Speaking of Librarians

Libraries are hotbeds of sexual tension. Urgencies are repressed next to the photocopier, there are muffled fumblings in the archives, the Shelf Stacker has dreams about shagging Tracy the Tesco checkout girl.

And that's just the Large Print section, next to the Gujarati Shelf and the revolving ancient CD's which used to be slightly popular whirligig thingumabob (or is it a tumbrel?)

I wish my local library didn't insist on employing auld bints in polyester slacks. Bad perms strolling around vagrants smelling of pee while leafing through Gardener's Weekly is not my idea of sexual Nirvana.

I think I'll go for the Late Returns harridan who winks at me with her one good eye, which isn't glass:



She's gagging for it.

Monochrome Dreams

I think I must be the only person alive who finds the late Philip Larkin hilarious. Let's move to Hull shall we? We can revel in smelly docks and sweary fish wives while bemoaning chain stores and Welfare State urchins playing on the swings. He was a reprehensible little Englander who redeemed his right wing pornography loving self with a romanticism and underlying humour that had, and has, no peer.

Laurel and Hardy this is not, although John Betjeman is straight off the end of the pier:

Hey Hey What Can you Do?

The JAMC have remarkable match making powers. Modern music is rubbish anyway, as the woeful Kasabian and the intellectually challenged Gallaghers (Mancunian Micks having a tiff) will testify.

We could have reconnected with a little Val Doonican night music, or some hardcore Smurfs, but we settled for this:



Why do I always end up crashing in the same car?

Teh Uses of Illiteracy

'Apparently countless numbers of iliterete and inumerete skool levers are having dificulty obteining Uniniversity places this year,

I think this is a tragidy what with the riccison and that. Enybody with an gramme of since can see that this is nuncence. We us more than capible for working for BT. We has wurked hard in getting A's in flour arranging and surfing studys so I see no reason why us showdnt be given a chance on at least a £50K starting saliry with free txts'.

Britney Jordan

I blame Bebo, although having said that I did score a cracking bird from Kilmarnock the other night.

Edukation, edukation, edukation.

Thanks Tony.

Mutual Antagonisms

I live on a small, rainy (typical August) windswept island marooned off the north west coast of Europe. It looks like a pig with a witch on it's back, preparing to devour its poor supplicant neighbouring island.

It's inhabitants call each other names constantly. The Jocks (ANCIENT NATION that they are, and insist on telling everybody within earshot) hate everybody else on the island with a refreshing constancy. The Welsh, being rather short, aren't so vociferous. They just hate anyone who hasn't heard of Aneurin Bevan and Dylan Thomas.

The Angles and whatnots, who constitute the English, are just content to get on with hating each other. Soft Southern bastards, inbred Devonians, gormless Brummies, thieving Scousers, London types, Northern muck 'n' brassers, Somerset Levellers: they're all constantly at each other's throats.

It's a great place to live if you think it's nice to be nice while secretly fancying a scrap.

It's no wonder that this little inebriated scrapper had such an influence on the world, while annoying Ireland.

Social Networking

I refuse.

Do I want to Twitter like an incontinent thrush? Do I want to reacquaint myself (via Facetwat) with Nigel from the Upper 6th who went into banking because "it's a nice safe job with a decent pension"?. Do I want to hear about how many sprogs Emily (14) has dropped on Bebo?

No.

To be honest I'd prefer to stuff my head up Barack Obama's wife and discuss health care, gun control, and how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

This is why I stick with Blogger. I can spout shite anonymously and intermittently, while posting a youtube vid which nobody will watch:



It's a hard life on the croft.

Coming Down With Something

No, it's not Swine Flu. Well, it might be; but then again it may just be an inevitable consequence of over exuberance.

The hoards have descended to shower me with ill deserved cash and I am as delighted as a sand boy who has just constructed a sand castle and bombarded all foreign speakers with beer cans, discarded toiletries, and the pile of the Manchester Guardian that a Southern English Type decided to cram into one of my bin liners.

They're shifty, these tourists. They like to avoid you unless they've got something really serious to complain about: like condensation drips under the toilet cistern, midges getting in their hairnets, or the lack of a decent pint from Burton on Trent (which is 400,000 miles away).

I am a living saint. I am the living personification of equanimity. I will be living somewhere else soon.

I fear that toilet seat complications will follow me there. There will be no escape from the wobbling toilet lid, microwave complications, and too many wifi signals or none at all.

I think I'll retire to a cave and take up macrame.

I would do, if I didn't love what I do. I make a living watching people enjoying themselves.

The Black Velvet Band

So I wake up in the Lochmaddy Hotel, North Uist, with no idea where I am, what day it is, or where I left my lighter. I shamble down to the bar where I am presented with a ham sandwich and am informed that "the lads will be back for you tomorrow, and there's £50 behind the bar for you. You'll be going to South Uist next. I wouldn't if I were you, they're all Catholics and they don't wash".

It was all Miller's fault. He chose a yacht with no iPod connectivity and forgot to bring the CD's. All we had was a cassette tape compilation of Sean Murphy's greatest hits. A week spent cruising around the Hebrides listening to a ghastly Oirish crooner belting out 'The Black Velvet Band' is enough to drive even the most well adjusted individual demented.

Then the wind dropped and we discovered that Miller, the useless tool, had forgotten to fill the tank with diesel. We were becalmed until some friendly fish farmers brought us some jerry cans and some 'liberated' 100% proof rough mash Talisker whisky. I blame the latter for my out of body experience in the Lochmaddy Hotel.

The Jocks invented the adhesive stamp, the Australian National Anthem, the Encyclopaedia, hypnosis, the United States Navy, insulin, the hypodermic syringe, Bovril, and the Bank of England. Brilliant, but not much consolation when you find yourself back on terra firma swaying on a bar stool with 'The Black Velvet Band' firmly embedded in your frontal lobe.

Heaven or Hell? You decide:

Epiphany

Sometimes the true significance of things is hidden; a concatenation of events and misunderstandings obscures what is real and conceals what subsequently becomes tangible. It doesn't happen in increments, there is no slow accretion of memory and its interpretation; rather a sudden and blinding realization that temporarily cripples as the tears scold and start.

My reflection is the same, but the mirror is no longer clouded. Things left unsaid have been said.

The heart is a lonely hunter (thanks Carson).

Bright Bright New Shiny Hole in my Heart

Little black dresses and gin and tonic.

It is me you want my darling, or is it my money?