Laughing at the present/Thinking about the future

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LIFE IN THE WRONG LANE ARCHIVE

Lines on previous owners

Our house Courcelles was sold to us by a Dutch couple. They seem to have had some kind of newspaper fetish, as their solution to every DIY problem was newsprint: hole in mortar - newsprint, draught in window frames - newsprint, plug wobbling in wall - newsprint, roof leaking - newsprint, nest in chimney - newsprint, nuclear attack - newsprint. If I didn't know better (and admire Dutch architecture) I might imagine that not only is Holland largely reclaimed from water, but also consists of houses constructed entirely from De Telegraaf.

The lady owner (a Mrs Maars) kept asking us as we looked round "Are you rich?", a question even the most naive house purchaser would wish to deflect. The 'Mr' in the equation was not called Maars, but was an extremely muscular gigolo of about half the vendor's age. They must have been the most eccentric people, as almost all the Dutch I've ever met are both direct and honest. Everything they told us about the house and its contents was one unbroken string of lies. And their approach to electricity seems to have been based on an admiration for Russian Roulette: this time the light may simply switch on, the next it may barbecue you within ten seconds.

Lines on contemporary vacuum cleaners

We discovered almost all the worms in our French can during tidying activities, and mainly during use of the vacuum cleaner. This is because strong vacuum cleaners tend to suck bits of newsprint with a degree of ease. Our French vacuum cleaner has two speeds, gentle blow-job and where did the curtains go? At the latter velocity, nothing can survive: three years ago I turned (while cleaning the vestibule) and saw an interesting lizard four yards away. For all I know, it may have been a new species, but either way it shot up the vaccum's nozzle and disappeared forever. Only last week one of Jan's welly socks went the same way. I am careful to keep the suction pipe well away from my genitalia.

But the cleaner comes into its own with the endless cobwebs that gather around our beams and ceiling. The nozzle has an extension that would've done any self-respecting mediaeval jouster proud,and as it's too narrow to swallow the floorboards above, by and large it's fairly safe.

The whole arrangement starts to fall apart when Siemens efficiency and French plug-socket design inevitably collide. The cleaner itself hangs on to its lead like a Norman miser starving the Saxon peasants: thus, if one pulls too hard on the machine, the plug flies out of the wall. The sockets don't help, as the Gallic desire for clean lines means that an underweight vole could pull a domestic plug out with ease.

Thus, cleaning involves moving forward gingerly, then forgetting to - and hearing the motor die, followed by the exquisite pain of small missile hitting buttock at great speed. The chore at last finished, one asks the plug-lead to do its job as intended and shoot back into the body of the kirk -which, naturally, it refuses to do. Instead, it leaves eighteen inches lying flaccid on the floor. I won't go into the business of trying to get the last bit back in or we'll be here all night.

Powerful vacuum cleaners also, however, reveal some things one didn't expect (or want) to find.

Lines on paying guests

It would be fun one day to try and guess what the clients who stay at Courcelles are like, based on the evidence they sometimes leave behind for us to find on arrival.

Quite a lot of them, I'd imagine, have the kind of powerful thumbs I used to think only Kirk Douglas could boast. I'm reasonably sure about this deduction, because every year both the lavatory cistern plungers are knackered when we get back. Some also enjoy swinging on kitchen-unit doors, an interesting (if annoying) hobby which gives the cupboards a post-modern open-plan feel for us to admire on our return. The other main clue involves broken things: glasses, parasols, chairs - you name it, if it's breakable, it'll be broken.

All in all, I'd say that anyone who's ever seen a chimps' tea party might draw an obvious conclusion about the species involved. But the clincher for me was the twenty-nine bananas blocking the downstairs dunny.

Lines on tractor-lawnmowers

Research shows that a Verts Loisirs tractor-mower can destroy a Ralph Lauren polo-shirt in 0.33 seconds. This (the shirt) was one of my most valued possessions, and not because of the silly polo-player on the front: I picked it up for £2 in a charity shop and the instant I wore it realised what a perfect fit it was. Now it has gone forever.

Getting it out of the blades was an interesting experience that took a mere two and a half hours. Once wrapped around the blade stem and halfway up into the engine space, an object of clothing fits its adopted home even better than it fitted me.

A coalman writes...

The knock on from the US sub prime market in Japan shows no signs of letting up. In the last 7 days Origami Bank has folded, Sumo Bank has gone belly up and Bonsai Bank plans to cut back   some of its branches. Yesterday it was announced that Karaoke Bank is up for sale and more than likely will go for a song. Today shares in Kamikaze Bank were suspended after they nose-dived, and 500 back-office staff at Karate Bank also got  the chop.

Analysts report that there is something fishy going on at Sushi Bank and staff fear they may get a raw deal.
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Sent from my BlackBerry

As a principled journalist, I could not possibly reveal the identity of the sender. Thanks anyway, Mark.

Watch out for the Grassy Knoll

Penne D'Agenais is a cute little hill bastide town just to the east of Villeneuve-sur-Lot. It's full of winding streets and art galleries, with laid-back cafes and restaurants that range from cheap great value to pricey good value. The Cafe Brasserie Peyragude is somewhere in the middle - sort of slightly pricey, average value. We went with two mates who very kindly paid, and it was a good occasion in that the pichet of wine was tasty and plentiful, and the food what you'd expect in this region. But the bill was rather more than I'd expect.

However, Le Peyragude's main claim to fame is that it proves beyond any doubt Lee Harvey Oswald was not shot outside the Dallas police department in November 1963, because he's still waiting at tables right there for anyone to see. And that just goes to show what a complete whitewash the Warren Commission was. The giveaways are (a) he speaks English and (b) at the end of the meal, he hands you a Fair Play For Cuba leaflet.

One of the regulars at Le Peyragude

On the Golf Bourse

As Wall St zooms back up to 13,800 and the FTSE wobbles along at 6,400, an air of unreality has once more returned to the world's stock markets. None of us should be surprised at this dramatic return to bullishness (the UK exchange demanded BoE help, and then largely ignored it once offered) because most of the folks buying and selling on the planet's bourses have testosterone where their judgement should be.

In this context, a selection of recent expert comment is instructive. The FT wrote as follows this week:

'....to assume that the pressure has now dropped and that the system has reverted to normal would be dangerous and premature. Big banks can source funds elsewhere – including from the ECB, if they have continental European subsidiaries – but the market rate may not be available to smaller British mortgage lenders. Yet for these banks, the stigma of approaching the Bank of England for a loan is likely to remain a powerful deterrent unless funding pressure mounts again to crisis levels.'

Man CEO Peter Clarke told an interviewer

"I think certainly the equity markets appear to be somewhat calmer, although there is still behind that a sense of caution, perhaps even danger, in the air."

HSBC's managing director of economics Stephen King wrote on Wednesday last:

'The crisis associated with Northern Rock may have been resolved, but the longer-term economic consequences have yet to be seen. In a few years' time, Northern Rock may be regarded as a watershed not only for the UK economy, but also for this Government's economic reputation.'

Fear and pessimism remain amongst those using the grey matter. Credit Suisse cut Head Office mortgage jobs by 150. With mortgages both more expensive and less available, the knock-on effect on the housing market (and over-borrowed owners) will arrive sooner rather than later. Consumer confidence in normally bullish Germany about the economic future has fallen by 10% in the last two months - the biggest drop in nearly twenty years.

The reality is that if every player on the golf bourse scored a hole in one from every tee, they still couldn't stop the consequences of tightened consumer credit, job losses and falling retail margins hitting confidence pretty much everywhere except China.

I want a referendum on the EU 'changed' Constitution

As nby readers know only too well (sigh) one of my most thumped tubs is the repeated attempt by our 'leaders' to stuff a controlling - and quite unnecessary - EU constitution up our unwilling bottoms. Having been rejected by two founder nations, the Control Freak's Charter is now being reintroduced by Die Fuhrerine Angela Merkel, who as many of you may have guessed is the love-child of Brunhilde the Slav Slayer and the larger type of Panzer tank. It is the One-Eyed Trouser Snake's desire to avoid the impertinence of voters telling him where he too can put this pernicous document: it must not be allowed to happen.

The issue is a watershed: if we give Brown his way on this, it will be the end of democratic politics in any meaningful form in this country, it will be the end of our independence, but most appalling of all, it will see the dawn of a supra-state created for one reason alone - the satiation of obscenely inflated political egos.

The folks at iwantareferendum.com write as follows:

'To help our campaign build up a picture of which MPs are in favour of a referendum and which are against, we would be grateful to receive any responses you get. Please email them to susannah@iwantareferendum.com or post them to Susannah Prins, I Want a Referendum, 7 Tufton Street, London, SW1P 3QN.'

These are fine people, but like all good eggs they are being far too polite - and Westminster doesn't listen to polite. Please (1) pledge your votes to Susannah and copy this page to as many friends as you can* (2) Bombard your MP with email, snailmail and blackmail (3) Write letters to newspapers (4) Send old Brownshirt bogus market research showing that if he tries to do without a referendum, 104% of voters will switch to Cameron and (5) go to the site at http://www.iwantareferendum.com

* Do this by clicking on http://www.iwantareferendum.com/sign.aspx

Have a good weekend (29.9.07)

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Autumn in Lot et Garonne

The Conference League

Just before our digibox finally died a few days ago, I was watching the odd clip of the Tories at Blackpool. Having seen the Brownshirt knocking them about a bit (and now teasing on the election date) I thought we might be in for a bit of fun. O forlorn hope that is my optimism.

Politicians really are a deeply second-rate lot these days. This has been true for some time, but watching them at work in 2007 makes the political scientist half of my degree turn in its deep, cold grave. The reason for this (he suggested controversially) is that political parties - too keen to be representative rather than represent - have allowed the deadly hand of affirmative action to take charge, while poor old promotion by ability has been given the sack.

Now that the apparatchiks have forced enough women, deaf folks, Polynesian Indians, comprehensive school boys and Gay miners onto the electorate, there are people in every party (but especially the Right-On Cameroons) who shouldn't be allowed on front of the cameras before the 9pm watershed. A junior minister I saw early on during televised Blackpool made me first of all wince at his strangely gurned face, and then laugh at his wig, a rug so improbable I thought perhaps a member of New Labour's Dirty Tricks team was pulling it upwards via a string from the balcony.

The insightful and incisively witty Andrew Marr took him on, and afterwards there was blood and bone everywhere. It was like setting a cloned 1960s Muhammed Ali onto Joe Pasquali, but judging from his appearance, the BBC man had conducted this comprehensive disembowelling while doing his morning meditation. God knows what would happen if Paxman was let loose on this lot; it would probably result in serious criminal charges.

There followed two women who had been to Stepford and undergone the special double indemnity treatment, and a bloke who looked badly in need of it. They were all painfully mediocre, and yet somehow impertinently enthusiastic. When at 11 am a blue screen bearing the legend 'No satellite signal being recieved ' flickered up, it was a blessed release. Much as I loathe Simon Cowell, politics needs someone of his ilk to give these people an audition, after about four seconds of which he could simply say 'no'. As for the Tories, I think only three would get through to the next round - William ah Hague ah, David Davies and, oddly enough, Cammers himself.

I am reminded of one morning in 1974, when CDP's old founder John Pearce (a man who didn't suffer genius gladly, let alone fools) popped his head out of an office door, spotted a suit of whom he was not overly fond and said - without any prologue - "Gonna have to let you go, what?" The account man's face crumpled, and Pearce asked "Wanna know why hmm?". By now being towed in for a nervous breakdown, the victim nodded in an autonomic manner, following which JP said "No good, what?" and shut his door again.

(Thanks to Paul S. by the way for the Conference League gag)

Live! Live! Live!

Deprived of television for the first time in many years (and on the wagon thanks to an unpleasant virus), by mid-afternoon and CD number forty-one I was beginning to watch the curtains for any signs of potential distraction - and the curtains are plain cream.

This seems to me very odd, as when the tube's working I watch it (outside Conference Season and Al Q'eida outings) for about ten minutes a day (News24 or the Daily Politics on Beeb2) plus some comedy on Friday nights - and a lot of even this is curling up at the edges. I think the telly for me has become an occasional source of unintended hilarity, needed now and then when better inspiration has left the building. Whatever it is, by teatime I thought I'd look into streaming.

Google's pages on the subject are like four hundred shady bouncers outside various Soho strip clubs shouting their heads off. Live! Live! Live! Live! See footy live right now immediately, hear John Humphreys live, live racing, classic sitcoms - actors all dead, yet somehow live! The faint possibility of someone offering to show me Humphrys going the Fully Monty live live live kept me going - but first of all, tyrannised by choice, I plumped for one that said 'Top news, footy and comedy live'.

The missing word in the promise was 'Turkish'. After two minutes of Turkish sitcom, I was back at the curtains. And although the curtains were indeed en directe, Turkey's finest wasn't.

As for streamed UK telly abroad, computer says 'no'. But most of the radio is easily available, and thus I listened to Cameron's speech on Radio Five live! live! live!

A jolly good effort

When one doesn't have to look at David Cameron, it's clear he means well. And it's also clear he does grasp - perhaps more than any other politician - just how and why people have become alienated by politics. Also, the longer he's given to speak (and explain things properly) the more impressive he seems. Giving the conference address without autocue or notes was also a bright idea - and played well with his professed dislike of slick politics.

The problem with Dave in the end is that he really is Blair II - a lightweight. For instance, while everything he says about life-balance and the family chimes exactly with what I think, it's clear neither he nor his accolytes have thought at all about how they will change corporate attitudes without first of all changing the consensus for multinational Globalist companies as the future model for capitalism.

Very late in the day, he has realised that Right On doesn't work in a Party that's dismissive of pc - especially at the grass roots. So he's swung back towards police losing the plot (they have) Labour still wedded to nanny and big (they are) Immigration is about numbers not race (it is) and the significance of Afghanistan is not yet understood (it isn't). If he'd started out like this and remained consistent, he would be walking it by now. But he and his advisors (who, I suspect, are a big part of the problem) chose to play safe and try to be all the faces at Facebook. This doesn't work very often in life. It never works in politics.

Best line of the day, as ever, went to Matthew Parris who called Cameron's effort 'more that of a marketing manager than a Leader'. He is a very funny man, and nail-head and hammer were working in concert on that one. The unintentionally funniest email of the following day was sent to The Times. It read, 'In my mind, Mr Cameron is the right man to take this country forward! Let's hope Great Britain wins...', and was signed 'Frank Spencer'.

The Guardian argued afterwards that Cameron's job was to save his, and ensure Brown would be put off calling an election by goading him. There's only one person in the Tory Party bright enough to have made that the strategy from the off, and that's Hague - who should be leader but of course is too short. Attlee you see was also too bald, Churchill too fat and Thatcher too screechy. Anyway, Cameron did the trick. His job is safe until Brown calls an election. If that's right now, the Dour One will now find winning abit more tricky. If it's later, other things will have intervened by then to make a Tory victory far more likely. As the WSJ correctly noted this week, the UK economy is about to hit real trouble. With the BoE so far refusing to lower interest rates, the One-Eyed Trouser Snake may be rueing the day he gave them independence.

Boursalino

Free live streaming of Andrew Marr going the Full Monty for anyone who remembers the filmic reference above. We are not, of course, talking art-house cinema here, but rather the continuing slapstick silent comedy (better than any telly) City Lights.

For those who missed the first reel, here's what we young traders call the Heads Up. There's a sub-prime credit crunch going on. Man, it's just awful. Seems the whole thing has been caused by people seeing the Gateshead Massage Emporium & Christmas Club Bank as a new paradigm in the trade-lending sector. To date, we taxpayers have stumped up (on each side of the pond) something in the region of $90 billion in order to extricate them. However, much of it hasn't been used by the market: having demanded to see the colour of our money, they went straight back onto that floor (troopers all) and started buying everything in sight. Nobody knows what happened to the ninety Megabucks, but anyway by last Wednesday, the Dow and the FTSE were at record highs. So to celebrate this, every Bank in the US has decided to spend the 90 billion on redundancy and lay-off costs. Earlier this week, Lehman Brothers led the charge with 5000 rolling heads, but the tumbrils are still turning up: 500 will go at Morgan the Pirate, and 1500 at UBS.

There's a great scene in Reel Two where Charlie the Trader sits down to eat the sole of his shoe; he's doing this because the bankers have fired everyone after the money went bye-byes. This is standard procedure in US banking accountancy, in that if the Third Quarter overhead looks sick against Fourth Quarter potential, every last NCO has to be shot. Now the market's not just coming back but zooming into the gravitational field of Saturn - and the Fed has made money available: so mass murder would seem to have been just a tad premature. Don't worry at this point: it's called The Market Must Decide.

My niece (a senior VP Lehman lab-rat) emailed yesterday to declare herself 'very perplexed'. This is Rachel the Wonderwoman, a chick who spits in the face of Himalayan pentathlons - the same girl who came within a gnats of telling the mad O'Leary to go fuck himself. Perplexed Rachels had been thought for years to be extinct. Perplexed Rachels herald bad shit.

You may, with some justification, be thinking 'What the sweet Jesus is going on here?' by now; and it's equally possible you're thinking - maybe even muttering to yourselves - "This guy is a jerk: every week he says it's all going mammories akimbo, and it never does". True, but as any shrewd investor will tell you, the past is no guide to the future: your analysis is both harsh and unfair. Here's why.

First off, the markets would have gone into freefall by now if it hadn't been for your and my money - regardless of whether it's been used or not. As I've written so many times now I can type it blind (and most of you have switched off anyway) (a) bourse traders are short in left-brain futures (b) no amount of money on Earth can stop the ultimate desire to head for the hills if enough people want to, and (c) the key thing is confidence: reality has nothing to do with the price of anything, until that reality is on every channel, podcast and virtual graph, while simultaneously pouring from the mouths of Central Bankers, Chancellors and Prime Ministers. This isn't a market deciding: it's a few folks at the top trying to calm down rather more folks on the ground - who're keeping the engine running, just in case.

Second, even life as low as banking accountants knows that - if the credit crunch is just a blip, and nothing else much worse is on it's way - it would be better to ace the bonuses rather than fire everyone.

So why is the FTSE still racing upwards and leaving 6,000 way, way behind, while the Dow went through the 14,000 barrier Tuesday? What's happening (I suspect) is that smart money is going gung-ho and smiling a lot because the Cutes want prices high for a few days at a time. It's classic speculate to accumulate - and on stock markets, this last-ditch stuff is necessary to persuade the Saps, who are infinitely more numerous than the Cutes, to step in and help. Seeing confident rises, the Saps pour in with tons of dosh (which sends the price even higher) and then on the count of ten, the Cutes sell everything they've got for a few hours. This is called 'profit taking'. In any other walk of life it'd be called cheating, but hey - this is High Finance, readers.

You may find that interpretation pure Hollywood Rogue Trader stuff: all I can say by way of response is go to www.advfn.com and sign up for their daily streams. This is the best free Market service I've yet found (they'll try to upgrade you to a fee, but just ignore it if you don't want to) and in their archive you can very easily access every day by hour and minute for the last year at least. On both the FTSE and the Dow over the last four weeks, you will see surges followed by falls on a regular basis. On a bourse, such is normal as neurotic traders react to this or that press release, rumour or line of coke. But when one sets out consciously to give the impression of bullishness in a market going bear, the peaks and troughs are far more extreme. This is seasoned Swinging Dicks squeezing the last drop out of a market going sour - and south. They don't waste their time with this skullduggery unless they can see bad times ahead.

OK - now you should worry.

There is still Hope

It occurred to me recently that there is a book - a very good one - about the incompetence of the world's security services over the last 150 years. Before you get too excited, I should point out that I have an idea for a book almost every day. And because I have submitted in excess of seventy ideas since 1989 (and had two published) the chances that I'll write this book are minimal - if only because life's too short. As Grumpy Old Bookman Michael Allen wrote to me recently 'what we do is a form of mental illness'. (And as Reggie Perrin creator David Nobbs told me four years ago with typical humility and wit, "I didn't get where I am today by commissioning editors knowing where I am today").

This book could, however, be a corker - by taking a very serious, life-threatening issue for every one of us and making it potentially hilarious.

I mentioned the idea to someone soon after having it, and her reply was "I don't think mass-murder is funny". True, it isn't: but most mass murder is carried out by soldiers, administrative bureaucrats and chemical companies. Secret services have, on the whole, nothing whatever to do with it.

The so-called Night of the Long Knives in 1934 (Hitler's purge of Roehm's SA) was a farce from start to finish. For one thing, Hitler burst into the SA leader's bedroom, and was shocked to find a young boy sharing Roehm's bed - he had assumed the Gestapo's charge of homosexuality to be a complete fabrication. It was estimated by Alan Bullock that almost a quarter of SA men escaped the immediate purge because the universally feared Gestapo had (variously) got house numbers, street names and Christian names wrong. Not very funny for those who got shot as Heinrich Schmidt at No 23 rather Hermann Schmidt at No 38 - but seventy years later, one sort of has to smile. All told, over half of Hitler's SA opponents managed to get away, most of whom fled abroad and circulated the truth about the Nazis with far more enthusiasm than would've been the case otherwise. (The leading of these, Gregor Strasser, was extremely useful to American Intelligence).

From the Tsarist secret police via inter-war MI6 activities all the way through to Saddam's WOMD turning out to be a bicycle, there is a great story of inept spies to be told: sort of Hornby Double-OO rather than 007. Just don't ask me to write the thing: I'm too busy telling people about it.

There is a sequel to this little divagation. I cannot imagine that a snooping State introduced by New Labour would be anything other than instantly over budget, constantly wrong, and blatantly obvious. This somehow makes me want to vote Liberal Democrat, as their surveillance would be even worse.

Do try to have a weekend free of election fever. (5.10.07)

 

Leo during a rare trip to Dorset

Dinner with Leo

My friend Leo Jacobs and I normally have our philosophy dinners on Monday evenings. Then the atmosphere is quieter at Le Portuguese, Monbahus' only restaurant. There might be a few ex-pat Portuguese in the bar, vaguely mysterious as they smoke and discuss sport with the owner, a short, chubby man who always strikes me as a bit of an idler. But often on that dead first week-night, we dine alone, our words of wisdom and whimsy heard only by the bare walls.

But last week, the Jacobs had friends to stay, and next Monday Leo heads off to his Catholic retreat for a week. So Friday it was.

My friend wanted some milk, so we sauntered over to the Petit Casino to say hello to Annye, the nearest thing Monbahus has to a 24/7 news channel. You are what you buy, and this is why the shop's manager knows more than most: Mme Saldat has a weakness for chocolate (I hear her husband's attentions are elsewhere), old M. Benoit hasn't been in for his usual slab of Comte, perhaps he's dead.

Sure enough, as Leo hunted out the milk for next day's breakfast, Annye was full of it. Michelle has sold the Presse, and leaves in January. The butcher's opposite is for sale (he's only been here three years). But the new bakers like it here, and people like them. And as for these English who have bought next door....well, que faire? All work has stopped, and the place is full of pigeons.

As we crossed the street, it was obvious that old Alex Soulard's place has been sold too. Despite the hour being nearly 7.30pm, workmen were still in there. Apparently it's gone to a French couple with a young family. We chatted for a few seconds about Alex and his love of sports cars almost until the day he died at 95, and then had to break off for the usual round of "'sieurs, 'dames"of mutual greeting as Leo pushed open the boulangerie door. He was after meringues to go with morning coffee - the baker said they were still in the oven, but if he didn't mind them hot....

As the confectionery cooled down, I asked M. le boulanger if he liked Monbahus. Very much, he answered - a quiet village with kind people. The previous owner (despite eight years of going into the shop) I never met: his place was in the bakery, and the forbidding Sylvie - with her Fourth Ronette Bee-hive hairstyle - saw to it that he stayed there while she managed the front-of-house operation. But this new chap seems very laid-back, and judging by the bread, a lot more experimental. In Sylvie's day, one could have baguette large and baguette small: now cereal bread has made its debut in Monbahus, and we can buy short baguettes as well as long. There are vanilla slices, three kinds of croissant and a superb pain au chocolat. Also, the new man's pretty, shy wife is delightful.

Dizzied by the pace of change in our local village, Leo and I walked more briskly now to the bar-restaurant: my friend had forgotten to eat lunch, and so was famished. No mortal in history has ever left the Portuguese anything less than uncomfortably full.

It was clear from the moment we arrived that Friday is Big Night Out in Monbahus. Apart from le tele and Radio Annye at the Casino, this is the only entertainment on offer: the Bodega and open-air repas evenings are now over, as a slight chill suggests itself and Autumn gets into its stride.

Within minutes, a large lady walked confidently towards me and declared with a beaming smile that I was her neighbour. I'd never seen her before in my life, but unabashed by my denials, she tackled Leo and engaged him in good-natured conversation. By this time a young villager had accosted me, and insisted on speaking English. He actually spoke quite good English, but very few of the words he chose fitted any of the contexts in which he employed them. It was fun in a way, trying to work out what he meant by "I find do you not that living rooms in Monbahus on the road for futures can be quite an exception". He told me in this circuitous style that he was starting work at a big ecology symposium in Villeneuve the following day, which I suspect means he has a stall on the organic market - I know for certain this takes place every Saturday, as my tres bio neighbour Jean-Pierre never misses it . To cement our new-born friendship, the young stranger gave me three hazelnuts.

By now the bar was packed, and Leo ( wilting under the verbal bombardment of his new friend) looked delighted to be rescued. We sat at a table for four, and I asked the owner's rather bumptious young son - a chip off the old block, I fear - for a pichet of red wine and some olives. A large family contingent had arrived and were piling into a soup turreen about the size of a fireman's bucket. Dotted along their table were five baskets full of white baguette, and I was watching each pile disappear rapidly when Big Woman reappeared and asked if we minded her joining us. Smiling in a slightly pained fashion, Leo gently told her that we had private business to discuss. "But of course" she shouted, and retreated across the way, sitting at the far end of a table for eight. Rushing in with four entrees delicately balanced on her short arms, the owner looked at her doubtfully. She sat there in splendid isolation for the next two hours, eating a hearty supper with cheerful relish.

It was some time before Madame took our order, and by then most of the first pichet had disappeared. There are no menus at the Portuguese: often there's no choice at all, la patrone abbreviating the discussion process by simply bringing what food she has. This time, she said "We have pork, veal or beefsteak". Leo nodded appreciatively and announced "I'll have the duck". Somehow, he got it too. My steak, I should record, was cooked to perfection. Leo was so delighted with his dessert, he ordered another one, and I went off to urinate.

I saw as I emerged from the loos that the large lady was once more standing at our table. She had, she told us, arranged a rendezvous with her brother for supper here, but the man hadn't turned up. Big Woman didn't seem remotely surprised: he was a drunkard, and quite unreliable. After a few minutes of her descriptions of the prodigal sibling, it dawned on me that he must be the chap dubbed by Jan and I 'Mad Bloke' several years ago.

Mad Bloke is six foot seven, of huge build and long flowing beard. In full flight, he has an air of Sterling Hayden towards the end of his career, with a deep and distinctive voice to match. For a long time, the Portuguese was not just his second home, it was without question his primary domicile, the maison secondaire being at the far end of the village, across from the school. There sits our large friend - his sister - night after night, awaiting his return.

Every evening from around six onwards, he would stand at a pinball machine in the bar-room, shouting loudly with some much smaller but equally bonkers chums. Winter and summer he sported a white tee-shirt, short shorts and bright red cap. He smoked like a chimney and drank like Brendan Behan. His absence from the bar had been noted in recent months, but now his sister explained: Mad Bloke has inoperable lung cancer, and irreversible liver damage. A little tearful now, she bade us goodbye and wobbled off into the night.

I had said litle or nothing to Mad Bloke over the years, but Leo told me that far from mad (or even ignorant) the man spoke beautiful educated French, and was a few light years in advance of most of Monbahus' brothers and sisters during his rare moments of sobriety.

Later still, we walked back to the car - I guiltily, as I was a little squiffy. But fuzzy at the edges or not, the words of a Don McClean song Homeless Brother came to mind:

And you who live on promises and prosper as you please

the victim of your riches often dies of your disease.

Smash your bottle on the gravestone and live while you can -

that Homeless Brother is my friend.

As I brought Leo back to his house, we talked briefly about his coming retreat - and our own good luck in not being born with the genes so unfairly dished out to this 54 year-old man. He was doomed to an early and unpleasant death, while his sister would go through a year or so of further trauma. Neither of us felt guilty for leaving Big Woman on her own - we too are entitled to our privacy - but as always, we had during the evening discussed both the fragility and serendipity of life. The large lady's news had thus felt like a screaming exclamation mark at the end of it.

I drove back down Leo and Tini's tree-lined driveway. The variously-coloured pastel leaves were falling in profusion, like dead confetti at a funeral. Although what follows may seem like the operative word, the thought was sobering rather than morbid. Carrying as I do my Dad's Alzheimic genes, I take my own decisions about how long I wish the physical life to last. But some of us are not quite so blessed in terms of our ability to make them. We should never judge the Mad Blokes of this world. Rather, we should all think a little about why they are with us - however briefly. (8.10.07)

 

The newly approved rosette of the Socially Conservative Democratic Liberal Party. The current leader Mr. G Brown (who called off the leadership election last week) told the world's media he had done so because he did not feel the two other candidates, Messrs D.Cameron and M.Campbell, had been given enough time to get used to long trousers. Mr Brown added that he did not expect an election until 2048. When asked if this meant Britain is now a one-party state, he replied "I've only ever been able to see one anyway, due to my tragic loss of an eye while saving the country from floods, terrorism and financial meltdown".

 

Driving Miss Daisy

Our eldest dog Daisy had a stroke last weekend. We found her Sunday morning on the kitchen floor, stretched out - alive but confused. She couldn't move her back legs at all, and her eyes were staring off into a middle distance of which only our hairy Dowager Empress was aware.

We think she probably had a smaller one two weeks earlier, when following a good lunch in Villeneuve, we came back to find her sitting very still, her face about half an inch from the kitchen wall. No wall - not even our kitchen wall of Himalayan crepis - is that interesting.

Alain Bichot - the vet in Cancon - is a star, and although this was Sunday morning we met up with him an hour later at his surgery. He is a thick-set, gruff but kindly rugger-bugger, and pretty quickly gave us the 'don't hold out much hope' speech. But then he gave the old girl a whopping cortizone injection, an anxiolitic to calm her down, and some antibiotics in case the incident was not a real stroke, but merely a vesticular ear infection. Did he really think it was vesticular disease? I asked him. No, he said gently - she's had a stroke, a big one.

The rest of the day was something of a vale of tears, and a tale of fears: would she pull through? What quality of life would she have? Were squirrels now safe forever? But come nightfall, Daisy toyed with a biscuit - and for the first time seemed to know who everyone was. Then she fell fast asleep. I have a vague memory of bottles and glasses and rambling conversations later, followed by the need to urinate at 3am - and find (in the pitch black) some paracetamol for my head.

The next morning she took a few tentative steps. She went for a pee under her own steam (better than under the kitchen table) and by the time we arrived chez Bichot was what one could only call perky. Alain was quick to douse any optimism: "ze cortizone, eez like speed, bert she can't 'ave too murch" he opined. Daisy looked at him as if to think 'gimme some more like now'. Nevertheless, the vet was pleased (almost astonished) at her progress.

Ever since then it's been a slow, steady improvement basedon three steps forward, two back. The key things are, she's eating, drinking, pooing, weeing and sort of perambulating. Her days of long walks and ferret-chasing are over forever, and the spring in her step is as wonky as the spring in her body clock. But she's still Daisy, and that's what counts.

Parting is such sweet sorrow

Have you noticed how these days, viruses just can't bear to leave? There's a kind of phoney armistice between the first bout of coughing, spluttering and gunge, followed by an unexpected eye-of-the-needle bottom output (with oral pavement pizzas at the other end) followed in turn by another brief interval of normal service, and then a long goodbye of stomach cramps and 'no more of the Vosne Romanee '81 for me, thank you all the same'. There are viruses around in 2007 that could teach James Cagney a thing or two about dying slowly; at times, I could hear the last one down here yelling "Come and get me, copper".

As a way to lose a few pounds, it beats Weightwatchers into a cocked hat: it just lacks the gentility of Rosemary Connelly.

Prepare to repel boarders

This was the headline of an ad CDP did to defend a client against takeover in the late 1970s. I mention it for two reasons.

The first is that the account director who sold this really rather good ad to the Ritz/QE2 conglomerate was Nigel Clark. I bumped into Nig five years ago skiiing in Andorra. He was by then the Mature Champion at the resort where we stayed, along with being chairman of various smaller ad agencies. Anyway, Clarky went to the big presentation in the sky a few weeks back, the victim of a heart attack at 71.

He was a lovely man, but hopelessly naive. I saw him some years before the Andorra surprise outside a chapel, where we'd been attending the memorial service for a waspish-tongued copywriter we both knew well. Nig said "I never heard her say a bad word about anyone", to which I replied, "Then you must be fucking deaf". It's this frankness that makes me so adorable.

The second reason for the witty sub-head is that - the crops now being in and the nights turning cold - the rodent population of our surrounding fields is venturing into our house Courcelles, in search of warmth, crumbs and warm places to nest for the winter - such as sofas, kindling baskets and curtains. And my wife is ready for them.

Each year, Jan sees another website/small ad/bit of editorial and decides that this might change the average freeloading vole's mind. (You have to understand here that killing the little buggers is entirely out of the question. One, they are just so sweet and don't deserve death; and two, having expired - while they may not die noisily - mice rot with a stench you cannot imagine. Also, French products for dispatching rodents are unbelievably bloodthirsty, being called things like Shitty Death, Guillotine, Execution - and my favourite brand name of all time, Souricide).

In 2005, it seems the big new thing was clicking noises designed to irritate rodents and give them unbearable earache (Me too). In 2006, The Answer was a double-whammy of ghostly green lights and beeping at a high wavelength which (sadly) humans can also hear. This year when we arrived here in the Spring, Mrs Ward put Plan C into operation: red, green and yellow lights that change colour and pulsate differently depending on whether a mouse is present or not. Or for that matter, a human.

The net result is roughly the same number of little furry things playfully (and noisily) eating the mains supply and transporting sofa covers to places where sofa covers just shouldn't be. Meanwhile, those of us venturing for the six am pee are treated to the Symphony de Son et Lumiere, which clicks, beeps, beams and flashes unpredictably. Yes, yes - I know: this makes the discovery of paracetamol easier. But I suspect you've never been hypnotised while sitting on the lavatory. Stop by some time, and I'll tell you all about it.

Rosbifs contre Grenouilles

This Saturday night sees The Big One. La Grande Bataille. Le Crunch-Match. The Decider. Les Blancs et les Bleus. The bulldog versus the coq. The future of the Rugby World Cup (and probably the whole EU) is in the balance as England and France fight it out for a Cup Final place neither of them remotely expected when the tournament began.

Even here in remote Monviel, expectation is at fever pitch. This is because remote or not, our Commune is in the South West, and thus very close to the soul of French rugby based in Villeneuve. Les Villeneuvois are legendary suppliers of national heroes in scrums, on wings, and between posts - so things are being taken very seriously.

For we Rosbifs, all this is something of a double-edged sword. The grit of our English pack means that those Frogs who giggled at every passing Anglais a few weeks back now smile uncertainly and mutter "you just wait". But whatever the result, I shall not be seen in public for several days afterwards: if we win, the resentment will be off the scale; and if we lose, the brickbats will be intolerable.

Diana in quest for justice

Regular readers know what a farce I think the Al Fayed-driven lunacy is. But I had to chuckle this week when Jan told me the papparaze who took the death pictures of Di and Jodi was called Romuald Rat. Sounds like a good idea for breakfast television to me.

Hand on heart, I wish you all a good weekend. (13.10.07)

 

LIBDEM LEADERSHIP: MING GETS THE MESSAGE

 

Oval Balls

As Rugby Union gains in popularity, so the television commentary is starting to give soccer's Voices of Vapidity a run for their money. Having asked his colleague how badly England wanted to win the game against France last weekend (which was, when all's said and done, the World Cup semi-final), ITV's man in the commentary box heard "Well, on balance I'd say very much indeed". Hard to argue with that really, and even harder to grasp why such an ant-brained enquiry was made in the first place. I would've turned over to France Deux at this point, but the friends with us didn't speak French. And then England scored an opportunist try in the first minute, so we forgot all about the silliness.

Until France scored a penalty soon afterwards, when mike-man suggested that "what we need to do now is score next". Well, we didn't, and soon it was 6-5 to France after a second kick between the posts - while Jonny Wilkinson had missed two reasonable chances.

"And six points have been conceded" spotted the main voice, "While Wilkinson has squandered six".

Desperate to ensure he kept up in this battle of intellects, No 2 bloke added "Those are not semi-final-winning statistics".

How very true. Especially when the French kicker belted another one over with consummate ease to make it 9-5.

"And England will live to regret those misses" said Main Man.

"Especially if they lose" said his 2 in c.

Into the second half, and with England pushing forward, ITV's top observer on Rugby matters said "And this is exactly where England wanted to be at this point". What, losing then? This is the sort of tactical insight that a proletarian, spherical-ball man like myself simply cannot fathom. But on and on it went, bollocks poured on drivel and topped off with further dollops of tripe, until as some form of desperate distraction, Wilkinson got it back to 9-8, hit the post, then scored again to make it 11-9, and then dropped his standard last few minutes goal to win the game (as ever) virtually single-handed.

For my money (and that of the chum also watching the game) I thought we were a bit lucky: if the green had been rubbing any harder, he'd have been Aladdin's genie.

But now - naturally - we are world beaters again. Bryan Ashton is being tipped for a knighthood, and as for Jonny - well, the Opinion polls say that 57.3% of women think he'd make a better Prime Minister than Gordon Brown, but 91.6% of men think the Prime Minister would would be crap at dropping last-minute goals. So on that basis, Gordy has walked away from pushing himself into Wilkinson's shirt, his excuses being that he is busy with his vision, and he's a fat Jock with only one eye. David Cameron immediately called a press conference to remind everyone that he's English, and played rugger at school.

I'm wandering now, so we'll move on.

Significant others, partners and Brides

The Daily Telegraph noted recently that New Labour 'has done a U-turn on marriage'. The Party of Cool is allegedly saying that ceremonies, receptions, documentation and so forth are Good Things. As if they might somehow revive marital fidelity with tax relief (not exactly Fabian and all that) the Government is, it seems, doing a volte-face on the whole church or registry office experience.

This makes me think in terms of Breach of Promise, a wonderfully quaint bit of law that was much-feared in my youth. Those who had been rash enough to buy an engagement ring (and then withdraw the offer of matrimony) could be hauled up before a court of law and asked to give a proper explanation of their behaviour. Magistrates required solid reasons for any change of heart - as opposed to 'Wull, juss won't workin' art wuzzit?' - and if these were not supplied in good measure, then chaps could face a fine and possible birching. (I'm serious)

I wonder why we couldn't effect a change in the law now - whereby politicians made promises, and any broken ones could be the subject of free civil suits by individual electors. It seems likely to be something lawyers would like (more fees etc) and as the Government consists almost entirely of lawyers, might just scrape through Parliament while the Whips weren't looking.

Bags-I be the one to birch David Miliband.

Jockist jokes

The irrepressible Kelvin MacKenzie went on Question Time last week, and in his classic rabble-rousing fashion condemned Brown as a tax-and-spend Scottish socialist, rising above the resultant boos to suggest that Scotland has been very good at spending English tax monies since the Act of Union, but pretty poor at the Wealth Creation thing - with the Scots never ceasing to moan about how much they hate the Sassenachs.

I think that possibly, Kelvin's major career failure over the years has centred on a tendency to cling to the entirely erroneous tenets of political correctness. While his Jockist observations are right on the Sporran, he omitted to point out just how daft a fantasy the Caledonian independence project is (See nby essays passim) and what an enormous berk Sean Connery is. Not for nothing, I suspect, is 007's surname the accepted slang word for 'bollocks' in France. (As in il ne parle que des conneries - he talks nothing but complete bollocks).

But like so many men touched with genius (and several other forms of mental illness) Mr Mackenzie is something of a slob wrapped in a veneer of hooliganism, the whole hiding an enigmatic core in which resides a brighter-than-average fox. Or, put another way, the Bier Keller is something of an attention-seeker. And equally, like all those who thought the Mad Handbag a Goddess, his adorations and aberrations are not to be taken too seriously.

I suspect Mack the Knife's main motivation on QT was to get up the noses of Scotland's rapidly-dying left-wing intelligentsia. If this was indeed the case, he succeeded rather better than most of the Chatterers would care to admit: the Sundays were flooded with Jock spin-doctors and writers, all asphyxiating in the rush to tell the former Currant-Bun supremo how little he knows of Scottish history. (Even less - if that's possible - than Brave Tart Mel Gibson)

I am bound to observe that when the Scots start falling back on obscure engineers, Mackintosh chairs and Adam Smith, one instinctively knows they're on the run - a form of locomotion not unknown to this fine nation.

It's a Rap

I can't stand rap music. It is misogynist, violent, infantile, repetitive and lacking any semblance of mature discernment or subtlety in its lyrics. It is thus prime building land for a new nby regular sub-feature monument to pc stupidity. And so for the time being - and until enough of you beg me to stop - I shall be rounding off Life in the Wrong Lane with topical observations in the style of an urban black musician and/or lyricist, yo dude.

Well it hard now for de Ming

wiv da whole leadaship fing

'cos he getting pretty old

an' he ain't breakin'no mould

so now we gotta see

who da new dude gonna be

but someone gotta winnit

and da fing is if yer binnit

then ya ain't gonna be innit

so it time for dat man Hughes

to get movin' wiv da news

an' get da arse into da gear

'cos 'e told us all 'e's queer

so 'e got nuffink to fear

but see fing is like I mean

we already got one Queen

so if 'e swingin'both ways

den I fink it always pays

if ya succeedin' to da Ming

to be Queen an' also King (16.10.07)

__________________________________________________________

 

 

The amazing Chateau Bonaguil

Screaming ab-dabs

I watched BBCNews24 aghast as Benazir Bhutto arrived back in Pakistan. At the airport, millions crammed together. On her route to the City, twenty people died, and there were two bomb-blasts. One was a car-bomb, the other a suicide bomber. It took Ms Bhutto six and a half hours to complete 50% of the journey from the airport to Karachi.

Over on Sky, the local hack told us "Politics here are very different to those of Western Europe". This must count as an understatement that will stand unrivalled for many years to come. Later, Skyhack 1 said "But as you can see, all is now calm". Jesus wept: all I could see were endless fires, and all I could hear was a madman with a loudhailer screaming his brains out. This was calm?

We should bear in mind that this woman's Dad was hanged by a military junta, and her two brothers assassinated. With the ruling Party losing its grip on any kind of order, the anti-Islamic West has alighted upon Benazir as the best Prime Minister they have. Whatever we may all think of this complex woman, she clearly has balls. God help her, because nobody else will.

Glub Glub Glub

"Britain now has a very serious drink problem" revealed Sky's Kate Burley last week to a startled audience, "and to look at this more closely, we're going over to Gerard Tubb who's in a pub."

So over we went (well, Katie didn't, on account of her agoraphobia) and sure enough Tubb was in the pub.

"Yes indeed" he began agreeably, "this is a pub, and it's just one of the many places in England where people drink too much".

Quick as a flash, Tubb in the pub had got to the nub: God damn their eyes, those blasted pubs - they serve alcoholic drinks. They serve grub in the pub too, but most of the time folks are going glub glub glub: mix the two together, and there's the rub - Homo chubbyapiens goes on to a club for more glub-glub.

To hammer this point a little futher into the forehead, Kath Birdbrain whacked up some charts over Gerard's face. These showed that far from being your sub-human clubbers problem, the local Brigadier and his Missus were also piling into the splosh, and in every metropolitan hub, sociologists were dubbing pubs the very place to go as an excuse to Carry on Glubbing.

Well lawks-a-mercy Jim lad, that Burly wench be smart as paint.

The government's response to this 24/7 brain and liver damage by the way (which they made possible) is putting more warnings on the bottles. A swift glance through the cigarette research document management summaries of twenty-five years ago would have told them that this only adds to the allure of the product among young people. And a trawl through the nby 2004 archive would demonstrate to Sky News that most of us knew all this long, long ago, on a planet not far from here.

The Sugar turns to Alcohol

And on a planet far to the north of here, the Scots (about whom Kelvin Mackenzo was so rude last week) have been employing the double-whammy of deep-fried Mars Bars and Laphroaig for many years now, which perhaps explains why they don't live, as it were, for many years.

Over four entirely separate decades in the marketing business, purely by accident I worked for Scottish retailers, distillers, soft drink manufacturers and food suppliers rather more than most. The various experiences enable me to log the following indisputable facts:

1. More Scots lose their teeth by the age of thirty-five than any other EU nation

2. Their love-affair with sugar and alcohol is the reason why all those Jock drunks at Euston station have no teeth

3. No countline manufacturer ever test-markets a new product in Scotland, for the simple reason that uptake will be abnormally high. (Ask any marketing manager in snack products)

4. Scottish-based supermarkets do not put 'impulse' sweetie purchases by the check-out, as nobody buys them: the average Caledonian trolley is already full of everything containing chocolate, mint and honey long before customers get to the check-out

5. Similarly, the drinks business watches drinking behaviour among the Scottish young very carefully, as the likelihood is that teenage abusers will mix the drink with something totally inappropriate and entirely sweet. Examples over the years have included Teachers & Coke, Bacardi & Baileys and Pernod & Lemonade

The search for intelligent Life

The head of an observatory-cum-feedback centre in the US told the New York Times last week that "we expect to find intelligent life some time during 2025". The bloke obviously has access to information that's denied to me. Assuming he meant 'intelligent life somewhere else apart from here on Earth', he must be some kind of super-confident mega-genius to know that - with 200,000,000,000,000,0006 constellations from which to choose - the reply to our endless messages will arrive during one single year of a Universe that is reckoned to be 600 billion years old.

In fact, why stop there? Although this might be showing off, I think our man at the end of the radio telescope should go for broke, and call it for 2.23 am on 21st July 2025. The message will say 'Hi, just got your October 18th 2007 edition of Eastenders, can you tell us if the Queen Vic's landlady is an actor or an android?"

Personally, I expect our first outer space contact to say 'The future's shite, the future's Orange', if only because this is a universal truth.

Daisy Update

The Dowager Empress is progressing slowly but well, and has been on one or two walks. More details will be available in a new edition of Dogstars very soon.

It's a rap

Now dat Brown he is de man

'cos 'e doin' what 'e can

to fix de NHS institution

an' de EU Constitution

for wiv de wunnerful Deep-Kleen

you knowin' what ah mean

'e tryin' all de bish-bash-bosh

to produce de big white-wash

an' helpin' de sick patrons

wiv de doubled-up old Matrons.

An' we all know dat he shoutin'

for de Rugby team's big mountain

to be overcome in in Paris

so dey stick it up de 'arris

of de arrogant Springboks

who is all a bunch o'cocks.

An' as for dat Sarkozy

well ah 'speck he gonna mosey

to be great big rugby match

'cos 'e lost de wifely snatch

an' got nuffin'much ter do

bein'in de pile o' poo

see, between de me an' you

ah finkin' dat 'e feelin' blue

but if he be de man

he should fly to Pakistan

and try ter be de beau

of de Benazir Bhutto.

 

Regardless of events in the Stade de France, have a good weekend. (19.10.07)

 

LIFE IN THE WRONG LANE

Chinese cooling tower: small design fault

 

Yes please, I'll take ten

Oh how we laughed. Almost as much as we laughed when told President Sarkozy had ‘completely forgotten’ that Cecilia served him with divorce papers some time before the election. Terrible thing Alzheimers, and not what’s required in a leader. I think the decent thing would be to give him a stiff belt of Sarkonasia. Meanwhile, Sarko is only going to have a small Cabinet: he would’ve used a matchbox, but the other members are somewhat taller than him.

Sarkozy....all washed up

(24.10.07)

 

 

Of mice and men

Our Lot et Garonne house Courcelles is infested with mice. They wisely stay out of sight when we're here (the formerly fit Daisy would kill any rodent, rabbit or gecko she could find), but out of sight rarely means out of mind. Worse still, it never means inaudible. From about 1 am onwards, the nibbling, running and what I can only assume is fornicating starts up. Mice fornicate with great purpose, and one gets the feeling it's more about procreation than enjoyment. But once winter sets in, for your average Mickie there ain't a lot else to do - apart from bite through wires and make nests in the curtain swags.

Indeed, it's the cold (and harvesting threshers) that brings them inside in their hundreds from October onwards. The pool being open until mid-October (although not this year) one awakes to find the water and filtration systems looking like a mass cull. Afterwards, the cull indoors is led by various unspeakable forms of poison available in rural hardware stores. Her indoors is normally in charge of this process, but the downside is that while quickly topped, the mice take weeks to rot in hidden nooks and corners. Mice do not decay discreetly. (Snakes are even worse: the smell of their putrefaction is similar to what my American chum Hugo used to call "old guys' farts").

Because of the nesting thing, we have to shrink-wrap everything left here, and seal the sofas in such a way that they look like those covered derelict cars so commonplace at one time in London's suiburban streets. Mice will nest in anything that's soft, and anywhere that's warm. As it's possible you're reading this over breakfast, I shall refrain from further detail - beyond saying that one of their favourite nesting substances is fibreglass. I reckon that over the last ten years, they've removed most of ours from the roof space. Can you imagine how bitter and twisted a mouse brought up lying on fibreglass would be? Perhaps much of their noise comes from non-stop scratching.

Iraq update latestmost

For all of you out there who didn't (a) march (b) complain (c) vote Libdem or (d) try to phone Number Ten because you hadn't the faintest idea who to believe before the original Iraq invasion, in the advice-giving tradition of nby, here is the situation for the hard of hearing as at 0650 hrs 26.10.07:

George Bush lied to Tony Blair about Lepers & Gas Consumption, as a result of which there was shock and awe in the BBC, and the Allies Bagged Dad. Saddam's party broke up and went for the early Bath, following which the Sunny folks felt the Shites were raining on their parade, began killing them, and vice versa

Spotting an advantage, Mad King Dinnerjacket of the Insanians invaded secretly and began killing all the civilians missed by Sunny & Shite. This gave the Kurds relief from being gassed and everyone - everyone - said the security situation in Eye Rack was improving. So Tony Blair said okey-doke let's leave and then he got caught buying hash for Connors so Gordon Brown took over and said we weren't leaving Ear Ark at all, merely doubling the rate of departure. These soldiers came home immediately via Afghani Stan, the notorious opium pusher who was fighting a Tali ban on his sales outlets. The Tali wanted to ban everything including clitto risks and sex between consenting adults, but mainly they wanted to stone women for getting stoned on Stan's poppies.

Back from a refeshing holiday away from all that gas, the Kurds got restless and started to blow up Turks. The Turks told Bush & Brown that the Kurds were turds, and the Kurds said the real turds were the Turks. So Turkey said OK, we're going to invade, and Gordon said you can't cos there's no bloody room.

I think that about covers it.

Auditing the auditors

Bourne Freebie

The FT reports as follows:

'Sir John Bourne quit as head of the public spending watchdog on Thursday, following a row over his expenses.The move comes after MPs this month demanded his resignation over a “gigantic” expenses bill. Analysis published by the National Audit Office showed Sir John racked up a £392,000 bill for travel and sustenance in three years, including trips as far afield as Almaty and Venice and meals at The Connaught and The Ritz. Sir John and his wife flew first class to Italy, the US, Portugal, Brazil, Hungary, South Africa and the Bahamas. One trip to Brazil cost £15,997, including taxi fares. One meal at Wiltons for four people came to £500'.

Memo to Mr Bourne: next time, better to go darn Brazil in a plane, not a taxi, squire.

Resisting the one-bourne every minute gag, this is the best metaphor for Britain today I've yet found - it makes Frank Lowe's last Interpublic expenses chit look honest

A cabbage patch doll

Shown last Tuesday on BBC2, Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War was a game of two halves. The set-up was masterly and hysterically funny: oldish (65+) Pauline Collins' controlling pillock of a husband pops his clogs, and in celebration of this unexpected liberation from his prize plants, carefully laid wine and mega-expensive golf clubs, she disposes of them in one way or another. All of these are eccentric (although generally philanthropic) but her son (Peter Capaldi), a chip off the old block, decides she's gaga. This suits his book, because by selling her house and developing the site, he can gets his hands on the old girl's money and fund her imprisonment in a badly-run quasi mental home.....which his own company runs.

The manager of the home (John Alderton) is quite good as a patronising git, but the real evil emanates from Isla Clair - still lovely after all these years - as the senior nurse. Thus Pauline Collins quickly goes from being patronised to matronised.

This first hour or so is a marvellously observed bashing of dominating husbands, the whole retirement home scam, and an object lesson for any lawmaker keen to introduce euthanasia: greed, ageism and sexism are all on show without being didactic in their purpose. But then the film becomes a rather laden tract on mistreatment of the elderly; and the nagging feeling that had been present from the start - 'I've seen this before' - comes more sharply into focus. The movie is basically a re-run of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, in which appalling treatment of those wrongly judged insane is substituted by prejudices in relation to those judged to be suffering from dementia.

Still, it filled an otherwise dull October afternoon. Worth renting if only for the opening forty minutes. (C4 films 2001, Dir. Ian Sharp)

The Darling Budgets of October

We used to have one Budget a year. Now we have two - but not content with this, Alistair Daring wants to keep dribbling bits out. His spin doctors are now busy telling the media how he wants to introduce an 18% base rate of tax.

The majority of voters (enjoying a modicum of common sense) know perfectly well that low base tax rates have form....as in the final Brown budget of 2007. They look at the bottom right-hand corner of the pay-cheque in the month following - if it's higher, fine: if not, they've been conned. Memories are short, but not in relation to real spending money. Because senior politicians have no experience of such basic maths, they always underestimate the elecorate.

However, word reaches me that Ally Boring didn't entirely include the Brownshirt in this 18% loop. If so, he has clearly mistaken Gordonic protestations of independence for the truth.

Kafka's Trial, Episode 348: Contacting the Silo

The story so far: Orange says they have been asked by Hotmail to block my newsletters because of offensive content. Hotmail first of all said no they hadn't and then well, er, yes - maybe they did. Foiled emailer (but not spammer) now emails Hotmail and receives the following response:

'Sender Score Certified is an independent whitelist owned and operated by Return Path. We are queried by various ISPs including Hotmail, but we do not have any other affiliation with Hotmail outside their use of our Whitelist.

In addition, Sender Score Certified is a whitelist designed for commercial senders. We do not currently certify personal mail, as it does not meet our standards, specifically the standards around consent and disclosure, and that sounds like the kind of mail you are trying to certify.

I recommend that you attempt to contact Hotmail using the following
form:

http://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?
productKey=edfsmsbl&page=support_home_options_form_byemail&ct=eformts

Soooo, I sent to hotmail support and - no kidding - this is what came back:

This is the SMTP Server program at host orange.fr.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to <postmaster>

The bottom line is, I sent to hotmail saying there's a problem and they said no there isn't and then to orange who said yes there is and then back to hotmail who say perhaps there is and then back to orange host who say we're not really orange host, just kidding, but send to hotmail postmaster and so I sent there and it came back as undeliverable from orange host who said 'why don't you send it to the same place again?'

The case continues

It's a rap

Well de Darlin' Budget man

needs takin' away in de van

he say homes dey gonna crash

he bin smokin' too much hash

if we let de migrants in

den dey can't live in de bin

or de roof like Mickie Mouse

so dey gonna need a house

an' also all dese Poles

dey ain't gonna live in holes

so house prices gotta rise

an' also de price of pies

but one ting it hard to see

cos de telly said to me

dat de Irish popolation

will be added to de nation

dey already got de Eire

so I tink it will be fairer

if dey stayin'over dere-er

because land dey got a plenty

an' what use is Ireland empty?

 

Enjoy the weekend.

(27.10.07)

 

Courcelles in October

The Royal Handicap

Last Monday, every news station kept on scooping this or that name to identify the blackmail plotters, but nobody was remotely interested in any of that: everyone wanted to know who the Royal was, what flagrante he or she had been in, and what drugs were involved.

For a fuller and less flippant analysis of this 'scandal', go to Mind Over Chatter

Anyway, in the race to identify the formerly low-profile drug-fuelled bonker, they were off - as it were. By Tuesday first thing, it was 5-1 Linley, evens Freddie Windsor and 2400-1 Queen Victoria, chiefly because of her low-profile of late. But come teatime on that day, a quick blog-trawl and a squint at Reuters made Linley the 5-4 on favourite.

While I'd have preferred a bit of discretion about this (see MOC above) several things made me more equivocal as the days passed:

1. Buck Palace was being - to say the very least - disingenuous in suggesting that Linley was 'a minor Royal distanced from her Majesty'. He's her nephew for crying out loud, and his father remains a firm favourite with QE2. Whichever dense spin-doctor recommended that line should be struck off immediately.

2. The action of the High Court in 'gagging' media naming of the blackmail victim makes one wonder yet again what century these bewigged twerps are living in. Long, long ago in 1963, judges in obscenity cases were asking juries 'would you want your servants to see such things?' This might have washed in 1936, but it was laughable by the Sixties, and incredible in 2007: by midday Tuesday, Linley had been named on four continents and on Fox News.

3. Even more bizarre was the action of Google towards UK-based google-blogs. Although happy to say in its news columns that the Royal victim had been named (and point one at relevant sites) Google didn't actually identify Linley in its own news columns. But on going to UK blogs, the pages had been censored. (I am not remotely surprised that Strangle would do such a thing, as they're also happy to smite all mentions of Chinese tanks running over people. But pointing its readers at overseas truth - while not naming the truth and then censoring UK-based truth - does suggest an organisation in some doubt as to the arrangement of arse, elbow, lavatory seat etc.

4. Like something out of a 1940s play where the landowner bumps off his pregnant maid, gives PC 49 half a crown and says let's not hear any more about this officer, Wednesday late morning saw the Met telling the media they had 'interviewed the blackmail victim and were entirely satisfied that....er...um...they (could be he, could be she) were entirely innocent of any wrong-doing'. As I say in the MOC essay, I'm sure they're absolutely right - blow-jobs between blokes have been legal since 1966 - but did they really think this would stem the flow of prurience? And in this brainlessly republican age (where drunken chauffeurs kill airhead Royals and an Arab is allowed to accuse the Consort of her murder) who on earth is going to accept 'entirely satisfied' from the boys in blue?

"Don't mind telling you Harry old chap, for a while there I thought it was me"

Booze news

When life palls a little, one of my favourite occupations is hunting out new and more obscure forms of alcohol. Last week I discovered Pineau de Charentes, which Seaton Wines emporium owner and nby reader Richard confirms is a fortified wine. It's at the normal 17% sherry level, but much nicer - more of a St Raphael Cote d'Azur feel. It's also drier than Floc, and half the price.

In the 1930s, 'Gin 'n' It' (Gin and Italian Vermouth) was the favoured poison of the hard-drinking Cannes set. I am here to record for posterity that Gin & Pineau is both smooth and deadly - shaken, stirred or even still. More delicious and less damaging is Pineau & Orange juice with ice and lemon.

There is something about French pression (draught) beer that continues to mystify me. The main cause of my bafflement is that it tastes so much better than the bottled stuff, there must be some secret involved. This conviction has only been strengthened by recent take-home developments on the beer scene over here.

Two types of draught-at-home are on offer: the keg, promising endless litres of amber delight at the twist of a tap - straight from the fridge; and the in-can widget, offering a freshly-poured pint at the click of a ring-pull. Sadly, both are telling fibs.

Of the barrel formats, Heineken is the one requiring less than mensa IQ to make it work: but it doesn't deliver on either crisp freshness, or maintenance of same. The stuff sort of oozes out like an albino pint of Dublin Guinness. The Kronenbourg version is hopelessly complex and (although the brewer claims a three-month freshness survival) tastes like flat, post-asparagus urine after forty-eight hours.

The main can version is Krono's 1664 job, and very smooth it is too. But 'smooth' isn't the enigmatic dimension that makes French pression beer unique. The experience in a bar where the landlord knows what he's doing is one of clean, low gas alcohol, but emphatically not in the Boddington's creamy head region: it's still thirst-drenching stuff, but without the usual belch factor one gets from a bottle.

So, the secret remains a secret. Such is often the result with your French enigma.

Upbeat Update

One of Bush's aides got excited earlier this week. Speaking from one of those Presidential podiums (they must have hundreds of the buggers), he yelled "LOOK! CAR BOMBINGS ARE DOWN 69% IN BAGHDAD!"

It was almost like a retail sale ad: hurry now while stocks last! Everything must go - Shiite throats cut! Up to 75% discount on all truth! British troops slashed by 60%!

All we need now is a strapline. I thought maybe 'IRAQ. WHERE EVERY DAY IS A FIRE SALE'

I must be dead, I'm watching telly

Best line of the week fell to a Weakest Link contestant. The exchange went like this:

Anne: Which famous person in a tight sequinned dress sang 'Happy Birthday Mr President' to John F Kennedy in 1960?

Contestant: The Queen.

Later in the show, another contestant asked for 'Shiela' to be voted off. This is probably the new recieved English. (See Text Talking)

'T J Hughes', proclaimed a made-for-sixpence spot on Channel Four last weekend, 'Where top brands meet low prices'. I remain unclear on the definition of 'top', as I'd never heard of any of the featured names on show. They seemed not so much designer as resigned to their fate: being featured in a low-budget commercial written by leading appendictomy surgeon Lancelot Anal. T J Hughes, on the basis of this effort, is where crap ideas meet wooden direction. (I do not doubt that it sells tons of kit: but then, the Lottery sells tons of tickets)

In the same commercial break, McDonalds introduced us to their new chicken-bottom sandwich. It was, they assured us, 'legendary'. This is impossible, McDonalds: it's either new, or legendary- it can't be both. That may seem picky to you folks out there in tellyland, but down this road lies Nothing Acts Faster Than, Forward Not Back, Timelessly Contemporary, and all the rest of the drivel.

The dig at surgeons should not be taken as a blanket dislike of all things medical. Harry Hill trained to be a consultant something or other, but decided instead to be the funniest man on the planet. The thing I admire above all about this bloke (who when he first appeared I thought unamusing in the extreme) is his determination to turn the worst sow's backside into a purse so silken, it would have happily graced a stand devoted to especially silken purses at the 1851 Exhibition. This he has achieved by taking over You've been Framed - a show previously so awful, even our dogs wouldn't watch it.

All Hill has done is introduce hysterical caption commentary, and retain a sense of ironic sang-froid about what he's doing. The result is unmissable.

If only the same could be said of Simon Foul's The X Factor, the one format on television dedicated to a celebration of grandeur delusions. From Sime downwards, everyone on the show suffers from the disease: Louis the boy-band creator, Sharon the smiling Osbourne housewife, Danni the lip-glossy Minogue sister, and almost every act on the show. All think they are stars, but of course they aren't. They are simply folks offering facile opinions upon limp versions of classics done infinitely better by the original singing stars, who occasionally guest on X Factor.

This TV offering is the epitome of risk aversion, the ultimate devotion to market economics in which anything truly innovative is rejected by the red pencil of the supreme accountant.

Equally low-risk (because most of us love wildlife) but endlessly informative and entertaining is My Life with Animals, BBC2's continuing saga of a great-looking bint (who becomes even sexier by wearing no make up with clingy-sweaty safari clothes) in pursuit of beautiful creatures. Given the title of this programme, when the young lady concerned told us "Bedouins and their camels know each other inside out" I didn't know where to put myself. But when she showed us the freak occurrence of a lioness adopting an antelope calf, I was lost and gone. I am a safari nut, but this sequence would've melted the hardest heart.

Talking about a young singing star earlier this week on Sky Morning News, the showbiz correspondent told Eamonn Holmes "Everything she touches comes off better". Eamonn leapt into the available gag with "No doubt I'd come off better if she touched me". It brightened my morning up no end, but a dark cloud was soon on the horizon as celeb man told us that Byankoh is comin' back on Eastenders, I mean what is she like? Seefingizzlike, wivart vat Rickay there's no chance innit?

I couldn't possibly comment - beyond observing how those joining the Eastenders team invariably turn into deadenders.

Let's hear it for the hazelnut

Just down the road from us lies Cancon - gateway to the South, as Sellers would've said. Before the days of autoroutes, the N21 (upon which Cancon lies) was the only way to get down to the Cote and Spain, and was thus a 300-mile traffic jam for the whole of August. It's an unprepossessing little town, but the people are friendly and it's a very close community.

Its main claim to fame is that it is the hazelnut capital of Europe. Further to the South again lies Agen, which in turn is the plum and prune capital of the world. Thus, without these two fine market towns, we'd all be constipated and there'd be no Cadbury's Fruit & Nut.

To promote the source of their livelihood, the commune of Cancon (in association with the Tourist Board, the Regional Development Fund, The Lot et Garonne Retailers' Consortium, the EU and probably you too if you turned up looking interested) has a fete des noisettes. You might think there aren't that many things to say about hazelnuts, and you'd be right. On this basis, we took a rain check on the factory visit (included in the 1 Euro entry price) and wandered around the various stalls which were, as always, displaying tractors, nut-pluckers, nut-crackers and all things hazelnut.

Inside the salles des fetes, however, it was a different - and much more interesting - story. Although when you've seen one hazelnut, there aren't many more hazelnut surprises in store (we are not talking Esther Rantzen vegetables here) what you can do with la noisette is both fascinating and tasty. The little beggars go in jams, bread, cheeses, creams, puddings and - when mixed with one other main ingredient - contribute to prune preserves, armagnac liqueurs, pumpkin soups and well, I'll stop now or we'd be here all day.

I am on the record as usually avoiding anything in France called Bodega, fete, and especially festivals du rire. Festivals du rire in France are a bit light on the rire part of the promise: the main emotion I usually have afterwards is a desire to kill myself in protest. But the principle of fetes in general - and the salles des fetes in particular - is one from which the British could learn.

Even the lowliest commune has a salle des fetes in France. The closest equivalent in England would be the Village Hall, except that the French version isn't a barn in danger of imminent collapse. It is far too important for that. Three or four times a year, there will be a commune meal. Each week there are commune government meetings, sports meetings, charity committees, and pretty much everything you could imagine. In a town as relatively large as Cancon, the salle des fetes is a whopper, doubling at times as an indoor market or sports hall. Most of these buildings have been built in the last twenty years, and they are all well-maintained.

Of course, the free-marketeers would mutter 'typical' on their way to the next headcount meeting. But all of these buildings are mostly paid for by the people who use them (via the taxe d'habitation) with only a small contribution if necessary from the regional directorate. Yes, it's true that France is riddled with unecessary bureaucracy, and ridiculously overstaffed with local government officers. But the dual ideas of a genuinely local economy and a proper community have no other downsides at all, and contribute enormously to a better quality of life. Even the large supermarkets here are careful to stock huge amounts of local vegetables, meat, wine and cheeses. France's carbon footprint from retailing and production must be minute compared to ours.

Not everything is put on earth to wash its face until the accountant is happy. Happy accountants, I have found, usually presage disaster.

Another lemon from Orange

All over Europe, mountains of emails are trickling in as people rush gently to join nby's new campaign SOTA (Suck on that, Orange). Further to the company's porkies about mail 'sanitisation' being utterly removed from marketing, here's the message I normally get when trying to reach friends with Hotmail, but subtly amended thus:

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to <postmaster>

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can delete your own text from the attached returned message.

The SMTP Server program

<mauryshow@aol.com>: host mailin-04.mx.aol.com[205.188.159.216] said: 550 We
would love to have gotten this email to mauryshow@aim.com. But, your
recipient never logged onto their free AIM Mail account. Please contact
them and let them know that they're missing out on all the super features
offered by AIM Mail. And by the way, they're also missing out on your
email. Thanks. (in reply to RCPT TO command)

This is pretty standard stuff from the lemons at Orange: we'd just leeerrvv to have gotten your cutesy liddle mail through, but your friend is a dumb fuck who's using AOL, not us. So we won't. Tell your buddy to shape up and fly right!

Please don't walk that way

You will be amused and/or alarmed to know that we all have a DNA gait, and the chaps working in surveillance have perfected a machine which, when enhancing the usual blurred CCTV image, will in future prove that yes, it was you and you alone who took a dump on that poor defenceless pensioner.

The snoopers are so ethically blind and naive, they make the original scientists working on the atom bomb look like wordly gossip columnists. Their other new trick in the toy-box is a brain-scanning device (it was only a matter of time) that can - and I quote from their bumf - 'quickly tell the good guys from the bad guys'. So it can tell your maquis from your collaborator: isn't that great?....especially if you work for the Gestapo.

There is no face quite like the childishly happy grin seen on the face of gadget-man as he chucks the contents of Pandora's box in every direction: "Hey dad - look what I did!" "That's ma boy!" says the adult with him. Except it's not his dad - just his Big Brother.

And finally.....

Congratulations to chum Sarah who single-handedly demonstrated against Saudi Nazi misogynists earlier this week.

Winter is here. Time to hibernate in front of a big non-pollutant fire. Enjoy it.

(1.11.07)

 

Egyptologists unearth early Black & White Minstrel Show

More death please

Asked what contemporary problems face transplant surgery these days, a 'manager' at Papworth hospital told the news media last week, "Well, the main one is fewer road deaths, and therefore fewer donors".

It was an odd remark on every imaginable level. I found myself wondering if hearts from road deaths were, for example, more up for being stuck into somebody else's chest than those formerly the property of a suicidal jumper. Given this bloke also made the remark wearing the humourless, idea-free, irony-free expression common to all 'management', I briefly pondered the idea of a letter to The Times suggesting the Highway Slaughter Shortfall be made up with the hearts of hospital managers, and ripped from their rib cavity while the donor was still very much alive - preferably during a meeting. Given the need to watch financial targets carefully, it goes without saying that the NHS would be spared the expense of anaesthetic in performing this tickerectomy.

Mainly, however, I was struck by his failure to mention that medical staff at Papworth are not that skilled at putting the hearts to good use once they've been dragged from the wreckage of a Peugeot 207 soft-top. 66% of patients undergoing transplants at this infirmary die within a month of their operation. Doh, um.....maybe more hearts isn't de problem, Bluebottle.

The vast majority of NHS managers are what my Dad used to call 'a dead loss', and Sir Frank Lowe calls 'people who simply get in the way'. Everything they've been involved in has (as one might reasonably expect) been tackled from the viewpoints of accountancy, litigation and drivel about internal markets. Put simply, hospital managers are folks who can't find a proper job. One could argue that they've lost the plot, but this would be entirely unfair: they never knew what it was in the first place.

Five courses for seven quid

On the recommendation of local friends, we went to a simple working folks restaurant last week, Le Camelia. Both Jan and I love places like this, because the astonishing value for money is equalled only by the charm of the staff, and the enjoyable honesty of the nosh on offer. The usual deal is turn up and eat what's on offer. Excellent: choice is tyranny.

Le Camelia is in Auriac-sur-Dropt, south westish from Bergerac. At lunchtime - and that's the time to see what these establishments are really made of - you may turn up and be both the only bourgeois and the only Anglaises. This can only be a good sign. As we drove up and parked, I also noted that a couple of camions and EDF vans were in evidence - an even better portent.

For 11.30 Euros, we had delicious soup, an odd (but very tasty) canneloni salad for entrees, chicken in a piquant sauce with mash and beans for mains, an enormous cheese board (with inclusive pichet of red wine to wash it down) and then a choice of three puds to end. Needless to say, the bread kept on coming - although we've both learned to leave most of it. Why use up one's appetite on baguette?

For Brits who wander down this way - or expats in search of a cheap lunch on France's expensive electricity days - Marianne and Thierry are on 05 53 20 24 62.

Two small, cheap, very good ideas

1. No need to cap, control, end or cut immigration - simply end welfare benefits for all immigrants from now on until they get a job, and spend £40 million advertising same in all countries east of Austria. Immigration will cease from everywhere except Poland, which would be terrific.

2. No need for everyone to spend £10,000 on insulating their homes. Simply go down to your local country pursuits store and spend £42.75 on thermal underwear: you will never be cold again.

I think we can then allow the market to decide.

I rike birriards

The P2P free sports streaming on the web is, I'm afraid, the same unreliable mess it's always been. The best website (TVants) has been smartened up, and at last translated into a form of English that is understandable. Also, the streaming software has been updated. However, the result is still pretty much the same - the channels work perfectly until it gets near to kick-off time, at which point you get a frozen picture, followed by lots of little Subbuteo men dashing about at 1000 mph, followed in turn by another picture of Chinese or Japanese commentators in mid-sentence.

But with an hour to kick off time, I was enjoying the birriards without interruption, and then listening enrapt to the snukka bloke explaining that Higgirs san had potted the brue forrowed by the brack, and was now on the gleen.

Yes, yes, yes....I know this is childish, but I'm too old for all this 'you're being racist' shit. I make as many (if not more) jokes about English working class, bourgeois and upper crust pronunciation. The day we can no longer laugh at ourselves and others harmlessly is the day the killjoys will have won. It is your duty as a real person to offend as many Caucasians as you can, stereotype as many foreigners as you can, imitate as many silly regional accents as you can, and insult as many politicians as you can.

Orange 46, nby 1

As Hotmailers have hopefully noticed, despite the mailed fist of Orange requesting I should fermez la bouche last week, the list of Great and Good on my complainant email seems to have had the desired effect: suddenly, nby emails are no longer offensive. They have been airbrushed out of history. All is well, and always was.

The problem remains, however, that surfers unable to attach major shakers on their email cc's will be told to lump it.

And on that note, I hope you had a good Catholic-burning night, and enjoy the rest of the week.

(4.11.07)

"You will meet a small, dark strangler...."

A misogynist speaks

A woman is someone who will complain she's cold, and leave the front door wide open in case the dogs fancy a pee. A woman is someone who can load a dishwasher better than any man on earth, and map-read worse than a gopher. A woman is someone who complains about noisy mice, but refuses to use mouse-traps. A woman is someone who wonders why men like to watch football, and tidies up before the cleaning lady comes. A woman is someone who thinks politicians are childish, and votes for the most handsome one.

My God, I needed that.

A taffy speaks

Under pressure from a particularly aggressive interviewer last Tuesday, A Welsh Nationalist MP offered his opinion on why having Welsh Nationalist MPs in an English Parliament was useful.

"Well" he began, "We feel that our Party gives a broad oversight in relation to Wales". As indeed do most of the English.

A Queen speaks

And so at last, we have it: vicarious Gordovision via the Monarch. The Government will, she asserted, look to help people achieve their aspirations, and prepare for the future of the country. I mean come on - you can't say fairer than that, can you?

Well, you could be more specific than that. In fact, it'd be hard to be more general than that. But listen - I'm inspired. So I now offer readers the not born yesterday vision:

'We will endeavour to help people win rather than lose, be rich rather than poor, be healthy rather than ill, be young rather than old, be first rather than last, be a BA rather than a BF, be good rather than bad, be bright rather than thick, be thin rather than clinically obese, be happy rather than sad, and immortal rather than stuck in an old folks' home being filled full of Valium'.

And finally, with truancy already running at record levels, we will endeavour to keep kids at school until the age of 37.

A Gooner speaks

Having alienated all the ladies, it's time for the Arsenal fans.

To mark his 21st year in charge of Manchester United (a record unequalled apart from Matt Busby working for the same club) Sir Alex Ferguson pointed out that two European Cups in their history is not the stuff of which Greatest Clubs in the World are made. He called for all United players to work hard to avoid the soubriquet 'nearly men' - which they were of course in English soccer before Ferguson took control.

Rather than viewing this as a modest dose of reality, Gooners immediately began mailing the Soccer 365 website in order to confirm Fergie's status as Beelzebub. This was one of the more sane ones, following a disgraceful incident in which Ferguson was manhandled and subject to obscene abuse after the 2-2 draw last weekend:

'Ferguson, 'the sour one', is only content when he can hear his own voice. How dare football supporters direct abuse towards him and his staff, at an away fixture, for goodness sake? You would think that he had never heard abuse before. Perhaps he should lip-read some of his own comments directed at officials when he watches replays of matches. He might be a Knight of the Realm, on paper, but I think the title 'the sour one' suits him better! The real "nearly man" is Ferguson himself. To have only won the European Championship once in 21 years with the financial rescourses (sic) available is a second rate performance. Given these circumstances almost any other manager in the premiership would do better.'

So, just to recap here, 1. Abuse is fine when you're the home side 2. Two wrongs make a right 3. A bloke who's won the Premiership more times than anyone else is an underachiever 4. Winning the Champions' League once is second-rate, whereas winning it, um, not at all is, er....5. The Manager of Derby County would've done better given the chance and the money. As well as the Wigan manager, the Bolton manager, the Reading manager, the Man City manager, the Newcastle manager, the Chelsea manager, the Southampton manager and the women's lingerie manager at Grace & Sons.

Ferguson and Manchester United will take lessons in consistently playing stylish soccer and winning European trophies from one club alone in the UK: Liverpool. And most decidedly not from a team playing in a stadium named after a crap airline, where French is the only lingua franca in the dressing room.

My God, but I needed that.

A newsreader speaks

On BBC24 last Tuesday, an anchor lady announced that a world record had been achieved because a terrier bitch had given birth to sixteeen poppies.

Given that we were but five days away from Remembrance Sunday, this seemed to Jan and I not so much a record as a miracle. But when the anchor person began to giggle, we realised that baby dogs aka puppies were involved.

Family life with mum, mum, Kevin the teenager and the local paedophile

Three equally insane elements of contemporary life collided earlier this week. First, the research industry produced yet another of its studies to knock us down with a featherweight conclusion. This latest told us that families argue more when the teenage children are at home; and that - because children still think their mums and dads are great - family life is as strong as ever.

Park those findings for a second, and take on board the second element - a brave new law that has sailed through the Parliamentary process saying that, in future, the Lesbian mum and mum will have the same rights as mum and dad, and be entitled to call themselves dad or not, as the mood and predeliction might take them.

Now try and use your remaining hard-drive memory to absorb number three - namely, the decision by the EU to mount a massive continent-wide operation to crack down on the Global Paedophile Terrorist threat.

Imagine if you will your descent onto Planet Earth as an alien arrival, and the discovery that this trio of priorities has occupied hours of fieldwork, legislative and police time. You could surely be forgiven for imagining that humanoid life was desperately anxious to find out why one generation is at odds with another, how to delude ourselves that family life is unchanged despite both parents being females in bib and brace suits, and what can be done about the overwhelming trend towards having sex with children as opposed to adults. You might well, in turn, decide that the locals are a species in viciously spiralling decline - and bizarrely, you'd be right.

For the record, I can't believe there is a human being alive who didn't go through puberty thinking their parents must be brain-dead, only to discover within a decade that they are wonderful. Lesbians are - allegedly - 2.9% of the population. And the Eurocop anti-paedophile drive focused on all of 2,550 adults across 27 countries - an average of less than 100 per nation - out of a total EU population of 473 million.

On your way back out of Earth's atmosphere at the fastest warp-speed possible, you would be entitled to a sense of relief, and a desire to warn other pan-Galactic travellers to give the place a very wide berth indeed.

A Rock

We have a new unit of currency - a Northern Rock, or for more colloquial use, a Rock.

I know I'm going on about this a bit, but can we all please wake up. As of last Friday when I had almost finished writing the last edition of LIWL, Northern Rock had gobbled up £23 billion of taxpayers' money. This is one (1) bank based in Newcastle being given six times the annual budget of DEFRA, and three times the Armed Forces Budget.

By Monday afternoon, the 'loan' had leapt a further seven billion pounds. This made Northern Rock's government aid bigger than the total UK defence budget.

Thus the unit 'a Rock' comes into existence. For example, there are four Rocks in an NHS. Except that the Rock has been spent in four weeks, whereas an NHS is spent in, um, fifty-two weeks.

Northern Rock business model

It's a Rap

Well me Queen she give a speech

sayin' all de folks can reach

for de sky an' be de best