book, favourite song, favourite colour, favourite envelope, favourite dental procedure, favourite celebrity whose initials run consecutively in the alphabet, favourite son or favourite daughter - all seemingly random favourites, you might think - still I could give you an answer for them all. It's likely that it's more that I'm not a fan of the word favourite than the idea of choosing a favourite. The irony never escapes me. My favourite book is just a book that I've yet to tire of reading. I'm sure it's a lot of people's favourite book. It's a good book. In fact a google search of the exact phrase, "My favourite book is The Catcher In The Rye" reveals 21,700 matches. In nought point one six seconds. So I know I'm not alone.

And I also know I'm not alone because I have family. A family which, until recently, didn't seem able to produce boys. Since my Dad was born, my family had produced only one boy. Me. Two sisters with three daughters each, and two daughters of my own - all within the last ten years. Plenty of nieces to love to pieces, and daughters to love like I oughta, but the traditionalist in me always wanted a son. I've pretty much always clung to the hackneyed pretension of perpetuating not only my genetic future, but also my surname. Maybe moreso since my Dad died. Don't ask me why, I'm aware how irrational the premise is. And I'm normally quite savvy. Seriously. The statistician in me thought that it might happen one day - and I was quite prepared to keep trying - so long as my partner wanted the same statistician in her.

Eventually dawn broke on that day. And all eleven and a half pounds of that bouncing baby boy made me feel simultaneously shocked, amazed, and unswervingly happy. And for every hour of every waking moment since, every ounce of that child has made me feel even happier and humbled and privileged. And whilst it goes against my natural instincts to publicly declare certain information, if there were ever a moment where I might have neglected to thank my wife for that moment and every moment since, then I do so now.

I'm grateful for this opportunity, and you should be grateful for the opportunity to say whatever you want to say and whatever you have to say. You should hate being edited or censored. You should abhor being banned or silenced. You can't always be responsible for how people react to what you say, and you can't always be held responsible. You put your thoughts out there. They're who you are, your very essence. And once those words are out there, for everyone to read, those words are there to be interpreted however anyone sees fit.

You don't need to back down from them if you know you're right.

You don't have to compromise. There's no such thing as compromise, someone has to give in.

Because if you can't defend your words then you have absolutely nothing worth saying.

And none of this is particularly new, or at least I don't think it is. And none of what you'll read or hear is especially radical or controversial. It's just stuff that has happened. But I don't want to waffle on about it too much. As someone once said, "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do you start missing everybody."

And if you think about that, it's true.

One giant leap for boykind...

2010-06-28T23:03:00.001+01:00

OYO

2010-03-04T23:49:00.003Z

Hello ladies.

Marriage/Tattoo

2009-12-22T14:37:00.002Z

Marriages and weddings are a lot like tattoos.

You should never get married on a whim. You should plan when and where it's going to be. You should consider how much it's going to cost. And you should definitely anticipate an element of pain being involved.

Good times.

Time Flies

2009-11-07T00:12:00.001Z

Loves Of My Life

2009-06-05T21:02:00.001+01:00

April

2009-05-05T21:48:00.002+01:00

February - February + March - owls + nappies = April

February

2009-03-01T21:19:00.001Z

I missed February. I was busy. I was distracted by owls and shit. I'll tell you why later.

Yes, you.

Is It Safe?

2009-01-14T23:23:00.001Z

A recent telephone conversation made me question the number of people who might have died in the dentist's chair. What is the likelihood of me dying at the dentist, and would I be willing to pay £16 a month so that my dependants could benefit from a lump sum payment in such an event? In all of my 37 years I've never heard of such a thing happening. I mean I've watched Marathon Man, but Dustin Hoffman didn't die. And with this half-life of knowledge I feel fairly confident in saying I wouldn't have thought it was such a widespread occurrence that it warranted someone trying to convince me that it could, one day, happen to me.

The chance of me dying at the dentist is pretty slim since, apart from anything else, I've only probably been to the dentist once in the last, maybe, twenty years. I know that's not a very good record, and it's not a claim to fame, or a boast, or an endorsement, or a recommendation, or a condonance. It's just a vague fact. But I've never had a filling in my whole life: I've always been pretty lucky with my teeth.

Apart from twice.

The time I had to have my four front teeth pulled out...

I must have been about seven or eight years old: at junior school, and our class had 'games'. As the class assembled outside, and before the teacher got there, all the boys in the class decided to have a race. Because that's what boys do. We were probably told not to by our teacher. Because that's what teachers do. So starting from the wall we had to run to the logs and back. First one to touch the wall wins. Because that's what boys do.

Cigarettes and alcohol have long since rendered such a contest almost impossible. Two gippy knees too. But back in the day I was a nippy little shit, so I fancied my chances. Only Christopher Pearce stood in my way. And, in fact, stand in my way he did, because having raced to the logs and heading back to the wall stride for stride, our legs somehow became entangled and I plunged teeth first into the wall.

My teeth weren't actually knocked out straight away, more 'knocked back' into my mouth. Half hanging there, half not. Prematurely useless. Clinging onto my gums. Haphazard. I can still remember the crunch of each tooth as the dentist pulled them out, one by bloody one.

The time I chewed a pen...

Roughly twenty years later I'm back. Nothing of any real note had occurred to my teeth before The Wall Incident, and very little since. Unfortunately I'd cracked a tooth on a pen a week or so beforehand, and a week of tooth pain - easily the most painful pain in the world with the possible exception of childbirth, waking up during a hip replacement operation, and standing bare foot on an upturned plug - was enough to send me back to the chair.

The dentist suggested some sort of root canal treatment, but I'd already been warned of the expense/pain/fruitlessness of such a procedure and was to immediately ask for less urinesque extraction. I paid £14 for the privilege of having one of my teeth pulled out which remains, to this day, among the best pounds I've ever spent. You might be able to imagine my amazement when one week later I received a letter from the 'practice' informing me that they had undercharged me for removing my tooth, and would I mind paying them thirteen more pounds as it should have, you know, been £27?

What were they going to do? Put it back???

So that's it.

That's a brief history of my mouth.

All those words and all that nonsense, just because I thought I heard someone say AXA Dental Death Plan.

The Twelve Days Of Christmas (Again)

2008-12-15T23:40:00.000Z

I saw another Nativity Play last week, and this reminded me of this...

I saw my two daughters in their first Nativity Play this week. It was a heart-warming and surreal affair. Singing donkeys playing xylophones and stuff, you know how it is. It reminded me of the unswerving and overwhelming love I have for my children, and it reminded me of Christmas. And when I thought about love and about Christmas it brought to mind the song The Twelve Days of Christmas, a song I don't think I've ever heard sung properly.

I mean I've heard it attempted. Everyone at least gets it right up until five gold rings. In fact the whole song revolves around five gold rings. If you've forgotten how many pipers are piping, or lords are a-leaping you can rest assured that on the fifth day it was DEFINITELY five gold rings that my true love gave to me. And if you sing it with enough gusto the rest of the song hardly matters. Everything between five gold rings and a partridge in a pear tree is sung as the longest word that has ever appeared in a song.

"Fourcallingbirdsthreefrenchhenstwoturtledoves, AND A PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREEEEEE."

Anyway. The thing is, I'm reckoning that this "true love" person was one hell of a rich mother-fucker, and obviously I'm having to make a few assumptions.

Firstly there's the packaging issue. Most of the stuff is alive, so we're not in bubble-wrap territory. And what's the deal with all the live creatures anyway? What is the method behind the madness? Why a pear tree? Was it just the alliteration?

Whatever.

I'm not particularly concerned with the events leading up to the twelve days of Christmas, and I'm not overly worried about understanding the psyche behind the purchases. I'm more interested in using as much hapless rhetoric and assumptive absurdity as possible. I'm thinking the deliveries were made in person, by the "True Love". Most of the information I have on prices is going to have to be pretty sketchy. I'm figuring that the whole lot is going to be pretty expensive, so in the absence of fact there'll be a bit of educated guesswork along the way.

For the purposes of this exercise, "My True Love" is a he/him/boyfriend, and "Me" is a she/her/girlfriend. And if you've got a problem with that, stop reading now.

Ready?

___________________________________________________________

Ok. So. Day one. The first day of Christmas. A partridge in a pear tree.

Now a pear tree, depending on the type of pear, is going to set you back about £17. The thing is, where the cost of this whole twelve days of Christmas thing starts to mount up, is the fact that each of the gifts is duplicated on each of the remaining days. So a partridge in a pear tree is given on the first day and each of the remaining eleven days.

Yes, I know, it's complicated.

Partridge meat costs about £7 per kilogram and the average weight of a partridge is about 500 grams, so that's about £3.50 per partridge. But how do you compare the cost of a dead partridge to a live one? I could compare the price of a pig to the price of bacon and work out some sort of dead:alive cost ratio index but, to be honest, I don't think there's a lot of point comparing a pig to a partridge. Turkey seems more festive, and more apt. I don't know if turkey prices go up at Christmas, necessarily. It's been a while since I studied supply and demand and now I'm looking into this, it's apparent that I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

Ok, major assumptions. You're going to have to run with me on this.

You can pick up a box of 10 dead partridge(s) for £47. Call it a fiver per partridge. Now, thinking out loud here, but thinking slowly... a... live... partridge... must... cost... less... than... a... dead... one. Right?

I mean, if you're going to sell ten dead partridge in a box, there has to be some sort of mark-up, unless you've raised them since they were eggs, or whatever. I can't imagine that you'd get a lot of waste product from a dead partridge. Do they use their feathers on shuttlecocks or anything? Not sure. Then there are economies of scale. If you buy in bulk the price per partridge has to be less than buying individual partridge. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a live partridge is probably going to cost about three quid. This will fall nicely in line with the £17 pear tree and make things easier to work out when the time comes.

There's no point in making it more complicated than it has to be, yeah?

Moving on. Turtle doves.

Day one was sweet. Granted that perfume might have been a more suitable choice, but the partridge and pear tree were a lovely thought. It probably would have been a bit of a surprise to get another partridge and another pear tree on day two, but the two turtle doves would have been a pleasant distraction. Fluttering away. Being turtle doves.

Now my basic knowledge of turtle doves is pretty slim as, coincidentally, is my knowledge of turtles and, indeed, doves. I'm more of a "know a little about a lot" kind of bloke. That's me.

Turtle doves are, essentially, free. They "occur" naturally. Although so do partridges and pear trees, and that didn't stop me putting a price on them. By my reckoning turtle doves are posh doves, and doves are posh pigeons. And racing pigeons are also posh pigeons. So by that rationale I'm thinking that a turtle dove would cost about the same as a posh racing pigeon. Which is about fifty quid. Two ponies. A tenth of a monkey.

On day three the alarm bells will have started ringing. They might be barely audible, like someone breaking into a butcher's around the corner from your house, but they're definitely there. Another partridge in a pear tree - the novelty is beginning to wear a bit thin. Two more turtle doves - blimey, they must have set you back about £100. And now three French hens.

It's a double whammy. The bird fixation, and the arithmetic progression. I'm guessing that if you call a hen French, that makes it a French hen. It won't cluck with an accent and it's not likely to get up when the La Marseillaise starts playing any more than a jar of French mustard would. On this basis a hen costs about a fiver.

At this point she asks him how long this is all going to last. And he tells her.

Day four. The alarm bell is next door. She's already made space in the garden for the fourth pear tree and the partridge have never looked so at home. They're roosting with the turtle doves.

Coo.

Three French hens become six French hens, like some sort of hackneyed meiosis, and fuck me if it's not more fucking birds. Four calling birds or, to be more accurate, four collie birds.

Don't panic though. In the same way as turtle doves ARE NOT some sort of crazy seaweed sprig carrying ocean-dwellers of peace, collie birds have nothing to do with sheepdogs. The word collie or "colly" actually comes from an old word meaning coal or "coal". Thus a collie bird, now more familiarly referred to as a calling bird, is actually a blackbird. And if you've done the maths already, you're right. At the end of the twelfth day there will be enough to make one and a half dainty dishes to set before the king.

I'm not sure how much blackbirds cost, and neither does the internet, so the blackbirds didn't cost anything, okay? He caught them. At the park or somewhere. And put them into cages. Until the pear trees were available.

You'd be forgiven, if you were her, for thinking that enough was enough. By the end of day four she's looking at four pear trees populated by four partridges, eight turtle doves, and four calling birds. And she's had to build a coop for the six French hens. There's already enough room for eight more pear trees, so the fifth one isnt a problem.

The rest of the birds are unloaded from the van (which is the same van as the previous day) and he shuts the doors and walks towards her - she's standing in the porch. There are no obvious signs of other life shoved up or down his sweater. No twittering, chirping, squawking, or tweeting eminates from his slacks. He's got five of something, she's certain, but five of what? What will she have to house forty of in the not too distant future? He reaches into his pocket. His pocket Mind! And takes out five gold rings.

Argos. Ten pound a pop. Sorted.

The phew from her lips could be heard within a ten mile radius. The gasp the following day, twelve. Buttered up by a day's worth of jewellery, he saw a window of opportunity and, after arriving before dawn broke, in a slightly larger van, began unloading his feather orientated cargo.

Six geese-a-laying enter the fray.

Now at this point she's clearly upset, she's having nightmares about being ravaged by a dozen dodos in half a dozen days time, and is about to tell him that enough is enough. So he makes a promise. No more birds after tomorrow. And he'd stop sooner but they're on order. And look, you've got ten gold rings. So she says okay, as he's promised, and wonders if five gold rings on each finger will still allow her to knit.

A decent goose is going to set you back about £120, whether it's a-laying or not. The a-laying bit is something of a red herring. You could probably get a deal by buying them in bulk. Say six for £600. That's if you knew someone who sold geese in bulk.

You could haggle for a gaggle.

That's pure gold.

So she knew they were coming and that they'd have feathers. She knew there would be seven of them. Shit. That meant within a week there would be forty-two of them. Fuck. Whilst his avian MO would have stopped, that would still leave her having to look after 184 birds, and that's not counting any hatched geese (a-laying my arse). But she was ready for anything, pretty much, or she thought she was.

Her suspicions were aroused when he insisted on having a pond landscaped into her back garden (he called in a favour). It was a big pond, you could probably fit... oooooooh... forty-two swans in that (£300 each). To be honest, having swans swimming in a pond in your back garden would be pretty cool and, for a split second, she almost regretted enforcing his bird-gift embargo. But only for a split second. He had the opportunity to redeem himself over the next few days and she had the opportunity to develop Dove Fancier's Lung.

The eighth day and a new dawn, ushered in with the sort of racket you might associate with the sound that nearly seventy birds make. And hark? Is that the sound of cow-bells coming from the large truck that has pulled into the driveway? Forming not so much a queue of presents, more the failed auditions from some sort of demented Noah film, the possibly soon-to-be ex-boyfriend proudly parades the next stage in his attempted woo.

Eight maids-a-milking.

On the plus side she now had eight people who could help her gather eggs, scatter seed, and clean the bird shit off her windows. There would be an endless supply of milk, which could domino into cheese, butter, and pear yogurt production. And they downside? IN FOUR DAYS TIME THERE WOULD BE FORTY COWS IN HER FUCKING GARDEN.

At this point a wry smile crawls across his face. Although because it's only a joke that he's aware of, and because she is about to stove his skull in with a pail, it quickly crawls off again. He explains that seven of the cows are going back, and she'll only be left with one cow, and the maids will have to take it in turns a-milking it. Her face defines the antithesis of sidesplitting.

Anyhow, cows cost a grand, exactly. And maids cost...

Hmmmnnn...

Here's the possible flaw in my interpretation of The Twelve Days Of Christmas. I'm wanting to go down the Human Ownership route. Not so much because I have a penchant for slavery, but more that I've gone so far down this absurd road, it would be a shame to have to turn back. But where can you buy human life on the internet?

You have to love rhetoric.

It won't work though. I've got to consider pipers piping and drummers drumming. Ladies dancing I can change to something more noughties, like lapdancing (£20/dance). And everyone knows that Lords are a snip at £2,000, or at least that's how much they think people can be bought for. I'm going to have to tar maids, pipers and drummers with the same metaphorical minimum wage brush, and base their cost on a 35 hour working week. It would mean an ongoing wage-bill after The Twelve Days Of Christmas were over... but that could always be offset by selling goose eggs and dairy produce... although with only one cow and 40 maids to pay... except their wages wouldn't be her problem... maybe he'd have to draw up some sort of pre-nuptial agreement... I'm rambling.

In any case, who cares what happened after?

Because I'm feeling generous the maids get five pounds an hour for a seven hour day. End of.

Thus eight maids-a-milking begets nine-ladies dancing begets ten lords-a-leaping begets eleven pipers piping begets twelve drummers drumming.

This is how you end an incredibly tedious story.

By the end of the twelfth day of Christmas her garden comprises 12 pear trees and 12 partridges, 22 turtle doves, 30 French hens, 36 calling birds, 42 geese, and 42 swans. That's 184 birds plus sundry goslings, and one cow. 140 people variously milk, dance, leap, pipe and drum at her house every day, and despite the fact that she is also the owner of 40 gold rings, her life is actually a living hell.

And the value of these gifts? Well, if my calculations are correct, the total value of the gifts, as at the end of the twelfth day of Christmas, is £87,265.

The Twelve Days of Christmas actually start on Boxing day and finish on Epiphany. If you want to you can treat this as ironic. My guess is he forgot to buy her something for Christmas and was trying to make it up to her. I wonder who had the epiphany?

Cheap C(o)unts

2008-11-22T22:24:00.009Z

I've been meaning to write this blog for some time. It's something which has been bubbling away in my psyche for a while and was finally prompted by me hearing the phrase, "obviously I'm going to go for the cheapest."

It's a bit like a three course meal. But the menu will be written in the form of a meandering line. The thrust of it is a straight line - running from the top to the bottom (if you want to picture it in that way). But it's a faint straight line, and probably dotted. The meander is in bold. This is why it will only sometimes seem to make any sense. None of it is particularly new, or at least I don't think it is. None of what you'll read is especially radical or controversial. It's just ideas I've had. Things that I've thought. Stuff that has happened. Shit like that.

This blog is essentially about thrift. It's about being cheap. Penny pinching. Or at least it is eventually.

For my sins I work in the insurance industry. It's not a sexy industry, but then a lot of industries aren't sexy: the majority. When I left school, back in 1989, I worked temporarily for a market research company (yeah, I know, I can really pick 'em, eh?) and the market research was carried out over the phone. The main campaign involved calling consultant cardiologists and asking them a series of questions about the treatment of myocardial infarction (heart attacks). And despite the fact that it was very nearly twenty years ago, I still remember that APSAC stands for Anisoylated Plasminogen Streptokinase Activator Complex.

Whilst the point I imagined I might be trying to make just now escapes me, the subsequent point is that the job only lasted for six months - the term of the contract - and I found myself unemployed.

By 1996 I'd been working in the insurance industry for seven years. I wasn't entirely sure how this had happened. I mean I'm familiar with the passing of time, look, but I was more surprised that I'd managed to remain in employment during this time. This period in my life coincided with its supreme moments of irresponsibility, exactly as it should have done. I was young, I was mainly single, I was living away from home for the first time, I had very little concept of the value of money - other than the knowledge that I didn't have much of it and definitely needed more of it - yet it was my overriding senses of immortality and optimism which must have kept me going. It was a dangerous and expensive cocktail.

The insurance industry is one which you can only truly end up in by accident. An endearing memory from those first seven years was the schadenfreude I always took in explaining this fact to work-experiencing A-Level students who had "always wanted to work in insurance".

"No."

"You haven't."

"You're wrong."

"Sorry about that."

Just so you know, this is all leading to something.

I moved from an insurance company to an insurance broker to improve my career chances and was made redundant three months later. Whoops.

I temped for a year working for BT in a call centre. Ace.

I coupled my insurance and telephone experience and started working for Direct Line. For six years.

I got married and had two beautiful daughters.

In the space of one week in April 2004 I got divorced, moved house, and spoke at my Dad's funeral.

Divorce
Moving house
Death of a relative
Public speaking

These four events feature fairly regularly in lists of life's Top Ten stressful events. Two years later I was fired from my job.

I was unemployed for ten months.

I worked for Sainsbury's as a delivery driver for five months.

For the last year I've been working in insurance again.

And all of this, this CV, and every event in every year of my adult life, has moulded me into the person I am today. Every month of every year has made me believe that I understand what I want. Every day of every month has helped me realise what I believe is right and wrong. Not without exception or consideration, or irrespective of anything, and not necessarily in black and white. Just right and wrong.

Anyway, that's the beef of the story, and here's mine.

Some people are becoming cheap.

The industry I work in is rife with these people.

I can almost understand why people want to save money. I'm familiar with the sentiment that if you look after the pennies the pounds will look after themselves. That it all adds up. Believe me. I know. But at the same time I'm consumed by the overwhelming notion that the only thing you can actually do with money is spend it. This and the fact, The Fact, that we'll all be in the same place one hundred years from now.

Why on earth at the moment does there seem to be this futile desire for people to want to sacrifice peace of mind or pleasure or need or their future, all in the pursuit of cheapness? It's because television advertisement breaks are saturated with evidence of this cheapness. And these adverts propagate the idea that the cheapest version of an homogenous product must automatically be the best.

I'm sure that part of the reason I think like this is because I sell something that people have to buy. They have a legal obligation to buy it, and it's something they never want to have to use. Like buying a coffin. Also the perception of the consumer is that despite there being literally hundreds of companies offering a similar type of product, the misconception is that the products are identical. There is, no doubt, an element of truth in this, but only in the same way that a television set lets you watch the same channels. In all other ways there could be a wealth of differences. I could understand it if the thing I was selling was wholely useless, but it isn't. And yet people continue to want to s(h)ave inconsequential sums of money at the expense of quality.

£365 is one pound a day. £50 is less than one pound a week. Some people spend that much on satellite or cable TV every month. Since when did securing your livelihood have to be forfeited at the expense of what's on television?

Please don't answer that.

People like to think that they have found a bargain. They're proud of the fact that they can save money, even better if they can save more money than you. But people lie as well. All the time. They lie about how much they earn, how much their children sleep at night, and how much they pay for their car insurance.

The internet is also blameworthy.

I use the internet. True. But I'd never use the internet to buy insurance. It's far too complicated and there's no-one to blame if you click the wrong link, or leave the right box unticked, it takes too long to sort out and that's time you'll never get back. Ever.

And that's me. That's me with years of insurance and internet experience. I'll use the internet to buy a CD. I know the name of the artist, I know the name of the album, I know it has ten tracks on it, it's a no-brainer. But that's only on the occasion that I'm prepared to wait. If I want to find out how long I need to roast a joint of beef so it's well done there's any number of places on the internet I can garner that information. But I have to know where to draw the line. And that line is common sense. It's knowing my limits. This is why, with the aid of the internet, I might be able to self-diagnose coeliac disease, but I'm not about to conduct my own biopsy, no matter how good the diagrams are.

Today a reduction in the rate of VAT was announced. On the radio this morning, before the announcement, I heard an interview with A Man. He was asked whether or not he thought this reduction would prompt him into buying, for example, a digital camera - the example being a saving of about £3 on a £120 camera. The Man said that it wouldn't. In fact beyond that he said only a five or possibly ten percent saving would encourage him to spend his hard-earned money on such a thing.

He is a fucking moron.

If you want to buy a digital camera, you buy one. If you need a digital camera, you definitely buy one.

Whatever you want or need, you pay what you're happy to pay and what you can afford to pay for the best you can afford. I mean whatever it is, that's all you need to consider, isn't it?

Because Christmas is one month away, and unless I missed a meeting it's still a time for giving not receiving.

So use your time to consider the people you love and spend as much or as little as you like on them. Because love isn't sensible. Love doesn't need to have a budget. And love doesn't ask you for the receipt.

Foetuswatch (20 weeks)

2008-10-28T20:28:00.004Z

1 x head - check
10 x fingers - check
1 x heart - check
2 x ventricles - check
1 x bladder - check
2 x knees - check
2 x backs of the knees - check
2 x femurs - check
1 x spine - check
1 x umbilical cord - check
1 x mouth - check
1 x brain - check
2 x excited parents-to-be - check

March 17th 2009

Credit Crunchie

2008-09-10T23:35:00.002+01:00

I really love Crunchie.

I remembered this when I ate one yesterday.

Chocolate is fantastic in its own right. One could argue that chocolate combined with any foodstuff is potentially 50% fantastic. Chocolate and orange, chocolate and toffee, chocolate and caramel, chocolate and coffee, chocolate and mint, chocolate and lamb, chocolate and nut, chocolate and et cetera. Chocolate and honeycomb is a great combination in exactly the same way that porridge and lamb probably isn't.

Honeycomb in particular reminds me of a bygone age. When my Dad worked for the brewery and used to visit Fry's Chocolate Factory every once in a while. Because among the best things about Fry's (and there were many, given its Chocolate Factory Status) was the fact that you could buy bags of broken honeycomb there. And my Dad never let us down.

Anyway, like I said, I had a Crunchie yesterday and it tasted good. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had a Crunchie prior to yesterday, and although I have no intention of keeping some sort of chocolate diary, I rationalised that I should always endeavour to remember My Last Crunchie. Not, I hasten to add, the last Crunchie I'll ever eat, but rather the tableau of my most recent Crunchie eating. It's something that we should all recall.

I think, for a limited period, that Cadbury should rename Crunchie as Credit Crunchie. And maybe knock 5p off the price.

NOT all my own work...

2008-08-31T22:01:00.001+01:00

World Food Crisis

2008-07-05T22:25:00.004+01:00

I don't know if this has been mentioned before.

I mean, I imagine it has.

What I mean is, it must have.

I've not had an original idea for years: ages.

The thing is, it's Shreddies. You know?

Shreddies keep hunger locked up til lunch. So my idea, my idea about Shreddies, is that you could eat them for lunch every day. And never be hungry.

But I don't want to be seen to be belittling starvation because, honestly, that isn't my style at all. So you should take this with a pinch of salt.

Yeah.

I know.

#77

2008-06-09T21:45:00.004+01:00

READ

BUY

HELP

MAY!1

2008-06-03T23:17:00.002+01:00

What the fuck happened to May? I mean, seriously, where did it go?

Answers please.

hɔgməˈneː

2008-04-06T12:38:00.002+01:00

I'll never have to tell you
How I feel today
Because I don't want to make you cry
Each time you say you love me
It's like New Year's Day
And my feelings start to magnify
I'll always want to tell you
That I love you too
Because the feeling is unsurpassed
Each time I say I love you
It's a heart tattoo
Until the next time and since the last

Tech-Savvy

2008-03-09T22:22:00.002Z

I'm mostly shit at technology.

I have little to no idea if any of this will work. I've never really known if any of this has worked.

Here's a picture which represents a good cause.

HERE's a link which tells you about a worthy cause which will
benefit the good cause.

*fingers crosed*

Catharsis

2008-02-28T20:35:00.005Z

I like...

...my brain.
...how quick I am.
...the way I can make people laugh.
...how much I know. Even though there are downsides to this. A lack of understanding: the way I feel like a Marmite person. I long, sometimes, to be naive. Although I know that I actually couldn't stand it.
...being unusual. That's my angle. I'm quirky and I'm comfortable being quirky. Who wants to be normal?
...my arms and legs, for all sorts of reasons.
...my achievements.
...my history.
...the fact that I am generous. That if I can do something I will.
...talking and writing, and that I can talk and write.
...having a command of English.

I don't like...

...the fact that I smoke. It didn't even seem like a good idea when I started. It's the first thing I'd change about myself. It's the only thing I'd change if I could only change one thing. It's expensive. It smells. I don't want my children to have to live for fifty years without a father.

...my weight. I'm overweight. I know I am. I have been for a while. I know what I need to do about it. I'm not daft. I know what I have to do about everything.

...my vanity.

...how I expect everything. I expect everything to happen without the least amount of effort on my part. I expect it all to fall into my lap. I expect luck.

...being pessimistic about my optimism.

...the way my conscience tells me things: speaks to me and tells me what to do, what I should be doing, when my mind and body won't obey its instructions.

...how lazy I am. I don't seem able to do anything sometimes. No matter how important it is or how much it would benefit me or others.

...being flippant. My ex-wife said I should be jailed for flippancy but...well...you know...whatever.

Why are you such a pedant?

2008-01-17T18:54:00.000Z

Cast your mind back to the spring of 1986, if you were alive.

My mind, at that time, was that of a fourteen year old schoolboy. Full of football and friends. Panini and puberty. Every day I would make my way down to the precinct in the morning to catch the coach to school. A ten mile trip full of laughter and punches, homework and wedgies. It took about three minutes for me to get from my house to the precinct on foot. A walk I had made hundreds of times before without event.

But on Wednesday 14th May I never made it to the coach. Instead I was knocked down by a transit van on a zebra crossing. The same zebra crossing I had used every school day prior to this event, and would every day after.

I was unconscious for two days in Weston General Hospital and was considered a potential patient for Frenchay Hospital before I came round. I spent a week in that hospital. Mainly hallucinating. Seeing babooshka bears running up and down the geriatric ward that I had been placed in due to the shortage of beds in the children's ward. My memories of my stay in hospital are fairly sketchy. I remember being presented with two football trophies that I would have collected on the evening of the date of the accident. I remember the terrible smell of incontinence. I remember requesting I Heard It Through The Grapevine every day on hospital radio and listening for it to be played.

I didn't used to be like I am now. I used to be the original happy-go-lucky kid. Loadsamates. Loadsafun. But immediately after the accident those friends who, I now realise, had been on the periphery soon faded away. Leaving me only with my truest friends. I was antagonistic to the point of insanity, would split hairs that had already been split. I never knew why. I couldn't help it.

I don't remember the accident at all, nor most of the year after it happened. Something in my brain prevents me from doing that. Something in there is telling me that it doesn't want to remember the accident. My brain is lying to me. Physically I was cut and bruised and subsequently scarred. Mentally, who knows? Before the accident I can't remember ever writing a word. Not a story or a poem or a limerick or a novel or a play or a sketch or a skit. Nothing. It's like the accident unlocked a creative part of me that had been previously hidden. A gift perhaps? Or a curse? Because at the expense of this "talent" came a criminal sense of pedantry.

Happy New Year

2007-12-31T20:31:00.000Z

...

What I want for Christmas...

2007-11-02T22:04:00.000Z

...I want a turret, covered in ivy, with a front door and a back door. And windows. Somewhere I can see the world through 360°. A little bit of castle.

I want guarantees, but nothing big, just things that are worth the paper they're written on.

I want to be able to see squirrels whenever the mood takes me. In fact any foraging creature will do. I just want wildlife on my doorstep. Snuffling noses and twitching whiskers. Quizzical mixed with careless abandon, and a hint of quarry. Failing that a top hat would do.

I want a new heart. In fact I want new insides, better insides. More resilient. Longer lasting.

I want a Sky+ life. A microwave option so I can experience everything quicker if I want to. And slow-mo. To be able to see the world in time lapse whenever I choose. Or freeze frame moments of joy or record them. I don't want to have to rely on my memory. I could live and relive at will.

I want a clean slate.

I want to be able to smell smoke all year round. Do you know what I mean? Not just in the Autumn. I want invisible burning fields, conjuring images of the sun's rays as marble javelins.

I want to be able to mend cars. To be able to know what's wrong with cars and be able to mend them. I want to be able to to tell what's wrong with a car just by listening to it.

I want every penny I've ever wasted.

I want some foresight. Sometimes. Not all the time. Not even most of the time. Just some of the time. But more than that I want serendipity.

And I want cobwebs, in isolation. Not yards of haunted house replicas. Not long abandoned flaky spiderhomes, but fragile, freshly spun, diamond encrusted, architectural miracles.

That's about it.

I don't want much.

I don't want to be King Midas.

Halloween Poem

2007-10-31T17:54:00.000Z

...so I knocked on the door
and he answered, with glee.
"My name is Paul Daniels."
"I'm Debbie Magee."
His wife hoved into view
and before I could speak
they'd both pulled me
inside
and I 'stayed' for the week.

I was kept bound and gagged
(it might sound a bit tragic)
and while Deb gave me head
I had Paul
perform magic.
Twelve times daily they came,
so did I, half the time.
The fellatio "okay"
and Paul's magic, sublime.

I was spent come the end
of a harrowing week,
then they took off the gag
which allowed me to speak.
I nodded to Debbie
shook Paul's hand, hit the street,
then turned back (I'd remembered)
as I asked,
"Trick or Treat?"

Price Comparison Website News

2007-10-31T17:21:00.000Z

Agonising over which price comparison website is the best price comparison website?

Confused about which price comparison website genuinely offers you the best price comparison?

Tired and confused and wondering which price comparison website you should use?

Confused and tired and confused and confused about the number of price comparison websites?

Do you want the best deal?
Do you want the deal which is better than the other best deals?
Do you want the best deal from all the best deals?
Do you want the very best best deal?
Do you want the number one very best best deal?
Do you want the very very very best deal?

www.pricecomparisonwebsitecomparison.com

No need to thank me.

Prolificacy

2007-10-23T23:14:00.000+01:00

I can't do it.

Labels

2007-09-14T23:00:00.000+01:00

I bought a coat the other day.

I needed a coat, what with the weather looking like it might be turning cold.

Looking?

But, try as I might, I couldn't find one which fitted my criteria.

It had to be:

1. Cheap
2. Warm
3. Any colour including brown
4. Waterproof

I looked everywhere, even in shops which didn't sell coats, all to no avail.

Until, like I said, the other day, I found one which suited me down to the tops of my thighs.

I thought twice about buying it straight away because of the label I found stuck to the inside pocket. Instead of not buying the coat I just ripped the label off, and everything was okay.

Happy Birthday

2007-09-07T20:46:00.000+01:00

It's a year since I started this blog. Look.

See. Told you.

Thanks for reading.

All three of you.

R.I.P.

2007-09-06T17:43:00.000+01:00

There is no romantic way to die and there is no romantic way to be found dead. Whether you die in the arms of a loved one after a short and painless illness, or are found washed up on the banks of the Thames with your limbs in a Co-Op carrier bag fastened around your neck, the long and short of it is that you are dead.

Most, I believe, would choose the former.

Closure

2007-08-29T17:43:00.000+01:00

This is my attempt to make everything okay.

I don’t honestly know if I care whether or not it will work any more than I know whether or not I know what work means..

I like to convince myself that I think I care in the same way that I hope you care. I don’t enjoy making you upset so please don’t change your mind about anything that we’ve said or agreed to recently.

Whilst the last two years of our marriage have ranged from a struggle, at best, to completely miserable, at worst, for the last six years we have lived our lives on fast forward. We had a relationship that was bliss. I mean it was, wasn’t it? But we know now that not everything lasts. I will always try to remember the good times, not to dwell on them and agonise over what went wrong, but just to make the future easier. I’ll try to remember things not being bad.

I know it’s over but I don’t see any danger in remembering when it was real and when it was The Best.

The result, as we both know, has been two adorable and stunningly beautiful children. We’ll always be a Mum and Dad. We shouldn’t just chalk things down to experience and relegate our marriage as a dim and distant mistake. I’m sure that we did make mistakes but learning from them must be key for the sake of our futures.

The situation at the moment is stressful and, ultimately, painful because by nature people fear change and what we’re going through is the ultimate upheaval. Time will definitely heal but we have no control over each other’s feelings or about how we think. Those thoughts and feelings are completely personal. Things we say and do can affect other people but our own reaction to these things cannot be known until they happen. Above and beyond anything else we are individuals. Our moods and temperaments change continuously. This is one of the reasons why I think our relationship has been so turbulent over the last six months and acknowledging it is one of the reasons why our relationship will improve in the future.

I will admit that in the past I have been guilty of emotional and physical neglect insofar as the girls are concerned. What I have come to realise over the last six months is my dependency on them. I couldn’t possibly even begin to imagine them not being there.

I’m sure you feel the same way.

The learning curve that we have both had to climb has turned out to be too steep. That doesn’t alter the fact that we have climbed some of it and have grown as individuals as a result. Maybe we reached the top and didn’t have any further to go? Maybe we exhausted our marriage and exhausted ourselves?

People talk about closure and I feel we’re very close to that now. It may not be until we get divorced that we have complete closure but I definitely feel its presence.

Realistically I don’t think that everything will run smoothly for the rest of our lives. There are too many issues and too many personalities involved to think otherwise. To appreciate anything good you have to experience the bad otherwise the good is irrelevant. We have to make the best of things. I want us to be sincere friends and I think we can be. But it shouldn’t need any effort. We are two people who got on and can get on. Given our mutual interest in the welfare of the girls that is how it has to be.

There must always be a place in my heart for you.

That’s just the way it is.

Time to move on.

My Mountain

2007-07-06T17:35:00.000+01:00

I ran to ask my mountain questions
Those borne from foothills of a soul
And borrowed air as makeshift transit
The stolen time from oxygen
Inhaled and set as veins in marble
Unlike each whispered, echoed word
It sat, unmoved, unfurrowed counsel
While only lost penumbra stirred

A heartbeat peppered fractured quiet
There's nothing blowing in the wind
Then senses pricked by cacti needles
All cursed their lucky solitude
The dumbest nurture untold knowledge
Mobility is just cement
The torture of my mountain's fortune
Solutions aren't by accident

The answer isn't on a matchbox
It can't be found among parched clouds
Or hidden betwixt the leaves of trees
Nor snaking dust around the scrub
My mountain sage stood fast in silence
And truth no nodding head betrayed
The foetus of my wisdom crowning
With innocence once more decayed

Blueprint (in pencil)

2007-06-25T16:42:00.000+01:00

Laugh like polystyrene crows are down your throat
Wake to a world through syrup crescents
and translucent lashes
Cough up sand and solar flares
Talk to goats
Fall if you feel like falling
Smile with teeth you never knew were yours
through lips which demand others

Mixing blue and yellow is innovation
Try everything twice
because people make mistakes
Wear a hat like a wig
Follow leaders
Stare in belief
Watch your back if you lie in profile
You may be in every ounce of dust you've ever seen
Imagine doors as opportunities
Use gravity to your advantage
Trust isn't a last resort
Be a sponge for inspiration
and be a brick
Prostrate yourself before gold
Brown your belly with logic
and fill it with knowledge
Consume everything

Make sure it all folds
Quit and win with equal ease
Carry your heart inside a box inside a box
Sing louder than birds conning crickets
Keep you guessing
Remember the past as photographs
and how you appear in unfamiliar mirrors
Pen people in occasionally
Addict yourself to abstinence
Consider the sky for longer than is sensible
You still need a roof when you knock down walls
Failure is guaranteed
Rollercoasters aren't the best metaphor for life
You can put flip-flops on the wrong feet
Does your neighbour even have an ox?

Play on swings and roundabouts
Swim alone if you must
Use ambition like cutlery
Embrace extremes of temperature
Patches work
All grass is green
Make Chinese people speak up
Read between the lines of blank pages
Beware of shadows
Paint towns brighter than red
Sleep when you can
The smooth used to be rough
Best clothes become rags

Steal advice

Don't bring anything down from within
Think about it

Know how to look after yourself
Know when to stop

Push

May

2007-05-28T11:14:00.000+01:00

For four and twenty hours honour ants, before you strike the sky,
Transparent, and apparent, that this life must start and end today.

Support The Earth's extremities, let ribbons decorate the globe,
As all the while wild chamomile and wilder flora make it weak.

Next turn it under, clear your throat, let violent disorder reign,
And run this city, creative. A. N. Other; alternative.

Cede this to us and (possibly) we'll all exist and, with clenched fists,
We'll punch the air because we dare enough to spy the sun for free.

Monkey

2007-04-30T13:35:00.000+01:00

There's no point talking
To me
I only see the things that I want
To See
It might look like I'm listening
But nothing you say
Can make me think in any sense
Except my way

There's no point talking
At all
Go have a conversation with a
Brick wall
It should seem like I care less
But probably don't
Don't try to think like I think
Because I won't

There's no point talking
Per se
It's nothing but a game that the
Humans play
Misused like a privilege
So go tell the birds
And don't forget that actions speak
Louder than words

Too-dimensional?

2007-04-29T10:00:00.000+01:00

Do you want a piece of me? Is that what it is? Is that all this is? Because I'll tell you now, that isn't going to achieve anything.

I'm the same as everyone else. Really. If you shake me then I'll rattle. You might not think it, right now. You might think that I'm 'different', and you'd be forgiven for thinking it, but not by me. I'm pretty unforgiving. I only work one way, and you'll have to work with me if you want the best of me.

Can you see what I look like? I know you can, or at least you think you can, on the outside at least. But I'm incomplete inside, honestly. And that image, the one you can see? That isn't really what I'm like. That's not me most of the time. Most of the time I'm an unmitigated muddle. A big mess. Bigger than you imagine you know.

Don't let me frustrate you. I'd hate it if you got bored of me and I can't abide the thought of being redundant. So don't waste hours on me without getting anything back, because that might happen. You might approach me the same way you approach everyone, and you've no obligation to approach me any differently. Use your usual technique, the same tried and tested method that has guaranteed success in the past. And take your time, exercise your effort with discretion. Leave me alone for a while, go and do something else. Come back to me later, once you've had time to think, time to distract yourself from me. Don't totally forget about me though, or we'll end up having to start all over again. Although I already know it's only ever going to end one of two ways. Isn't that always the way?

Go on, please. Please try me once, or at least once, just to get me out of your system, just to find out what I'm like. I know you'll feel much better for it. You know you'll much feel better for it. It's a given. It gets easier each time, in time, like everything does. Or am I a game to you? Just some sort of fucking game? Am I...? AM I...? ...So just get rid of me. Dump me. Drop me. I'd care, of course I would, I'd go to pieces. But I swear I'd hold you responsible for picking up every single one afterwards. I know I wouldn't be in any position do it myself.

I'm an enigma: a complex soul. I'm black. And I'm white. And black and white. And grey. And a myriad of other colours and reflections of light and shades of shadow. I'm a plethora of different shapes and every shape a different shape. Every one has a pattern and everyone has a pattern. Everyone has the right to feel complete. We're all just a series of rows and columns, and corners or edges, aren't we?

No?

Okay fine. Have it your way. Go ahead. Pigeonhole me. Put me into a convenient box.

Bite Me

2007-04-27T13:35:00.000+01:00

Hollow me out

and stuff me

Put me in the oven

and bake me

Scrape my fingers pickle my eyes
Marinade my liver poach my thighs

Peel off my skin

and mash me

Macédoine my tonsils

and baste me

Beat my buttocks curdle my cream
Microwave my nipples let off steam

Butter me up

and spread me

Roll me in some breadcrumbs

and fry me

Grate my earlobes boil my toes
Skewer my intestine up my nose

Flour my back

and whip me

Put me in a cupboard

and leave me

Soak my plums and grill my loins
Celebrate my pudding filled with coins

Now fold me in

and mix me

Put me in some foil

and roast me

Spice my kidneys batter my jaw
Barbecue my carcass

Want any more?

Knowledge

2007-04-22T22:29:00.000+01:00

I know what I want
And if I don't know what I want
Then I know that I know
What I know I don't want

I know who I am
And if I don't know who I am
Then I know that I know
That I know who I'm not

I know what I do
And if I don't know what I do
Then I know that I know
What I Know I wont do

I know what I know
And if I don't know what I know
Then I know that I know
That I don't know a lot

Re: Lotto

2007-04-20T13:29:00.000+01:00

Every week the National Lottery promises to make someone a millionaire. Simply pick six numbers between and including one and forty-nine and if your numbers match those chosen by the lottery machine on the following Saturday, you've won.

It all sounds relatively simple, doesn't it?

The odds are about 14,000,000-1, which are the same odds as the chance of you swallowing a badger in your sleep. And the odds of those odds being the same is also 14,000,000-1.

One way of shortening the odds is to form a syndicate, a group of friends or colleagues who all contribute a pound, or more, to purchase one ticket, or more, each. If your syndicate has two people the odds are 7,000,000-1, if it has seven people 2,000,000-1, if it has fourteen people 1,000,000-1 and so on and so forth. So if you're one of those people who doesn't have 14,000,000 friends, the chances are that you'll be pretty hard pushed to reduce the odds to evens. In fact, even if you did have 14,000,000 friends, with the average jackpot total standing at about £8,000,000, you would still lose out.

This begs the question, why form a syndicate?

They're not new, far from it. Many people form syndicates in order to win the football pools. But in this instance there is a method in the madness. The more crosses you have in one permutation, the more chance you have of matching with more score draws. The more crosses you have in each permutation, the more it costs. So, in order to be able to afford the cost of your perms (and I don't mean going to the hairdressers every week), you can split the cost between the members of your syndicate. The end result assuming you win is, of course, the same. The prize money is shared between the members of the syndicate.

More tickets more chances more expense. More crosses more chances more expense.

Hmmnnnn...

Here though is where the lottery syndicate fails to deliver. A football pools syndicate is often honed from the collective football intelligence of many people. Their foundations lie in the working clubs and pubs of Great Britain. Lifelong friends whose rights to join syndicates have been handed down throughout generations. With the football pools you have a chance to study form. It's unlikely that a cup fixture between Manchester United and Stalybridge will produce a score draw. However, a game between Manchester United and Liverpool would no doubt create some interesting debate, and might only be resolved after the seventh or eighth pint. In the event of a jackpot win the money has been won by the syndicate and each member is deserved of a share.

But compare this to the lottery syndicate. The horrible randomness of it all. Arguments over whether or not the number three is more likely to appear than the number twenty-three. There is no form, no history, no theory behind it, unless you rely purely on probability. When the lottery syndicate wins there is only one winner, the person who holds the ticket. They must then share their winnings with everyone else. Everyone who hasn't really deserved it.

Of course, for everyone else it is a dream come true.

Members of lottery syndicates nationwide should ask themselves one question. "If I win £8,000,000 do I want to give most of it away?" If the answer is no then the solution is simple. Whatever numbers you have on your ticket, buy an identical one. If a syndicate of four has the lottery's only winner, and you are that winner, and you've got two tickets, you win £5,000,000.

They only get a poxy £1,000,000 each.

Anagram Story

2007-04-19T15:04:00.000+01:00

There are two schools of thought.

There are those who believe that Spiro Agnew was called Spiro because Spiro is a nice name, and there are those who believe he was called Spiro for a more sinister reason altogether.

One must first be privy to the knowledge that Spiro Agnew is an anagram of 'grow a penis' before one can fully grasp the rudiments of the second school since the second school believe that this seemingly random choice of forename was anything but.

Picture the scene.

Mrs Agnew has just given birth to a bouncing baby boy. Uncertain about the naming of their child, Mr Agnew - who is something of a practical joker - has what he considers a rather humourous idea. Taking away the letters in his own surname from the words 'grow a penis' he cunningly fashions the name 'Spiro'. And the rest, as they said, was history.

What, then, are future parents to do when confronted with the apparently elementary task of naming their children? Is there any need for someone to calculate every single possible permutation of anagram for a child's name before committing it to... ermmm... whatever it is people commit names to? Aren't the stresses associated with childbirth enough already, without having to worry about Richard Stilgoe waiting in the wings to point out that if Mr and Mrs Platt name their son Boris, an anagram of his name will be 'Spoilt Brat'?

If there's a lesson to be learnt from this it's a simple and fascinating one. Anagrams can be both fearful and fun.

And fascinating.

I can clearly remember the day I discovered them. It was a Tuesday. Keith Williams sparked it all off. During an exceptionally dull 'A' Level Economics lecture my mind began to wander. Keith Williams. Weith Killiams. Unassuming Keith. Ordinarily if Keith was pissing me off I would have just told him to shut up. But "why?", I thought, should I resort to such obvious intellectual depths when instead I could say, "Keith. Your name is an anagram of 'I will make shit'."?

True story.

Anagrams itself is an anagram of 'ars magna', which means 'great art'. And there are a plethora of absolute corkers out there. Famous people have used anagrams as pseudonyms, and even not so famous people, like me (Viz Top Tip c.1988). Private Eye has had an anagrams feature for as long as I don't care to remember. Competitions are run. Prizes are awarded. There's a World's Biggest One for goodness sake.

In the south sea islands
A thousand islets shine

These two lines share The Very Same Letters. Revel in their literary likeness. Marvel at their simple simplicity. Wonder about my avant-garde alliteration. I could look at those two lines for at least about roughly two minutes without getting the least bit bored. Who couldn't?

Of course, the funniest or most peculiar or chilling or clever anagram of them all isn't 'grow a penis'. It's not even someone's name. It's just a word. The word is funeral, and its anagram is quite a paradox.

Hotel II

2007-04-18T17:27:00.001+01:00

Imagine him lying next to you. On a bed. In a hotel room. Anywhere. At night.

You're on your back, your head turned towards him. He's on his side, kissing you, softly. He moves his hand from your face, over your shoulder, across your breasts, brushing against your nipples, down your side, down and up your thighs, perilously close to your cunt.

Still kissing you he presses his hand against your pussy. The flat of his hand. His palm against you. He can feel its warmth, sense your legs moving apart, volunteering yourself to him.

He starts by brushing his thumb over your clit, then circling it, very very gently. Coaxing it. The rest of his fingers loiter with intent, stroking your pussy lips and the tops of your thighs. Then his thumb moves down, pressing harder, finding the entrance to you, slipping inside, while his fingers move down too, to your ass cheeks, and between, a solitary finger threatening you there.

His thumb pushes further into you, up to his knuckle, which grinds against your clit. Your hips buck into him. Grinding against him as he slides his thumb in and out of you. Building up a rhythm, faster and harder, then slowing down, almost stopping, before ramming back into you again, hard and fast and deep, making you gasp.

His mouth moves from yours, and follows the same route as his hand had taken. But taking slightly longer, sucking your nipples inside his mouth in turn, flicking his tongue across and around them, giving you an indication of the treat awaiting your clit. He shifts and bends his face inches away from your cunt, his thumb glistening with you.

Before his thumb leaves your pussy, before it's replaced by his fingers and tongue, it begins to speed up. Firing into you harder and faster than before until his hand is a blur, his thumb punching into you, almost forcing you further up the bed if you weren't pushing downwards onto his cunt-soaked hand. Then he's between your legs. Breathing millimetres from your pussy. His left hand prising you apart. His lubricated thumb tracing a line down your perineum to your ass. His tongue ready to lick you.

He spits on your clit and dives in.

You moan as he sucks your clit into his mouth. His teeth gently grazing, his tongue warm and soft and soothing, and then suddenly hard and probing, twirling around you inside his mouth. Then he lets you go and pushes his lips onto you there, and he starts to hum. Tiny vibrations rippling through you. His fingers and thumb push into you at once. Two in your cunt, twisting around and upwards inside you, his thumb in your ass.

You ask him to fuck you.

He hears you and get on his knees, pulling your hands to your pussy, wanting you to open yourself up for him, pull yourself apart for him. He dribbles saliva onto your clit again, smearing his spit around your clit with the tip of his cock. You can feel the heat of it. His cock pressing hard against you. Really hard. Slowly and gently moving, pressure alone sending it towards your cunt. Just before it's about to slip into you he looks at you, wanton eyes into wanting eyes, and tells you he's going to fuck you.

His cock moves suddenly. It reaches the point where it's no longer sliding down your clit but sliding into your pussy. Timed to perfection he pushes the whole of him inside you. Ready or not. You're breached in one movement. Your cunt clinging to him, sucking him inside. You both moan. He kneels up a little and lifts your ass up slightly, almost pulling you onto his cock, watching himself swallowed up by you. Sighing at the sight.

Your hand reaches down, thumb and fingers either side of his cock, almost wanking him as he thrusts into you and slides from you. Holding on to him. Controlling how far, how deep he goes. He pushes harder into you and feels your hand tighten around him. His thumb moves to your clit, wanting to take you over. His other hand reaches underneath his cock as a finger pushes past it and into your pussy. So he can feel his cock pounding into you. You can feel it pounding into you. And all the while his thumb dances over your clit, lubricated by a mixture of his saliva and your weeping cunt.

A second finger joins his first. Inside you. Alongside his cock. The cock your hand is wrapped around. The same cock you're wanking off into your own pussy. Brushing against his balls, wanting him to unload inside you. His thumb speeds up in time with the thrust of his hips. His cock straining to get deeper inside you than before, pushing your hand onto his. Joining the frenzied frigging of your clit as you both approach the edge.

And that's what sends you both over. You telling him you're coming and him telling you that he is too as you buck your hips into him and he smashes his cock into you, your cunt spasming around him, tightening as his cock throbs and pulses unleashing the first wads of cum into you. He fucks you harder in the throes of his orgasm, wanting you to suck every last drop of spunk from his balls as your pussy clamps around him.

His cock slips from your drenched cunt as the last of his cum splashes against your clit. Your fingers are there immediately, massaging his hot spunk into you, draining every sinew of orgasm from you. And you both collapse. Breathless. Your cum-covered fingers slipping into his mouth to suck himself from you, your mouths on each other's again, gasping.

The circle completed.

Likehavewantneed

2007-04-16T12:20:00.000+01:00

I'd like to teach the world, but not to sing.
I need to tell them what true love can bring:
A sense of immortality and worth:
The reason I've been put upon this earth.

I have to teach the world, but not to write,
That "she doth teach the torches to burn bright."
I'll thank my God that they've delivered me,
And realise that it was meant to be.

I want to teach the world, but not to read.
I have to tell them that it's love they need:
The sense of culpability and blame:
How things can never truly be the same.

I need to teach the world, but not a song.
I'd like to tell them where they're going wrong:
To trust to serendipity, not fate:
To just believe your heart and conjugate.

In Memoriam

2007-04-11T21:39:00.000+01:00

Three years ago today my Dad passed away.

Although he had cancer, it was still a shock that it took him so quickly.

I remember going to the hospital like it was yesterday. Seeing him lying there. My Mum crying.

My sisters live away from the area so they had the choice of seeing him later, days later. I'm glad I wasn't given that choice because even today I don't know whether or not I could have made it.

My Dad was a brilliant Dad. Not all the time of course, but mostly. His own Dad died when my Dad was just six, so he did a pretty fucking good job without having had anyone to show him what to do.

Three years ago the 11th of April was Easter Sunday. My Dad's Dad died on Easter Sunday exactly 50 years before him. Weird.

I never wanted to have to live for 50 years without a Dad, like my Dad had to.

But I hope I will.

Tribute

To live inside the hearts
Of those you love
Is not to die
To love you every day
That you are gone
Is not goodbye

To live inside the hearts
Of those you love
Means that you're here
To know that if we go
You'll always stay
And still be near

To live inside the hearts
Of those you love
Shows that we care
To see you when we want
We'll close our eyes
And you'll be there

You give us all your love
And give us all
You have to give
You are inside the hearts
Of those you love
And so you live

RIP

Looking For You

2007-04-10T00:27:00.000+01:00

I've always been finding the one
Without me really thinking that I'd ever be done
Another mouth to make my own mouth smile
Another mouth
To make it all worthwhile

I've always been seeking you out
Without me ever thinking that my search was in doubt
Another heart to make my half a whole
Another heart
For whom the bell might toll

I've always been looking for you
Without me really thinking that my one could be two
Another pair of eyes to see the light
Another pair
To heal my sore eyes sight

I've always been one of a pair
Without me ever thinking that you wouldn't be there
Another hand to hold that's not my own
Another hand
To make me feel less alone

Soapy Opera

2007-04-08T12:16:00.000+01:00

I knock on the bathroom door and there's no reply,
so I wander in.
You're lying back in the water,
breasts on display,
eyes shut,
knees raised,
legs slightly parted.
I'm worried that I'm going to scare you but you sit up,
breasts tumbling,
water rippling over them.
You heard me knock on the door.
Your eyes beckon me forward and you grab my hand,
pouring shampoo onto it.
I work it into both my hands and start to massage your hair and head.
I resist the urge to look elsewhere until a blob of foam spills into your cleavage.
Instinctively my hand goes there,
sweeping it up,
lingering slightly longer than it should,
witnessing your nipples starting to stir.
More shampoo drips onto you,
onto your breasts and your legs.
You look at me expectantly,
and my hand strays to your thigh,
this time smoothing the soap suds up and down your leg,
tentatively along your inner thighs,
which open involuntarily.
My hand runs between them,
thumb and pinky touching each leg,
gently pushing them wider.
As my fingers approach your pussy you tense slightly,
but I carry on,
my middle finger tracing a line along the crease of your cunt,
sensing your tense body soften as my fingertip slips gently in and then out of you.
The same hand finds a breast,
warm and wet,
the nipple stiffening in my palm as it caresses it;
cups it.
My other hand smooths the wet hair from your face,
reaches round to your neck,
and pulls your lips towards mine.
Onto mine.
Still kissing you I tug at my jeans and boxers,
pulling them both down,
revealing my excitement.
I grab your hand and pull you up from the bath and out of it,
naked and dripping.
Our hands are all over each other instantly,
on faces and chests,
around backs,
between legs,
readying ourselves for what we know is going to happen.
Unabated and frantic fucking.
I push you against the sink,
lift you onto it,
and,
without warning,
I nail you to it.
Fucking you.
Like our lives depended on it.
Balls deep inside you,
then pulling out,
holding your pussy open with the tip of my cock,
teasing it,
before ramming it inside you again.
Making you gasp.
You push me off you and turn us around,
my back to the sink.
You trace your tongue from my neck to my chest,
gently biting me,
one hand reaching down to my cock.
You kneel down,
run your tongue up and down it,
around the head of my cock,
flicking your tongue over its tip,
pulling my cock back hard.
You take me into your mouth,
a little deeper each time,
deeper with each stroke,
all the time massaging my balls until I can't stand it.
You're in control of me at this point.
I'm holding your hair,
guiding you.
You pull me off the sink,
onto a chair.
and you straddle me,
guiding my cock into your sopping pussy inch by inch.
You slowly start to fuck me,
building up pressure and speed,
riding my cock harder and harder,
wanting every inch of me inside you,
grinding your clit against me.
You suddenly pull yourself off of me,
but my despair turns to joy as you turn yourself around,
and grind back down onto my pulsating cock,
pushing your full weight onto me,
making sure that you have all of me inside you.
Then you lift yourself off of me again,
teasing the tip of my cock with your drenched pussy.
You turn and kneel in front of me and I shift myself forward on the chair.
Again you take me into your mouth,
briefly,
tasting yourself on me before guiding my cock between your breasts,
the tip of my cock nudging your lips.
You can sense that I'm ready to come.
Ready to come hard and fast.
But I want you to come first.
I want us to come at the same time.
I want to feel your pussy spasming around my cock.
I want to fill your pussy with my cum,
and I want to see your face as I do it,
as much as I want to see my come dripping over you,
over your neck and tits and nipples.
As much as I want to anoint you with it I also want to fill you up with it.
Your mouth.
Your cunt.
Then I pick you up.
I pick you up and wrap you in a robe,
white towelling,
and I carry you into the bedroom,
and lie you gently on the bed,
your legs bent,
dangling off the edge.
Then I kneel between your knees and push the robe away from your legs,
open it right up.
Then I open you up,
push your legs as far apart as they'll go,
push your puffy pink pussy lips as wide as they will go,
then I bury my tongue inside you.
Inside your cunt.
Thumbs and fingers probing.
Tongue darting.
Circling your pussy.
Flicking your clit.
Nibbling it.
I hold your pussy in my hand,
until you tell me to replace my tongue with my cock.
Then I get up from my knees,
push you further onto the bed,
and strip the robe from your shoulders.
I grab two pillows and slide them under your ass,
your hips rising upwards to meet me,
and I kneel on the bed between your legs,
and I gently push the tip of my cock inside you,
your cunt wrapping itself around me.
I grab your legs and pull them onto my shoulders,
and shove all of me inside you,
suddenly,
whether you're ready or not,
and your hips buck to meet me,
grinding your pussy onto me as I thrust to meet you.
I wrap you up in my arms and flip you over,
still inside you,
then you're in control for a while,
bouncing up and down on my cock,
your breasts in my hands.
But you push me down.
When I've had enough of you teasing me I turn you over again,
turn us over then you over,
your face into the bed.
I pull your ass into the air,
use my knees to force your legs apart,
and then I fuck you,
like a dog.
Reaching round to frig your clit,
reaching round to pinch your nipples,
fucking you hard,
forcing your face deeper and deeper into the bed each time my cock pounds into you.
Then I pull out suddenly and turn you round again,
onto your back,
and feed my cock into you,
slowly.
I grab your throat,
seeing the mixture of pain and pleasure in your eyes.
Then.
Again.
Without warning.
I pull all of me out of you,
and push all of me into you,
again and again,
over and over,
fucking the life out of you,
feeling your legs wrapping themselves around my back,
sensing that you want more of me inside you,
more than I might be able to give,
but trying to give you more all the same.
I can sense you're about to come,
that you're about to cover my cock with your cum.
I feel your cunt clamp hard around me,
and that sends me over.
I unload inside you.
Filling you with my cum.

And we collapse.

Devil's Poem

2007-04-06T23:28:00.000+01:00

Since negating my past
Once the last die was cast
When I swam in the sea
And proclaimed it my last
I've just lied in the sand
More supply than demand
With a head buried deep
Know my place is dry land
(Come) hell or high water
(Or) devil take daughter
I won't never go back
As I know that I oughta
Cos one day things might change
Whilst I'm home on the range
It will call from afar
Dialect Sounding strange
Then my self-doubting style
And an internal smile
Will return to the sea
To lilo for a while
Where if my toes get wet
It's a pretty safe bet
That I'll sink till I swim
And have paid off the debt

Sauce

2007-04-06T16:28:00.001+01:00

Imagine him between your knees, between your legs, tickling the backs of your knees as he traces your inner thighs with kisses. Think of his fingers as yours, your thumb as his tongue, probing, stroking, licking your hot wet cunt, pushing your lips wider, making tiny little circles around your clit...

Suddenly he's up and straddling you, pinning your arms to a bed, just above your waist, under your breasts, kissing along your shoulders, all round your neck. There are no gaps between the kisses. He moves his body down, moves his mouth down to a nipple, drawing it in, gently licking it inside his mouth, feeling it harden against his tongue. He stops to rain kisses on your other breast, then between them, running his hands over your hips and then further down, inside, across your pelvis, thumbs pointing inwards, brushing over your clit, slipping into your moistening pussy, prising your lips apart as his mouth trails kisses over your belly, around your clit, up and down your the tops of your legs, before burying his tongue inside you again.

Now he's lying beside you. He'd love it if you sucked him hard, but maybe, for the minute, he just wants to stroke you. Just to make sure you're really there. Your hair, your neck, your spine. Resisting the urge to reach round to your breasts and feel your nipples stiffen in his palms. He can do that later with his mouth. He'll smooth his hand across your stomach and down towards your hips and pelvis, his fingertips briefly straining towards the hot wet sanctuary of your cunt.

He senses your urgency and runs his fingers across your pussy heading towards your inner thigh, trailing his little finger so it "accidentally" lightly snags against your clit. You turn around to face him. Start to kiss his neck and all the way down to his right nipple. You can feel his now rock hard cock between your tits as you move down his body. He's praying for you to take him into your mouth so he can quickly sit up to flip you around and eat you.

He half sits up and grabs your leg, pulling it up towards his head. You sense his desire to feel your hot cunt on his face, your lips on his, and spin round. He turns you round. His cock in your mouth, your pussy hovering above his face. The pleasure/pain principle threatens to take him over the edge. Gazing at your swollen pussy he grabs your hips and sinks his tongue into it. Then, almost as quickly, his hands move from hips to lips, two fingers of each hand pulling your already gaping cunt even further apart, thumbs circling your clit in turn.

You cup his balls in your hand and he groans in ecstasy. Your pussy sucks his tongue inside. Like the first and last he'll ever taste, the best of the best. He lifts you up so he can see your head bobbing up and down, his cock fucking your mouth. Then he drops you back down towards his face to run the tip of his tongue slowly around your sopping pussy lips.

He feels his balls start to tighten and lightly slaps your ass as he lifts you away from his face to your obvious displeasure. A smile returns to your face when he tells you, "I have to fuck you." Pulling your ass into the air, onto all fours, he surveys the scene. Your moist pussy glistens with a mixture of his saliva and your pleasure. Forcing your legs further apart with his knees he feels you brace as he gently starts to slide his cock into you, inch by inch. His tongue-moistened thumb lingering over your asshole, threatening invasion.

He starts to build up a steady rhythm, holding your hips tighter with each thrust. One hand reaches round to your breast. The hardness of your nipple and your tightening pussy make him gasp. His hand moves slowly towards your cock-filled cunt, intent on frigging your clit into orgasmic frenzy, only to find your own hand already there. He pushes your hand away and his takes over, your pussy gripping him tighter. He can feel the hardness of your clit as his fingertips brush against his pounding cock.

His orgasm is welling up in his balls and he can sense that you're close too. Rubbing your clit with one hand, his cock ramming into you. He takes the thumb of his other hand into his mouth then runs it from the nape of your neck, down your arched spine to the small of your back. It carries on between your cheeks, slipping into you.

He withdraws his cock from your cunt and his thumb from your ass suddenly, and to your obvious displeasure. But your cries of anguish change as he nurses his cock into your ass. Slowly at first. Inch by inch. Building up speed.

He feels your body in the paroxysm of its orgasm and it sends him over the edge. The thrusts of his cock seem intent on breaking your back, and the final slap of his balls sends the first wads of cum splashing inside your ass. Groaning with pleasure he pulls out to send a third streak of jism up your back and over your ass, only to return his cock to your spasming pussy as it sucks the last he has from his balls.

The End

2007-04-03T01:18:00.000+01:00

Sorry about the poetry. I'll think of something else to write soon. Probably.

The End

Into my soul a fire is burnt
That only time can quell
Each passing day a lesson learnt
Heralds a fond farewell

There is a place I know is lost
That I won't see again
History now dictates the cost
As it will heal the pain

Into my arms my children run
Melting with their embrace
Making me warmer than the sun
Cushion my fall from grace

This then the world that I create
And why I must prevail
Follow the route that I dictate
So I can never fail

Shrug

2007-03-29T19:40:00.000+01:00

Whilst most men think they're great
in bed
There's no such thing as
awful head
What they give's real it's
never fake
The truth may well be hard
to take
I'll never make that
foolish brag
I'm sure I'm just an
average shag
When you think I've loved you
all I can
I probably have
I'm just
a man

Poem Mope

2007-03-27T14:18:00.000+01:00

Girl With A One-Track Mind

I'm wicked, ranting harlot
I adore warmth 'n' tickling
Wanking at mild rhetoric

I want a thick, modern girl
Manic whore talking dirt
Thinking crowd material?

Together

2007-03-22T18:54:00.000Z

Relationships are difficult, aren't they?

All that compromise and mutual respect and trust and honesty and (sometimes) fidelity and memories and planning and effort and work and commitment and making mistakes and learning from those mistakes and in sickness and health and for better or worse and for richer or poorer and not in any particular order.

Until death do you part.

When we moved in together I knew everything wouldn't always be perfect. We'd only just met after all. But I knew that I wanted you. Wanted you to be with me. Knew that we'd learn to live with each other as we went along. And that you could make my house a home.

Where the heart is.

You looked lovely when I first saw you. I can still remember it vividly. There were others there, but you stood out. If I could have deemed a single moment in my life as too perfect, I might well have done it there and then. You were cold-looking but emanated warmth. You had an air of comfort and confidence and solidity. When I touched you I knew that I had to have you. And even though it might sound a bit daft, you were somehow... I don't know... the right size? Height and everything. I thought you had dimensions to die for.

I told you it would sound daft.

I couldn't work you out for a couple of years, not all of you. I'd pieced half of you together, from what I could see, and what I thought I knew. It's not that I didn't want to know the whole of you. I knew you were all there, and I knew it wouldn't take much, if anything, to discover all of you. A day. A snapshot. A moment of concentration and focus and dedication. I thought about you literally all the time. But something else always seemed to get in the way.

So you stayed with me, like I knew you would, where else could you go? But pretty soon it was obvious that things weren't working out as we'd hoped. I made promises I knew I couldn't keep. Claimed and blamed tomorrows as the pivot, the fulcrum of my vows. Because other stuff happens. Other stuff always happens. Things outside the things you know are more important. And The Thing is that I was so much happier to start with. Happy when I met you, happy when I took you home to stay with me all those moons ago.

I'm indebted to your patience and forgiveness. Envious of your placidity and charm. I might have said that you completed me, but when would I complete you?

I should have put you first, and finally I have.

So I'm happy again.

Lunchtime

2007-03-19T12:45:00.000Z

I'll turn up at your work at lunchtime and tell you that I'm taking you out to lunch.

So you'll get into my car and we'll drive.

After a while I'll give you a blindfold and you'll put it on.
And we'll drive a little further.
And you won't know where you are.
And we'll stop.
And I'll lead you from the car.
And you'll only be able to smell...

Fresh air.
The countryside.
The smell of green.

Under your feet the ground is soft. You're standing. I'll kiss you. No touching. Just our lips. And I'll begin to unbutton your blouse, pushing it from your shoulders to the floor. Then I'll unzip your skirt. I'll kneel down. Pull it down. You'll step out of it. And I'll bury my face into you. Suddenly. Surprising you.

I'll hold your shoes and you'll step out of them too. Your bare feet on...

On what seems like grass.
Or straw.
Then I'll stand.
Running my hands up your sides.
You'll giggle.
And I'll reach behind you.
Undo you bra.
Bring my hands round to your front.
Your breasts in my hands.
My head bending down.
Sucking hungrily at your nipples.
One hand straying to your panties.

Touching you there.

Seeing how ready you are.

Then.
Suddenly.
I'll rip your panties from you.
Hear your sharp intake of breath.

I'll turn you around and lead you forward, further into the barn, lead you to a blanket, place you on all fours, handcuff your hands around a wooden post, see your breath quicken. See your body tense. Nervous.

The next thing you'll feel is my hand.
I'm behind you.
Reaching between your legs. But not for your pussy...

Further...

Reaching further up your body.
Stretching further up your body.
The inside of my arm brushing against you.
All of you.

Running my hand between your breasts, down your cleavage, a cold nervous sweat left on my fingers, then down your belly, nearing the hot sanctuary of your cunt.

Then I'm holding the whole of it.
In the palm of my hand.
Three fingers.
Moving perilously close to your cunt.
Then on it.
Two fingers easing you apart.
The third slipping into you.
Effortlessly.

You try to grind your hips down onto it but I move my finger away, so it's barely inside you.

You sigh.

Without warning my thumb replaces my finger, and it pushes into you, hard, fast, fingers on your clit, working together, thumb and fingers, you push down onto them, and I know you're ready.

Then nothing.

No sensation of touch.

My fingers and thumb no longer on or in you and you're aware of your utter vulnerability.

On all fours.
Cuffed.
Spread.
Wet.
Eerie silence.

Then...

Something warm. Hot breath on your pussy. Fingers pulling you apart. A warm wet stiff tongue probing into you. My tongue. Running from your clit. Along the crease of your cunt. To your ass.

Something harder. Almost hotter. You feel the tip of my cock nudge at you. Your pussy opens up to meet it. Your hips push back to welcome it. And mine push forward. My cock sliding into you. With ease. Filling you. Slowly. Gradually. Inch by inch. Your cunt sucking me in. My hands holding your hips. Both of us rocking back and forth. Finding a natural rhythm straight away.

Starting slow.
Really slow.
Building up.
Speed and strength.

Until...

We're fucking.
Hard.
Like dogs.

I reach forward and undo your handcuffs, my hands no longer on your hips, grabbing around them, pulling you onto me, and your hands no longer propping you up as one strays to your clit, feeling my cock pound into you, mercilessly frigging yourself towards orgasmic oblivion as my own starts to build. Like a pin prick to start. At the base of my balls as they slap against you. I push my thumb into your mouth and then, lubricated, into your ass. I can feel my cock brushing against my thumb through the thin membrane between your ass and your cunt and I know I've gone too far to stop...

Your hand quickens on your clit.
Your moans become louder.
I know you're close too.
I tell you I'm about to come.
That I want to come inside you.
I pull off your blindfold.
You look round into my eyes.
They tell me that's exactly what you want too.
And the look sends me over...

I shout as my orgasm takes hold. The relief and release as my spunk splashes inside you. I sense your pussy tighten, become somehow wetter, and you moan in the throes of your own orgasm. My cock cumming inside you. My thumb in your ass. Your cunt, vice-like around my thick cock. Your fingers a blur around your clit. Wave after wave after wave...

Your pussy still pulsing as I'm spent.
And we collapse in a heap.
Breathless and laughing.
Sated.

Somethingnothing

2007-03-17T20:26:00.001Z

I've kissed your beautiful lips
Heard your mouth start gasping
And held onto your hips
There's nothing in between us then
There's something I should tell you
But I didn't say when

I've seen your beautiful smile
And your pained expression
As you start the last mile
It's something that I've not done yet
There's nothing that I couldn't
Or might live to regret

I've stroked your beautiful skin
Felt your warmth turn colder
And the sense I can't win
There's nothing now where you have been
There's something I can't let go
Do you know what I mean?

I've wiped you beautiful tears
Crying eyes like diamonds
And allaying your fears
There's nothing that I'd want to change
There's something that I couldn't
Is it really so strange?

I've held your beautiful hand
Fingers wrapped round fingers
Life slipped through them like sand
It's something that will always be
There's nothing that can change it
It is our history

I've heard your beautiful laugh
Told the world that's listening
You were my better half
It's something that I can't forget
There's nothing left to live for
At least nothing just yet

Dream #1

2007-03-05T10:57:00.000Z

I woke up in tears, thinking about my Dad. He'd been in my dreams again.

We'd argued and I didn't want to argue any more. Such an ultimately senseless waste of emotion. I don't remember what we'd argued about. Is that the thing about arguments or the thing about dreams?

We were both so angry that our bodies were frigid with frustration and rage.

And then.

When the argument plateaued.

When the last drops of ire were squeezed from it.

We caught each other's glare.

I thought I saw him blink, and leapt. I wrapped my arms around his torso, my body relaxed. He wouldn't hug me back at first. I embraced a manequin. Hard and cold and fixed and matt. But gradually I sensed his body soften, his arms around my shoulders, our heads at tangents, our minds united by love and history and blood. Then finally, before I woke up, I felt his chest against mine, a faint heartbeat, and we both gently started crying our apologies. Our clinch flooded with colour.

Words #1

2007-02-23T12:41:00.000Z

You should be grateful for the opportunity to say whatever you want to say and whatever you have to say. You should hate being edited or censored. You should abhor being banned or silenced.

You can't be responsible for how people react to what you say, and you can't always be held responsible. You put your thoughts out there. They're who you are, your very essence. And once those words are out there, for everyone to read, those words are there to be interpreted however anyone sees fit.

You don't need to back down from them if you know you're right.

You don't always have to compromise.

Because if you can't defend your words then you have absolutely nothing worth saying.

Hotel

2007-02-19T13:22:00.001Z

Spooky.

Ok.

We're outside the hotel room. Not talking for the first time during the whole evening. I hold open the door for you and you brush past me.

Sparks.

You walk a few steps into the room and stop. Nervous and excited about being there. I flick the light switch and a dim glow comes from the room, barely lighting us up. It starts slow, but passionately. I stand in front of you as the door closes. And lean in to kiss you.

Your lips meet mine. They are the only things which connect us. And the first kiss is light. Not a peck, more of a.......dab. Our lips dab together. Quickly. Then we look at each other, for what seems like minutes. Then our lips dab again. Eyes closed. And every time we kiss the kisses last a little longer, feel a little firmer, increase in intensity. And every gap between the kisses becomes shorter, until the gaps are almost non-existent.

Then the kisses are long and hard. My hands hold yours and bring them up above your head, my mouth forcing you backwards against the wall. I draw my hands down your arms, leaving them pointing upwards, you're prostrate but standing. My hands slide down, over your armpits, down your sides, feeling the swell of your breasts, my thumbs brushing over your nipples, which are stiff to the touch even through your clothes. My hands stop at your waist and pull you into me.

I bring my hands round to the front of your jeans. Undoing yours then undoing mine. You can feel my excitement and I'm about to feel yours. I crouch down quickly, holding your shoes as you step from them, pulling your trousers and panties from you, relieving myself of my shoes and trousers and pants on my journey back to your mouth. We're naked from the waist down. I hold your face in my hands and feel your arms around me as we kiss again.

My cock presses against you and you bring your hand round to stroke it, lovingly caressing it with tender cold fingers. It feels hot to you, cold to me, and I suck the breath from your mouth in surprise. Then my hand drops to the top of your thigh. Smoothing its way across your pelvis. Snaking its way slowly to your cunt which I hold in my hand. Two fingers either side of it, one finger barely slipping into you, curling upwards as you give yourself to me.

Suddenly a second finger joins the first and I push them both into you, knuckle deep, almost lifting you up. A moan escapes your lips so I stop, but you tell me that you want me to carry on, but not with my fingers inside you, as you squeeze my cock playfully, and lead me to the bed by it. I push your hand from me and push you onto the bed. You fall, giggling, legs akimbo, and I kneel between them.

"Do you want me to fuck you?"

You've barely finished your reply before I'm inside you, completely, hot and hard, filling you, threatening to pull out completely, but barely moving inside you. Moving enough for you to know that I'm there. Kissing you. Kissing you as I slowly screw you. Then sliding out of you a little further, pounding back into you, nailing you to the mattress as your hips buck to meet mine.

Then I start to tease you with the tip of my cock, leaving it at the entrance to your weeping cunt. I look into your eyes, sensing your desire for me to fill you up again. But I don't. I leave it there. Moving it millimetres until you can stand it no longer and start to bring your hand down with the intention of pulling me into you. As soon as I sense your hand moving I push myself into you completely again. Much harder than before. Winding you. And then I start to fuck you harder than you've ever been fucked before.

Your hand continues its journey anyway, its journey to your clit. And you frig yourself to the rhythm of our fucking. And I feel your fingertips brushing against my cock as it pounds into you. And I can sense that you're about to come, as your breath quickens, and your hand spirals faster around your clit, and you tell me that you're about come and that you want me to fill your hot wet cunt with my warm spunk, that you want to feel it splashing inside you as you go over the edge.

Hearing that is enough to send me over too. I groan as my orgasm kicks in. I plunge my cock as hard and as deep into you as I can possibly manage as the first wads of my cum start to fill you up. I can feel your body tense as your orgasm tears through you and this inspires me to fuck you even harder as I empty my balls inside your spasming cunt. I keep on and on fucking you when I'm spent, relishing you cumming over my cock, trying to sap every last synapse of your orgasm from you, until we're breathless, chests heaving, mouths together, not kissing.

Owed To A Kiss

2007-02-17T22:01:00.000Z

If I could hold your hips or hands
Or touch you places you can't stand
Then turn around to face my face
We'll kiss and feel our pulses race

When on the corners of your mouth
I'll dream my dreams of journeys south
To hold your cheeks in both my palms
And feel my back within your arms

Then pause to help us catch our breath
This matters more than life or death
My fingers wrapped around your throat
A paradox and antidote

Into the fray I taste your teeth
The all around and underneath
So soft and hard and right and wrong
Like singers of a wordless song

And bitten lips and nibbled tongues
And air sucked out of fondled lungs
Our mouths entwined in heedful bliss
Defining essence of our kiss

Valentine's Day

2007-02-12T16:00:00.000Z

I'll probably get up about eight or nine, possibly put some washing on, maybe do a bit of ironing.

I could listen to some Love Music...

Later on I might write some poetry, dwell temporarily on my past, remembering the good times. After that I could go for a drive. Somewhere peaceful that will reflect my contemplative mood. I'll consider LOVE and the times I thought I'd found and known love. The feeling, the abandon, the gut-wrenching abstinence. Then I might recall the moments when I thought love had been lost. The despair, the redundancy, the soul-destroying gravity.

Or I'll imagine our date. At the arboretum. Where we would always have gone if you'd stayed another day. The place we'll always be going tomorrow. Walking and laughing and running and breathless, catching leaves to make wishes for each other. We could take a cool bag with some scones and clotted cream and jam, and a flask of hot tea.

On returning home I could bask in the joy of being alive and consider how fortunate I am to have the things I have. I should ring my daughters and my sisters and my Mum. Later still I might put the heating on, then run myself a nice hot bath, and afterwards just put a bathrobe on. I could even break open a bottle of wine, just to put an edge on the day.

Then finally, when the day is almost done, I'll snuggle up on the sofa, put on a DVD, and wank myself into oblivion.

Patrick Wolf

2007-02-09T09:39:00.000Z

I'll try and make this brief.

I'm a 35 year old divorced father of two. If I had a job I'd be an employed 35 year old divorced father of two. It was never my intention to write about stuff like this, or to write about stuff like this like this. I didn't expect to be prompted into committing such a piece to public scrutiny. I should probably feel a bit embarrassed, but I don't. Why should I be? I'm a 35 year old divorced father of two.

Anyway. I'll cut to the chase. I've got a bit of a crush on Patrick Wolf. Although this isn't a confession any more than it should be a surprise. He's an amazingly beautiful man.

I don't really know anything about Patrick Wolf except that he sings wonderfully, in words that I can understand. And that sometimes he's like a glorious busker. And sometimes he's shinier than Liberace. And other times he's darker than diamond. And he makes me smile and he, in turn, smiles like it's a new invention. And above and beyond almost every single other thing he makes every single other thing he does look incredibly natural and unforced . In fur or feathers. Or jogger shorts with leopard print ears. Or short sleeved sequined hoodies. Or one and a half red gingham shirts.

Call it what you like. Star quality? The X Factor? All I know is that Patrick Wolf makes this 35 year old divorced father of two feel like telling you this series of gushing random comments, and hopes that they might fashion themselves into something coherent. He's got something I'm trying to define but I'm not sure that I can. It's not about how he looks or sings or acts, and yet it is about all of these things. He has it. And he wears it like it's an accident.

STOP PRESS

2007-01-25T01:07:00.000Z

I will be writing something interesting soon.

Promise.

Text To A Voice

2007-01-19T17:28:00.000Z

I'm really looking forward to meeting you.
More than I can believe is possible.
I'm looking forward to just seeing you,
And you seeing me,
And walking towards you,
And hold you in my arms,
Like I can't let you go,
And kissing your mouth,
Like the last kiss ever,
And feeling your body pressed hard against mine,
Like we're trying to fuse,
And your face in my hands,
Staring into your eyes for the meaning of me,
Running hands over shoulders,
And under your arms,
Cup the swell of your breasts,
And the curve of your hips,
And I want my hands straying,
Between your thighs,
And for you to involuntarily let me in,
Like it's natural,
And meant,
And destiny,
And I want you to feel me.
Inside you.
And I'm longing to feel you.
Outside me.
And I want us to be able to taste each other,
And I want to remember a moment forever,
And over and over and over again,
Wherever and whenever we want and we will.
I love you.

M(y)us(p)i(a)c(e)

2007-01-15T19:11:00.000Z

Clicking on MySpace links as a means to discovering new music is actually making me feel a bit down.

I remember when I first heard A Certain Romance by Arctic Monkeys. I remember exactly how I felt and what it prompted me to do afterwards. It made me buy gig tickets on Ebay. It made me go to the gig and turn down three times the amount I'd paid for the tickets. It has subesequently made me travel hundreds of miles and write thousands of words in the name of criticism. Here are a few:

___________________________________________________________

Bristol Bierkeller - October 2005

It's sometimes difficult to know where to start. I Bet That... seems a good place. Maybe I don't go to enough gigs but rarely have I heard the assembled masses singing the hook so well it sounds like it's been rehearsed.

I'm confused.

I don't know whether or not to write a little or lots.

Arctic Monkeys are the next big thing right? A familiar blend of youthful exuberance and choons. I mean. At one and the same time they made me feel like I'm 17 and 70. Wanting to be young enough to be "involved". Wanting to claim that I was there. I might be a year late, then, in fact, looking around, I realise that I'm about seventeen years too late.

I knew what to expect. A blitzed set. A gig like a bank job. In and out. No fuck-ups. And so the gig was a blur. A million miles an hour mission statement. Tighter than tights and ten times sweatier.

After Fake Tales... and the double negative rant of Still Take You Home, I stopped remembering the tracks until the conversation that is From The Ritz To The Rubble. I was sucked into Monkey Mayhem. Wondering how anyone could get so good so quick. Thinking that I must have wasted my adolescence, knowing that I had. Reflecting in how utterly natural it all seems. How a voice can sound like another instrument. How its lilts and language and inflections can make you laugh and bounce and take a trip down its melody.

And at the end, or just before, we were told that "We ain't got owt else we can play." I was promised A Certain Romance half way through, and waited until the end before I fell in love.

No need for an encore, and nobody gave a shit.

___________________________________________________________

Today I've listened to about half a dozen MySpace bands and a couple showed a bit of potential, a couple seemed quite accomplished, and a couple were completely dogwank. I actually had to wonder, "How on earth do these people get away with it?" Why are they playing gigs, why do people like them, why do people imagine other people will like them, why do other people have to inflict this on me?

Some of it is just a racket: barely discernable from noise. And I know that there isn't anything wrong with noise, but I'm going with unpleasant or undesired as opposed to sound of any kind, in this instance.

And yes, I know that [whinyvoice]everyone is entitled to their opinion[/whinyvoice] and [screwedupnose]you don't have to click on the link[/screwedupnose] but I quite like listening to good, new, accessible music. It genuinely seems to me that everyone just wants to be breaking the next big thing, or people want to be seen to be listening to music that is increasingly inaccessible. Like it comes with a Certificate Of Exclusivity or an I Heard Of Them First badge.

Why is this?

I don't think people exercise enough discretion when they're recommending music nowadays. I also think The Arctic Monkeys Phenomenon has had a lot to do with that, even in such a short space of time. I'm cool with the fact that people want other people to know what they like, and the fact that they want those other people to like what they like too, and to like them, in turn, for liking like things. I just wish people would try to remember how they felt when they heard something incredible for the first time, rather than touting every other band/artist they listen to who sounds 'okay'.

It's the equivalent of the boy who cried wolf. Or that's at least how it seems to me.

Cake

2007-01-11T14:49:00.000Z

The things I've done
Could make me cry
Or leave you asking questions
Such as why
The effort that we make
To turn a stone to chocolate cake
Result in nothing
But the state
We started off
To contemplate
That is the rock
We tried to change
A task which
(Though beyond our range)
We thought might happen
Via a blend
Of luck
And rules we tried to bend
Then realised
Like common sense
That for the sake
Of ninety pence
The sinful sweet
(Like Cleo's asp)
Was always well within our grasp
Without the need
To find a boulder
Waiting...

Only made us older
And come to terms
Once brains were wracked
That cake is cake
And that's a fact

Eureka #1

2007-01-07T01:50:00.000Z

Every time someone leaves a comment on a piece on my blog I get an email telling me that someone has left a comment on a piece on my blog.

Which got me to thinking...

I wonder if there's a thing, like a thing with a special name, where you can register your email address on a blog in a special section, like a special section with a special name, so that you get an email every time a new piece appears on that blog?

Obviously if you got an email saying that I had just posted this piece you'd probably be a bit gutted, but at least technology of this kind would stop me having to look at this blog ten times a day just to see if something new is on there.

It probably does exist. I can't imagine that I've had an original idea. So if it exists, tell me where. And if it doesn't exist, invent such a thing. Please.

Thanks.

Guess what?

2007-01-02T17:03:00.000Z

Guess what?

You can't, can you?

Guess what?

Two words. Two horrible words masquerading as a conversation starter or a pregnant pause filler or a sentence: the worst sentence ever. And the English language is so versatile. Look at the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Ayres, Cartland. Truly English is plural.

"Guess what?" is an unanswerable question. It serves little earthly purpose. It's the equivalent of "ummmmm..." or "errrrr..." and it might be the singularly most useless question in the world. It's like clearing wordphlegm from your throat. What "Guess what?" actually means is, "I'm about to tell you something which not only do I know will be utterly impossible for you to predict but I don't even want you to try and predict the answer which is utterly impossible for you to predict either."

"You'll never guess what" is almost as bad, but at least it doesn't try to pretend to be a question. Its not under the impression that it's anything other than a tedious preamble.

"Guess what?" should be banned, along with the word indescribable. And just once, one time, I would like to be able to say something other than "What?" in response.

"Guess what?"
"You think that your cat leaves the house every night and metamorphosises into an amalgam of Zorro, the character of Arthur Fowler in Eastenders, and a blacksmith, in order to perpetrate an incalculable number of heinous local acts of wanton vandalism."
"!"

English makes me laugh, especially when it's written on pub blackboards.

Three Course Dinner £4.50, Children £3.00

The funniest pub notice though is 'No Jeans'. Is that discrimination, or what?

And there's another anomaly of the English language, adding "or what?" to the end of a sentence. Having asked the question, "Is that discrimination?" there is absolutely no need to fortify it with "or what?" In fact adding "or what?" to the end of a sentence actually means please swap the first two words around, ignore the or what, and treat the whole utterance as a statement of fact rather than a question. Thus "Is that discrimination, or what?" becomes "That is discrimination."

It discriminates against the clothes we wear, our right to self expression, and our individuality. It also discriminates against anyone called Jean.

The thing I love about English is that you can often make up sentences which you can be pretty certain no-one else has ever said. Among my favourites are my bed-ridden God-aunt has a pathological fear of nutmeg, closely followed by the trip to accident and emergency was peppered with detour and comedy. Feel free to use them in any conversations you might have soon. I'd hate to think they had gone to waste. Because words and phrases haunt my every waking moment, and the idea that some people don't ever seem to think about things they say, or the fact that they say things they don't mean, or even understand, fills me with a little bit of woe.

I remember watching a rugby match on TV one day. One of the players, who was a naturally right-footed kicker of the ball, had just kicked it with his left foot, and kicked it well. So up pipes the commentator, "that just goes to show the advantage of being ambidextrous." Indeed, where would any current rugby professional be without being able to use both hands with equal ease? Then, in the same game, and and and this is THE BBC mind, the same commentator said, "Lovely running there. Off one foot, then the other." No doubt any blind people listening needed confirmation that the players weren't hopping around the pitch.

Hang on.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

Then again, the world would be a pretty dull place if everyone went around thinking about what they were saying all the time. Imagine a world without spontaneity or instinct. Imagine a world without wit and instant. A world full of people umming and erring or even errming. Imagine a world without ermine. The world needs impulsion, it couldn't survive without it.

Guess what?

Go on, guess.

I'll give you a lifetime to come up with the answer.

Lawnmower Story

2006-12-29T00:40:00.000Z

I've got just over fifty minutes before I have to be doing something else. I could count to three thousand, but that might take too long.

It would be okay to start with. One, two, three, four, five, six, they don't take very long to say. But when you get to two thousand seven hundred and seventy seven it might start to take too long. Too many syllables you see. Too much time.

Time. It's on your side and it flies when you're having fun.

I remember when I used to have double French at school with Monsieur Trim. He used to teach German as well but the Herr Trim jokes had worn a bit thin by the fourth year.

"Time", I used to say to myself, "is on my side. The lesson has to end, at some point the buzzer will go, I will pack my bag, and be on the coach home".

Even though I knew this there was still the nagging doubt. That time would stand still and I would be forced to spend eternity in double French. Although if you think about it, if the lesson was to last for eternity the concept of it being a double lesson couldn't exist, since eternity is infinite and infinity is not divisible by two.

I knew my maths lessons would come in handy one day.

What then am I to do with the thirty five minutes that now remain? What do other people do with their time? I'll tell you what they do, they go around fondling lawnmowers. I know they do because I saw it on television once. There was a man on television wearing a blindfold and fondling lawnmowers. He identified ten different lawnmowers without the use of his eyes. I don't mean lawnmowers as in your Flymo Super Hover with detachable grass harness, I mean antique lawnmowers. It was truly a sight to behold. A grown man, in a blindfold, running his fingers over blades, handles and cogs, then standing up and saying, with some degree of pride, "Yes, I think that one is a Smith and Chambers Ten Inch Greenback, 1935".

Yet despite the fact that during every single second of this 'feat' I was repeating the phrase "You fucking sad bastard" in my head, I couldn't help but be in awe of this man. He had used his time. Granted he had used it to stumble around in the dark touching up lawnmowers, but he had found a purpose, a niche.

The television programme was called YOU BET!, the rules of which are as difficult to understand as the rules of skittles. Somebody somewhere had devised it. They had sat down, perhaps with others, and invented it, and pitched it. No-one had asked them to. It wasn't necessary. The world would have merrily continued spinning on its axis without YOU BET!.

And if your faith in the future of the human race isn't completely wiped out by the fact that someone had invented it, it must be completely fucked by the fact that someone thought it would be a good idea to broadcast it on prime-time television. "Could anything in the entire universe be more unnecessary?" I had to ask myself. The answer I didn't want to hear was that a new series of "Last Of The Summer Wine" would soon be starting.

And they say that British TV is the best in the world.

Someone once said that twenty-four hours is a long time in politics. The truth is that twenty-four hours is the same time anywhere. It all depends on what order you want to take them in and whether or not you put them to good use.

Addendum:

Deal or No Deal

How in the fucking name of fuckity fuck did this sorry excuse for entertainment ever make it onto our television screens?

The premise that one person randomly choosing numbers somehow constitutes anything even remotely approaching excitement is utterly absurd.

The "Christmas Special" was on. The whole thing lasted an hour. People watched it on TV. There were people in the audience. They were getting excited about people opening boxes. The people opening the boxes were saying things like "I'll do my best for you", and offering 'tactical advice'.

YOU'RE OPENING A FUCKING BOX YOU FUCKING FUCKWIT.

So this is it, there's no grey area. You're either a moron, and you like DOND, or you're momentarily not a cunt and you think DOND is the sorriest heap of shit ever to disgrace television.

John Logie Baird must be turning in his grave.

Televisual sputum.

Walking Gingerly: A Guide

2006-12-19T23:48:00.000Z

Icy pavements and snowy sidewalks abound as the Winter Weather Wagon crawls over the brow of Christmas Hill. There's nothing quite like the smell of freshly gritted tarmac to put the spring in your step, and whilst iffy alliteration can't splinter your coccyx, be warned. Pride may come before a fall, but what comes after?

Whether it's torn trousers, a bruised bottom, or just plain hospitalisation, this Christmas you'll be going absolutely nowhere without my Guide To Walking Gingerly. Follow the guide carefully and Christmas rambling will be as easy as falling off a yule log.

1 Shoe Selection

The importance of shoe selection cannot be emphasised enough as far as walking gingerly is concerned. What you're after in this sort of weather is a boot/shoe with a sturdy grip and strong ankle support. Don't be afraid to customise old wellies with sequins, buttons, or screwed up Penguin wrappers.

2 Centre Of Gravity

Poise and balance are the order of the day if you're going to get from A to C without involving your B. To ensure that your centre of gravity is going to maximise velocity and friction, while at the same time minimising embarrassment, use the following equation:

Divide your weight in newtons by your height in fathoms, multiply by a factor of two, or your mean stride length in feet over a distance of one furlong - whichever is the greater. Find the cube root of this amount and the resultant figure is the weight, in pounds, of fresh fruit which you should put into any available pocket.

3 Luck

If at this stage you're still falling over the chances are that you're either clumsy, or extremely unlucky. But, as in all aspects of life, you make your own luck and take it where you find it. To increase your 'luck ratio' simply stay indoors, avoid ice altogether (except in drinks), and have a happy and bruise-free Christmas.

The Twelve Days Of Christmas

2006-12-15T01:57:00.000Z

I saw my two daughters in their first Nativity Play this week. It was a heart-warming and surreal affair. Singing donkeys playing xylophones and stuff, you know how it is. It reminded me of the unswerving and overwhelming love I have for my children, and it reminded me of Christmas. And when I thought about love and about Christmas it brought to mind the song The Twelve Days of Christmas, a song I don't think I've ever heard sung properly.

I mean I've heard it attempted. Everyone at least gets it right up until five gold rings. In fact the whole song revolves around five gold rings. If you've forgotten how many pipers are piping, or lords are a-leaping you can rest assured that on the fifth day it was DEFINITELY five gold rings that my true love gave to me. And if you sing it with enough gusto the rest of the song hardly matters. Everything between five gold rings and a partridge in a pear tree is sung as the longest word that has ever appeared in a song.

"Fourcallingbirdsthreefrenchhenstwoturtledoves, AND A PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREEEEEE."

Anyway. The thing is, I'm reckoning that this "true love" person was one hell of a rich mother-fucker, and obviously I'm having to make a few assumptions.

Firstly there's the packaging issue. Most of the stuff is alive, so we're not in bubble-wrap territory. And what's the deal with all the live creatures anyway? What is the method behind the madness? Why a pear tree? Was it just the alliteration?

Whatever.

I'm not particularly concerned with the events leading up to the twelve days of Christmas, and I'm not overly worried about understanding the psyche behind the purchases. I'm more interested in using as much hapless rhetoric and assumptive absurdity as possible. I'm thinking the deliveries were made in person, by the "True Love". Most of the information I have on prices is going to have to be pretty sketchy. I'm figuring that the whole lot is going to be pretty expensive, so in the absence of fact there'll be a bit of educated guesswork along the way.

For the purposes of this exercise, "My True Love" is a he/him/boyfriend, and "Me" is a she/her/girlfriend. And if you've got a problem with that, stop reading now.

Ready?

___________________________________________________________

Ok. So. Day one. The first day of Christmas. A partridge in a pear tree.

Now a pear tree, depending on the type of pear, is going to set you back about £17. The thing is, where the cost of this whole twelve days of Christmas thing starts to mount up, is the fact that each of the gifts is duplicated on each of the remaining days. So a partridge in a pear tree is given on the first day and each of the remaining eleven days.

Yes, I know, it's complicated.

Partridge meat costs about £7 per kilogram and the average weight of a partridge is about 500 grams, so that's about £3.50 per partridge. But how do you compare the cost of a dead partridge to a live one? I could compare the price of a pig to the price of bacon and work out some sort of dead:alive cost ratio index but, to be honest, I don't think there's a lot of point comparing a pig to a partridge. Turkey seems more festive, and more apt. I don't know if turkey prices go up at Christmas, necessarily. It's been a while since I studied supply and demand and now I'm looking into this, it's apparent that I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

Ok, major assumptions. You're going to have to run with me on this.

You can pick up a box of 10 dead partridge(s) for £47. Call it a fiver per partridge. Now, thinking out loud here, but thinking slowly... a... live... partridge... must... cost... less... than... a... dead... one. Right?

I mean, if you're going to sell ten dead partridge in a box, there has to be some sort of mark-up, unless you've raised them since they were eggs, or whatever. I can't imagine that you'd get a lot of waste product from a dead partridge. Do they use their feathers on shuttlecocks or anything? Not sure. Then there are economies of scale. If you buy in bulk the price per partridge has to be less than buying individual partridge. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a live partridge is probably going to cost about three quid. This will fall nicely in line with the £17 pear tree and make things easier to work out when the time comes.

There's no point in making it more complicated than it has to be, yeah?

Moving on. Turtle doves.

Day one was sweet. Granted that perfume might have been a more suitable choice, but the partridge and pear tree were a lovely thought. It probably would have been a bit of a surprise to get another partridge and another pear tree on day two, but the two turtle doves would have been a pleasant distraction. Fluttering away. Being turtle doves.

Now my basic knowledge of turtle doves is pretty slim as, coincidentally, is my knowledge of turtles and, indeed, doves. I'm more of a "know a little about a lot" kind of bloke. That's me.

Turtle doves are, essentially, free. They "occur" naturally. Although so do partridges and pear trees, and that didn't stop me putting a price on them. By my reckoning turtle doves are posh doves, and doves are posh pigeons. And racing pigeons are also posh pigeons. So by that rationale I'm thinking that a turtle dove would cost about the same as a posh racing pigeon. Which is about fifty quid. Two ponies. A tenth of a monkey.

On day three the alarm bells will have started ringing. They might be barely audible, like someone breaking into a butcher's around the corner from your house, but they're definitely there. Another partridge in a pear tree - the novelty is beginning to wear a bit thin. Two more turtle doves - blimey, they must have set you back about £100. And now three French hens.

It's a double whammy. The bird fixation, and the arithmetic progression. I'm guessing that if you call a hen French, that makes it a French hen. It won't cluck with an accent and it's not likely to get up when the La Marseillaise starts playing any more than a jar of French mustard would. On this basis a hen costs about a fiver.

At this point she asks him how long this is all going to last. And he tells her.

Day four. The alarm bell is next door. She's already made space in the garden for the fourth pear tree and the partridge have never looked so at home. They're roosting with the turtle doves.

Coo.

Three French hens become six French hens, like some sort of hackneyed meiosis, and fuck me if it's not more fucking birds. Four calling birds or, to be more accurate, four collie birds.

Don't panic though. In the same way as turtle doves ARE NOT some sort of crazy seaweed sprig carrying ocean-dwellers of peace, collie birds have nothing to do with sheepdogs. The word collie or "colly" actually comes from an old word meaning coal or "coal". Thus a collie bird, now more familiarly referred to as a calling bird, is actually a blackbird. And if you've done the maths already, you're right. At the end of the twelfth day there will be enough to make one and a half dainty dishes to set before the king.

I'm not sure how much blackbirds cost, and neither does the internet, so the blackbirds didn't cost anything, okay? He caught them. At the park or somewhere. And put them into cages. Until the pear trees were available.

You'd be forgiven, if you were her, for thinking that enough was enough. By the end of day four she's looking at four pear trees populated by four partridges, eight turtle doves, and four calling birds. And she's had to build a coop for the six French hens. There's already enough room for eight more pear trees, so the fifth one isnt a problem.

The rest of the birds are unloaded from the van (which is the same van as the previous day) and he shuts the doors and walks towards her - she's standing in the porch. There are no obvious signs of other life shoved up or down his sweater. No twittering, chirping, squawking, or tweeting eminates from his slacks. He's got five of something, she's certain, but five of what? What will she have to house forty of in the not too distant future? He reaches into his pocket. His pocket Mind! And takes out five gold rings.

Argos. Ten pound a pop. Sorted.

The phew from her lips could be heard within a ten mile radius. The gasp the following day, twelve. Buttered up by a day's worth of jewellery, he saw a window of opportunity and, after arriving before dawn broke, in a slightly larger van, began unloading his feather orientated cargo.

Six geese-a-laying enter the fray.

Now at this point she's clearly upset, she's having nightmares about being ravaged by a dozen dodos in half a dozen days time, and is about to tell him that enough is enough. So he makes a promise. No more birds after tomorrow. And he'd stop sooner but they're on order. And look, you've got ten gold rings. So she says okay, as he's promised, and wonders if five gold rings on each finger will still allow her to knit.

A decent goose is going to set you back about £120, whether it's a-laying or not. The a-laying bit is something of a red herring. You could probably get a deal by buying them in bulk. Say six for £600. That's if you knew someone who sold geese in bulk.

You could haggle for a gaggle.

That's pure gold.

So she knew they were coming and that they'd have feathers. She knew there would be seven of them. Shit. That meant within a week there would be forty-two of them. Fuck. Whilst his avian MO would have stopped, that would still leave her having to look after 184 birds, and that's not counting any hatched geese (a-laying my arse). But she was ready for anything, pretty much, or she thought she was.

Her suspicions were aroused when he insisted on having a pond landscaped into her back garden (he called in a favour). It was a big pond, you could probably fit... oooooooh... forty-two swans in that (£300 each). To be honest, having swans swimming in a pond in your back garden would be pretty cool and, for a split second, she almost regretted enforcing his bird-gift embargo. But only for a split second. He had the opportunity to redeem himself over the next few days and she had the opportunity to develop Dove Fancier's Lung.

The eighth day and a new dawn, ushered in with the sort of racket you might associate with the sound that nearly seventy birds make. And hark? Is that the sound of cow-bells coming from the large truck that has pulled into the driveway? Forming not so much a queue of presents, more the failed auditions from some sort of demented Noah film, the possibly soon-to-be ex-boyfriend proudly parades the next stage in his attempted woo.

Eight maids-a-milking.

On the plus side she now had eight people who could help her gather eggs, scatter seed, and clean the bird shit off her windows. There would be an endless supply of milk, which could domino into cheese, butter, and pear yogurt production. And they downside? IN FOUR DAYS TIME THERE WOULD BE FORTY COWS IN HER FUCKING GARDEN.

At this point a wry smile crawls across his face. Although because it's only a joke that he's aware of, and because she is about to stove his skull in with a pail, it quickly crawls off again. He explains that seven of the cows are going back, and she'll only be left with one cow, and the maids will have to take it in turns a-milking it. Her face defines the antithesis of sidesplitting.

Anyhow, cows cost a grand, exactly. And maids cost...

Hmmmnnn...

Here's the possible flaw in my interpretation of The Twelve Days Of Christmas. I'm wanting to go down the Human Ownership route. Not so much because I have a penchant for slavery, but more that I've gone so far down this absurd road, it would be a shame to have to turn back. But where can you buy human life on the internet?

You have to love rhetoric.

It won't work though. I've got to consider pipers piping and drummers drumming. Ladies dancing I can change to something more noughties, like lapdancing (£20/dance). And everyone knows that Lords are a snip at £2,000, or at least that's how much they think people can be bought for. I'm going to have to tar maids, pipers and drummers with the same metaphorical minimum wage brush, and base their cost on a 35 hour working week. It would mean an ongoing wage-bill after The Twelve Days Of Christmas were over... but that could always be offset by selling goose eggs and dairy produce... although with only one cow and 40 maids to pay... except their wages wouldn't be her problem... maybe he'd have to draw up some sort of pre-nuptial agreement... I'm rambling.

In any case, who cares what happened after?

Because I'm feeling generous the maids get five pounds an hour for a seven hour day. End of.

Thus eight maids-a-milking begets nine-ladies dancing begets ten lords-a-leaping begets eleven pipers piping begets twelve drummers drumming.

This is how you end an incredibly tedious story.

By the end of the twelfth day of Christmas her garden comprises 12 pear trees and 12 partridges, 22 turtle doves, 30 French hens, 36 calling birds, 42 geese, and 42 swans. That's 184 birds plus sundry goslings, and one cow. 140 people variously milk, dance, leap, pipe and drum at her house every day, and despite the fact that she is also the owner of 40 gold rings, her life is actually a living hell.

And the value of these gifts? Well, if my calculations are correct, the total value of the gifts, as at the end of the twelfth day of Christmas, is £87,265.

The Twelve Days of Christmas actually start on Boxing day and finish on Epiphany. If you want to you can treat this as ironic. My guess is he forgot to buy her something for Christmas and was trying to make it up to her. I wonder who had the epiphany?

Christmas Present

2006-12-05T16:13:00.000Z

When I was about sixteen I wanted a guitar.

I'd wanted a guitar for quite a few months. I wanted a guitar more than I wanted anything else. Christmas was coming. So I asked for a guitar. I would have been happy with a guitar and nothing else. But no guitar shapes appeared under the Christmas tree in the lead up to Christmas Day.

Christmas Morning I went to church with my family. I think I might have prayed for a guitar. Then, after mass, we went back home for breakfast. And, after breakfast, we all sat in the lounge, waiting to begin the present opening. I was already pretty gutted at this point. Still no guitar-shaped presents under the tree. Not even the hint of one (whatever that actually means). But despite this, despite my palpable sadness, there was the merest hint of tangible excitement. Like a joke that was only being played on me. So when it came to handing out the presents it seemed both odd and strangely appropriate that I should be handed the first one.

It was about eight inches long and four inches across. But not rectangular. It was weirdly shaped. And a bit nobbly in places. No audible moving parts - a shake confirmed this. I was perplexed. My face must have been a creative combination of sadness, excitement, and puzzlement.

Anyway.

I opened it.

I opened it, and inside the wrapping paper, there, in my hands, my trembling hands, was a guitar. A plastic guitar. It was yellow, and had a red back. With rubber bands for strings. Three rubber bands forming six strings. I strummed it in my sorrow, fighting back tears. Every twang accompanied by my laughing family.

"Look on the back," my Dad said. So I did. And there. There sellotaped on the back of the plastic guitar was a yellow square of paper. Blue ink. LOOK UNDER YOUR BED.

I looked up at them first. Saw their beaming faces. And ran upstairs. And saw My Guitar. And cried.

My GENEsis™

2006-11-21T17:09:00.000Z

Far be it for me to diss God.

After all, God's omnipotent and that. But it seems to me that the whole orderGodcreatedtheworldin thing doesn't make a great deal of sense. Normally I wouldn't question The Almighty, per se, but God, if you're reading this, here's the order I think you should have done it in, just in case you're planning another. Here's My GENEsis™

Day One: Light
Day Two: Sun and moon and stars
Day Three: Land
Day Four: Water
Day Five: Had a rest
Day Six: Birds and sea creatures
Day Seven: Land creatures and "man"

Creating light first obviously made everything else easier, anyone who has tried to find matches in a power cut will tell you that. I think God was spot on as far as creating light first is concerned, so a big thumbs up there. Plus it gave God night and day, a timescale to work with straight away. I mean we've all been there. Falling asleep, waking up wondering whether or not it's day or night. Clocks weren't part of the plan, neither were curtains, and nor was alcohol. This much we know. So whilst in hindsight light might seem the obvious thing to create first, we should give God praise where praise is due. God had to invent light first. No mean feat. God also made it really fast. But I'm not sure why.

I used to think the speed of light was the time it took for you to flick a light switch and the bulb to come on. I've lost count of the number of times I've stood, stopwatch in hand, SWITCHONSTARTLIGHTSTOP. When God created light They created fear. No-one should be afraid of the dark. What is the dark? It's nothing. Blackness. It's light you should be afraid of. Light should scare the shit out of you. Darkness should be embraced and thanked.

I know that some people say, "Why put off until tomorrow what you can do today?" Obviously, at this stage in creation, those people didn't exist, that's why God had never heard this statement before. To be honest, I don't normally listen to those sorts of people, because they're wankers. God is exactly like me in this respect, except the bit about thinking that they're wankers. God did the lazy version of creation. When God did it They tried to put off the boring tasks for a couple of days. Procrastination is an artform, it's just that no-one can be bothered to publicise it. In My GENEsis™ though, those wan...people were, or would have probably been, right. Once God had created light I think They would have been better off getting the more boring tasks out of the way. That way God could really get God's teeth into the stuff God needed to do later on in the week.

Not that it was called a week yet.

The sun and the moon wouldn't be too difficult. I'm thinking some sort of paper mâché affair for the moon, and an enormous flaming orange for the sun, but making all those stars must have been really boring. Of course I know what you're thinking.

Making stars? Boring? Are you mad?

Listen.

The laying-down-plenty-of-newspaper-to-catch-the-extraneous-glitter process is one I'm totally aware of. But don't forget, every glitter star needs a dab of glue. Trillions of squillions of dabs of glue, tons of glitter. Do you have any idea how much a ton of glitter weighs? Thought not. So, you see, I'm right. There was absolutely no point trying to put it off until the fourth day. God should have got that shit out of the way as soon as possible.

Time is supposed to fly when you're having fun, so after the tedium of the second day, the third day was bound to fly by. I'm guessing that by the third day God would probably have been a bit parched, but rather than creating water I think land would have been the better option. It seems a bit shortsighted to create water then land.

1. Where are you going to put it?
2. It's not a good time to find out that you can't swim.

It's bad enough having to stand on a towel to make sure your feet are dry when you put your socks back on. Without land there wouldn't even be anywhere to put your towel. You'd be fucked. God would have got soaked creating water first, and there would have been nowhere to dry off for at least a day. Major pruniness. So it would be land first for me, every time. It's common sense. I can imagine the ribbing God got about the Land/Water Water/Land mix-up at God Meetings for millennia afterwards.

"Oh no."
"You didn't?"
"God!"

Water on the fourth day is the natural follow up to land. It would have been a case of just filling in the gaps. Probably using some sort of giant ewer. All flamboyant and bejeweled with a flaring spout. A proper Godjug. Ace.

The fifth day should have been the rest day. God still had birds and sea creatures and land creatures to create. Instead of being absolutely knackered and knocking out a load of weird looking stuff, a day of rest would have been ideal. But I don't mean rest as in "do nothing". Maybe just kick back on some land, write a few lists, make a plan, design a few creatures, think things through, doodle if absolutely necessary. The next couple of days would determine what was going to populate the planet. So instead of making it look like a rush job (duck billed platypuses, wasps, horses) God could have made some creatures a bit more user-friendly (added steps, or zipped mouths, or detachable bottoms).

Not only that but if God had rested on the fifth day, Friday would be The Sabbath. Bonus.

On day six God would then be completely refreshed to create the beasts of the sea and the air, and on Sunday, I mean the seventh day, he would have had plenty of creature creating experience from the previous day to sort out cattle and what have you. Since it was always God's intention to make man in God's own image (apart from being able to fly - tut)), that job was sorted from day one. It stands to reason, if you were God and you created man on the seventh day instead of the sixth, you wouldn't have to worry about them fucking everything up on your day off.

Sorted.

Star Signs #1

2006-11-17T16:12:00.000Z

Aquarius

The last couple of weeks have left you feeling as strange as a beard with no moustache. However, an older friend, or partner, or someone younger than you, possibly a stranger, may set you back on the right track. The full moon on the 23rd might well be the turning point in the month. Every day you get older. Your lucky name is Gregory and destiny sees you climbing a ladder with a bucket in both hands.

Pisces

Cheer up, it may never happen. Except, perhaps, unfortunately, it already has, and in a big way. Sweep it under the carpet and you’re a fool to yourself, leave it out in the open and who knows? Give anyone an inch and before you know it they’ve taken a foot, much more than that and you haven’t got a leg to stand on. Fishy. Your lucky colour is cerise and destiny has you riding a horse naked.

Aries

The month starts well after the new moon on the 8th rising up to its peak, plateauing mid-month, falling slightly, stopping completely, turning round, remembering its left the gas on at home and then getting started again (although slightly slower than before). Someone with hair may ask your advice on a matter that could, inevitably, decide the future of the human race. So be careful. Your lucky animal is elk and destiny shouts your name from scaffolding.

Taurus

Things may seem a little tight around the mid-month full moon, but resist the urge to prostitute yourself for the sake of a few pence (you’ve probably only got two kidneys!) Before the month is out, somewhere around the 25th, it’s quite possible that all your financial troubles will be temporarily behind you and someone who has recently been married may be asking to borrow money. Your lucky biscuit is lemon puff and destiny misreads a bus timetable.

Gemini

The past mocks you like a backward cousin whilst the present and future conspire like two grotesque twin god-nieces. A chance meeting with K, R, N or A around the 3rd of the month (or the 4th to the 16th) could well be the start of a beautiful relationship, or at least a relationship or some sort, or maybe not. It’s difficult to say. Your lucky place is Battersea and destiny sees you crying like a baby.

Cancer

Mixing friends and money is a little like asking Michael Jackson to judge a bonny baby competition right now. Laughter may be the best medicine but pride comes before a fall. Maybe it’s time to install that power shower you’ve wanted for so long or change your name by deed poll. Either way it’s generally the same old same old. Get a life. Your lucky fruit is kumquat and destiny has you reaching for a dictionary.

Leo

Due to a tricky aspect between Mars and Uranus it’s unlikely that you’ll be eating any chocolate for the rest of the year. That said, the future looks queerly optimistic. Nothing you do this month will go wrong, everyone will agree with everything you say, and you might as well try to get into the cinema without paying. It might just work! Don’t forget that Leos don’t believe in astrology. Your lucky profession is upholsterer and destiny spells the word trousers in sequins.

Virgo

The legacy of November lives on throughout December. If you thought your love life couldn’t get any worse then think again. You’re as likely to meet a tall dark stranger as you are a midget albino stranger, or even one you know already. Take up a hobby. Buy a kite. Start collecting teaspoons. Count to three million. For crying out loud. Your lucky garment is a tunic and destiny sees a cloud shaped like an ice cream.

Libra

More than ever, like your sign, your life is a constant balancing act. There can sometimes be a fine line between fantasy and reality but the only way you’re likely to find out the difference is the hard way. For the time being you’re probably naïve enough to plod along at least appearing to acknowledge the difference between the two. Your lucky sense is smell and destiny buys you food which is approaching its sell by date.

Scorpio

Your love life might well be under the spotlight right now, but what you do in the privacy of your own home is of no concern to me. Either there’s a gloomy cloud on the horizon or I’ve just spilt some hot chocolate on my tarot cards. Just in case, ring all of your known living relatives every day for the whole month. I wouldn’t want anything on my conscience. Your lucky nut is almond and destiny sees you arrested for indecent exposure.

Sagittarius

You’re at odds with the whole world this month. If the fists are flying then it’s probably down to you. Hardly surprising since everyone you speak to seems to want to take it outside. With Jupiter in Taurus being challenged by Neptune the whole thing is likely to go off in a big way. Do you want some? Your lucky drink is beer and destiny wins a beauty contest by accident.

Capricorn

Yesterday, all your troubles seemed so far away. Now it looks as though they’re here to stay. Things can only get better. The only way is up. So come on feel the noise, girls grab the boys, we get wild wild wild. You’re lucky and density is the measure of a physical quantity per unit of length area or volume.

Rubbers

2006-11-11T23:18:00.000Z

Rubber stamping was the favourite part of Marlon's work. If something needed rubber stamping, Marlon was your man.

Although Marlon only owned two rubber stamps they were always inked up and ready for action. Because of the nature of Marlon's work for the Monopolies Commission his "ACCEPT" stamp didn't get that much use whereas, at the other end of the stamping spectrum, barely a day went by without his "REJECT" stamp being hoisted down from its rack. That particular rubber stamp had to be replaced on a fairly regular basis such was the force with which he carried out his daily tasks. And when Marlon needed a new rubber stamp, he rang Phil Hart in office supplies.

Phil had big problems that morning, and he was annoyed. Not only had he just been in a car accident, but he also couldn't find a rubber.

Just after he had parked his car in his car parking space, his car had been hit by one of the office lorries. And when he got to his desk he decided that he would try to write down the sequence of events, as he had seen them, while they were still fresh in his memory. The only problem he was having was that he couldn't think of anything to write except that he had been hit by an oncoming stationery lorry.

And even removing the word oncoming didn't make it sound a lot better...

And he couldn't remember how to spell 'stationery' anyway...

And he didn't have a dictionary to hand.

But, for some unknown reason, he did have a thesaurus, so he checked it there...

But but even then, when he read it back to himself...

But but but that was what had happened. Saying his car had been hit by a paper lorry sounded even worse.

This, then, was the moment that Phil tried to find a rubber, and couldn't find one.

The reason for this is because of what happens to rubbers.

When you use a pen, a biro, you write with it until you lose it, or it runs out of ink. Mainly when it runs out of ink, because a lost biro is never really lost. Anyway, biro (I'm guessing biro are like sheep) are a different issue entirely. Basically they're cunts. A biro can run out at any moment. Whether they appear to have a whole barrel of ink, or there seems to be none at all, a biro can give up the ghost precisely when it wants to and exactly when you least want it to. A rubber, on the other hand, can only ever be lost. You can't use a rubber until it runs out. You can't use a rubber until there's no rubber left; until you've rubbed it into extinction.

What happens with rubbers is that you use them when they are new. Then, after a while, one day, when you're bored, you write your name on them, or your initials, but you do it backwards so that you can use the rubber as some sort of primitive printing device. Later still, when you're even more bored, you break the rubber in half, usually around the point where you had previously stuck a pencil, or a biro, or a pair of plotting compasses into it. At this stage you convince yourself that you now have two rubbers and, eventually, you break the two rubbers you now have in half again, and lose four rubbers, or you just lose the two rubbers that you thought you had.

Phil was annoyed because he hadn't even had the chance to write his name on it yet.

The Road

2006-11-10T22:36:00.000Z

To a certain extent I owe my pleasant demeanour and general happy-go-luckiness to my nursery school teacher, Mrs Dab. The nursery, located just behind the launderette, was a portakabin, but, unlike the nursery, Mrs Dab was multi-story (sic). On sunny summer afternoons everyone would sit in the shade of The Old Oak Tree, just by the rubbish bins. After a while the smell adopted a therapeutic and sometimes even hypnotic/hallucinogenic effect.

Of all the stories Mrs Dab told only one has ever stuck in my memory. And this is it. The Road.

___________________________________________________________

In a certain small village there was a certain road.

Not that there weren't any other roads, but this road was different.

It was different because no matter where you were going in the village; down to the chemist; shopping at the supermarket; visiting the doctor's surgery, there always seemed to be a better or quicker way of getting there. As a result the road was barely used, if at all.

The road itself, though outwardly inanimate, had feelings. Most of the time it was under the impression that it wasn't really doing its job. In fact apart from keeping the pavements apart it did very little and the chances of it meeting of it getting any sort of promotion or meeting any nice looking minor A roads were slipping away, and it wasn't getting any younger.

Days passed, weeks passed, and time generally passed until one day, one very stormy day, the wind blew so hard that it blew the road clean away. It blew the road up and up and up and then carried it far far far away. And after it had been flying for many many many miles the road met up with gravity and it landed in the middle of a field.

The animals in the field could not make head or tail of this strange tarmaccy thing which had been thrust so suddenly upon them. They had all seen one before, and some of their late friends had, sadly, made some very close inspections. After a while though they all plucked up the courage to go and talk to the road. They soon found out that the road was very friendly and eventually ventured onto it, safe in the knowledge that they were not at any risk.

The days in the field passed quickly, and the road was really beginning to come to terms with its new friends, role, and general environment. Unfortunately after two weeks the field was bulldozed over to make way for a new housing estate.

___________________________________________________________

Some people are incredibly impatient. They want it all and they want it all now. Give them an inch and they'll take a foot. What's wrong with them? Why can't they be happy with their lot? While some people are joining hands around the world and saying a prayer for the end to world hunger, there are others who would take the opportunity to try and set a new record for the biggest ever hokey-cokey.

Greed is a sickness which lies dormant in every person. Once woken, there is no cure. The only hope any of us have is that it can be sedated.

A Glass of Water

2006-11-09T23:37:00.000Z

OK, so I wake up and you're fast asleep. It's hot. Just a thin sheet half covering you. I get out of bed and get a glass of water from the bathroom. I drink it all and fill it up again. Then I return to the bed. To the foot of the bed. I put the water on the floor and slide the sheet from your lower half, exposing you. Exposing your calves and your knees and your thighs and your hips and your waist and your cunt.

You're on your side so I run my finger gently down your back, encouraging you to turn onto it, which you do. Next I move my arms between your legs, nudging them slightly, your pussy in full view, my palms on the inside of your thighs, smoothing their way upwards, you opening your legs wider, almost involuntarily, as you start to open up before my eyes.

And so I start to lick you. Very gently. Just the tip of my tongue running along and around the outside of you, from as low as possible, up and around, clockwise, around and around, the circle getting slightly smaller each time, my tongue slightly firmer with each circuit, around and around and around until the circle it's making is on the cleft of your cunt, your outer lips pink and puffed up, your pussy opening up, starting to weep.

You're starting to stir, and I can hear tiny moans of pleasure. You're ready for me now. My hands tentatively reach for you. The index and middle fingers of each hand tenderly prising you apart, my thumbs brushing against your clit. I push my tongue into you, right into the middle of your cunt. Hard and gentle. I twist it around inside you and you begin to writhe slightly. Then I lap. I lap at your cunt. From the bottom to the top. And my thumbs return to your clit, massaging it, clockwise and anticlockwise in turn.

Then you wake up. I can sense it and feel it. Your pussy clenches. But you're not frightened, more grateful. Glad that you can enjoy the moment. My thumbs on your clit, my tongue beginning to flatten out, filling the whole of your cunt, lapping upwards, in and out of you, my teeth nibbling your lips, sucking your clit into my mouth, flicking my tongue over and around it while it's inside my mouth, your hips pushing your cunt onto my face.

Then I reach down and grab the water. And I bring it up to where my mouth is buried into you. And I trickle the water onto you. Your hips buck at first, but I push you down with my other hand. And you get used to it. The cool water running over your clit and down your pussy, my fat tongue filling your cunt alongside my fingers, stretching you wider, my thumbing making tiny firm circles around and on your clit, taking you closer and closer to the edge.

The water gone I throw the glass on the floor. Your pussy and my face a sopping wet, a mixture of water and your arousal. My fingers and thumbs are equally wet. I can hear your breath starting to quicken, sighs turning to moans and gasps as I pull your cunt wider than before, hard, and sink my face back into it, frenziedly licking you for all I'm worth. The fingers on my left hand now massaging your clit, making you scream with pleasure, my left hand smoothing its way under you, around your ass, pushing my wet thumb into you there.

And that's it. That's what takes you there, over the edge. My tongue in your cunt, my thumb in your ass, my fingers swarming over your clit. Feeling you tighten as your orgasm takes hold. Feeling your cunt spasm around my tongue. Feeling you get wetter as you buck your hips into me again and again.

Chocolate Sauce

2006-11-08T00:08:00.000Z

Can I feed you chocolate with one hand and hold your pussy in my other hand?

I'll run my middle finger along the crease of your cunt, the two fingers either side of it tracing a line around the edge of it, up and down, occasionally nipping together, trapping your puffy pink lips between them, building up a rhythm, teasing you, my thumb threatening your clit.

Then, with a downstroke, my middle finger and index finger will gently prise you open, my index finger dipping inside you on the upstroke. On the way back down the same two fingers will press into you a little more, and stay there until they find the point of resistance, where they'll hover, momentarily, before pushing into you completely, curling upwards, twisting inside you, making you moan.

Two fingers inside you, a steady rhythm, my mouth on yours, tongues tasting, teeth biting lips, fusing, my thumb firmly but gently on your clit, working magic clockwise circles, my fingers feeling you getting wetter, your thighs opening involuntarily, the tips of my thumb and fingers trying to feel each other through you. I move my hand so my fingers are side by side instead of on top of each other, stretching you, making your cunt grip them tighter as you buck your hips into my hand.

Leaving my fingers inside you I move myself down, my head between your legs, my eyes move from you down to your glorious pussy, my fingers sliding effortlessly in and out of you, shiny from your juices which trickle down towards your ass. I introduce my other hand, two fingers of each pulling you wide as you gasp. You can sense my mouth getting nearer and nearer.

I start to talk to your wonderfully tight wet warm cunt, my hot breath on your thighs and pussy lips, puffed up and pink, your clit standing proud, waiting to be nibbled and bitten and sucked into my mouth. And I don't keep you waiting, plunging my tongue into you, quickly, flicking across and over and around you, then as my fingers press back into you, my mouth sucks your clit inside it, my teeth grazing over it making you jerk, and inside my mouth the tip of my tongue peppers your clit.

You can sense the strength in my fingers as your pussy clings to them. I add a third finger and you moan as all three turn inside you, reaching upwards into you, my tongue flat against your clit, then lapping at it with the very tip, twisting around it as my fingers alternate between delicately teasing you and punching into you, hard and fast, almost forcing you further up the bed. And you fight back, grinding your cunt onto my hand with each thrust.

Suddenly the speed increases and my hand is a blur. For a minute my hand pummels your cunt, taking you closer and closer to the edge. Then my tongue returns to your clit, lapping at it frenziedly. I push the thumb of my hand into your pussy then bring it underneath you, finding your asshole as you tense then soften, allowing me to push it into you there.

I jump up, keen to get inside you almost as soon as my fingers have left you empty. I'm between your legs, holding myself up by my arms, my cock at the entrance to you, my eyes looking into yours, wanting to savour the moment, wanting to see how you react as first you feel the tip of my cock touching you, then you feel your pussy lips kissing it, opening up to my rock hard cock as I dip into you, seeing your pleading eyes wanting more, pushing in a little further, until I can't stand it any more than you, and suddenly, with all my force, I thrust my cock deep into your cunt, balls deep into you, almost winding you.

And I do it again and again and again, each time a little harder, each time a little deeper, pounding into your cunt, fucking the shit out of you, over and over and over, sometimes stopping completely inside you, sometimes stopping on the edge of you, barely inside you, wanting to come inside you, and over your belly and over your clit. Wanting to feel your spasming cunt around my cock. Wanting to keep you at orgasm when I pull out only for me to frig your spunk covered clit with my hand, and lick my come from my fingers.

Telling me you're going to come will make me work harder, feel harder, feel thicker. As I sense your pussy tighten in the paroxysm of its orgasm I keep going and going and going, wanting your pleasure to last as long as mine as my cock rams into you, waiting for you to tell me that you're coming, waiting to feel your weeping cunt get wetter, waiting for the last slap of my balls on your ass as I tell you that I'm coming too, telling you that I'm going to fill you up with my warm spunk, as we collapse into each other.

No Comment(s)

2006-10-28T20:06:00.000+01:00

I'm not sorry. It was bound to happen. Because in order to prompt some sort of reaction "these days", other than none, it seems to me that a blog has to have at least one loin-stirring entry. So here's mine.

Well. It starts on the sofa. Kissing and cuddling. It often starts like that. You getting me hard. Stroking my cock through my jeans. My hand reaching up your skirt, parting your thighs, pushing your knickers to one side, sliding my fingers inside your wet cunt, my thumb finding your clit, making you flinch.

And then your fingers undo my jeans and find their way inside my boxers, touching my hard cock, flesh on flesh, stroking me gently, getting me harder still, wrapping your hand around me, pulling my foreskin back hard, making me gasp as I whisper in your ear that I have to fuck you. If you want me to.

I'd push my trousers and boxers to the floor and pull you on top of me, my cock finding the entrance to you, the tip teasing you, wanting to savour the moment when I slide into you, balls deep, reaching under your arms, pulling you onto me, my hands on your shoulders, sliding my cock into you, your clit grinding against me, my hands moving down to your ass, pulling you onto me even harder, your fingers reaching down, feeling my cock sliding from you as you ride me.

I should reach behind you, undo your bra, pulls your arms from it, release your breasts, bring my mouth towards your nipples, sucking them in turn, feel them harden against my tongue, then bring my mouth to yours, kissing you, you remember, deep and hard, my cock fucking your weeping cunt, deep and hard, wanting to cum inside you, wanting you to cum at the same time, wanting to feel your spasming cunt tighten and soften around my pulsating cock, wanting you to tell me that you're cumming over my cock, wanting to tell you that I'm filling your pussy with spunk.

Then we'd stop. To catch breath. To breathe. Before we've cum. Before we've given in to our orgasm. We'd stop. And I could feel your pussy pulsing around me. And you could feel my cock. Filling you up. And I'd bring one hand to the back of your head and pull your mouth onto mine. Kissing you like I do. Like it's never meant to end. And you'd kiss me back. And my other hand would fall to yours. Pushing your fingers onto you. Both of us making tiny hard circles. Mine on your hand, yours on your clit. Starting slowly and building up. Beginning to move gently again.

Our gentle movements would speed up quickly, soft slow love-making replaced by hard faster fucking. Your fingers sliding from your clit, falling either side of my cock, guiding it into you as I pound you harder and harder. I'd push my thumb into your cunt, alongside my cock, stretching you, making you moan, then I'd reach underneath you, pushing the same thumb slowly into your ass.

I'd be able to feel the tip of my cock nudging against the tip of my thumb. I'd be able to hear your moans becoming more audible as your orgasm approached. I'd bend my head to breathe in your cleavage, run my tongue up and down it, before kissing you, sucking the moans from your mouth. Then I'd bring both hands around to your ass, holding you, pulling you onto me in time with the thrusts of my cock, pumping it into your cunt, telling you that I'm about to cum.

You nod, breathlessly telling me you're going to cum too. Asking me to unload inside you. Pleading with me to unleash wads and wads of cum into your cunt. And this sends me over. I thrust as deep as I can into you as the first splashes of my cum hit the walls of your pussy. I pull out deftly, sending the third and fourth streaks of my spunk up over your belly and tits and directly onto your clit. My throbbing cock returns to your aching cunt, somehow thicker, somehow stretching you that little bit more as you cum over my cock, shouting out, telling me that's exactly what you're doing as you suck that last drops of cum from my balls, and you collapse on me, spunk covered tits against my chest, arms tight around each other.

Do you want any more?

Dead On Arrival

2006-10-25T21:10:00.000+01:00

Death reflected in the madman's eyes. The pale Winter moon hung lifeless in the pale Winter sky.

The madman wiped his brow. Sweat glistened on the back of his hand. The thinning hair stretched across his balding scalp clung to his damp and pallid skin. He stared at his hand. It shook. He drew it to his mouth and slowly sucked the sweat from it. It tasted salty. It tasted of fear. It tasted of salty fear.

For the hundredth time he drew the rifle up to his shoulder and took aim through the telescopic sight. His body quivered mirthlessly as his insane brain played again and again the images of his madness. A jolly laugh. A rifle crack. A child's scream. Music to the ears of the madman. JFK would pale by comparison. Lee Harvey Oswald? A nobody.

He strained his ears for telltale sounds. Nothing but the chill December wind howling down the main street. He strained his eyes for telltale sights. He'd seen few if any cars since the start of his lonely vigil atop the building. A few worshippers had left a midnight mass at a nearby church, in fact all of them had, but since then only the biting breeze and odd snippets of drunken revelry had reached his ears.

Cradling the rifle he rubbed his hands together to revive the circulation. The frail dawn sun heralded the imminent fulfillment of his fantasy. Ecstasy beyond any sexual realm he had ever experienced or dreamed. The utter sensory nirvana that would soon be his.

It started.

Sound.

Faint at first but growing more distinct as it approached his lofty perch. "The Doppler Effect." He mused in a moment of intellectual clarity. The jingle of trace bells getting louder and louder. The crack of the whip and the sound of hooves.

There.

There in the sheer sunrise flew his game.

The madman prepared himself. His beady eye squinting as he took aim. Sharp and in focus reared his prey. The white beard. The red cheeks. Bespectacled eyes tired from the night's exertions. Eyes soon to be blank and sightless.

He tracked the target. Held his breath. At last his quarry had arrived. The moment had come.

Blood and brains scattered the sky. A crimson mist trailed the target's wake as it fell to the ground, staining its destination. The madman cackled hideously and looked down at his work.

Red on red. Grey matter on white hair. The murder of Father Christmas...

He stared blankly at the monitor in front of him, cracked his fingers and recalled the fantasy. If only. The madman in his brain seethed. He shook his head. How did the reindeer hooves make that noise?

The telephone broke him out of his daydream with a start and he began to type.

"I was thinking about this piece for my blog..."

Confession #1

2006-10-17T23:09:00.000+01:00

I'm a lazy twat.

It's been ages since I wrote anything on here. And look, I have an archive already. It's called September 2006.

Go me.

There's no particular reason for my lack of words. Tuesday the 26th of September wasn't a landmark date for me. I didn't have anything specific planned before or after. I started this blog with good intentions, the very best. You can check. Contribute regularly and frequently, I thought. Keep up the good work, as regularly and frequently as possible, I thought. Then, as ever, the days of the week conspired against me. Time itself decided to let me know who was boss. And, before I knew it, before anyone knew it, it was over three weeks later. Three Fridays had been and gone. Three weekends had welcomed me into their arms as a chair-ridden God-aunt might, only to slap me into Monday at the earliest opportunity.

Bob Geldof didn't like Mondays, did he?

Me? I wouldn't go so far as to say I don't like them, although Monday is definitely 24 hours of overblown self-importance. For starters it purports (albeit successfully) to be start the week. Monday hijacks Sunday. If Saturday (see Saturday) is The Sabbath, and The Sabbath is the last day of the week, then Sunday should take the accolade. But it doesn't really, does it? I mean the week starts on Monday. Monday has actually grown a mouth and The Bible has grown a face and Monday has laughed in the face of The Bible. The Bible mind. It has prised The FDOTW Title from Sunday's pathetic, arthritis-ridden, limp-fingered grasp, when it was asleep.

Everything starts on Monday.

Diets, giving up smoking, work. And that's why I generally let Monday off. I allow it to have its eternal moment of prestige since, as a rule, people hate Mondays and their associated blues. Bank Holiday Mondays salvage some sort of latent heroism, but anywhere that isn't shut, or doesn't close early on them, is busy. That's if you're not spending half of them in bed anyway.

None of the rest of the days of the week like Monday either.

Tuesday is a shit day. It's really shit, I mean it, honestly, I'm not even kidding. Look it up if you don't believe me. Under: shit. The Russian language uses the name "second" for Tuesday. How rubbish is that? It's like the onset of the decimal week. Monday begets Tuesday, that's how shit Tuesday is, it couldn't get any shitter. What did you ever do on a Tuesday? You won't be able to remember. I promise. And don't try to claim that Shrove Tuesday is anything other than a pathetic effort by Tuesday's PR People to attempt to re-brand it as something other than eternally dull. You want a pancake? Have one. Don't wait.

Tuesday's only saving grace is that it isn't Monday.

Wednesday squats in the middle of the week like a female sheep. Laughing at its equidistance from weekends past and future. Wednesdays don't have to do anything, which makes them the smuggest day. They've got the most letters and they know it. None of them make sense. Two of them don't even have to be there. Wednesday is like an anagram of itself with two less letters. It's the fulcrum of the week. Whenever anyone tries to gauge weekly time it invariably revolves around Wednesday, without mentioning Wednesday. That's why Wednesday's smugness is largely negated by its anonymity. It's the worst day of the week to have a birthday.

Ash Wednesday isn't even worth mentioning. Whoops.

Thursday is the most boring day of the week.

Friday is the best day of the week. Fact. Thank Crunchie, Thank Goodness, Thank Fuck. Everyone looks forward to Friday (insert Robinson Crusoe joke here). And it's not even the fact that people look forward to it. They enjoy it while it lasts and rue its passing. Unlike the universally hated Monday, Friday carries off this worship with measured aplomb. The rest of the week aspires to be Friday. It doesn't pretend to be something it isn't, it's the climax of the week. Always has been. You want a long weekend? It starts on Friday. You want POETS Day? Every Friday. You want Good Friday? Have it.

Jesus died on a Friday and it's still called Good. That's how cool Friday is.

Saturday would be the best day of the week were it not for the fact that it only really exists, along with Sunday, as The Weekend. And Friday is better anyway. Saturday is The Sabbath, not Sunday. But Saturday has more than one identity crisis. Saturday wants to be Friday. It wants to be the day that everyone looks forward to. Sure people look forward to Saturday, but they also take it for granted. And it will never be Friday. If The Weekend had a day in between Saturday and Sunday - I'll call it Skipday for the sake of argument - then Saturday might be onto something.

It doesn't though.

Saturdays have a buddy. A partner in crime. They're both thick as thieves but Saturday bosses Sunday. It seeps into it and steals some of its hours. And Sunday doesn't do anything about it because Sunday is a pussy. Sunday, like Tuesday, suffers from being too close to Monday. It believes its own press. Sunday is The Day of Rest.

Lazy twat.

Drive

2006-09-26T02:29:00.000+01:00

Here is a story about learning to drive and stuff. Like most of these tales, Tracy (my ex-wife) is involved at the beginning. Sorry it's not very well structured.

Tracy learned to drive when she was seventeen, and she's among the best drivers I know. I think she must have got fed up with driving me around because the day before my 27th (not sure about this) birthday there was a knock at our front door. She told me to go and answer the door, because she thought it was for me.

I had two quite independent thoughts at this point. The first was disappointment, because a three hour Simpsons omnibus was just about to start on the TV. The second was excitement, but only because I thought the person at the front door might be a stripper.

She also told me to put my shoes on. Which I did. NB It's easier to drive with footwear.

I opened the front door:

Me: Hello.
Him: Hello, my name's Lawrence...
Me: Excellent. I'm pleased for you.
Him: ...and I'm your driving instructor.

The good thing about my first driving lesson being a surprise was that I didn't have time to worry about it. Fear of learning to drive was probably always at the forefront of my mind before I could drive, or, more likely, fear of failure. I always thought that I would have to be as good a driver as, say, Tracy, or my Dad, to be able to pass my driving test. My Dad, incidentally, is and was the best driver I have ever known, and he passed third time.

The first time he took his test there had been a lot of press about Driving Examiners accepting bribes, so he tried to bribe them. The second time he threatened the Examiner with violence.

So I had my lesson. Which was fine, and it was booked as a block of eight, although the eight lessons I had were spread over about three months - due to holidays and broken bones (different story). The key to success is putting in the hours. In November of that year (my birthday is 15th August, btw) Tracy had a car accident, so I had to drive nearly everywhere when we went out together. When I was learning Tracy and I went to a wedding in Tunbridge Wells. She was ill but I couldn't drive on the motorway so we went as far as the North Circular (we were staying at my sister's in Walthamstow) where we stopped and I took over. It was a bit of a baptism of fire, and we ended up in Tottenham, but it was all experience.

Before I passed my test I rarely looked forward to driving anywhere. I enjoyed driving while I was doing it, it was the knowledge that I would have to drive somewhere that I didn't like. This is probably about confidence. And confidence is something that you can normally only accrue over time, unless you're a "natural".

I'd never had to drive before. There were always lifts to be cadged or public transport or shoe leather. But learning to drive is the most singularly useful skill I have ever been taught (apart from this thing this woman showed me, but I don't get to use that every day). And I failed my first test - statistically the safest drivers do. Apparently.

Driving Examiner: Thank you for that Mr Herbert, I'm sorry to have to tell you that you haven't passed. But what a lovely drive.

The way I see it, when you're 17 the previous three years of your life have been spent wondering how quickly your parents can get you to places. You're not bothered about risk perception or road etiquette. But by the time I got around to learning to drive I think I was a little bit more road savvy than the average 17 year old.

Now I love driving. And not only do I love driving, my life couldn't possibly function without being able to drive. It's something I regret not having done sooner.

The point is that you don't have to be as good a driver as the best driver you know to pass your driving test. You just have to be able to pass your driving test. Then, once you've passed, you can spend 50% of your driving time wondering how other drivers managed to do what you have done.

Crime Story

2006-09-25T01:13:00.000+01:00

Imagine meeting yourself when you were younger. What would you notice first? How fat or thin you were? How short you were? How you hadn't really changed that much? Do you still wet your bed?

Slipping through holes in the string vest of time.

Once it was a theory.

Now it was a reality.

The invention that Travel Agents everywhere had been crying out for. People were bored of brain implants. The memories of virtual holidays did fade. Virtual holidays seemed like a good idea at the time until an outbreak of virtual Legionnaire's Disease wiped out an entire virtual hotel of virtual holidaymakers. After that there was a return to the old school. Real holidays. Go to the real seaside, get really wet, get really ripped off by local market traders, get real sand in your real sandwiches.

Have a gippy tummy.

It took everyone about three years to realise, again, why real holidays were so crap in the first place. Seven years for people who went on Club 18-30 Holidays.

Time was the key. Time Travel®. Not that there weren't any teething troubles. When Time Travel® was in its infancy, travel agents (or vacation brokers as they were known) were taken to the cleaners by everyone, including the elderly and the infirm. Granted they're not the sort of people who usually top the world's most wanted lists. The papers aren't normally filled with those sorts of headlines.

PENSIONERS KILL TEENAGER FOR CONDENSED MILK?

I don't think so.

That was the beauty of it.

But pre-meditated crime isn't about ability. It's not about whether you can do it, it's about whether you can do it and get away with it. That's why anyone does it. No-one commits these days believing that they'll be caught. Anyone who says the reason the crime rate is increasing is because of a fall in family values, poor education, lack of job prospects etc is, quite metaphorically, talking out of the top of their head. Which is as strange a place as any to find someone's arse. The reason the crime rate is going up is because more people believe that they won't be caught.

Anyway, people with incurable diseases, everyone at death's door, they all started queuing up to buy time travel holidays.

Ironically, no-one saw it coming.

Put yourself in their position. You've been given six months to live. What are you going to do? Wrap yourself up in a blanket and sit tight until your number's up? No way. You're going out with a bang. For two months you live it up. Soft drugs, hard drugs, drinking binges, orgies, wife swapping, husband swapping, house swapping parties. You try casual sex, formal sex, cybersex, phonesex, textsex, faxsex. Everything goes on credit. Then, when you've not so much burnt the candle at both ends but are about to turn into a puddle of wick and wax, you do a bank job or a post office job. Next you head to your nearest vacation broker to book a holiday back to the time of your conception and prevent your own birth.

Try including that one in the latest crime figures. As soon as you prevent your conception you disappear from the future. How can you get caught if you no longer exist?

Bloody marvellous.

Spam Story

2006-09-14T20:04:00.000+01:00

Imagine a graph. The X axis displays age (in years), the Y axis quantifies an individual's interest, displayed as a percentage, in the size of things.

At age one your interest in the size of things is limited to between one and two percent. You only really care about who is going to change your nappy and where your next meal is coming from. As you get older your interest in the size of things duly increases. By the time you're thirty you'll be about 43% interested. How far is it to Coventry and if a bag of shopping weighs ten pounds, and if the average weekly cost of a family's shopping is fifty pounds.

The optimum interest level of any one person in the size of things cannot exceed 50%, otherwise the individual concerned would care more about the size of things than they didn't care about the size of things (the result of which is a size-related-fixated death). Maximum interest in the size of things is achieved at the age of 45, thereafter begins the descent into a non-size-fixated old age. Interest in the size of things decreases towards the individual's childhood levels until, at the age of 90, interest in the size of things is the same as the day you were born. And you're left wondering who is going to change your nappy and where is your next meal coming from?

This graph is depicted by the equation Y = 100(cosX sinX)

Something that I've always found hard to come to terms with is infinity. It's like the biggest thing you could possibly imagine but unimaginably bigger. I think it's the boundlessness and immeasureableness of infinity that leaves me stumped. I can't picture it.

Tell me something is as high as a cow, tell me it's as big as a mouse, tell me it's as small as a car. These are things that have a size to them. I'm a man. I know how high or big or small things are. But tell me that something is infinite and I'll either reach for the aspirin or just tut. It's no coincidence that infinite and irritate both start with an 'I' and end in 'TE'.

But I do have a fascination with the size of things. I'm about 38% interested.

When you're small more things are big. The classic example of this is Wagon Wheels. They used to be massive. You'd be hard pushed to finish them in one sitting. Now I'm older, Wagon Wheels are small, they don't block out the sun like they used to (and I'm sure they always used to have jam in them). A mile used to be a long way. There was no concept of the distance that light travels in a year. Anything more than a mile away was just miles away. As you get older things are far too specific.

Of course, not everything changes. There are things, laws, which will never change. Like being able to eat two school dinner spam fritters in one sitting. Of all the most bizarre and wondrous properties that the universe has (all those discovered, as yet undiscovered, and, if there is such a word, undiscoverable) the fact that it is, no matter how hungry you think you are, impossible to eat two school dinner spam fritters one after the other must be the most grotesque.

Some people say that in an infinite universe, anything is possible. They risk being lynched by an Anadin crazed mob, but they still say it. I would maintain that eating two school dinner spam fritters one after the other is the only thing that actually is impossible.

If you had an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of typewriters... are you saying that Shakespeare was a monkey?

Outside now.

So Hit Me

2006-09-13T15:50:00.000+01:00

I added a hit counter to my blog yesterday. A friend I've never met helped me because I'm not much cop with computers, and he is. I wasn't going to tell anyone why I got it, on face value it's pretty obvious why, isn't it? But when I chose it the site I picked it from asked me an odd question: it asked me what I wanted my starting count to be.

I'm rarely shocked but sometimes surprised, especially by odd questions.

The premise behind a hit counter is recognition, or faint praise, or popularity, right? The idea that someone else wants to read your mind and that they're interested in what someone else has to say. I mean I don't care what time of day or night someone visits my blog, after all, like Douglas Adams wrote, "Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so."

I'm not interested in whether you're male or female, not at the moment anyway. I don't need to know your blood group or about your first experience in a submarine or whether you'd buy a red or a blue car or the last time you saw a snake. I don't mind if you've simply stumbled across me - although your gender may be more relevant then. I imagine that the same people might come back to read, or maybe they won't. And maybe they tell someone else about it, or maybe they don't. I know that's what I do. Maybe they, good lord above, bookmark you.

Just imagine.

So the hit counter trundles along, rising steadily like an arithmetic progression where the number of days equals x and the number of hits the previous day equals y and I hope, beyond hope, that the result of this blog's equation is never zzzzz...

I appreciate that articles on/in a blog about the blog itself aren't exactly pivotal in the province of excitement. I'm not daft. But it is content. It's something to fill a space. Something that might make you think, or laugh, or cry, or feel horny, or prompt you to remember something. Because anything can be responsible for anything else. Like word association or Chinese whispers. "We" don't know what a ridiculously high percentage of the brain actually does so I won't blame you if, right now, you're thinking about the fact that you need to take a shower, or eat, or buy toilet rolls when you next go shopping. And that's what you are thinking, right now. Even if you don't need them, you're thinking that you might.

It isn't my job to alleviate boredom, although I know I could try if someone paid me.

I think more people are bored than used to be bored, just like more people complain about things. It's not that anything is getting any worse, it's just that people are more inclined to complain about things. And the world isn't getting any more boring. There are more things to occupy minds in 2006 than there have ever been. So why oh why oh why oh why oh why oh why oh why oh why oh why oh why do "people" always tell "me" that they're "bored"?

It might just be semantics or a state of mind, but boredom, to me, is just an easy way out. It's the escape route for those challenged by their potentially unlimited vocabulary. Confuse boredom with apathy or lack of opportunity or the inability to generate options. Just call it something else.

Please.

This blog is a child, a baby, born a matter of days ago. Unlike a baby in that it can speak and move, but like a baby in that it can't really do anything for itself, or recognise its own hands, or understand. This blog doesn't understand. It doesn't know what it wants to be any more than I know what it wants to be, or what I want to be come to that. I just want less than half of the hits to be created by me.

Anyway. Back to the question, "What do you want your starting count to be?" I could have chosen any integer, literally, but I chose zero.

Apt.

JFK Story

2006-09-12T22:19:00.000+01:00

What were you doing when you heard the news? JFK. Everyone asks that question. Everyone's been asked that question. Lee isn't it? Lee Oswald? What were you doing when you heard the news? English speaking dyslexics the world over still maintain that Oswald was a pasty. To the rest of us he was simply done up like a kipper.

So if it wasn't Oswald who fired the fatal shot then who did? Someone, somewhere knew it was them. What did they say when they were asked the same question? They lied. They had too. They were making an omelette, walking the dog, or trimming their nose hairs. Whatever they were doing it definitely wasn't in Dallas and, even if it was, they were nowhere near the grassy knoll.

This is the story of three other liars. Three people who, when asked what they were doing when they heard the news, had to lie.

_____________________________________________________________

When I say that in the sixties some people dropped a lot of acid I'm not talking about a lot of clumsy people who worked in the chemical industry. Coke was no longer just a fizzy drink, free base wasn't just a phrase you might hear during a baseball game, and smoking grass ceased to be uniquely associated with crop rotation.

_____________________________________________________________

I've thought of this story. It's a story about three people who are conspiring to kill the president at the same time as they hear he has been assassinated.

It could work.

The problem is that I don't really know anything about the sixties. I wasn't alive. I get them confused with the seventies - and I was alive then. If the sixties were swinging what were the seventies? When did flower power start? What's a hippy? Or a hippie? When did all the promiscuity start? Hasn't it always been going on?

My story is a shambles: a start without a middle, never mind an end.

I've got the start of roughly a million stories in my head. One about mass hypnotic suggestion, one about the lottery, three about a herd of scrapie infected sheep. A million starts and no ends.

"Write about something you know." My Mum said.
"Make sure it's got plenty of sympathy." My Mum's friend said.
"Why not start at the end?" This bloke I met on the bus the other day said.

_____________________________________________________________

Three people died and one was born that day. One was a millionaire, one gutted fish for a living, and the other two were the South-West's Cribbage Mixed Pairs Champions. Two of them knew each other. One had never met two of them. One of them would never meet any of them ever. It wasn't anyone's fault. It was the purest of accidents. How it all happened is the story and it started in the ninetieth minute of a football match between Yeovil and Stalybridge. Typical.

In the ninetieth minute of a football match between Yeovil and Stalybridge, Yeovil equalised to make the score one all. At their home in Taunton, Barry and Maureen Love leapt. The late equaliser meant that they had won the football pools. Maureen's leap caused her to go into a premature labour - she was eight and a half months pregnant. Barry, who had been prosecuted for drink driving the week before, after celebrating the couple's win in the South-West Cribbage Mixed Pairs Championship Final, phoned for a taxi. The taxi driver, John Wild, had been forced to take up part-time mini cabbing after injuring his hand gutting fish - his qualified profession.

John didn't see the skip at the side of the road.

Only baby Alice survived.

The richest orphan in the world.

Poets Anonymous

2006-09-10T17:38:00.000+01:00

I'm not ashamed of myself. When I got married I wrote a poem for my (now ex) wife. I read it out at the wedding. Should video footage of the event ever leak onto anywhere I'll edit this entry, but in the absence of such a circumstance I can tell you that I struggled. I had to stop half way through, so choked was I. Because I'm romantic like that. I remember someone writing in our "Wedding Book":

"This will go down in history as the wedding where all the adults cried and none of the children did."

Tonight, over six years later, I'm taking this poem to an Instant Anthology Night as part of Bristol's Poetry Festival. The premise is that anyone who wants to read a poem, can, as long as they bring fifty copies of it. The copies of each of the poems are then turned into and instant anthology for all those reading to take home.

_____________________________________________________________

Eponymous

I'll write what means the most to me,
My health, my soul, my sanity.
But if I lost them I'd be fine
Because I've found a love worth mine.

I'll whisper words, but nothing sweet,
From somewhere underneath my feet
And when, through lips, they must depart
They will have travelled through my heart.

I'll say the things inside my head
But one thing will remain unsaid
Because the truth I've come to see
Is without her I'm only me.

I'll shout at volumes unsurpassed
About my triumph, love at last,
And pity those who'll never win,
Their jealousy, my heroine.

I'll sing the notes for all to hear,
Let tunes transcend the deafest ear,
A love like this has now found me
And what is now will ever be.

I'll sit in silence where I bask
In questions I don't need to ask,
Because the answer's never new
I love her and she loves me too.

_____________________________________________________________

I write poetry.....I'm a poet.....It's been two weeks since my last poem.

Not ashamed.
Not me.
Not ashamed at all.
No Siree.

Umbrella Story

2006-09-10T15:10:00.000+01:00

I remember when it was dead hot recently. Horrible sticky heat. Hot as in over twenty degrees. People piss me off. I'm a Winter person. I like wearing lots of clothes. If wearing too many layers of clothes was a hanging offence then I'd be dead now. I'd have been hung years ago. I'd have been dead for years.

Hung.

People piss me off when they complain that it's too cold. I'm not talking about your pensioner who can't afford to put the heating on because of VAT. In general they don't anyway. They're up to their armpits in shawls and blankets, up to their heads in balaclavas. They haven't got time to be bitter about the bitter weather. They're using their complaint gland to complain about VAT on fuel. The people who complain about it being too cold can generally afford another jumper. They generally own gloves. They are generally the same people who complain when the weather's too hot. The weather isn't given a chance. It's totally fucked.

It can't win.

I like extremes of temperature. When you're cold you can always wear more clothes, if you're hot and naked you have problems.

Some of the time.

I don't mind when it's hot. I still get accused of wearing too many layers of clothes, luckily I can't be formally charged. When it's hot there are hosepipe bans. When it's hot for more than two days it becomes a heatwave. Look it up if you don't believe me.

Am I the only person who misses the centigrade scale?

Anyway, it had been dead hot recently and I was on the bus when it started. I don't mind the rain but when it's quite heavy you need an umbrella, or a hat. I was wearing a coat at the time, after all, it's never too hot for a coat, but the hood on it doesn't reach my head properly and if I have to put it up my neck disappears. I'm not a big fan of hats, so I got off the bus and went to buy an umbrella. The thing was I only had a fiver on me and decent ones cost about twice as much, or at least if anyone asked me how much a decent umbrella costs I'd tell them about a tenner. Not that anyone ever has, or probably ever will.

But it's just as well to be prepared.

I went straight into Woolworths looking like the Atlantic, found an umbrella that fell within my budget, paid for it, and left.

It was only when I got outside that I realised my mistake. It was a bloody girls one! I had paid five pounds for what was, in effect, a crap parasol. My walk to work only heightened my angst. There were umbrella sales going on everywhere. Decent ones. For less than a tenner. Even in Halfords. I might as well have held a five pound note over my head for all the use my new umbrella was. To be honest it was more of a psychological crutch. In fact it probably would have made a better crutch than an umbrella because the first gust of wind that came my way turned the umbrella inside out and ripped it apart. My umbrella left as a canvasless comedy corpse, lying in a bin. Spokes akimbo.

I saw a rainbow the other day and went looking for the crock of gold.

When I found them they were complaining about VAT on fuel.

Just Say Yes

2006-09-09T20:36:00.000+01:00

As much as I would love to announce this as the tagline to a new and controversial reverse psychology anti-drugs programme, this is just about saying yes. Specifically, it's about hearing someone say yes when you ask them to marry you. Actually, it's about knowing that someone will say yes when you propose to them.

Because, let's face it, if you don't know what the answer is going to be when you ask that "special" someone to be your future husband/bride, you shouldn't be asking them. Not yet.

Anything other than "yes" is "no". "I'm not sure" is "No". "Let me think about it" is "No". "This has come as a bit of a shock" isn't really "No", but it's as good as. It shouldn't be a shock, unless you're proposing to a complete stranger. Who the hell wants to ask someone to marry them only to find out that it's a shock?

"Listen, Carol, I know we've only been living together for fifteen years, we have three beautiful children, two dogs, a mortgage, and congenital herpes. But I thought it was about time that I made an honest woman of you. Will you marry me?"

Actually that probably would be a shock. There's probably a statistic. And anyway, unless you need to furnish a kitchen, is there any point in getting married? Because that's the thing about wedding towels. When you get married, and you ask for towels, and you get towels, because you asked for them, those towels are the best towels you've ever had. But the condition of those towels may well correlate with the condition of your marriage over time. In the beginning the towels are used by "guests". Ushered ceremoniously from the airing cupboard in a wordless ceremony. It only takes a glance. A nod. Years of evolution summarised in telepathy.

"Mmmmmm......nice towels".

Eventually you'll be using them to mop up paint and baby sick.

What makes you think that the person for you, the one, works in the same office as you, or drinks in the same pub as you, or lives in the same town, or county or country or continent or hemisphere? What even makes anyone think that there is only one person for everyone? The internet makes the world such a small place these days. And words are powerful. Weapons. Sharper than knives. The penis mightier than the sword.

Yes.

I know.

Monopoly Story

2006-09-08T19:01:00.000+01:00

Long ago, mountains were higher, water tables were lower, and the word myth was used to describe a girl by a person with a lisp.

Past, Present and Future had just finished a game of Monopoly.

It was never any fun though.

Past could only remember the game when it was over, Present only knew what it was doing at the time, but didn't know why afterwards (or before come to think of it), and Future always won, but then it knew it would. They were all round Present's house because it was the tidiest. Past was in the process of moving out of its house and Future was waiting to move in.

"Fancy a drink?" Present asked the other two. "Past?"
"No, not for me thanks. I have one too many already." The clocked chimed eleven. "Shit! Is that the time? I didn't realise. I should have left ages ago."
"I did tell you this would happen." Future smugged.
"What about you Future? One for the road?"
"Not for me either thanks, if I have another Jack Daniels I'm violently sick at two thirty in the morning."
"Like you were last night?" Past remarked.
"Was I?"

Past, Present and Future had just finished a game of Monopoly.

"It's never any fun." Said Past to Future. "You always win."
"You might win one day though." Future said.
"What are you up to tomorrow?" Future asked.
"I'm not too sure." Said Past.
"I'll have to wait and see." Added Present.
"How to you both fancy a game of Monopoly?" Asked Future.

There are few things in the world which are less boring that playing Monopoly for all eternity. Especially when the same person wins all the time. But if you put yourself in their shoes, the monotony of it all, the infinite boredom of each game, the limitless, boundless, sameness about each throw of the dice begins to make sense.

Here sits Past. Remembering everything that has gone by. Remembering every single dice roll, every single 'Get Out Of Jail Free' card, and every single game they've lost. Why do they carry on playing? Why do they continue with the endless torture? Because they think that one day they'll win. One day they'll get Park Lane. It's not the taking part that matters, it's the winning. It's the time when you remember all the times you've lost before. But this time you've won.

There sits Present. Convinced that everything they're doing at the time is right. Convinced that they are winning and that they'll always be winning, or at least in with a Chance. They have never actually had that winning feeling, and they will never have it, they will never win. But since they are oblivious to the concepts of past and future they carry on playing until they do win. But there is no sense of frustration because they don't know that they haven't ever and never will.

Future is bored. Future twiddles. It sees everything that lies ahead. There is no way out. Whereas the future to us seems the most predictable, when personified it becmes the least. Although they don't know it, Past and Present strive to change the unchangeable and alter the unalterable (even if neither word actually exists), reacting against Future, the catalyst.

All share the same life at different stages in time.

Future is bored because of the irony of everything. Its life cannot be changed. You should remember the past and live in the present because the irony of everything is that there is no point.