Why I never made it as a Goth.

I think all today’s newspapers carried the story about the post grad student at Sussex University who has been awarded a PhD for a thesis on the Goth sub-culture. It really is remarkable what constitutes an appropriate subject area for a PhD these days, but I won’t go into that as it is a suitable subject for a lengthy rant at some later date.

I would never have cut is a Goth as I have blonde hair and invisible eyebrows. I would have looked a right twat with black eyeliner and lipstick. It would have been a different matter if I was a proper albino with pink eyes: then I would have taken considerable pleasure in scaring the hell out of infants.

The student reached the unremarkable conclusion that Goths tend to be arty middle class types who don’t do drugs and aren’t keen to get into fights. Talk about stating the bleedin’ obvious. There was a Goth girl in my year at University who was more likely to be found at Glastonbury of a weekend hunting for ley lines than knocking back snakebites in the Students Union. She draped the ceiling of her bedroom with black bin liners, and had a penchant for crushed velvet, but apart from that she was as boringly normal as they come.

It’s the aging Goths that frighten me. Anyone who has witnessed the Cures Robert Smith’s physical deterioration of late will take a dim view of anyone wearing the Goth uniform in later life. He resembles a fat Elvis in a fright wig with pancake make up and drooping jowls.

In truth, I never wanted to be a Goth. I hated Bauhaus, and the Sisters of Mercy were purveyors of melodramatic bollocks. They exist in their own little cul de sac, and are welcome to it.

I’m off to listen to ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead'.

Farewell my furry friend.

TOPCAT

Those of you (fewer by the day, and who can blame them) who peruse this blog will be aware that my cat, Oscar, had a cancerous growth removed six months ago. It was malignant and aggressive, and at the time the vet didn’t hold out much hope, although he did remove the lymph nodes.

Unfortunately, the tumour has returned with a vengeance. I took Oscar to the vet, who advised that it would be futile to operate again as the cancer would only return. He has given Oscar a prognosis of two to three months. He isn’t displaying the slightest sign of discomfort at the moment, but when he does I shall bow to the inevitable and have him put to sleep.

Oscar came from a cat shelter, and has proved a most excellent moggie in every way. I have never before encountered a cat with such a playful and placid temperament. I cannot recall him baring his claws once.

The vet informed me that he is growing increasingly concerned about the number of cats that he has inoculated against leukaemia developing cancerous growths a few years later. Although there are no clinical studies suggesting that he do so, he has taken to advising people that this is a risk if they have their cats inoculated. It seems a bit of a sick joke that an injection intended to prevent one form of cancer may be responsible for another that is just as debilitating.

I salute you Oscar. Those whom the gods love die young.

Pukka mate

The liver lipped, big tongued tosser, Jamie Oliver has avoided ridicule recently due to his advocacy of decent, nutritious school dinners. He deserves some credit for this: feeding fat drenched chicken nuggets to twelve year olds on grounds of economy is obviously not conducive to reducing obesity.

Unfortunately for Jamie, it turns out that children are rejecting his tasty recipes and going down the chippy instead. They know what they like, and are prepared to pay for it.

Some people are just inherently irritating. Jamie seems a decent enough chap, it’s just that everything about his cheeky chappy, mockney persona gets right on my tits. Awight, pukka mate, dahn the Old Kent Road? Fuck off and speak properly you irritating little mong. It’s not as though he’s the son of an east end barrow boy, he’s the son of an Essex publican. Oliver passing himself off as cockney is like me claiming to hail from the Bronx.

Even his wife, Jules, is annoying. She’s like a little doll with the over rouged cheekbones of a whore.

Oliver claims never to have read a book in his life, which is tantamount to boasting about being a moron.

I don’t see why inverted snobs should be allowed to amass £7 million fortunes. There should be a law forcing all sub literate cretins to donate their wealth to deserving cases like me. I can whip up a soufflé as well as the next man; it’s about time I was released from the hell that is work.

My amplifier goes up to eleven.

In theory it shouldn’t be possible to be nostalgic for a period that you were too young to experience. Ok, I was alive in 1971/72, but being five years old I was more likely to be listening to Pinky and Perky singing White Christmas than getting off my face on ganga and grooving on down to the Faces singing ‘Three Button Hand me Down’.

I’m not going to get into rock criticism here, which is the last refuge of the aging hipster with bad teeth and a drink problem. It is a genre that produces the odd genius like Lester Bangs, but is more likely to allow pretentious tossers to indulge in some cod sociology. Paul Morley, whose criticism used to appear in the NME years ago, had the good sense to retire when he was 24, claiming that he was too old to continue.

The period 1971/72 produced some of the greatest rock music ever recorded. The Rolling Stones, the Faces, the Who, and Led Zeppelin were all at their creative peaks, and had not yet succumbed to the hubris of rock hedonism. Seeing any of these bands play live must have been awe inspiring, even if a perforated eardrum was the price you had to pay for the experience.

It just seems to have been a time when there was a generosity of spirit in the air that was on the verge of dissolving into rancour and disillusionment. The Faces in particular just sound like a bunch of pissed blokes producing a ramshackle but wonderful sound.

Within a few years it was all pomp rock, twiddling on synthesisers, and ugly blokes wearing platform boots coated in glitter.

I’m off to listen to the ‘Brown Bomber’ album and play some air guitar. Sod Coldplay and James Blunt. There was a time when hairy men in tight trousers ruled the world. We will never see their like again.

Feck, feckity, feck.

Bastard howling gales last night toppled ten of my trees. I have spent a very pleasant day wielding a chain saw in foul weather.

I thought this was supposed to be Spring.


This is rather chucklesome.

Ach well

G’ORN, HAVE A CHUFF ON THAT CIGGIE.

The ban on smoking in public places in Scotland begins in seventeen days time. Rough boozers across the nation are preparing to auction their heavy glass ashtrays for use by Glasgow gangs in territorial disputes. The sign makers are writhing in orgasmic frenzy at the prospect of the demand for NO SMOKING signs increasing tenfold.

For some bizarre reason, the ban extends to hotel rooms. Presumably this is to prevent forty a day cleaners instantly contracting lung cancer as a consequence of passive smoking in well ventilated, air conditioned, rooms. I wonder if hotels will have to install in room closed circuit TV to ensure that the appropriate authorities can be summoned if anyone attempts to light up a Rothmans and flick the ash in a tooth mug.

With signs of rising unemployment, I am reassured that local Councils will be able to employ a few extra million minions in ensuring that individuals partaking in a hitherto legal activity are handed out a severe bollocking, and a £1000 fine. They will, no doubt, like Edinburgh traffic wardens, be issued with performance targets to ensure that they are suitably assiduous.

Thankfully, the ban does not extend to holiday cottages. These are classed as an extension of the individual’s home, and they are allowed to puff away to their hearts content.

I’m rather pleased about this. I don’t ban anyone from staying in one of my cottages. To my mind that would be commercial stupidity. If 30% of the population smoke and are prevented from doing so in hotels they will look for alternatives: i.e. me. I also allow dogs, although I do draw a line where Doberman Pinchers with a crack habit are involved.

I’m off to eat my five fruit and veg a day, and check that the tread on my car tyres is an acceptable depth. I wouldn’t want to endanger my health, or that of innocent pedestrians. I’m just glad that politicians are around to keep me on the straight and narrow. If it wasn’t for them I would be a right cynical bastard.

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

A few years ago I sold a house to a guy from Suffolk. He seemed ok at the time; a bit stuffy and reserved, but that isn’t unusual for professional types from the Home Counties.

Over the course of the past couple of years I have discovered, to my chagrin, that he is an arrogant, anal, wanker. He has an obsession with property boundaries, and takes extreme umbrage whenever anyone leaves a vehicle on what he deems his parking area. He doesn’t live here, and only visits three times a year, so why he should get his knickers in a twist over something so minor frankly mystifies me.

Last week I received a solicitor’s letter. I had left a small dinghy at the edge of, but outside his car park. I was informed that this presented an obstruction to vehicular access, and that I should remove it immediately as I was in contravention of the original deeds of sale.

It would be possible to drive a large commercial vehicle into his car park, and I am not obstructing his access in any way. This kind of small minded, ignorant behaviour gets right on my tits, and I have informed my solicitor to rebut his allegation.

I have also (see photo) put a timber kerb around his car park. The tosser hasn’t realised that he hasn’t got sufficient room to park his massive 4 by 4 facing outwards, and will have to park lengthways. If he has visitors, they will have to parallel park, and unless they are driving a small car, will have considerable difficulty. The stupid tit should have checked the dimensions of his grounds before sounding off.

I’m a fairly easy going individual, and I haven’t got a vindictive nature. On this occasion, however, I do have to admit to feeling a smug sense of satisfaction.

That’ll learn the fucktard.

Mwah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

Shoot the Aged.

MA MOTOR

This is my car, of which I am rather proud. It’s a Mazda 6 estate: quick, pretty, economical, and spacious. I bought it new six months ago and so far it hasn’t missed a beat.

I got a phone call from my father this afternoon asking if he could borrow it as his car is in for a service. Sure, said I, but it’s a bit short on fuel. You’ll need to get some diesel, and make sure that you don’t put in petrol or chances are you’ll bugger the engine. He scoffed at the very idea of someone of his age and motoring experience making such an elementary error.

Two hours later I get a phone call: “..er, sorry, but there’s a bit of a problem with the car; I put in petrol by mistake”. I did a little dance of rage, but didn’t come down too hard on him as I don’t want him writing me out of his will. The old fellah has loads of dosh stashed in banks on the Isle of Man.

The car has had to be taken back to the dealer in Perth (100 miles away). Apparently there’s some hope, but chances are the high pressure fuel pump will have to be replaced at a fat cost of £1,000. The insurance will cover it, but it’s still annoying.

I have no wheels and am exceedingly miffed. The aged should be confined to their mobility scooters: letting them loose in expensive motors just isn’t worth the risk.

Hatstand Doolally.

IVOR CUTLER

I was saddened to learn of the death of Ivor Cutler, legendary Glaswegian eccentric, poet, and entertainer.

I’ve always held the firm opinion that a sizeable proportion of the UK and Ireland, while not strictly sectionable, are certainly not entirely right in the head. I certainly know of several of my own acquaintances who would make interesting psychiatric case studies, and that’s when they’re sober.

I’m not entirely sure why loopiness is so general among our population. It may have something to do with the perpetual drizzle, the idiocy of our politicians, or the lingering depredations of an obsession with class that makes the Hindu caste system seem like a model of good sense and dignity.

I suppose we shouldn’t complain too much. The chances of being stabbed to death by a psycho are thankfully slim, and it is rather entertaining to listen to the queues of gibbering mutterers in the Post Office. In any case, the flipside of eccentric nuttiness is an intense creativity. Spike Milligan may have been a manic depressive who attempted to strangle Harry Secombe, but he was also surreally funny.

Funnily enough, Ivor Cutler and Spike Milligan were both members of the Noise Abatement Society. I’m sure that much of our endemic madness is caused by juvenile twats in Vauxhall Novas driving around with their windows open blaring out shite music on their zillion megawatt speakers. Perhaps if more of us had access to bazookas, and license to obliterate the knobheads, Britain would be a happier and saner place.

Ivor liked to hand out sticky labels to strangers containing the sage advice: ‘Add 15 inches to your stride and save 4.5% of the insects’. That’s sense that is, in a mad kind of way.

Thou shalt have a fishie, on a little dishie.

WHY AYE MAN!

The most sexually alluring sound known to mankind is a Geordie girl speaking. I can’t quite put my finger on it (although I’d like to); it’s just so damn melodious that it leaves me stammering like a fumbling adolescent. I’m not exactly a silver tongued charmer at the best of times, but when a Geordie lass speaks to me I am reduced to the bletherings of an inarticulate mong.

The problem with Geordie girls is that they just don’t travel. I have a theory that they are kept under lock and key by their men folk, lest they be whisked away to more salubrious and civilised climes. Geordie men are, on the whole, devoid of any charm whatsoever. Paul Gascoigne is a fine example of the male intellectual that Newcastle upon Tyne churns out by the thousand. They espouse the Northern creed that no garment is more suited to sub zero temperatures than a sleeveless t shirt. I can only assume that nights on the toon thus clad have addled their brain cells to the point were a bout of extreme hypothermia holds no fear.

Personally I think Jayne Middlemiss is missing a trick coming over all glam and sucking up to the soft southern trendies. What she needs to do is record some soothing mp3's that lovelorn males can listen to before drifting into the land of nod in their lonely beds. The lass would make millions. It wouldn’t be long before she’d be richer than Sting (the Geordie wanka).

Would you like a sweetie little boy?

Unlike most celeb food writers, poor old Nigel Slater has only been allowed to present one TV series. Unlike the lavishly breasted and bethighed Nigella Lawson, he lacks the physical attributes that lend themselves so readily to the small screen. Personally, I think Queen Nigella is vastly overrated. Top posh totty she may be, but most of the recipes she comes up with leave me cold. Ham baked in Coca Cola? No fucking ta.

One TV critic claimed that Nigel resembled a child molester. Now I don’t know exactly what a child molester is supposed to look like, but I do think that he may have had a point. There is something slightly odd about an individual who lives alone in a five bedroom house, but likes to invite waifs and strays to stay the night. Perhaps he just wants some company. I certainly hope that there are no undertones of Dennis Nilsen.

Strange as he may be, Nigel is one of our best cookery writers. He loves simple food, and is refreshingly unimpressed by the sort of chefy bollocks cluttering up our TV screens. Anyone who can sing a paean of praise to a humble bowl of mashed potato has to have their heart in the right place. He also has no truck with the low fat fanatics, and loves to drench everything in butter and cream.

Rock on Nigel I say, you may resemble a kiddie fiddler but your nosh is top notch.


N.B Apologies for the lack of posts recently. I have been suffering from bloggers block and the after effects of a three day bender.

Numpties

I really don’t know what the criminal underworld is coming to. It takes a fair degree of brains to steal £50 million from a security firm, but it displays a staggering lack of forethought not to know how to go about disposing of the stuff.

Some gormless Essex girl associate actually went into a Building Society and tried to deposit £10K in cash still wrapped in the official seal from the cash storage depot. How fucking stupid is that? Then another gang member abandons a white van containing £4 million close to the Eurostar terminal. He might as well have painted ‘cash here – come and get it’ on the side of the van. Useless tosser.

The robbers had six full hours before the police started looking for them. Instead of heading for the south coast they should have headed north. Once over the Scottish border the chances of anyone looking for them, let alone catching them, would have been zilch. I would happily have let them store fifty million in my holiday houses. With the curtains drawn no one would have suspected anything, and the cash would have been safe until Spring. It could then have been transferred to yachts and transported all over Europe.

I would only have required a small commission, say 10%, for my storage facility. I could also have proved useful should any gang member have threatened to go to the police. I know plenty of deserted lochs were a corpse could be disposed of with minimal chance of discovery. Properly wrapped and weighed down with stones, the body would be never be found as there are no fishermen or divers.

I think I may have missed my forte in life. I would make an excellent and discreet gangland fixer. All things considered, I’m sure I’d prefer it to working.

Oi am a Coider Drinker

WANKERS

In the early ‘90’s I lived in Bristol. Apart from being a happening musical place, with the likes of Portishead and Roni Size producing distinct musical idioms, it was also the sleepy capital of the West Country.

The south west of England has always been cider country, and Bristol had some pubs (usually in grotty areas) that sold nothing else but the stuff. It wasn’t the industrially produced Strongbow and the like, it was rough scrumpy with bits floating in it. Some people claimed that rats had been dropped into the cider vats to accentuate the flavour.

It really is the strangest drink that I have ever imbibed. A sickly sweet concoction, it was also a mind blowing 9% proof. Three pints of the stuff and your legs went numb. After five pints, the hallucinogenic effects took hold. Wandering out of a cider den into bright sunlight was disorientating in the extreme.

The stuff was also extremely cheap; a pint of beer at the time was £1.60, while a pint of scrumpy cider was 90p. Perhaps this price discrepancy explained the type of clientele that the cider pubs attracted. They were invariably ancient decrepit hippies, and whiffy vagrants. One thing that they had in common was one remaining yellowed tooth. The cider contained so much unfermented sugar that they were effectively spending all day bathing their teeth in the alcoholic equivalent of Coke.

There’s not much to be said for scrumpy really. It makes you go mad, and all your teeth fall out. No wonder the sheep in North Devon are the best serviced in Britain.

Pissed Chefs

Watching Gordon Ramsay’s ‘Kitchen Nightmares’ last night, I was unsurprised to learn that the chef in the Irish restaurant he was assisting turned out to be a chronic alcoholic.

Having been around the hotel and restaurant trade for years, I have encountered many chefs. They tend to fall into two categories: the psychotic, and the permanently pissed. Anyone who has ever witnessed the immense pressure that these people work under will understand the temptation to use drink or drugs to blur the frenetic hothouse that is a commercial kitchen. The psychopaths are thankfully rarer than the alcoholics; although they are much more lethal, having access to razor sharp knives.

My best mate Keith was an alcoholic chef. He was a strange alcoholic in that he only drank beer, most hardcore boozers preferring regular slugs of Vodka. He drank steadily throughout the day, beginning with a pint of bitter while preparing breakfast at 7.00 am. He managed to hold down his job because he was always able to function, and the food he produced was invariably wonderful. He’s sober now and can’t believe how much money he has. Drinking sixteen pints a day was putting a serious dent in his bank balance.

I never complain vociferously in restaurants as I understand how easy it is to cock something up. I draw attention to any shortcomings in a polite and reasonable manner. The last thing I want is a pissed, or psychotic, chef emerging from the kitchen brandishing a large carving knife.

Benbecula or Bust

The yacht has been booked for my annual trip round the Hebrides with my mates. A 38 ft sailing ketch with a diesel engine, it should be able to cope with anything the Atlantic throws at it bar a force 9 gale.

Yachtsmen are a strange breed. On the whole they are annoying tossers that have more interest in the mechanics of sailing than of the seascapes that they pass through. There is no bar bore more likely to have you heading for the exit than a self proclaimed master mariner wittering on about navigation charts and types of knot.

My lot aren’t anything like that (of course). Most yachties are public school types from the south of England that arrive in these parts clad from head to toe in brand new sailing gear. They bray on the waves, and bore everyone senseless in every saloon bar from the Mull of Kintyre to Cape Wrath.

My crew are local highlanders (actually I’m part of the crew, not Captain Ahab). We can afford a yacht for a week as we all chip in to the charter cost. This amounts to about £350 a head, which should, on the face of it, make for a reasonably cheap trip. Unfortunately this figure does not include ship stores: a weeks worth of food, and twenty bottles of rum and whisky. Then there is the cost of nightly sojourns ashore for a spot of carousing.

It all gets rather expensive, and I’m sure that I could head off for a fortnight in the Med for less. I never regret it though. The seascapes around the islands and west coast of Scotland are some of the most hauntingly beautiful on earth.

Sitting on a yacht watching the porpoises crisscrossing the prow as the Atlantic swell rolls beneath you is an otherworldly experience. It kind of puts things in perspective.

You Make me Feel Like Puking

I am frankly bemused that Leo Sayer has made it to the top of the charts. I can vaguely remember him from the seventies; a bubble permed nerd in ridiculous braces who jigged about like an imbecile while performing his cheesecake pop.

The decade that taste forgot produced some risible acts that, bafflingly, managed to achieve huge success here and in the United States. After the decade that produced the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, we came up with the Bay City Rollers and Leo Sayer.
Talk about the sublime to the ridiculous.

If Leo is all the rage with todays teenyboppers I will feel justified in digging my spacehopper and tartan flares out of the attic. I can sit on a huge beanbag, smoke a giant spliff, and play ‘Shang a Lang’ on a pair of massive seventies headphones. I can, like, get with the kids, and scoot about on a Chopper bicycle.

Leo’s success will no doubt be of interest to Wyndham the Triffid, who recently informed us that when he grows his hair he is the spitting image of the grinning tosser. I say go for it Wyndham. Get a cheesecloth shirt and some braces and head down to your local pub for the Karaoke.

Your day has obviously come.

Dirty Bastards

I rent out holiday homes, and am constantly amazed how some people can turn a spotlessly clean house into a filthy midden in the space of seven days. It appears that some people have a vacuam cleaner phobia, and are quite content to use a grill pan containing an inch of congealed fat.

I’m no cleanliness fetishist personally, but I do adhere to some basic standards. It is a fact of nature that entropy is the inevitable outcome of a lack of human action. A failure to do a little housework on a daily basis results in an accumulation of tat and general filth.

I’ve noticed that the filthiest people tend to be from middle class backgrounds. Doctors, barristers, and architects tend to be the main offenders. I suppose this is because they are used to paying people to clean up after them. I wouldn’t mind this so much if the stingy bastards had the common decency to leave a sizeable tip for the cleaners. They never do.

Filthiness as an outcome of national character is also readily apparent. The French, naturally, are the dirtiest mingers of all, closely followed by the Dutch and English. The paragons of cleanliness are, unsurprisingly, the Germans and Austrians. They usually leave their houses in such an immaculate condition that they barely need cleaning.

Such Teutonic efficiency is rather frightening. It’s no wonder the squareheads almost won the war.

Midgies

On the whole, I prefer to avoid abroad whenever possible. It’s not that I don’t like to experience other cultures (even if they are a tad less civilised than us lot), it’s just that it’s too damn dangerous.

Take the USA for example; have a nice snooze and you’re liable to have your nadgers nipped by a scorpion; go for a stroll in the woods and chances are a wolf will bite your leg off below the knee. Then there’s Canada, a frozen wilderness filled with wolverines with razor sharp teeth and grizzly bears just itching to tear your head off. Australia is the worst of the lot, a continent filled with the most venomous snakes on earth, and a dirty big bastard spider that lurks in toilet bowls hoping to inject venom into your naked buttocks at the first opportunity.

It’s just not safe, I tell you. I’m with the poet Phillip Larkin, who opined that he wouldn’t mind visiting the Great Wall of China as long as he could be home in time for his tea.

Britain doesn’t have much in the way of dangerous critters. The best that we can come up with is the wankiest of venomous snakes: the adder. If you suffer a bite from one of these you might suffer a slight fever, and a bit of a headache, but that’s about it.

We do have one creature that, although unlikely to kill you, has the potential to ruin your day. The highland midge is a small biting fly with a voracious appetite. They attack in clouds, and are guaranteed to evacuate all campsites and barbeques in ten minutes flat.

The Scottish Tourist Board literature mentions the highland midge in small print at the back of their brochures. I can appreciate that it’s best not to over emphasise the potential down sides of a holiday in Scotland, but it would be fairer to warn summer visitors that a midge hood and an ample supply of insect repellent are essential purchases.

If these insects existed in the south of England I’m sure the scientists would have worked out a way to exterminate them fifty years ago. Unfortunately there are too many biodiversity experts up here. If I hear another eco fuckwit blethering on about the essential role of the midge in maintaining the diversity of birdlife, I’m going to strangle him with his cagoule.

As far as I’m concerned, the Lesser Spotted Mauve Lapwing can fuck off and die. I can live with a few less flappy things if it stops me being eaten to death every summer

You're Not Good Enough

STORMONT PARLIAMENT BUILDING, BELFAST

When I was a kid we lived in a house that adjoined the Stormont Parliament grounds in east Belfast. The building had been mothballed at that stage; the last devolved Unionist government having been dissolved by Edward Heath in 1973.

My mates and I used to climb over a fence at the bottom of the garden and play in the woodland in the grounds. I suppose we were trespassing, but no one ever said anything. It was excellent cowboys and Indians territory, and there was much whooping and hollering.

These days I have ambivalent feelings about the Stormont building. It has a magnificent neo classical frontage, and sits on a hill at the end of a mile long drive. It is imposing, but not in the right way. The building, with its statue of a belligerent Edward Carson outside, seems to be announcing to the populace of Northern Ireland that they aren’t good enough. Imposing architecture quite often has that effect, cowing the people whose sovereignty it represents.

John Hume was once asked what he thought should be the role of Stormont. He replied that it should be turned into a golf club. I’ve always regarded Hume as an irascible wee shite, but I’m inclined to agree with him.

Northern Ireland should have a new Parliament building like Scotland. Stormont is so heavily weighted with unpleasant history and negative imagery that it can never serve a society as divided as Ulster. It would make an excellent hotel and conference centre, and I’m sure there must be room for an eighteen hole golf course in the enormous grounds.

Images and symbols are potent. If Northern Ireland wants to start afresh a new building would be a good place to begin.

Cupid's Arrow

No valentines for me today. It’s ridiculous really, it’s not as though I have hair growing down the back of my neck, persistent body odour, or a severe case of halitosis. OK, I may look a bit hung over from time to time, and my acquaintance with a comb is only a casual thing, but apart from that I’m reasonably presentable (at a distance, in dim light).

Disconsolately, I ventured out to Morrison’s to wander around the food aisles looking hangdog and unwanted. Imagine my surprise when my eyes locked with a gorgeous female's across the frozen foods section. She didn’t wince, which is unusual, and I might have been in with a chance there. Unfortunately I couldn’t think of anything to say other than “do you fancy doing it doggy style over the petit pois?”

Oh well. Maybe next time.