turn off tune out drop in

Thursday 23rd December 2010 11:33 PM

The well-meaning but sometimes pretentious Brenda has messed up the yoghurt order at the dairy. It's chaos. She took off her new glasses, (she said it was because they were rubbing, but I suspect it was vanity), and because she then lost the ability to distinguish the difference between the words strawberry and raspberry, all the yoghurt was then wrongly labelled. Recently, I've had no toilet, my waters been frozen up, and I've been seriously worried about the damage to the earths subtle magnetic light body from the effects of too much Ant and Dec, so this was a problem I really didn't need. Luckily, it was all happening on the radio, in a fictional village called Ambridge, so when Susan's subsequent anger started troubling my solar plexus, I just turned it off.

Yesterday I heard a Radio 5 presenter declare that Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without a turkey. While I respect that stations ability to give me traffic reports and bibble-babble on about premiership football, their spiritual insight into the mystery of the solar logos is patently pitiful. Surely it's obvious that the majestic figure of Christ is innately more essential to Christmas than a factory-tortured bag of growth-hormones, and because all this was going on in my kitchen, I turned it off.

It didn't stop there. As I've declared many times in this blog, the only things I watch on the telly with any regularity are Match of the Day and The Simpsons. Well, from now on make that just Match of the Day. Homer, who used to be an everyman, a flawed human being with the possibility of redemption, is now just unceasingly foul, and the last three episodes I've seen have been violent, over-sexualised and deeply misanthropic. Doh!

All this turning off and tuning out means I've been dropping in on other kinds of cultural pastime. On Tuesday, as darkness fell, I turned out the lights and spent a happy hour watching a big blob of full-fat, pale tangerine moon-milk, as it bubbled up through a dark lattice of trees and percolated into the liquid black disc of a coffee-pot night. As the first shining arc of unshadowed moon-milk semi-skimmed above the tree-tops, I fancied it was the leading edge of a polished silver spoon delivering unrefined sweetness to the grateful sky.

This morning I passed a merry half-hour looking out of the same window, making exquisite mind-jewellery from the field's blazing galaxy of frost-strewn diamonds, and using my imagination, and some special pliers, I made a Mary Poppins themed charm bracelet and three pairs of earrings. If it really is the thought that counts, I might give some of them away as Christmas presents.

These cheap, simple, reliable and readily available entertainments can be enormously enhanced by the presence of a good provenance, single-estate leaf tea, and a sensible supply of crispy-but-yielding, mum-made, almond biscuits. While enjoying the freely given, gorgeous narrative of this created world, a spicily fragrant, hand-rolled cigarette, liberally laced with some delicious, high-grade cannabis, can also be a real boon. I think it could also be a handy help-mate when dealing with mass-media entertainment, as it certainly helped me get over that messy business with Brenda and the yoghurt.

Posted 11:33 PM | 35 Comments | Permalink

they'll be singing in the streets of Doha tonight

Friday 3rd December 2010 10:14 PM

It seems that even the presence of two dishy Daves and a royal Willie couldn't secure the 2018 world cup bid for England. What does a country have to do for goodness sake? Personally, I would have focussed the bid on our world cup winners and sent a delegation of Nobby Styles and the Charlton brothers, and called it the Nobby Bobby Gobby lobby. His Royal Highness must be absolutely gutted, as must David Cameron and Prince William, and so I hereby publicly invite all three of them round to my place to see my Big Woman. Gasping in grateful wonderment at her generous snowy mounds and entranced by her frozen alabaster curves, it would be difficult to imagine their brimming hearts holding any room for lingering disappointment.

While they were out swanning with the boys in Switzerland I've obviously been busy snow-sculpting big women out in the yard, which is, of course, real work. The latest of these ice incarnations I've called Susan because it's a pleasant, easy name for an earth goddess and also has a touch of sixties modernity about it. Although basically buttocks, breasts and belly and a general celebration of the buxom letter B, she also has a cool, understated wisdom that I'm sure David Beckham will respond to.

I don't know whether Becks and the posh boys will be able to make it to mine in this weather, although you'd expect that they'd be able to rustle up a 4x4 between them. The effects of seeing my sculptures are often bowel-loosening, and at the moment my water's off and the toilets frozen up, so if they are coming I recommend that Prince William borrows his Dads porta-potti, which I've heard is a Thetford 465 with electric flush.

As an ongoing oeuoeuvre I'm hoping that one day that Susan will have arms, and hopefully hands as well, but probably not ones that can do dishes and feel soft as your face, because at the moment the snow's a bit too powdery to work with. Yesterday her head fell off and she damaged her features quite badly, and also during the reconnection surgery she lost a fair amount of neck with the tragic result that instead of looking a bit like Gillian Anderson, she's now looks a lot like Clive Anderson.

After we failed in our bid to host the 2006 world cup I remember inviting Sir Geoff Hurst, Sir Bobby Charlton and Dame Gary Lineker round for a warming bowl of lentil and apricot soup, and even though at the time they all said they enjoyed it, when they left I had gnawing doubts and grave inklings that the soup hadn't fully made up for their grievous loss. That affair was made more bitter by losing out to Germany whereas as this time we've been downed by Russia and plucky Qatar, so I expect the lads to be considerably more consolable.I think Susan can do it.

Posted 10:14 PM | 27 Comments | Permalink

a kiss on the cheek

Sunday 24th October 2010 7:44 PM

For the last fortnight I've been laid low by the latest breed of hacky-cough-cough virus and have subsequently been lacking in any sort of ambition beyond that of watching immense amounts of televised football. In the sixties, a night of European football on the telly was considered novel and exotic, like Tupperware parties or the low mist that swirled around Sandie Shaw's bare ankles on 'Thank Your Lucky Stars'. As regards the beautiful game, we were used to a certain plodding, potato predictability and so found the continental stuff a heady bewilderment of sautéed courgettes, aubergines and garlic. Invariably the opposition were tall, blonde and strong, or conversely short, swarthy and fast, and all their surnames had the same endings. Even though sat-nav hadn't been invented then, you knew where you were.

In 1968 Manchester City won the league title with ten Mancunians and a Scot, whereas last night, against Liverpool, Napoli fielded a team, not only without any Neapolitans in it, but without any Italians in it either. By the time I got to watching Man City versus Lech Walensa, it had all become so much indistinguishable Eurosludge, and with Man City now wearing the same sky-blue shirts as Napoli had worn in the previous match, I wasn't sure who I was supposed to be rooting for anymore, or even why. In my state of disorientation, which was partly cultural and partly the effects of a lethal combination of cannabis and tixy lix, I listened agog to the post-match analysis of Marcel Desailly.

'Ah, he is in a good moment here, when he make a solution for the ball to go to goal'

At the time, I couldn't have put it better myself.

Posted 7:44 PM | 17 Comments | Permalink

little brown jug-ears

Saturday 25th September 2010 10:12 PM

This afternoon they're going to announce the winner of the Labour leadership contest between the Glen Miller Band and the Steve Miller Band, and whatever the result, it's bound to swing.

I don't think that negotiating the choppy waters of diplomacy that separate Britain from the rest of Europe is really the right job for someone like Glen, even if he's in the mood, whereas in the same situation I feel that Steve would let his spirit carry him to the point where he could fly like an eagle, despite any ongoing problems with the single currency and a space-time continuum that keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future. Also, I'd expect a strong fiscal policy from a man who's fully aware that those who run for the money risk having a complete ignorance of wild mountain honey. The slipping, slipping, slipping future of the Labour party is in the balance. Will it be Steve or will it be Glen? Glen or Steve? Who can fill the Brown shoes? Will they choose Steve and his 'sha baba doo ma ma ma ma ma, oh yeah!s' or will it be Glen's 'Chatanooga choo choo's' they choose?

Posted 10:12 PM | 20 Comments | Permalink

the stupid persons clever person

Saturday 18th September 2010 12:10 AM

In the interests of nutrition and spiritual well-being, I've always felt that supermarket food, because of its toxicity and low energetic value, needs to be eschewed at least thirty times, so this week, instead of taking our usual magic car-trip ride to Aldi, me and my Mum decided to go hunter-gathering by the millennium bridge.

To make a bit of a day of it I went bare-foot and semi-naked, and Mum wore a fur bikini that she'd kept from the time when she had a small part in the film 'One Million Years BC'. (In those days, Raquel Welch, who had a big part, would often come round to our house on a Sunday, and eat toast and dripping with us round the fire, and share in the monochrome glamour of 'Thank your lucky stars' on the TV. In her handbag she always carried a tiny spaceship filled with a team of tiny scientists and sometimes, during the adverts, she'd shrink herself to microscopic proportions and my Mum would inject her and her mates into whoever's turn it was next. Other than that, and a double-jointed thumb, she was a surprisingly ordinary woman).

As I'm a vegetarian we thought it appropriate that Mum would do the hunting and I'd mainly gather, so Mum found herself a pointed stick and a blunt one for me, and for the next few hours I searched the hedgerows and floodplain while Mum, in spite of a few stern looks from some rather disgruntled fishermen, waded into the river and killed ducks. Later that evening, as Mum roasted a mallard in the baby belling, and I tucked into another slice of delicious blackberry, cob-nut, crab-apple and puffball pie, we laughed at the latest Sainsbury's advert, both of us delighted by our complete and utter indifference to the hired charms of Jamie Oliver.

With all the present kerfuffle over the papal visit I'm finding it really difficult to know who I like more, the Pope or Richard Dawkins. This week I read a snotty letter in the Guardian complaining about the state funding of poor Benny the Bridge's visit, undersigned by, amongst others, Richard 'Deep' Dawkins and Steven 'Shallow' Fry. (I know I'm being a bit judgemental here, but I find it saves time.) Seemingly unaware of our governments regular lavish hostings of overseas psychopaths, they pontificate (do you see what I've done there?) that the Bishop of Rome, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City, Servant of the Servants of God, Vicar of Dibley, is a homophobe who's stingy with the condoms. They want me to work with the paradigm that the universe is either the result of blind, pitiless indifference or the creation of a God who's got a big beard and doesn't like sex, but to be honest, with all this hunter-gathering I've been doing, and the start of the football season, I've been too busy.

Posted 12:10 AM | 17 Comments | Permalink