Spreading the gospel according to Tunnocks of Uddingston,Scotland; creators of the finest confection/biscuit known to mankind.
Currently kebabless, rootless and temporarily boozeless.
I am melancholic by disposition, although I prefer to repress that aspect of my personality because there is a fine line between wistful contemplation and an unhealthy obsession with an unsatisfactory past that leads inexorably to depression. It can also develop into an unhealthy mawkishness that is laughable.
Maybe its a Celtic* thing; the sense that there is an underlying sadness to things, that the bright timbre of a voice or a swirl of laughing faces is a chimera. Old photographs, abandoned ways of being, the evaporation of faith, certainties debunked: they're all there, concealed behind the Ikea sofa.
The dying fall, a limp and pills, a scatter of cigarette butts. The wind blows the wrong way across the salient, the antimacassars are yellowing, there is dust in the china cabinet.
Thanks for a most wonderful holiday in "Stronsay" a week ago. The weather smiled and we had a fantastic time. I wonder if you found our boy Rory's toy tiger "Kitty" in the single room? He has done a disappearing act and Rory is asking for him. Would be grateful if you could let us know.
Very best regards
Jane
Dear Jane
I have a shed full of cuddly toys, colostomy bags, crutches, hiking boots, mobile phones, laptop chargers, odd socks, and digital cameras. Sometimes I like to sit in the shed and look at them. They're mine you see; I've worked for them and I like to commune with them and luxuriate in their freeness.
I will happily return "Kitty" to you if appropriate legal documentation proving ownership is afforded within the next 7 days. Failing this I am afraid that that this furry creature (presumed stuffed feline) shall be stored next to thewatch that the previous guest left under the sofa.
Gasping for some nicotine sustenance today I was exasperated to find myself behind a queue of wobbling crumblies at the supermarket tobacco counter. Each of the Crimean War veterans spent at least five minutes fumbling in their purses and wallets as they shuffled their way towards the cancer emporium.
Were they queuing for a half ounce ofOgden's Nut Gone Flake or a packet of el cheapo obscure brand fags? No they were not; they were queuing for Lottery tickets and scratch cards.
Tenners were lobbed across the counter with gay abandon by the Ernies and Hildas, no doubt in expectation of huge payouts to fund their hip replacements and mobility scooters. I don't for one moment imagine that they were gambling in order to shower their children and grandchildren with new cars and trust funds. Oh no, they just want to deposit lucre in their Post Office accounts and gloat.
To think that grafters like myself are toiling to pay these peoples pensions. It's enough to make even the most fair minded individual advocate euthanasia.
Let's get this straight, travel does not broaden the mind. Sitting on a cruise ship while your midriff slowly expands and you develop an alcohol problem does not make you Marco Polo. Briefly sitting on an Elephant before devoting the next three weeks to serious dope bum activities on a Thai beach does not make you Paul Theroux. Driving a car (or sitting on a Greyhound bus - which just gives you piles) from Manhattan to Los Angeles does not make you Jack Keroauc.
Experiencing foreign cultures is generally just an exercise in suffering diarrhoea and having nasty little insects burrow into your skin and lay their eggs. And that's just in the more salubrious equatorial regions. When you decide to have a wazz over the side of your canoe while exploring the Amazon asmall barbed fish will inevitably swim up your willy and hang on for dear life.
Europe is no better, what with its funny languages and Mediterranean blokes prancing about in too tight trousers. As for Japan, that's just compulsory karaoke, 'Love Hotels', and Pachinko.
You would think that the USA, being vaguely civilized, would be worth the trip. Unfortunately no; the delights afforded by Latino housemaids are far outweighed by the sheer nastiness of the giant American cockroach andthis wholly revolting foetus of Satan.
Best stay at home and tend the petunias I say. You can't be too careful.
Apparently you can't join theBNP unless you are a white Caucasian. I suppose this is intellectually consistent given that their membership consists of no necked *Neanderthals who like nothing better than to tuck into a nice curry while berating Pakistanis and assorted other non whitey scum.
I'm rather puzzled how a political party which denies membership to people on the basis of the colour of their skin can call itself democratic. As for splashing pictures of Spitfires all over their campaign literature, this suggests they aren't aware that a lot of these were piloted by Poles - a nationality that they regard as Polack scum nicking our jobs.
These people like to congregate and sing SS Marching songs, which would be utterly risible if there weren't people in this country stupid enough to vote for them.
* This is unfair to Neanderthals who, despite their deficiencies in the neck department, probably loved their old mums and didn't support Millwall.
Well congratulations, you got here first and reconnoitred the upsides and the downsides before bagging a trawl of fish and considering further horizons.
I am a frustrated imperialist: desirous of new regions of potential conquest and the prospect of a fine cockaded hat and a retinue of obsequious servants and willing stable wenches.
It's not too much to ask; a mere small domain like Sarawak, or French Polynesia with a lifetimes supply of free dancing girls and sundown cocktails would do. Unfortunately they've all been taken and I'm faced with the prospect of negotiating the rings of Saturn if I'm to have any chance of inculcating the rubric of British truthand justice in the breasts of the unruly heathen natives.
It's a tough piece of gristle to chew on, but what can I do?
The head honcho (or 'big heid yin' in Glasgae parlance) ofBarr is to hand over the closely guardedIrn Bru recipe to which only he and an unnamed other are privy. The recipe is apparently stashed in a secret bank vault, where it is presumably guarded by various Indiana Jones type booby traps and a contingent of mean and moody Gurkhas, and has not seen the light of day for 50 odd years.
Irn bru is exceedingly popular in Scotland, rivalling even the mighty Coca Cola in sales. Its most successful export market is Russia, which may seem odd until you consider that the main ingredient of the orange elixir is sugar. Sugar rich drinks are, as we all know, rather a good hangover cure. It is unsurprising that whisky debilitated Jocks and vodka purblind Ivans should both turn to the Bru the morning after a night on the brew.
Personally I think the stuff is utterly ghastly, but I suppose it has its merits when the pains of indulgence make the sight of a full fry up a nausea inducing experience.
All power to the Bru. It might give us diabetes but we'll always be fit for a bevvy before noon. I think it's what the marketing bods call a USP, whatever that is.
I am compelled to devote another post to poetry given that the last one, despite my hymn of praise to Miss Dolly Parton, produced a non-existent response from all but the most ardent poetastic adepts.
It can't be helped I suppose: most of us are brought up reading the back of the Kellogg Cornflakes packet as the clock hurries us and the egg timer clicks away our tomorrows. I could draw attention to Byron's proto rock star tendencies or Burns' shag 'n' tell propensities, but it wouldn't make any difference.
When in my cups I turn to poetry. At the perfect point of mild intoxication I am inclined to seek out a soupçon of iambic pentameter and a perfectly formed sonnet. When this point of perfection has passed I am prone (literally) to recite a soliloquy from Hamlet.
Perhaps this is why I get punched so much.
Trawling youtube in the one handed inebriated prone position the other night I was delighted to discover the putting a poem to music nadir. Talk about missing the point on purpose. Miss Dolly Parton (may her name be blessed) would be dead chuffed.
Celebrity chefs are almost always total titheads. The likes of Anthony Worra Tosspot, Heston Bloominghell, and Hugh Fairly Windscreen Wiper make me gag on my creme caramel.
Anthony can't cook, he just does his "I'm a big cuddly bear me" routine on TV while flashing his enormous Rolex at the cameras. Thankfully he's had to shut a couple of his rip off steak restaurants due to the recession.
Heston used to be a bailiff, a profession normally reserved for psychopaths who enjoy breaking down debtors doors and scaring the hell out of them so that they pay up. It's no surprise that the bullet headed bully now charges enormous sums of money for snail porridge and engine oil tirimasu. I shall not be gracing his restaurant, The Fat Tit, with my presence.
Hugh is just too posh. I'm convinced that he doesn't like broiler chickens because they provide cheap protein for the proles. All Eton educated toffs know that it's best to keep the working classes stunted in case they get ideas above their station and start demanding foie gras pasties.
Only the saintly and extravagantly thighed Nigella is worthy of the accolade 'Celebrity Chef'. She can't cook, but that is an irrelevance. Her wholesome wobblesomeness is the reason we watch.
If Nigella is feeling a bit peckish I think she should eat Jamie Oliver and his annoying wife Jools. They would make nice carpaccio, and would also be tasty deep fried. It's important that Nigella keeps her strength up and obtains the requisite wobbling nutrients.
There is a particular puckered up expression displaying extreme distaste that is as visually arresting as a baboon disporting its scarlet buttocks. It has a Scottish Presbyterian provenance, beloved of Schoolmistresses and Sunday School teachers when presented with an obstreperous urchin or intimations of untoward sexual practices. To look as though one is 'sucking on a soor plum' is to be an obvious examplar of moral rectitude and Calvinist fortitude.
Here are some soor plums:
Here is a soor plum expression:
There are a lot of soor plum expressions around at the moment, what with the recession and all. I refuse to join their number, and shall instead read Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness' and say to myself "what in the name of bejasus is that ugly little French git on about?".
My mother has dementia, my nephew has Asperger's, and my father has developed an unhealthy obsession with Wellington bombers andPaddy Mayne.
It's a wonder I'm normal at all.
My sister is seeking the vodka solution, but being feisty will no doubt surmount that obstacle and rediscover the rejuvenating qualities of the teacake.
I am inclined to retire to my garret and consume a nice piece of cheese, if the mice haven't got to it first. There I shall toast Carol Anne Duffy as the first lesbo Glaswegian/Somewhere else poet to be Poet Laureate. Hopefully Queenie will treat her to a large portion of Weetabix and a stern talking to.
She's not as good as Philip Larkin though. Forget the Velvet Underground: rarely has a man deployed a pair of spectacles so effecively.
I need some bifocals. If I had some I'd look intelligent and could mock peoples choice of socks.
I was going to devote a post to The Attack of the 50ft Woman, but there's only so much you can say about 50 ft women. They're, well, rather tall and have breasts that could double as inter continental ballistic missiles.
Instead I have decided to devote a few words to slugs. I have a fiercely held (though empirically unproven) conviction that slugs appear through wormholes in the space/time continuum. They appear overnight from nowhere to deposit their slime on my hallway parquet flooring. Gratifyingly they dissolve when sprinkled with salt, but unfortunately this doesn't stop them emerging from the wormhole the next night.
There are few less pleasant experiences than a slug squelched underfoot. The resultant goo oozing between ones toes is a cross between snot and a lightly poached egg. Wiping the essence of slugness from between ones toes is not the perfect start to the day.
That is all I have to say about slugs at this time.
I've been inJeffrey Bernard mode again recently, reminiscing about the cuddly nature of the past when you could cadge a fag in a pub without some prig nosed arsehole pointing to the subtly displayed NO SMOKING MAXIMUM FINE £2 MILLION sign before digging into their cous cous.
I don't frequent the public house much these days, preferring to avoid the yachtsman hearties who frequent these parts and bugger on about topsails, reef knots, and inverted sphincters in loud braying voices. The locals wince into their drams and mutter about 'bastard English', but in truth they're just rephrasing the same conversations they've been having for the last twenty years and certainly aren't past masters in bar room banter.
Even worse, Bobby the reliably bald and consistently rude barman has popped his cloggs and the premises no longer echo to the sweet refrain of 'no, you can't have any food, we switched the fryers off half an hour ago'. The landlords daughter with her delightfully squint glass eye doesn't even visit any more, which just shows what a sorry pass the place has come to.
The pub should be a sanctum for the lame and halt where healthiness is frowned upon as a foul and wholly inexplicable perversion. The way things are going these days it's only a matter of time before it's compulsory step aerobics under the optics.
Whenever I listen to an an anaemic lentil eater extolling the virtues of the vegetarian diet I just think about sheep. How anybody can have any qualms about eating something so unbelievably stupid beats me. Where I live they amble along the sides of the public road, interrupting their gormless chomping only to wander into the path of oncoming traffic to deposit their sheepness on radiator grills.
They look thick at the best of times, and when freshly shorn are probably the ugliest creature on God's earth; all protruding bones and big lumpen head. Lambs aren't so bad looking I grant you, but given their plug ugly destiny it is only right and proper that they be dismembered and grilled.
Apparently the Welsh occasionally take a sheep as a sexual partner, which just goes to show what a staple diet of leeks does to you.
I think I'll go out tomorrow and hunt down some road kill. I'm due recompense from the wooly cretins for the number of my car bumpers they have left misshapen and covered in baa entrails.
Have a lamb chop, you know it's the right thing to do.
I don't normally take an instant dislike to people. Actually that's a lie, I frequently do and my wholly unjustified preconceptions are almost invariably justified.
What can one do when an Edinbugger drives up the hill in a Chyrsler (who I profoundly hope go bust and cease offending my eyeballs) monstrosity and announces that 'I don't suppose you've got round to HD TV up here yet have you'?
Then there's the fat lesbians who complain that they can feel the mattress springs, the boring adulterers who arrive 'incognito' in pick 'n' mix Germanmobiles, and the Americans who've just done Barcelona and are dropping in on their way to the auld country where their Great Great Uncle O'Paddywhacker built a shebeen and fathered five inbreeds.
The Continentals aren't so bad. I quite like the French because they're obviously scared, and I'm not too down on the Italians because they have decent dress sense, but I have to draw the line when in comes to being friendly to Spaniards. They tried to invade us, and sank. They should just get over it and make some paella with our whelks, the thieving daygos.
It's the tourist season and I'm feeling chipper. A bit of bitter hatred ingrained in my being will see me through the months ahead and prevent me from decapitating an ingrate.
Enjoying a hand rolled cheroot outside the hotel my mildly lubricated equanimity was disturbed by a couple emerging from the front door having a full on domestic.
'Why the fuck did ye book us in for three nights if there wuz no spa treatments! There's fuck all to dae, and I'm bored trailing around after you and your swally ya bastud'
'You're startin' up aboot nothin you miserable coo, if I wasnae still workin' you'd be down the bingo. Quit yer moanin'.
Some folk are just plain miserable, and (although I hate to generalise) people from the east coast of Scotland have elevated gurning and general ignorant bastardness into an art form.
It's Perth, for fucks sake. It's elegant and prosperous and you're staying in an hotel when a lot of folk are getting their homes repossessed. Did you not notice the sprinkling of closed shops and the big farewell note slapped up in the Woolies window and signed by all the staff who are now scraping by on £60 a week Jobseekers Allowance?
Kebab fever overtook me the other day, but then I glanced at the Cypriot Turk's 'Munchie Box' selection and felt compelled to avert my gaze.
I want salad but somehow I can't warm to it; it's just a bit curly and frayed about the edges, the sad cherry tomato exiled in a sea of wilted lollo rosso, the desultory splash of North Sea vinaigrette, the lonesome sweetcorn kernel suffering a serious bout of ennui.
Salad fails to excite me. What I want is roasted flesh served on a V12 bed of turbine smooth excellence. Maserati would do, with a dose of Sophia Loren draped across the cylinder head. Failing that a reasonably intact Hermann Goering era Merc or a full on Mussolini fuck off Alfa would suffice.
Perhaps I'll settle for this:
Cool as fuck and on the hunt for Benzes and BMW's theBristol is a gentleman's conveyance of inestimable elegance with a massive Chrevolet V8 engine and crafted English cow scrotum.
Glasgow is the only city on earth to have grown and prospered on a great river and then turned its back on it with a contemptuous shrug.
The great ships no longer loose their chains and birth themselves in the River Clyde, chapped hands no longer clap, the champagne remains in the icebox. True, the Govan Yard is recruiting apprentices and ther are faint stirrings, but a renaissance cannot be founded on defence contracts.
Belfast, with it's mighty cranes, restricts itself to its pathetic sectarian huddles and forgets that it once looked west.
Rivets are in our blood, even if they are obsolete. The tang of the salt air should resonate with steel crashing into the surf.
Gardening is one of the activities that I associate with terminal eccentricity: an inexplicable obsession with loamy soil; string bean training; an evangelical zeal to praise the soil aerating activities of earth worms.
I suppose it's fairly harmless as hobbies go. It certainly isn't as embarrassing as sado masochism or train spotting, and I'm sure potential partners could be sourced from the personal ads if the phrase 'herbaceous border' was artfully inserted among references to GSOH and WLTM.
Personally I don't garden; I haven't even dabbled in window boxes, fearing that a little herb cultivation may prove a to be a link drug leading to stupid floppy hats and corduroy.
Should Armageddon arrive I am afraid that I will have to rely on my stockpile of tinned ravioli and aged Scotch. When the shutters finally come down on civilisation I intend to go down smiling while the gardeners wave their sticks of celery fruitlessly.
Did I just mention fruit? No, I don't grow that either.
I felt an urgency in my bowels today which was less an omen of impending terminal cancer than an indication of my fervent desire to sit on my 'Business Solutions Manager's' face and fart long and sonorously.
He's quite normal looking in a brain dead CLYDESDALE BANK kind of way, but there are clear traces of the journeyman tattooed on his forehead. This time server is staring obsequiously up his bosses bum and worshipping at the tiny alter of his time served pension.
Nasty demanding letters are being dispatched to lots of people I know threatening withdrawn overdraft facilities, hiked interest rates, and worse.
As a Gladstonian liberal who believes that 'money should fructify in the pockets of the people' I want the banks nationalised for a time, and quickly.
I have some rather pale guests staying at the moment. They aren't full on Goth in a Robert Smith wearing a fright wig kind of way, but they do apply a little eye-liner and dress exclusively in black.
Thing is, they haven't gone outside for the last three days. I'm beginning to suspect that I may have agreed to be mien host to a couple of the undead, their obvious aversion to daylight a clear indication of vampire tendencies.
I'm going to have to think of an excuse to knock them up, but short of procuring some virgins to tempt them into the great outdoors I'm short on ideas. Perhaps I should just stake (geddit?) the place out in case they decide to clear off without paying
I'm not scared because I've been eating lots of garlic and shall breathe over them if they attempt to disturb my beauty sleep. Anyway, vampires are infinitely preferable to werewolves. The Lycans keep the other guests awake with their howling and invariably chew the table legs and leave hairs all over the soft furnishings.
I saved feverishly until the Saturday when I handed over the cash for the gate fold sleeve LP. The bus saw the unveiling, the first scan of the lyrics and sleeve notes; a prelude to the consummation almost carnal in intensity when the stylus hit the groove.
Then along came CD, followed by Mindisc and the bewildering MP3napstertwaddle. The joy afforded by the physical artefact was replaced by mundane file sharing, the storage of 1000's of songs on an iPod. Something got lost along the way. Shelves were no longer filled with alphabetically arranged (if you were anal) LP's, a quick scan of which could instantly appraise you of someone's musical taste, or lack thereof. A spine containing the words 'Duran Duran' or 'Top of the Pops Volume 19' was a clear indication that the person was a clueless numptie and best avoided.
I'm not a total Luddite though, and have embraced spotify. Music now exists in the ether, is available instantly, and streams free of charge. I may miss album sleeves, which in some cases were works of art in their own right, but I'm more than happy not to have to pay for what I consume.
Will I be streaming the preview of the new U2 album? You betcha I won't.
People called Howard deserve to have dreadful things happen to them; it's a crap name up there with Timothy and Kenneth in the 'his parents need a good slapping' stakes.
Howard had drunkenly wandered into a room full of posh penguin suit and taffeta gown clad revellers and helped himself to gin and champagne, as you do. He had a great night of it and managed not to throw up over anybody, the latter being a signal achievement as he was known as a chunderer of epic proportions when blootered.
Having free loaded to his hearts content he decided not to waste money on a taxi and trudged off in the general direction of home. Unfortunately he got a bit lost, and then it started to rain. He decided, in a flash of genius, to take shelter in a large gritting bin in which he fell into a drunken stupor.
Several hours later he woke to a dark sepulchral silence with not a baldy clue were he was. After much scrabbling at the bin lid he reached the natural conclusion that he had been buried alive. Fortunately for Howard his whimpering cries alerted a passing policeman who hauled him out of the bin. The policeman was not impressed and told him to "fuck off home" or he'd arrest him for wasting police time.
Burglars should be met with extreme prejudice; we're not talking withheld offers of cups of tea here, we're talking electrocution in bath tubs after partial immersion. That'd learn them, and a good swallow of Radox bath salts after the event would be the least they deserve.
Mice have been troubling me recently, but not as much as the bastard presumptuous youthful piss off merchant Pine Marten who has taken up residence in my office. How the fucker is getting in has had me tapping walls like Basil Fawlty with an inadvertent erection.
This relative of the weasel has been crapping over my towels, nibbling the complimentary minuscule guest soaps, and having his way with the UHT milk cartons and demerera sugar sachets. If he was a Red Squirrel there is a chance that I could be dissuaded from divesting him of his nuts but in this instance I have no alternative but to send in the cat.
Having just devoured a large slice of chocolate cake topped with a goodly portion of butter icing my thoughts have inevitably turned to the Protestant Reformation. As I see it the problem with being Proddie these days is that there isn't much protesting going on. Back in the 'good old days' a bit of Catholic burning would have passed the time, but these days even Catholic baiting is frowned upon so that particular diversion is not an option.
These days the schism in Western Christendom is really only a question of the acceptability of contraception, or more particularly the use of latex prophylactics. Even this issue is a bit of a limp member as I don't think that many Priests are haranguing their parishioners about rubber Johnnies at Mass.
Had one enquired of a heavily tattooed Loyalist in a Shankill Road drinking den during the 1970's what his difficulty was with the Irish Catholic Church a lengthy monologue on Black Mambos, French ticklers, and strawberry flavoured condoms would have ensued. These a days a shrug would be the more likely response.
Secularism has killed off this important debate, and I for one think it's about time it was revived.
The Black Watch will shortly be off to Helmland Province in Afghanistan. It's probably appropriate that a regiment that was formed to prevent the Scottish Highland Clans from causing mayhem should be dispatched to wrestle with a bunch of tribal nutcases whose ingrained code of hospitality exists alongside a homicidal rage against the outsider. The code of the Pashtun has many resemblances to the code of conduct observed by the Highland Clans for centuries.
Before long we will hear the skirl of the pipes as a flag draped coffin is led up the gravel path to the doors of a Kirk. It won't be first time; it's a ritual that echoes down the centuries. War is shite, but it's what the Black Watch do.
I can't claim to be a hair shirt individual, but there are sufficient residual vestiges of Calvinism in my genes to ensure that I cannot splurge or waste without feeling annoying pangs of guilt. I cannot leave food uneaten on my plate (being instructed to think of the starving millions while at Primary School saw to that), I do not get drunk and dance jigs at the crossroads at midnight, and I do not have a sheaf of maxed out credit cards in my wallet.
Apparently we're all supposed to be spending our way out of recession, although how acquiring even more debt in order to dig ourselves out of our debt induced hole is supposed to do the trick escapes me. Still, who am I argue with the big brains at the Bank of England. I have decided to do my bit and shall be spending more on the following:
1) Big fuck off 21 day agedsirloin steaks. These are very tasty but very expensive. I'll be providing much needed relief for the beleaguered Scottish beef farmer and expect at least an OBE for my efforts.
2) Jaguars. My current gas gussler is starting to display the symptoms of old age in failed alternators and squeaky suspension bushings. The old dear will have to be put out to pasture and a newer and swisher temptress purchased.
3) Malt whisky. No more ghastly blends shall be imbibed. Only the fruit of the single malt, aged for at least ten years, shall be permitted to pass my lips.
I'm prepared to selflessly do my bit. I just hope that other people are prepared to make similar sacrifices and prevent a repeat of the 1930's.
Idling my afternoon away sitting in my car at a popular local beauty spot I was surprised to see two young ladies emerge from their vehicle and assemble their packed lunches on a picnic table. This would be an occurrence unworthy of note had not the temperature been -5C.
Al fresco lunches in sub zero temperatures have never appealed to me. The absence of annoying bastard wasps does not compensate for frost bitten fingers. Still, each to their own I suppose. If people want to indulge in bizarre Polar lunches in the depths of the Scottish winter that is their right and I would defend to the death their right to do so (well, up to a point).
The ladies were obviously lesbians as they both had close cropped hair (one brunette, the other peroxide) and an interesting variety of facial piercings. They also drove a bona fide lesbian car; a small nondescript hatchback of either French or Japanese origin.
These lesbians are tough cookies. In fact, they may be at the apex of human evolution. Risking hypothermia by scorning hats and not being pansy enough to wear gloves just goes to prove they are a superior example of Homo Sapien and are destined to rule the earth.
They didn't even throw their crusts to the seagulls, which proves that they have the mental toughness to take the ruthless decisions necessary to get our economy back on an even keel. Were I in power I would appoint them to run the banks. They mightn't be very keen to grant overdrafts, but at least they wouldn't run up huge taxpayer funded lunch expenses when a ham roll and a can of Sprite in the car park would do.
A strange woman came up to me today and asked (rather aggressively) "what does the W H in W H Smith stand for?". I was somewhat nonplussed by this and could only think to reply "dunno, but it used to be called John Menzies".
Odd people are constantly apprehending me in the street for no reason whatsoever. I seem to attract oddballs and borderline pychopaths like flypaper. I'd like to put this down to my magnetic personality, but I suspect that it may be because I look like a soft touch who will willingly listen to monologues about psychiatric wards, methadone, and multiple suicide attempts.
Unfortunately I don't hold the same allure for drop dead gorgeous women. I regard this as grossly unfair, and have decided to start looking mean and shifty. Gorgeous women always go for bastards and it should dissuade the mentally ill from tugging at my coat tails.
If anybody can suggest other surefire methods of keeping the mentalists at bay I'm all ears. They won't leave me alone.
Side partings have always been a bad idea; hair should be swept back, knotted into dreadlocks, left to its own devices to moulder slowly in its own oils before recovering to its natural state, or shaved to a mouse breath tonsure that would render your average Jesuit all a tremble.
I've always respected the Plymouth Brethren because the menfolk had sufficient sense to chastise their womenfolk for failing to conceal their crowning glories beneath old tea towels.
As far as I'm concerned Utopia will only exist when skinheads rule, Bryan Ferry's flick fringe is available to all aspirant males who dislike skins, and all females start wearing cloche hats.
Come on girls, you know it's the right thing to do. Be gamine for Garfer, there are teacakes to be had.
Ths Swiss are famous for having lots of money, most of it acquired by making extortionately priced watches which are less accurate than a cheapo Jap quartz, chocolate, and hiding the ill gotten gains of Third World kleptocrats in their bank vaults.
I went skiing there once, and have no recollections other than being astounded by the cost of veal scnitzel and the number of beardy Hassidic Jews wandering around Zurich airport looking prosperous.
The Great and the Good are encamped at Davos at the moment, no doubt gorging themselves on canapes and attempting to feel up the Heidi lookalike chambermaids. There aren't as many bankers there this year as they are no longer regarded as great and good. So low have they fallen that they are regarded in a similar light to this feller:
Davros has not been invited to Davos either.
I imagine that the cost of this hot air jamboree would be enough to provide clean drinking water for a few million Africans, but I suppose I can't be too churlish. There's always the slim possibility that a large meteorite may strike and rid us of the shower of egotistical freeloading bastards for good.
This being the eve of maudlin half cut Robert Burns celebrations I am minded to celebrate the warmth of the man and applaud the common humanity that he celebrated. Having said that, I find it rather difficult to square his cuddly image with the drunken womaniser and Excise Man who briefly considered becoming an overseer on a Jamaican slave estate before deciding to follow his muse.
Oor Rabbie shagged about a bit, and his verbal felicity can still be detected in some of his Ayrshire descendants:
A man's a man for a' that
Is there for honest poverty That hings his head, an' a' that? The coward slave, we pass him by - We dare be poor for a' that! For a' that, an' a' that! Our toils obscure, an' a' that, The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that.
What though on hamely fare we dine, Wear hoddin grey an' a' that? Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine A man's a man for a' that. For a' that, an' a' that, Their tinsel show, an' a' that, The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor, Is king o' men for a' that.
Ye see yon birkie ca'd 'a lord', Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that? Tho' hundreds worship at his word, He's but a cuif for a' that, For a' that, an' a' that, His ribband, star, an' a' that, The man o' independent mind, He looks an' laughs at a' that.
A prince can mak a belted knight, A marquis, duke, an' a' that! But an honest man's aboon his might - Guid faith, he mauna fa' that! For a' that, an' a' that, Their dignities, an' a' that, The pith o' sense an' pride o' worth Are higher rank than a' that.
Then let us pray that come it may (As come it will for a' that) That Sense and Worth o'er a' the earth, Shall bear the gree an' a' that, For a' that, an' a' that, It's comin yet for a' that, That man to man the world oe'r Shall brithers be for a' that.
Robert Burns
Not exactly a Marxist analysis, but definitely pithy. To be honest I think he has more in common with Jerry Lee Lewis than Keats.
Burns would have whupped Keats in a fight, but he wouldn't have stood a chance against 'the Killer'.
Complete gobshite, drug muppet, and talentless bass guitar plucker Sid Vicious is apparentlyinnocent of the murder of his repulsive peroxide blonde girlfriend Nancy Spungen.
Why there should still be speculation about this is beyond me. Given that they were both heroin addled numbskulls it is a matter of profound indifference to me whether Sid chibbed Nancy, Nancy stabbed herself, or a mystery man from the room upstairs performed the dirty deed.
As for any romance attached to the Chelsea Hotel, I think that died around about the time Leonard Cohen and Janis Joplin checked out. A squalid overpriced freak and poseur magnet is unlikely to attract my custom.
As for Sid, the other Sex Pistols called him Vicious* because he wasn't strong enough to punch his way out of a paper bag. His legend lives on, if you're a complete numpty.
*Update
Some readers have suggested that he was named Vicious after John Lydon's pet hamster. Having researched the matter I am convinced that this was just one of Lydon's jolly japes and that my explanation is correct.
I don't want to meet ex Paratroop Regiment General Mike Jackson down a dark alley.
Definitely a hint of the Satanic about Fuld. Maybe not Old Nick, but definitely Old Dick.
Macca exploiter and all round bunny boiler mentalist Heather McCartney Mills. Mad as a brush and will beat you to death with her wooden leg.
Feck, girls, arse!
There's a lot of evil looking people about. So many that I'm beginning to wonder if it's safe to go outside at all. Maybe I'll just stay at home and polish my arsenal of illegally held hand guns and assault rifles.
I am pleased to report that the spirit of scientific endeavour lives. I'm not referring to superstring theory, the quest for nuclear fusion, or the glories revealed by the Hubblebubble telescope. Much more important research is being carried out in the field ofsnack pimping.
I feel that it's only a matter of time until a Nobel prize or three is awarded to these brave venturers at the outer reaches of experimental endeavour.
Avalanches would be nice, if you had a tube of Deep Heat, a periscope, and a faithful St Bernard called Arnold hovering expectantly with a collar flask of Jamaican Rum.
That's a bit melodramatic.
I've been feeling old recently. Parts of my anatomy of which I have hitherto been unaware (and have no desire to know intimately) have startd to ache. I have no idea what they're yearning for; it's not as though I have strained them inadvertently by being athletic.
I beginning to think that cryogenic suspension is the only cure for my existential malaise.
Somebody wake me up when the Banks start lending again.
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee—and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Or the obligatory You tube:
Guttered as the guterredest of guttersnipes, but still breathing.
I always find the desultory interregnum between Christmas and New year a useful time to contemplate why I hate most green vegetables with a passion greater than Morrisey's penchant for gladioli, or Pamela Anderson's passion for proving that short arse Canuck birds like stuffing spacehoppers up their jumpers.
Asparagus would do, if it wasn't mostly twig. A string bean would be tolerable, if it didn't leave a stray string rotting between my top left molars. I wouldn't say no to a broad bean if it got a bit Mexican and started quaffing tequila and getting a bit stroppy.
No, broad beans aren't for me.
Nor are carrots, which may be orange but are the most pointless vegetable known to humanity.
Anyhoo, here's the Undertones, proving that Derryboys who love their spuds are vastly superior to short arse Dublin pontifcaters like Bono.
....and garfer is half cut. Feeling slightly less misanthropic than usual I wish all my deluded nincompoops a very happy Christmas. I hope nobody gets food poisoning from a dodgy prawn.
May the plums in your pudding prosper. In fact, if you're a male nincompoop, may your plums prosper full stop.
* There's always one sweet in the box with a precariously balanced almond on top. One bite and half the almond falls off and rolls under the sofa.
* Everybody hates mince pies, yet everybody feels an inexplicable urge to force them on everybody else.
* People eat After Eight mints and put the empty wrappers back in the box. These people need shooting.
* Big Issue sellers make you feel mildly guilty.
* The Queen.
* Untangling Christmas tree lights. This activity invariably involves high volume cursing and swearing. Personally I'd rather wrestle an octopus.
* Indigestion.
* Squidgy presents. These are usually provided by skinflint relatives who think that a hand knitted jumper with baggy sleeves or a pair of socks are a fair swap for being providing with copious amounts of free food and booze.
* People who think a game of 'Twister' is the perfect way to occupy Christmas Day afternoon.
* Party hats. I have no desire to look a complete twat, whatever the occasion.
I am hotelling it at the moment, the expense of which I am defraying by Christmas shopping for items of an inconsequential and paltry nature for my nearest and dearest.
I like the anonymity provided by chain hotels, the sense of living in an enclosed bubble oblivious to workaday concerns. I am firmly convinced that should anything apocalyptic happen I will still be able to phone reception and demand that fresh towels and an extra pillow are dispatched to my room instantly.
It's not quite as good as the Manhattan hotel room where the charming Latino house maid was sensitive to my every need (and then some), but it's still acceptable.
Time is seeping through my pores, and regular meal times and the guilt of sleeping in are a distant memory.
My animus has been thwarted yet again. Admittedly I'm not on the verge of destitution, or even fearful of the unlikely prospect of mild deprivation, but I am irked, annoyed, and of a mind to detach a leg from one of my occasional tables and insert it forcefully up the nearest bankers rectum.
Assets apparently have no value, and consequently cannot be lent against. This is a worry, as if nothing is worth fuck all we are all comprehensively fucked.
Fucking fuckity muppets the lot of them, the shower of useless bastards.
For some reason blind people keep bumping into me and poking me with their sticks. Rude isn't the word.
Snow
Constantly forecasted and all we get is freezing rain.
Small Towns
There's always some knob head student claiming that it's great to be back and moaning about seeing the same old faces.
Asparagus
Over rated and stringy.
Jaguars
Used to be cool as fuck but got bloated and sold out to the Injuns.
Banks
Employ the mindless morons that narrowly avoided getting a kicking at school. I'm planning to go blind just so that I can poke mine with a pointy stick (or a taser).
I loathe spending money on other people, preferring (quite sensibly) to fortify my self worth with utilitarian purchases of a wholly justifiable nature that benefit me. I scoff at the crass materialism and wasteful consumerism that has so benighted our shallow and valueless Western cultures.
I laugh at the pallor and anxiety of recession etched faces as they stare at the 50 inch plasma TV's that should rightfully be theirs but have been capriciously snatched from them by the harsh Gods of plastic. I sneer at the wee wifeys loading up on economy concentration camp turkeys at Asda.
If only more people had been sensible about spending money they didn't have this country wouldn't be evaporating like the bubbles in my jacuzzi.
Actually, speaking of jacuzzis, I've decided to launch a special Christmas appeal in aid of myself. I want the new model with complimentary Thai bathing belles and streaming cocktails. It's not too much to ask, and I expect everybody to contribute generously.
My French teacher was fresh out of Teacher Training College and exemplified the curvaceous big bosomed come-hitherness that is every 15 year old boys ideal of feminine perfection. It was no bloody wonder none of us could manage French pronunciation, being incapable of saying anything other than a mumbled "dunno Miss" in her pneumatic presence.
I speak very, very poor French as a result of this educational handicap. This doesn't bother me unduly as I can't see much point in being able to speak fluent Froggy. It's not as though they still rule Indochina. If they did I could swan around Hanoi in a crumpled cream linen suit and seduce oriental beauties with my Baudelaire recitations. These days the Viet birds are more likely to invite me to partake in some 'boom boom' in one of their brothels, which isn't very glamorous at all and indicative of the verbal felicity which the Americans left in their bomb strewn wake.
I'm quite satisfied not to be able to speak French as the French clearly have no intention of learning to speak English. Each to their own I say.
Not everyone is lucky enough to have a German Harley Davidson riding dentist called Dietmar. Dietmar is efficient, in a brusquely Prussian manner, and does not interrupt his drilling and filling with pointless small talk.
Unfortunately Dietmar is rather out of sorts at the moment as he has acquired a drink driving conviction and is unable to live out his Easy Rider fantasies on his Harley. I have commiserated with him, and berated the idiocies of the British drink driving laws which prevent harmless Germans trundling around on their motorcycles. As such, I am one of Dietmar's favourite patients.
I recently had a prehistoric filling fall out, and having been somewhat tardy in having the matter attended to was unsure of the tooth's future. I asked Dietmar if the tooth could be saved. He replied that "I cannot save ze tooth permanently, but I can apply a temporary filling". Apparently this temporary filling should be good for five years or so, after which it will fall out and can be replaced with another temporary filling. "So it's not really temporary then?", I asked. "No", he said, "it is not temporary, but neither is it permanent".
Being firmly convinced that decent drains and proper toilets are the hallmark of all civilized societies I tend more towards armchair travel than the real variety. Other cultures and cuisines are all very well and good, but there is little alluring about fly encircled toilet rims.
Having said that, I do like to dream about exotic destinations and the attractions they offer. I was reading up on Shanghai the other day and was pleased to note that one hotel claimed that all guests were sure to have a 'drastically good time'. I haven't had many drastically good times, so I'm sure it would prove to be an invigorating holiday.
The British economy is definitely going round the U bend, so I think we should all go out and have a drastically good time.
"I dont need a a toilet roll, I wait until I get to work and have a dump there"
That's when I knew I had to sort myself out. I was 27 years old and still renting rooms in manky houses with malignant failed but still aspirant male careerists. It wasn't that bad a house really; the ever so posh landlady and her husband were just across the street and were clearly early adopters on the road to 'buy-to let' Nirvana.
I think it was because the rest of the residents were accountants and solicitors, Next suited Friday night kebab scoffers who had planned out their lives in accordance with the two thirds final salary scheme that would be theirs by right if they ticked all the right boxes and licked the appropriate arses.
No food other than condiments and dried pulses and pasta were kept in the kitchen. Any fool who left anything instantly edible would find it gone the next morning. It was the antithesis of communal living, where anything left unattended would be instantly snaffled and crowed over.
It was really the toilet rolls that got to me. You had to carry yours to the crapper, and make sure you left with it. I'm not sure if it was Thatcherism or Maoism, but it scarred me for life.
Cor Blimey am I glad to be shot of that mentalist Yankee bint Madge. The loony cow wouldn't let me have me bangers 'n' mash wiv mushy peas coz she said they wozn't marcobotic or somefink. Couldn't even get a shag coz she spent most of 'er time in an oxygen tent or was off giving it the charitable thing in some stinkin' 'ole in Africar.
Ectually, I'm rather pleased that my ill advised marriage to that lower class gel from Michigan is over. Mater and Pater weren't happy with the union at the time, claiming (quite correctly) that blue blood shouldn't mingle with lower class Eyetie blood. She didn't even know what a fish knife was for!
I don't need her money because I'm Guy Rich Richie. You just can't buy class.
The Grauniad has a very useful section in its Saturday magazine where metrosexual Londoners suggest that we all move to some provincial hell hole where the air is cleaner, a blow job behind the gas works costs a fiver, and there are several local state schools in which your offspring will learn how to do sums and write in short poorly punctuated sentences.
Last weeks Shangri La was Lancaster. I haven't been to Lancaster, and although I'm sure it's very nice I have absolutely no desire to visit the place let alone live there. One of the locals opined that: "Lancaster has a healthy arts scene, lesbian community, cycling fraternity and is a stronghold of the Green party. It's full of artists and musicians, with Freehold its Latin Quarter!
I suppose it would be mildly diverting watching sandal wearing lesbo cycling groups pedalling about telling people off for using plastic carrier bags, but the novelty would probably wear off pretty quickly. Whenever anyone tells you that a town has a thriving arts scene this invariably means that the rest of the place resembles a post apocalyptic wasteland and is patrolled by squads of inebriated morons in search of arty types to kick the shit out of.
Being a sensitive soul I'm sure that Lancaster isn't the place for me. Perhaps I should try somewhere safer like Moss Side, or Toxteth.
Walking around in the park Should feel better than work: The lake, the sunshine, The grass to lie on,
Blurred playground noises Beyond black-stockinged nurses - Not a bad place to be. Yet it doesn't suit me.
Being one of the men You meet of an afternoon: Palsied old step-takers, Hare-eyed clerks with the jitters,
Waxed-fleshed out-patients Still vague from accidents, And characters in long coats Deep in the litter-baskets -
All dodging the toad work By being stupid or weak. Think of being them! Hearing the hours chime,
Watching the bread delivered, The sun by clouds covered, The children going home; Think of being them,
Turning over their failures By some bed of lobelias, Nowhere to go but indoors, Nor friends but empty chairs -
No, give me my in-tray, My loaf-haired secretary, My shall-I-keep-the-call-in-Sir: What else can I answer,
When the lights come on at four At the end of another year? Give me your arm, old toad; Help me down Cemetery Road.
Work is a vastly overrated activity, an unpleasant obligation rendered necessary by the need to earn money. Some people make the fatal error of imbuing their chosen 'career' with life defining qualities before promptly dropping dead on a golf course when they retire. Capitalism, with its inevitable recessions, only makes matters worse by causing much existential angst when work evaporates. Not only is the sense of self worth punctured by the loss of a job, the ensuing financial agony means that you can't even afford to be miserable in comfort.
The only solution to this hideous con trick that I can see is either to make enough money never to have to rely on a salary again, or quit the whole sordid business and live on the range of benefits which so many of the terminally bone idle seem to get by on so happily.
Personally I would be quite content to be a jet setting flaneur with a healthy private income. I'm not so keen on the idea of existing on frozen Iceland pizzas and litre bottles of cheap potent cider, but even that beats the prospect of sitting in an office with people I hate for eight hours a day.
Perhaps I need counselling to reanimate the Protestant work ethic which was briefly mine for ten minutes in 1996. I really could do with some motivational tips as I'm seriously toying with the idea of squandering everything on having a very nice time for the next five years and letting the long term future go hang.
Barack bleedin' Obama. Every newspaper I open has a six page spread on the big eared wunderkind and his impossibly photogenic family. Apprently he's a Frankenstein liberal cobbled together from the best bits of every successful US president from Lincoln to JFK.
OK, so he's black; but not too black. Personally I'm more impressed that the Americans are astute enough to have elected a gangly dude with big sticky out ears. Lincoln's shell likes were quite striking, and Lyndon Johnson's aural appendages virtually swept along the carpet. One wrote the Gettysburg address and the other introduced the 'Great Society'.
Apparently we're all due to start sneezing blood and drowning in our own lung fluid any day now. I'm quite excited by this as I've always fancied strolling down the street ringing my bell and shouting 'bring out yer dead'.
I don't see what all the fuss is about. Given thatflu pandemics usually effect city dwellers I should be safe if I decide to live in a cave and subsist on tinned sardines and cider. I may have to use my tin opener to fend off any thieving vagrants attempting to steal my stash, but you have to be tough if you want to survive.
Perhaps It'll be like The Day of the Triffids and I'll be able to hole up in a nice old farm house with some other hardy survivors. We'll drink vintage claret and listen avidly to short wave radio. A shotgun or two will come in handy, and thankfully that's just the sort of thing you tend to find in old farm houses.
Surviving appeals as there would be no excuse for not eating all the tinned and processed foods that I could lay my hands on. Booze is particularly rich in nutrients, so all cellars and sideboards would have to be thoroughly searched.
It would all be more Marx Brothers than Mad Max, and it it would certainly be more fun than worrying about the size of my overdraft.
