Cape to Rio

2009-11-03T22:23:00.004Z

Well that just puts the tin hat on it.

Three bloody months I’ve been working on my algorithm (Warhammer II ™ © ) and suddenly the bloody levellers at the SEC and FSA are bleating on about high frequency trading and how it’s the death of proper share dealing and how stock markets and exchanges are there to provide capital for enterprise and not fat wads for casino banks, it’s so easy a monkey could do it and blah de blah de blah.

This is exactly what is killing our great nation. I’d love a fat wad me, instead my pips are being squeezed mercilessly.

2009-10-26T11:58:00.006Z

My Beautiful Fucking Mind.

In 1968, in our leafy little primary school, (no snotters, no rickets, no Irish) when we were nine years old, they introduced us to the problem of the overflowing bath in arithmetic.

It runs like this.

A forgetful man wishes to have a bath so he turns on both taps but forgets (because he is forgetful) to put the plug in and is suddenly called away to the telephone. While he is away, the water keeps pouring out the taps, filling the bath. The bath fills at 10 gallons a minute and drains out the plughole at 5 gallons a minute. If the bath holds 100 gallons of water, how long before the bath overflows?

It took me ten seconds to solve it even though I was watching out the window for Batman who was coming at 11am to talk to us about road safety. My poor little classmates however, were in a right tizzy. They were pissing their pants trying to work out the answer before that fucking bath overflowed. They were troubled by the phone call to the forgetful man. At the door were three bags of bottle tops for the blind. They were frightened that the water would get in the skirting boards and flood the electrics. Do they make metal eyes out them? Help! The bath water will soak everything to fuck and back in the whole fucking house!
As the minutes passed, they blamed themselves. Our paintings on the wall looked shit. The water kept on rising in the bath. Their little legs were wiggling in panic. God, they hated the forgetful man. Forgetful? He was a fucking spastic. Can’t he hear the bath running? Is he fucking deaf and dumb as well? They couldn’t even phone him to tell him to turn the fucking taps off because he was ON the fucking phone and the line was busy and it might be a party line and anyway he shouldn’t be allowed to use the phone if he can’t run a fucking bath the stupid useless bastard, we hope he gets drowned, we will be blamed for the whole fucking mess when we got home.

It’s simple arithmetic so you maybe think I solved it by taking 5 from 10 and dividing 100 by the result, but you’d be wrong. This will become clear later. Meanwhile I watched out the window and put up my hand and said; “20 minutes.” Mrs Thompson turned over the page to check the answer and sniffed. I made her uneasy because I was always looking up her skirt at her knickers.

2009-10-10T10:19:00.005+01:00

I have taken a police caution and we’ll say no more about it Mister Maroon.
The wheels of Scottish justice have finally come off with their judgement.
It’s most unsatisfactory. A priggish verbal warning and a criminal record and a feedback questionnaire to fill in, asking my opinion of the Tayside Police Service. (Obviously I shall lie)

Of the three, I don’t know what gets my goat the most. I think it’s the questionnaire. No; it’s the caution.

There was a time in this great nation, when giants like Douglas Bader and Brian Trubshaw strode the land, a time when two men could settle their differences with an honest punch-up without dogs fainting and PC 99 making such a bloody song and dance about it; a time when, if some crosspatch was being a pest, whammo! hard as you can onto the bastard’s nose or wind pipe - endof.

"Dead for a ducat! Dead!"

"At midnight, the drunken lout drew near with evil threats upon his breath, by 12:03, I had run him through. ‘twas nothing, a matter of seconds and his life’s blood staining the flags…" That sort of thing.

Not now. Now it’s all "you do not have to say anything to harm your defence but were the arresting officers courteous ? Were they prompt? Did the taser hurt? Was there a pine air freshener in the black maria?"

After you with the pencil please, Mad Frankie. Swing low, sweet chariot…

2009-09-18T21:55:00.003+01:00

The Leith Police Releaseth Me

Why are constabularies of the world so against high jinks? Anyone would think that men in bars only ever played skittles and discussed their allotments. A swift punch in the throat never hurt anyone. Have they never seen a John Wayne film?

Anyway, it’s Rosh Hashanah and that seems a good place to start my 10 days of repentance; Days of Awe to you (no offence).

But I would walk five hundred miles
And I would walk five hundred more
Just to be the man who walked a thousand miles
To fall down at your door

I’M BACK! (for good)
Leshone Toyve; Lang may your lum reek.

2009-08-16T15:10:00.003+01:00

Straightforward Saucy Seaside Postcards

Nos. 1 & 2 in a converging infinite series.

No. 1 “Judging The Vegetables.”

Let the postcard show a village fete and let the illustrator show the judging of the garden vegetables upon a table.
And to avoid any misunderstanding, let there be a sign upon the tent canvas saying: “Village Fete. ~ Vegetable Competition“.
And let the judge in this case be a cleric: A Church of England vicar or curate or somesuch.
And let him be in dog collar and black weskit and have a rosette upon his lapel with the word “JUDGE” upon it.
And let him be shewn standing close to the table such that a cucumber, recumbent upon the table, is in absentminded contact with the fly buttons of his trousers.
For good measure, let the vicar have a beatific smirk upon his face.

Now, let there also be a lovely young woman in a red polka dot, low-cut, summer frock barely restraining her “rack”. And let the illustrator shew her resting her clammy little hand upon the aforementioned cucumber. And let her full red lips be parted in a saucy smile of overpowering fecundity.

She should speak thus: “Ooh Vicar, is it as big as yours?”

And let the cleric reply: “That’s not a cucumber Miss ~ I took some camouflage paint from the cadets and disguised my penis to look like a cucumber and that is what you are stroking now.”

And, if there be space still upon the card, let all reply in unison: “Stop the fete! The vicar is a filthy pervert!”

No.2 At The Greengrocer.

Let the card show an array of ripe melons in a greengrocer’s shop and to avoid confusion let there be a sign upon the wall saying : “Nudist Camp Shop” or some such.
And let there be a beautiful naked woman holding two ripe melons prior to making their purchase.
Now let there also be a shrunken, naked man leering at her, and let there be a pile of soup tins hiding his member from view and he should spake thus:

“Gosh, Darling! What a lovely pair you have!”

Now let the beautiful woman reply: “Yes, I intend to make melon boats with ginger at dinner tonight.”

And let the leering man reply to that: “No Poppet, I meant your breasts. They are fabulous. They would look so good with my dick between them!”

Now let the greengrocer shout: “Get out of my shop you filthy pervert!”

Perhaps you can think of more ideas for straightforward saucy seaside postcards?

2009-08-03T14:05:00.021+01:00

“Without the inclination towards philanthropia, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing; no better than a kind of vermin, Maroon.”
“Well quite, but I did give at the office.”
“You gave at the office did you?”
“Yes.”
“To The West of Scotland Red Crescent?”
“Yesss...”
“No matter, roll up your sleeve. Still smoking?”

Today, Dr Al-Abri, company medic, is being a royal pain in the ass with his raffle tickets and charity tins. His manner is a disgrace. When you go in, he is always reading a newspaper or eating a Kit Kat. He just riles me. For some reason he is wearing a brown leather protector over his middle finger and he keeps touching me with the fucking thing, so, to take my mind off it while he straps me up, I read the little acronyms he writes across the cover of my file. The latest is HIBGIA; no, not a wasting of the liver, but “Had It Before, Got It Again”.

“Hypertension: it's the silent killer, Maroon.”

And, sure as Death, the examination rumbles on to The Display And Consideration Of The Maroon Private Parts and I follow like a lamb, knowing he’s going to have his hairy fingers pressing up on my sweaty groin while I look down into his liquid brown eyes. Thankfully, there is nothing like a biennial finger to fetch out the racist homophobe.

“Did you bring a sample?”

I take it out my pocket and because I have just done it in the disabled toilet, it is still hot. He holds it up to the window, quite fascinated; then he turns it over like an egg timer, spellbound,

“Is this what I think it is?”
“What do you mean?”
“It looks fine, but I was expecting pee not semen.”
“No way! Your letter is all about a “Well Man” examination. There is a whole paragraph on prostate and testicular cancer, and em, fertility, erectile problems, discoloured ejaculate, and then, then it asks for a sample in the Sterilin bottle provided. This is your bloody fault, not mine.”

I am scanning the letter as I blurt all this out and for the first time in 10 readings I see the word urine.

“How did you get it in the bottle?”
“Get lost Ali, I ain't in the mood.”
“Cough.”
*ahem*
“And again.”
*cough*
“Fine.”

And then he snarks away to himself for a full minute.

2009-07-30T22:12:00.010+01:00

There is no oil for the lamps.
“What is truth?” said Pilate; and then, like me, he pissed off quick for fear he got an answer. Well, I shall just tell you: Truth is a very grey area; very, very grey.
I mention Pilate because oftentimes at Cambridge, I would dream of the Roman goddess Levana and wonder when her bestowed gifts would kick in. It was my Jesuit schooling impinging you see. I am positive it would have totally buggered up a lesser man. Made him shifty and withdrawn perhaps. Not me. You see, by then I had developed a strategy to cope:drugs and cunning.
My panacea, my φαρμακον νηπενθες, * was and is, strong drink and the Jesuits taught me the cunning.
The upshot is, that by my clever deployment of what might be called "turning the cat in the pan", certain things have come to light; it turns out that I am not to blame after all for our local difficulties in Araby and am to be sent back like Gandalf the White, to finish off what weak men could only begin. I am sent back out to Saudi, v soon. Can’t wait. Before you know it, I’ll be in the compound rumpus room playing Islamic bingo.

We have a local bingo caller, (works for Mecca).

“Right guys and guys, eyes cast down for a full house…

Eye for an eye…number one,
Clicketty click…car-bomb timer,
All the ones…nine-eleven
Number eight…old enough
Seven and six…seventysix, strokes of the lash, was she worth it?
Four-oh…virgins in paradise
Number ten…British pig dog Satan
Number nine…Mullah’s orders
Eighty eight…two fat ladies, how can you tell?
Six and nine...sixty-nine…oral sex
Top of the house...ninety-nine...beard of the Prophet…”

* “drug banishing sorrow” pronounced pharmacon nehpenthes.

2009-07-15T23:34:00.007+01:00

I am to be sent home in disgrace (medevac) for the good of the contract and company name. They sent out a director to give me the black spot. I thought I was to be promoted.
“I’m sending you home on leave without the option, before you really fuck up.” was how he put it.
He broke the news to me at that vile breakfast stroke lunch affair which exemplifies company life in overseas compounds.

That "I Hate Maroon" menu in full.

Brunche:
Waffle
Mixed Grilling:
I'm-For-The Chop
With Contract Bedevilled Kidneys
& Frazzled Liver.
or
Not-Bringing-Home-The Bacon
Served With Hash-Of-It Browns And Has Beans.

Eggs Interdict
Cheerios.

Plat Du Monde: Ciao Mein

Desserts Du Jour:
In A Jam Roly-Poly
Eton Mess Of It
Crepe

To Drink:
Aqua Miserable
Sack

Chef De Parti: Harry Vidercci.

* * *

2009-07-04T19:09:00.001+01:00

I am sure you know the story of Vedran Smajlović, the Cellist of Sarajevo, who played 22 consecutive days in Peter’s Square under the murderous Serbian mortars. I am equally sure, that few of you will have heard of “The Bagpiper Of Dundee” who yesterday played 20 consecutive minutes at the Nethergate under the glass canopy until he had made enough for a bottle of Emva and a Gregg’s macaroni pie.

As part of the ongoing international effort in the former Yugoslavia, Unicef has twinned Sarajevo with other European towns one of which is our own City of Discovery.
In the nature of these things, the twinning committee toured the devastation in an open-topped bus. The Mexican delegate was particularly moved. Shaking his head sadly, his eyes filling with furious tears; “Serbian bastards!” he swore, his arm sweeping to encompass the whole of the Lochee housing estate.

2009-06-22T23:09:00.000+01:00

fucklestopped

2009-06-21T02:01:00.000+01:00

2009-06-13T15:17:00.006+01:00

Thank God for the bomb.

I am acutely aware that by 14.58 BST today, Boris Johnson and Cameron (I forget his first name; is it Ian?) have already accomplished a lot.

They are old Etonians you see. I am of an age when all my heroes were Etonians. It was the only school worth mentioning. In fact a college. Now my school was a college too, and we had the twin chips on our shoulders of being Scotch and Jesuit. Beat that! Let Eton flourish? Let Glasgow Flourish!

I’ve met three; Etonians that is. They were très good company and as tough as nails and had that effortless English quality of being at ease. I became quite friendly with one, for a while, a year or so, during various crises in the world of agriculture. We emailed regularly, got pissed a few times home and away, had him home to dinner, that sort of thing. I would meet him at the airport and he had that superb way of looking very grateful to be met. Perhaps he was. Anyway, we got on. He was elevating company. What a leech I am. He liked malt whiskies and I have an "in" where malt whisky is concerned and would press white labelled bottles of Glen Farclas 1968 (62% ABV) on him as he left for London.

I foolishly dropped all my network a while back. Pissed them against the wall like the faux Benzedrine I was guzzling at the time.

To get back to the subject; I, on the other hand, have done sweet Fanny Adams today.

Because I am not an Old Etonian?

No.

Because I am an old, hopeless, worthless aunt with an autumnal timor mortis perched on my shoulder the size of a parrot.

OH bee tee doubleyou Pat, a "Frenchie" is a kiss, nothing more. Shame on you if you thought otherwise.

2009-06-09T22:29:00.001+01:00

Some lines on Maroon stepping from the closet.

‘Twas in the year two thousand and nine, on a cold summer’s day,
That poor Doctor Maroon woke a la William Ard, to find he was gay,
He had retired to bed early, totally straight (and utterly pissed)
So imagine the mental turmoil to awake as a homosexualist.

His revelationary conversion to soft furnishings and indirect lighty,
Made him feel like Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite,
“Oh me! Oh my!” he said, I must sit on this news,
Yet the camp old sod couldn’t resist praising his lady-friend’s shoes,

“This just puts the tin hat on it.” thought the impecunious gay git,
“When Poor Mother finds out, she’ll have a violent, possibly fatal, conniption fit,”
“Well that’s just too bad.” he flounced, “all I ever was, was her glorified chauffeur,”
And he danced a defiant little hornpipe, being now shocking light in the loafer.

“I knew all along.” lied Jayne-Marie, a girl with the morals of a stoat,
“Anyone could tell he was as bent as a three pound note.”
“Where will it end?” thought the clapped out, pissed up, academic Nobel dreamer,
Now admitting his love of stage musicals and sparkly drapes, the sad old screamer.

2009-06-06T09:38:00.002+01:00

Let’s review the evidence.
Shall we?
Painful muscle pull, lower back, left side.
Bruising various odd places. Very odd places.
General feeling of having gone 3 rounds with Turkish boxer.
Alarming record of various latenight calls on cell phone
Still fully dressed.
Yes.
Yes I think I had a good night last night.
I must pad the furniture edges like one sees in the houses of the blind
Yeah, blind drunk you aunt.
Ok that’s enough.
Today at the eleventh hour, as the bell tolls, I am cleaning up my act, getting my shit together, taking stock, striding out into the new day. I shall bathe, ablute and dress with care. Full cuff link presentation, pomade on hair, polished boots. I am not a mollusc, I am a free man! Christ give me a drink someone, perllease!

Has the British government fallen yet? I hope not. Good old Mandy. Cometh the hour cometh the man.

2009-06-04T11:43:00.002+01:00

I used to look after this girl's goldfish when they went on holiday.

Stop Press: What a twelvemonth! First it was Ali Bongo then Danny La Rue and now poor Old David Carradine! Oh Grasshopper. Time for you to leave.

"Is that Kung Fu?"

"No, he's choked the chicken."

2009-05-29T00:19:00.003+01:00

When it comes to Liverpool fans, this must be the BEST result ever.
EVER

However, give us a chance.
The best footballer ever, was this man.

2009-05-25T14:25:00.001+01:00

The worst of watching a parent age and die is the conversation. We long for the meaningful conversation that we despised when we were young. Overnight our parents become inane. What’s more, they revel in it. They punish us. When we were younger we begged them to talk like other kid’s parents especially when our friends (those other kids) were round for a snog and the burning of joss sticks.

Fucking hell mum don’t make a dissertation out of it. This isn’t a question of politics or human morals, noble spirit, deferred gratification; we got drunk on cider and the girls put make up on us like David Bowie, move on for fuck’s sake, and write me a note for school. (no fucking way).

Now we wish they would return to their rigour and shut the fuck up about just how terribly nosey is Mrs Wickes in number 11 (I think she is lonely) or the total, total, lack of urbanity in restaurants or in Boots the chemist, or with tradesmen looking at the ceiling.

Fucking hell, how do they manage to shed a lifetime of propriety, etiquette (which they imprinted on US by the way- ie never make anyone uncomfortable by your presence or speech or table manners) so easily? Piff paff poff and it’s like it never happened. After seventy something, they don’t give a flying fuck.

2009-05-23T19:25:00.003+01:00

Some interesting root canal work this morning at around 10 am local time...

So far this evening,
600mg Ibuprofen
1500mg Paracetamol
45mg codeine
1.5lt sparkling perry
35 cl rum type tincture 50%ABV (Approx) with diet cherry coke.
4 hours sleep in last 48

Feeling chust sublime.

Why?

Why the fuck not?

Here’s Joe Cocker.

Cocker! Snitter snitter fnar…

Oh, there are concrete mountains in the city…

Yeah and some Joni as well.

Oh it gets so lonely, when you're walkin' and the streets are full of strangers...

Hey if you don't like it...

It's Saturday and I'm in and I'm playing my records alright?

And some Bernstein

I like the island of Manhattan

2009-05-18T23:03:00.001+01:00

snark

2009-05-18T21:54:00.005+01:00

Out on a limb

My creditors are avowed to kill me.
“If you do not make full and timeous restitution –in full, we will kill you.”
Such Little Men. Such ambiguity.
Poor old Dropshaft. Aware that life is a delusion and responsible for his situation.
So then, here I am in Jeddah. The dust and fumes would kill an ox. My urine is fluorescent; either from the tablets or the cid or dehydration. During the day I contend with shifty Arabs and in the evening I suffer the music of a talentless sod called Dizzy Twat telling everyone he’s bonkers.
One night around ten, we went to a convenience store like Bohack or Budgens to buy sugar and yeast and a pressure cooker. Bit suspicious? Not a bit of it. We kept up an innocent conversation throughout.
What’s on the list Hugh? (Always a good prop, a list.) Let’s see, sugar -for our baking. How much? 20 kilos. Oh and some yeast of course. Yes Hugh, we will need yeast also: for the baking of the bread etc. Look at these pressure cookers, very nice. Yes let’s get one for our English stews and hotpots. Oh remember our central heating is playing up, we could do with some micro bore copper pipe. Here’s some here! Anything else Hugh? Yes, these hickory chips will make a nice barbeque (Jack Daniels flavouring) And so on.
Everything is stacked next to each other on the shelf. Elliot Ness would shit bricks. “They put one of oursh in the hoshpital, we put one of theirsh in the morgue…”
It’s as shaming as buying Asian Beaver or the Peoples Friend but the shop staff are cowed immigrants so fuck em.
Hugh is my line manager. He’s from Warrington. He’s been here way too long. His bide a wee apartment stinks of hooch and flavourings like rum essence and polo mints. His carpets are a fucking disgrace. I think some of it is blood. He hates everything, even the very blackening. Everyone calls him Hugh except the RSAF personnel who call him Mr Janus.

2009-05-03T01:25:00.006+01:00

Fucklestopped

My best man has been rebuffed by AL Kennedy three times because he is a v=bastardf. His mother was in a coma for three weeks after a road accident and to fill the vacuum I told her I was getting married and promised that her son would be my best man. The machiones didn’t beep she died the following week and I was stuck with the bastard.He was like I am now and I bankrolled him for 31/2 years. I thought nothing of it. I was flush and id known him since way way back. yet now I realise how bloody awful that mustr have been for him. How terrifingly shite that must have been. Too fucking bad. Hes a dreadful alchoholic now and I haven’t spoken to him for twenmty years. My next friend I met at trinity. He was from Dumbarton you couldn’t make it up. On like day two we met said something like, are you scotch? Yeah? Wanna drink? lets go. And that was that. We spent as much time as possible away from the fucking place because we were working class. I ended up eventually taking supervisions, he didn’t. he has a multi billion pond company makinfg umbilicles ifor the north sea oil and gas thing. I went out with him . he showered me this huge unwinding thing. Ti was stultifiingly boring. He has contracts off east anglia . I will not ask him for a job. I think he may have got married and nor asked me to the wedding the cunt. He was at mine and missed being best man by a whuisker. See above. My poor wife , the previous mrs maroon loved him as much as ui did and tried to get me to change it but it was too late. Even I couldn’t break a deathbed promise. I do remember how wanky the whole thing was. There is a maths test at Cambridge it’s a beefed up a level no more and if you get a good mark they call you a wtrangler. Well in the finasl its 5 from 7 and I did the 7 and goty a good mark asnd was called a werang;ler. I was wanky enough toi write “ perm any five from seven” on the bottom of the scrip. Fuck me gently.Max didn’t. and that’s the point,. Undertgraduates doing medieaval French history can do maths at Cambridge. Every cint can do it. anyway there was a surfeit thar year and they all disappeared up yhtere own arses workinf out whjy. Its not a variable bar ill give them that. Tits an absolute anywat its like the debate over a levels now. Are they too easy?. Ironica\lly we examined the statistical correlation ( l;ike that inky?) one of the most dreadful things about an English education is its thoroughness. England is stil even now a country of power and influence and to iknow that one has no part in it is so so cuntish as to be unbearable. We had a post mortem after the event and one of ourgroup a handsome lad called steve asked our supervisor if I really had written that and had I got maximum marks. What a dick. The trouble wqs we could see it was all props. If you pushed the walls they would tip over. Cardboard. His books (doctor loughran) our maths suervisor, if we’d taken them out the selves would have been blank paper we all knew itr but weree too polite to say. the point is I tookm him into my home and family. Max you cuntWhen mrs maroon and I split up he waws there the next day and stayed tewo weeks to make sure I didn’t kill myself. Yeah riught. We had a swell time, pissed constantly and he shaggrd everything going.i have the letter copy of sent to lse saying how wonderful I was. Ill give them that. Neyou know the worst of it? we played on it constantly. Were at Cambridge. We didn’t fit and it was difficult but we played on it. he married a nurse from Cambridge. The town. It was like officer and a genteman. The townies hated us but we ciould stll twist it. fuck.my next friends are the richest people iknow3.

2009-04-29T23:40:00.009+01:00

The smell hit him when he opened the hut door. He couldn’t place it. Perhaps it was the smell of gentle disappointment.
No, it’s margarine he decided. Margarine and vinyl table covers.
“Oh Maroon,” he sighed piteously.
Life on the lam was going to be difficult.
He stepped in and dropped his suitcase on the bed…

If "Uncle" Otto Ziegler hadn’t had his stroke and fallen in the pool and if his puzzled audience hadn’t assumed it the highlight of his act then Maroon would never have come. The classified in last week’s Stage had been a godsend;

“Hands on” compere and two
coats required for prestige Devon
sunshine resort. Exp. of mediaeval
knight / serving wench not essential.
Live in all found. Immediate start.

To Maroon, a rat on a sinking ship, every word sang out to him with the tantalising “hands on” and “serving wench” providing the descant.
He memorised the number and while he was out shopping in Sainsburys, he called the agent, one Richard (Double) Dekker. They met later that day.

The interview went well. A formality. Maroon had warmed to the theatrical agent instantly which is always a great comfort to the practiced liar. There only remained the crossing of the "i"s as Dekker put it.

“Let’s see…Can we run through the health questionnaire?”
“Of course.”
“Smoke?”
“No thanks.”
“Uhuh. Do you smoke?”
“Good Lord no.”
“Any skin disease, dizzy spells, headaches or heart trouble?”
“No.”
“Deafness?”
“Wha…no”
“Thanks. No deafness.”
“No.”
“Drink?”
“That’s very kind of you…”
“Yes, good. Um, alcohol, how many units; in a week say?”
“Oh,14.”
“14?”
“Some weeks would be less.”
“Less?”

The formalities came to a shuddering halt. Dekker was unable to stop himself looking up. He saw at once the narrow necktie streaked with cigarette ash and the swollen brisket and the purple veins around a nose sharp as a pin. He relaxed and smiled.
Maroon on the other hand, felt the scrutiny keenly and cursed the sun which chose now to shine on his ravaged face and checkered jacket. He cleared his throat running a finger around his damp collar, and asked innocently:

“Well, how much is an alcohol unit these days?”
“I’ll put down 50 shall I?”
“50?”
“There are seven days in a week Maroon. It’s purely for insurance purposes. Besides, all the best comperes are piss ar…look it’s expected, it’s the biz. Take poor Lennie Bennett: smoked like a fish and thirsty as an Arab Mullah…”
“But he died!”
“Never on stage Maroon, never died with his public, no, they loved him and that’s the point. I’ll fill in the rest, you get yourself down to Devon."
And that was that. They shook hands.

“Give Devon my love and tell them I’ll send the two coats stroke serving wenches as soon as.
Break a leg Maroon.”

2009-04-13T13:17:00.001+01:00

Achilles Hector Kenneth Maroon.

An Apology:

I apologise unreservedly for the slur neither intended nor implied on the wives of Mr Cameron and Mr Brown the Prime Minister occasioned by my bare-arsed exhibitionism on the weblog named Cape to Rio. I was not overworked or under great stress.

Further, I deeply regret my inconvenience on this most beautiful of Easter Mondays to be stuck inside explaining myself. I am most sorry to be typing this out to an empty screen knowing deep in my heart that public houses across this great land have been open for two hours now, serving cool wines and sandwiches. That, perhaps, is my deepest regret and for that I am more sorry than I can say.

2009-04-12T22:48:00.001+01:00

2009-04-12T20:05:00.000+01:00

It's the Norwegians!

2009-04-09T23:53:00.006+01:00

2009-04-09T23:31:00.017+01:00

I had no idea that the back of my head was so ugly.
I shall ask for a taper cut from now on

Some of you, perhaps the sporting physiologists among you (and I know how many there are of you these days) will be wondering, which, is the disabled leg. Take a good look my friends.

Have any of you noticed how both legs get thicker towards the bottom? I mean towards the ground.
Instead of thinning out they thicken up?
Simple explanation; Cycling.
That's right my friend, cycling... and nothing to worry about whatsoever.

2009-04-08T19:20:00.001+01:00

On Sunday we like to cut sandwiches for our return from the Boston Arms at 3:30. We like old fashioned sandwiches best; smoked salmon, egg and cress, roast beef. We like to arrange them in three piles on paper doilies on the big oblong sandwich plate and cover them with a square of muslin.
We like to walk along the river in the afternoon to work up our appetites. When we come in, we get the wine from the fridge and the sandwiches from the pantry and settle to watch deal or no deal. We have a woollen travel rug that we spread over us even if it’s warm because it’s nice and special to do so. We usually bring a surprise home like a small box of chocs or Turkish delight. We like to have a snog during the wine and sandwiches. We like to laugh when someone who is poor ends up with nothing on deal or no deal. We like it when the other contestants start to cry because they look silly. We find it sexy and we like to start petting while Noel Edmunds commiserates with them. We like to have oral when the banker reduces his offer and the poor person tries to smile. Then we like to have more wine and a nap before Gordon Ramsay.

2009-04-04T22:36:00.003+01:00

In 1964 I went to state catholic primary school. What a punch in the guts.
You see, I had spent the preceding year, my gap year, at nursery, expressing myself as a tree or a stickleback or a tadpole or a cotton wool cloud in a blue sky. I had busied my emotional development through the medium of finger paints and Bauhaus wooden toys. The last of the innocent naps always followed lunch and then home in time for Stingray or Fireball XL5.

State catholic primary school in 1964 was a workhouse from 1924. My best friends smelled of damp and stale bread. They had holes in their jumpers. I caught nits. They had bruises and black eyes and purple dye painted on them. They were the poorest, fucked around kids you can imagine.

Shut up Maroon, you are becoming tiresome. You’re nearly fifty, so fucking what? Live, you stupid bastard. That famous picture of the Japanese kids at nursery having their nap in Hiroshima is identical to us having ours. Complete blissful innocence. But then our dads weren’t out raping Nanking were they?

I was extracted in 1965 and sent to protestant primary school. It had activity rooms and French language puppets. It had miniaturised sanitary porcelain in the lavatories. Not to mention a roof over the urinals. It was nice to pee without getting rained on in a place which smelled of carbolic soap and not old man’s piss.

2009-04-03T21:01:00.005+01:00

U StInK
See? There it is again. It’ll put the customers off. The whelks are arranging themselves into disparaging personal attacks. I'm sure of it. The Tortoiseshells are the worst. Troublemakers to a man. The Blue Rounds are little angels by comparison, though I did turn around suddenly to see their tiny feelers out at each other behind my back. Bit rude. The worst are the adolescents,
U R UGLY.
It’s always out the corner of my eye. By the time I check positively they subtly change their position to a random array. A bit too random I think, but that’s the curse of mathematics. I took some of them down to the river today. A treat. You know, let them stretch their foot. I’m not sure they all came back.
PINOCCHIO
Buggers, did you see that? Yes the adolescents. Clever you see and greased bloody lightning. What a handful. The customers are a rum lot too. I'm fussy you see and I’m not sure people realise the responsibility they are taking on with whelks. I had one ask me for a pin. A pin. He wanted to "winkle" them out their shells. What an utter bastard. I could have struck him. Another asked where the salt and vinegar was. He was an utter as well. I had no idea such cruelty existed. Christ did you see where the tortoiseshells went? Mind where you’re standing will you? There they are - look, halfway down the street. What did I tell you? Greased bloody lightning.

2009-03-23T12:55:00.004Z

Young woman dies of cancer convinced Rio de Janeiro was a footballer.

Gordon Brown. What the hell was he thinking with his troublesome dirge for poor Jade? He was totally silent about Ali Bongo.

Heston Fuckwit. Peels frogs, (they were quite furious), persuades them up a pig’s back passage then detonates the lot in Cilla Black’s face.

President Obama. Comfy on the couch wasn't he, making remarks about the special Olympics. I didn’t see the suitcase with the nuclear button. He is not a real president, he is a tribute president.

2009-03-20T13:22:00.007Z

Trifles.

Rockall, Sodall, Bogall…
Carlyle said that the meanest object is a window into infinitude and Grayling remarks that to say that trifles make up the happiness or misery of human life is to voice a cliché no less true for being one.
Dover, Fastnet, fishnet…

I have a young charge who worries me. He is unworldly and besotted with a knowing girl. She has him twirled around her finger leading him a merry dance. I often want to spank her; she has such a way of flicking her skirts at me as she brushes past. She is incorrigible. To make matters worse, this girl is a prodigy and favourite of her aunt, a lady-friend of mine, so I see where matters will lead.

As you know, I have lived a life after my own lights. A disastrous car crash of a life; fuelled by strong drink and a misplaced laissez-faire attitude to money and women.
Often, I have been found vomiting twin writhing serpents of guilt and alcohol down others’ pristine toilet bowls. And always, with the last aching heave, the viper of guilt releases her entwined twin, to slide backwards into my mouth, to rest calm and comfortable somewhere inside me, for another day, for another disaster. No emetic will shift that one. Not she.
A costly burden to be borne, “In Perpetua”.

To remind me, I had a trifle run up at Asprey’s. A ring I wear now and then when I feel vulnerable. It was to this ring, that I referred when I took my young charge aside to advise:

“Do you see this ring, Ewan?"
“What of it?"
“Do you see how it is formed?”
“Yes”
“Do you see how the two serpents are encoiled around an emerald named “Bile”?
“It’s ‘the ring of Barahir’, Uncle Ack”
“What?”
“Aragorn’s ring”
“No, it's Asprey’s.”
“Lord of the Rings merchandising.”
“No it’s not, it’s mine - This viper is called ‘Guilt’…”
“You can get them on eBay for £30. All the Trekkies wear them.”
“Right, here’s £50. Fuck off out of it for an hour and take Jane Marie with you.”

2009-03-15T11:22:00.008Z

It’s that time again. Summer is coming and summer’s lease has all too short a date. To wit, the Guardian has published the lists of post graduate studies available to the fearful or work-shy. How times have changed. No PgD.s are available at LSE, it’s all MSc.s now. How ghastly.
I will never forget my interview with whatshisname of the Cambridge Appointments Board; I was sent for. A mid morning slot.

I told myself:
“This is it Maroon, you’ve been plucked, you’ve trailed your coat, been talent spotted and Britain’s imperial service are here for you (or Shell at the very least). Now remember kiddo, they’re not interested in the facts, just an ability to stick to a good back story.”

He was the most repellant individual I have ever seen. He drank tea throughout, never offering me a cup (rude) and he opened up his Kit Kat, spread the silver paper flat and methodically broke the fingers in two, placing the eight bits in parallel rows like soldiers. It was disquieting watching this. Distracting. He was like Joseph Mengele. He had horrible fingernails, I remember that much.
He took a while to get going.

“Any thoughts what you’d like to do when you leave here Maroon?” (what happened to Achilles, or even Ack?)
“Nuh.”
"Hmmm. Well, what are your interests? Which FIELD excites you?”

I had to stifle a snigger here, exciting fields; geddit? It’s electromagnetism!

“I hadn’t really thought…”
“Well OK. Here’s a list of courses you could probably take while you decide. Thanks awfully for coming in.”

Second top of the list was a safe berth at LSE. It was, I realise now, a contented, almost happy time. It was a little railway siding where old wagons were shunted, you know, off the Titfield branch line. I was surrounded by the kids of commonwealth diplomats who would go on to rescue Africa from financial ruin, in much the same way as political satire in 1930s Berlin cabaret, saved Germany from fascism.
Anyway, it looks as if Beecham made it to Houghton Street eventually.
Sic transit.

Kids today can choose Gender Studies (we did that), Hospitality Management (did that too), even Celtic Studies (haven’t a clue). the difference being they are all Saturday’s children now, poor sods.

2009-03-14T10:29:00.004Z

It's Saturday! It's the sixties! It's the Beatles!

It's still Saturday! It's the Rolling Stones! (for Pat and me and Scarlet too)

It's still Saturday! It's the Doors! (for Sarah and me)

For Clarissa

2009-03-12T23:48:00.004Z

Ali Bongo Dead!
Irish not to blame says hospital spokesman.

In a sad announcement that rocked the world of magic, the death of beloved madcap magician Ali Bongo was put down to age, cardiac arrhythmia, stroke and finally pneumonia. An ashen faced agent Manny Cohen added that no Irish involvement in his demise could be found or inferred.
Last night First and Deputy First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Irish Taoiseach were united in their relief at the conjurer’s non Irish downfall.

2009-03-11T11:07:00.003Z

Muslims, ain’t they mental? Of course they are. Our boys fight for their rights and get an ear bashing on their return to barracks. We’ve given them Moslems the right to protest and the bastards have taken it. There’s gratitude for you. Manners maketh the man. They are so graceless. Luton's full of them, jumping about in inappropriate clothes, baggy pyjamas and so forth.

Go and try it in any Moslem country, Ali, and just see how far you get. In fact, just piss off out of it and take your bonkers medieval Caliphate shit with you. We’re tired of you all, you are turning into royal pains in the arse so just clear off to some wonderful muslem country. Oops there aren’t any.

And what about the Irish? They phone up the police because their window has been put in and when they arrive to help, they get shot for their trouble. That’s not War in any man’s language, that’s murder. You don’t shoot people who are trying against the odds, to help. Gits.

2009-03-10T10:32:00.000Z

Cornwall, the master spy and author, returns endlessly to two themes. The small crippled double agent (whoever he was) and the immobilising anxiety borne when working in hostile territory.
As you know, I undertake business on behalf of MOSSAD and I must say it’s catching up on me. Every morning I pad the floors like Samson in the wilderness seeking what he might devour and I listen to the breaths of we innocents.
Every footfall turns my insides to junket and an evil wind gathers around the blackest kernel of my malignant soul. “Be you the white tornado?” I ask. The answer is indistinct.
“Go home to Israel.” I hear you mutter over your anti Semitic breakfasts.
Alas I cannot, for it is my purpose to bear witness, no matter the cost; and believe me, the price is high.
I observe.
I see too much. I see people laughing, shopping, couples in cars content to be going somewhere - on the move. I see the wasteland strewn with hollow lives lived to a formula handed them by a dreadful power. There is no redemption. There is no mint sauce for the lamb on their dinner plates. God help us.
I also see that the Bee and Drainpipe is open. Yes, I shall step in here for a quick gum freezer. My handler is due and I have news to impart. Not for us the rattle-tattle-tat of hidden Morse transmitters. We use the regular dialogue of lady and gentleman. Ah, here he comes, the Duke of Cambridge, I’d recognise that brisket anywhere.

2009-02-26T11:41:00.011Z

Masterchef final or Ten Years Younger?

Oh, before we go any further; I am one ugly bastard.
I don’t mean ugly in a rugged, or hang dog, or interesting way. I mean pot fucking ugly in a weird ugly way. Not only that, I am ugly on the inside as well.
What ya gonna do?
You see, Time without measure in the past, in Limbo, I was assigned the wrong earthly vessel for my soul.
It was an admin error. Honestly.
I remember it like yesterday.

I was queuing up with all the other souls and it was busy that morning and there was a lot of high spirits and friendly jostling. So we calmed down a bit and we're all floating in an orderly line in our persil-white gowns and I noticed the smallest of smuts on my character. It must have come off an agnostic or something, anyway, tiny it was, a speck, I should have left it alone but I had to rub at it didn’t I? Well, I made it much worse, so I hid it, besmirching stain that it was; I hid it in a diaphanous fold.
See the whole thing was sleeveless, what else could I do?
So I’m queuing up at the dispatch hatch and I noticed it was Antimacassar on the counter. Shit. I’d never got on with him, don’t know why, just didn’t, so I reach the front and he says:

“Name…oh it’s you.”
“Yeah”
“Right, let’s see. Ah, we’ve got you down for a good one: number 242/A. very handsome”
“Excellent”
“Wait a minute, are those smuts I can see on your heavenly raiment?”
“Yeah but it’ll come out with some Fairy, I’m sure of it”
“I dunno, I think there’s been a big mistake. I think you should have 242/B”
“Fuck off. I'm not taking that one, it's ugly and it's not your decision to make”
“Oh yes it is, now take it and move on, you’re holding up the line”
“Fuck you”
“Your complaint will be processed. Next!…Name please”
“Gregory Peck”
“Right Greg, here we are, 242/A”

Anyway, back to Masterchef. Shaven headed Mat, (as in door, bath, and mouse) will win.

Late Update 01:15

The bastard won it! Press release follows

"The 42-year-old's winning menu consisted of a starter of trio of wild rabbit, a main course of spider crab with hand cut chips and sea vegetables, and a dessert of lavender mousse with hokey pokey and a blackberry sauce."

Jesus! What's happened to this country? Do you think he looks like Kim?

Gail Trimble: Fox or Minger?

2009-02-24T08:50:00.014Z

With total recall and lightning buzzer finger, the classically trained Portia single-handedly dragged the dolts of Corpus in her wake.
How long before we see her in Nuts or FHM? Wouldn’t it be great?
What about a flash of her knickers as she disembarks a limo, out on the town with Lilly Allen?

Or a tasteful bikini series, rolling on some beach in Antigua with her boffin boyfriend?
I can see it now:
Gail’s Hunk Gets A Starter For Ten!

She will be on the cover of the Oxford prospectus for years.

Full-time team analysis.

Kay: 3/10 his wrong answers and gormless expression were a joy.

Swartzman: 7/10 contributed well in the final but definitely cross-eyed.

Trimble (cptn): 10/10 tactical maestro gave Manchester enough rope then crucified them.

Marsden: 4/10 foppish hair and total ignorance, a throwback ripe for ridicule.

2009-02-23T18:42:00.001Z

Back down to 12 followers?
Who baled on me?
Come back ya bastard.

2009-02-23T12:01:00.004Z

You may be interested to know that I stayed up late last night to watch a biopic of Jackson Pollock. It was très bon. The actress playing his wonderful talented wife was magnificent and heid-the-ba was good too, although he relied on his physical resemblance a lot.

Look, never mind about that. The point is, I am one of very few people I know, who get his pictures. Ha! How cool is that? I know, it’s fantastic isn’t it?

It is because I was exposed to them at something like three or four year old, followed by seeing film of him at work in his studio on TV when I was about seven, followed by a TV discussion where he was rubbished when I was nine and then that unfunny prick Tony Hancock spoofed him in some shit film too.

I am not a critic so I can’t communicate what he has communicated to me, but there’s an emotional reaction, then a realisation that it’s the intended emotional reaction and then when you realise that, there’s a third layer when you say fuck! It’s at a machine code level so all I can say is it is fantastic and mesmerising and overpowering and all encompassing in some telepathic miraculous way. See? I told you I couldn’t tell you, and now you think I’m mental and a patronising wanker to boot. Tough.

I have never read any criticism of his work in case I’ve got it all wrong and the philistines burst my bubble; I don’t have the strength of my conviction.

Anyway, I say he was a giant and a genius and he was overwhelmed when he discovered his technique. I have seen some originals in Glasgow, Liverpool, London, New York and Washington so I know what I’m talking about.
If I were a millionaire I’d buy one and stare at it.

2009-02-22T09:43:00.001Z

Air navigation

Sales of Fray Bentos steak pies and Bisto are up. Ahhh, Bisto, pass the gravy boat. You shouldn’t be sniffy about it. In toxic times we reach for the consolation of the breast, get over it.
My mother of yesteryear would often bake pies for us. All from scratch of course, (never EVER Fray Bentos) not even jus-rol pastry.
Steak, apple, you name it; mince rounds…

Man walks into the butchers….
“Can I have a mince round?”
“Yes, but we’re closing in 20 minutes.”

Anyway, were we happy? Were we buggery.
We wanted the new fangled pizza pies, Dream Topping, Instant Whip, Cremola Foam, Kia Ora, and Irn Bru.
That’s right, shock horror, we were allowed fizzy drinks, diluting drinks, cremola foam, and frozen florida orange concentrate, the lot; all at the same time.
It was never either or.
Same with biscuits; there was no biscuit hierarchy in our house, everything was fair game.
We had a breakfast, lunch at school, and a compulsory carnivorous evening meal at the big table and no mucking about with your cutlery. We were never thinner or fitter.
We had no teeth right enough, but so what, the dentist was a sadist, everyone said so, even his poor wife.
Can’t remember my point, oh yes, no it’s gone, sorry.

The Florida orange came frozen in a tubular thing. This was pre ringpull so I can't remember how it opened, anyway, Mater would put it in a big glass jug with water, to dilute and thaw it out for us. It was a treat.

We didn't like it , we thought it was shit. "Is there any pineappleade left?" we would moan.

Still can't remember the point, sorry.

2009-02-20T15:07:00.001Z

Not a dry eye in the house.

(it's a slow day.)

Don't mind me, I just like to sing this next one when I'm pressing my simmits.

2009-02-17T10:25:00.005Z

British snow for British workers

“...and that floating hotel they’ve got? Five star."
“um, it looks like a prison barge to me…”
“It’s a palace. Cinema and everything.”

Lloyd has that way, that signature way, of the drinker, smoker, and cod philosopher of holding a glass of whisky and cigarette in the same hand.

“Some of them are on two and three hundred pound a week, all found."

He is my host and a generous one. He has given me use of cruet and included me in tonight’s lock-in so I must hide my lack of grace. It would be bad form otherwise. It would be shocking bad form, even for me. The fact I have a bar tab has nothing to do with it.

“Lazy shiftless bastards the lot of them…”
“The Italians?”
“…no! Those Bolshie union men from Lincolnshire. Never liked Wiltshire neither, don’t ask me why.”

Like all Other People, he has no rigour, he is unfamiliar with parallax let alone method, to him, it is axiomatic. Thankfully the news screen has changed to Africa. Quick drag on his Lambert & Butler;

“He’s another one. I’ve gone right off him.”
“Mandela?”
“Yeah, look at him, bloody rolling in it, he’s minted that one.”
“Well, I don’t know…
“AND him!"
“Morgan Tsvangirai?”
“That’s him. Shandy Rye! Yeah, coining it in, he is. Smith was right. Look what they’ve done to the place, bloody shambles. From your neck of the woods too, I believe.”
“Never!”
“Yes! Smith’s father was a jock butcher from Kirkintilloch, I’m telling you…”

With the ease of a boy playing cowboys and Indians, he can extend his first two fingers, Superking and all, and make a gun to aim in my face to emphasise the points as he goes; “That’s… what… I’m… saying…” ( bang… bang… bang…)

Pair of Collared doves snuggling up in the cold in Perthshire.
Click on the picture to see the pair of them. This is all Sarah's fault.

2009-02-11T23:27:00.001Z

It’s strange but true.
If I had any guts I’d shoot myself.
You may be interested to know I have an unlicensed Brno rifle and a side by side multichoke. My kitchen drawers are swimming in shells. So much for “Responsible Keeper.”
My best friend, now dead and buried in the ash pits of God-awful Lanarkshire, explained it to me:
“ He was too old, it was too much, he couldn’t start again.”
I am a first rate shot.
In the school’s corps in 1971 we were given WD 303s and two-foot bayonets. We loved it. We couldn’t run. We fell over our webbing and the bayonets were longer than our thigh bones and dug into our calves yet we were ready to shoot any bastard (German) that dared to take us on.
Another dead friend visited me out of the blue in 1980. He was RUC. Can you believe it? He had medals and a citation and a Colt 45 automatic in his pocket. I was on that long vac between first and second year at Trinity. I had returned in triumph. I didn’t tell anyone the truth. That it was shit; a disaster.
Easter and summer, I had come back to Perthshire , I was 21 and what a conquering twat I was .
We walked to a field and let off at the rabbits and rats.
Twang!
It’s a cross between bang! And twing!
The shell came out the side and hit me in the head.
I never understood it.
I thought he had shot me in the head.
Eight moths later he was “killed in action.”
They tortured him and booby-trapped his body with gelignite.
He was the Catholics’ Catholic.
You could not have met a bigger Pape.
They sent a robot out to collect his body. The robot cut the wires and brought him back.

2009-01-18T21:57:00.000Z

Gone to Tahiti.

2009-01-18T09:48:00.004Z

The WI Investigates....porn in the local press

I recently took a call from the Women’s Institute.

“Who is this?” was the husky enquiry.
“I’ll be whoever you want me to be, darling.” I answered neutrally.
“Are you The Proprietor?”
“I am called many things.” I said, flicking through my cue cards to the “Ps”.

To let you know, I have a small interest in a premium phone service. It’s just a sideline to keep the wolf from the door you understand; beer money, nothing more, honestly.
I offer two services:
“Adrian, The Obliging Plumber” targeting the housewife demographic and
“Adrian, The Compliant Plumber” for the homosexualist brigade.
Do you see the difference? I am nothing if not PC., one has to be, in this game.
I use the same number for both services; it saves money. But, but, I have found it is no good rambling on about cunnilingus to gay men, they hang up too soon, and vice versa. So, my immediate problem was to determine the sex of this caller.
And again, not for the first time, I heard a distinct sigh so I relaxed into my spiel.
I advertise in Scottish Motor Mart and the Perthshire Advertiser.

It's a far cry from my first steps into the world of adult chat lines.
For example, on Day One I had a very tricky woman. A maths teacher I think.
God, I still cringe. I was so unprofessional.

"Have you a big one?"
"Spanner?"
"No, dick. I mean dick, a big dick. Have you a big penis? Jesus H!"
"Sorry, sorry, yes it’s huge."
"How big is it?"
"Um, length or, oh, what’s the word?...Girth!"
"Girth?"
"Look, it’s fifteen inches long and it’s huge!"
"What’s that in centimetres?"
" er, 75"
"Fuck off!"
"No wait! My mistake, 35! Yes, it’s 35 centimetres long."
"God that IS big."
"Yeah. You better believe it Doll."
"Don’t call me Doll."
"Sorry."
"Is it 35 cm long just now? Right at this minute?"
"Oh yeah"
"Well, where is it?"
"What do you mean; ‘where is it?’ It’s right here."
"I mean, is it exposed or still in your trousers?"
"Um, "
"I knew it! It’s not 35 centimetres long at all, is it?"
"Well not right now..."
"No, I thought not."
"I can make it that long if you want me to."
"And just how would you do that? Surgery?"
"Look here, I am an honest businessman trying to scratch a living and I can do without you madam, carping on and on about my genitals, size thereof or not!"
"You sound just like my husband, I want my money back."
"Maroon Leisure SA regrets no refunds are available, terms and conditions apply, check press for details."

2009-01-17T10:56:00.000Z

Byron or Arnold Bennett?

My glasses, that is, spectacles, are the best in the shop. They are called Byron. A more inferior model would be the Arnold Bennett, or even Milton.
D’ye see the pattern?

I intend to open my own marketing service giving everyday items more exciting names.
For example, the top of the range ice-making machine is not called the Viking 3000 or even the Frostmaster Delux, no it is called The Scotsman!

Who would have thought?

As a start, I am looking around, and I see my little computer speakers, I shall call them the Cicero. Big sub woofer would be…the Churchill?

I dunno, I’m losing it a bit. Help me out.

Dishtowels! The Yasser, or the Mother Theresa, or top of the range, um, the Molly!

What you reckon?

2009-01-15T11:28:00.003Z

Cleanliness is next to godliness & manners maketh the man.

Below, are the replies I lost to the ether. See? I’m not a total asshole.

Pat, you would think that those privileged enough to attend such tirribly, tirribly elite institutions as Trinity and the LSE would be fiscally independent by the time they were 45 wouldn’t you?
I mean the very idea that on the other hand one might stagger out of them into the real world at 26, desperately trying to remember one’s own name, having a half-assed mental breakdown at 27, then too quickly marrying an unsatisfactory wife, and then being honey-trapped by a Mossad agent at 49 (49 ferchristssakes) when one was on one’s uppers would be enough for any over-matched man, but apparently not.
Spies? I should live so long.

Savannah What happened to Syrup Sex? I’ll just tell you. I put the lid back on the tin when I wasn’t thinking , but guess what, I’ve got a new spoon, and I shall have my syrup, yes Sir, every day if I am spared.

Scarlet I knew it would be jazz number threes, I knew it in my marrow. And you are posh. Anyone says different gets a punch up the hooter.
Ax

Boyo! It is Popery. You are right! Ask three economists for a forecast, you get four answers. Badoom tish. Btw that bridge you shoed me, yeah that one…stay off it on the 25th , just sayin’ that’s all. Even that most tedious of heroes Welshmanman cannot save you.

Sarah, Inkspot, Pat Never trust a bank. Like, never. My word is my bond? Yeah, rightsville. They are run by the global anti-Semitic conspiracy.

Eryl Cheery is as cheery does.

Conan My bile is spent. (just like me money) Oish.

Conan Drumm said...

The only thing to pour on his grave would be a bottle of Milton.

11:24 AM, January 07, 2009

Conan Drumm said...

...that's Friedman, not Keynes...

12:25 PM, January 07, 2009

scarlet-blue said...

I'm rubbish at economics.
Apologies for my brief privatisation, I was wondering what it would be like to be proper posh... it was lonely.
Sx

12:38 PM, January 07, 2009

Sarah said...

i've had Guinness in an English pub.. i prefer stella artois, even if this guy from Liverpool told me it was "cheap". lagers over stouts any day.. but that's probably my "yank" upbringing, with the beer that's like water. if i wanted a full on meal, i'd eat one.

11:06 PM, January 07, 2009

Sarah said...

economics is best left to people who bother balancing their checkbooks.. i don't, not because i don't have to. but because i'm lazy.

11:08 PM, January 07, 2009

Comment deleted

This post has been removed by the author.

12:32 PM, January 08, 2009

inkspot said...

Sarah is spot on. Thank god for transatlantic insight. Balancing chequebooks is the bank's job. Of course, if you have two and a piece of stick, then they'll balance each other quite nicely.

3:49 PM, January 08, 2009

PI said...

Inkspot and Sarah: you trust the banks to balance your cheque books?
Blimey!

4:04 PM, January 09, 2009

Eryl Shields said...

It does seem awfully cheery Doc.

5:46 PM, January 09, 2009

Sarah said...

PI: i didn't say i trusted them, you underestimate my laziness.

Maroon: "you have mail."

6:17 PM, January 09, 2009

No Good Boyo said...

Economics is Popery. Your hocus-pocus comment is all the proof I need, Maroon.

The K Man, my legal advisor, also studied at the LSE. Not law, I hasten to add.

11:15 AM, January 10, 2009

scarlet-blue said...

I play a Yamaha Alto, YAZ 52, Dr Maroon. I'm on Vandoren Jazz reeds - no.3. You'd best start on something weaker though.... you have to learn Dr.

Oh, sorry, I'm replying to your question on an earlier post.
Sx

10:58 PM, January 10, 2009

savannah said...

three things:

online banking works.

maroon reads his email?

what happened to syrup sex?

xoxox

12:46 PM, January 12, 2009

Comment deleted

This post has been removed by the author.

11:10 PM, January 12, 2009

PI said...

I used to think that everybody who went to the LSE ended up a revolutionary - rather like Cambridge and spies. Am I wrong?

3:30 PM, January 13, 2009

2009-01-12T23:46:00.002Z

Tamla Motown is 50 today!

Got my link up again. Sorry all for the delay. I will reply to my wonderful commenters forthwith.

2009-01-05T21:04:00.003Z

You may be interested to know that among the many things thrown in my face recently, perhaps the most and yet least discouraging is my economic past.

If you have ever owned a BMW or drunk Guinness in an English pub, you will know what I'm talking about. Nobody but nobody can let it lie, they MUST comment.

"Guinness eh? Can't stand it meself."

"BMW. Not all they're cracked up to be. My brother-in-law had one, secondhand right enough, not a new one like this, but he said they were shite. He's a mechanic."

Same with economics.

I'm bringing it up because Walters has died.
Tell me where he is buried and I will piss on his grave.
In fact I will go to Liverpool and run a bus and we shall drink beer on the way and all of us shall piss on his grave.

Then I will move on to the West Midlands, East Midlands, Northumbria, Central Belt, Cumbria, Derbyshire, West Country, in fact, all the bits he shat on.

I'll be a millionaire in no time. It's an ill wind.

2009-01-01T10:36:00.004Z

A Guid New Year!

Remember when British TV was the best in the world?
I've just spent an improving hour watching some unknown naturalist climbing trees.
It used to be about the bugs and stuff up the tree, now it's about her climbing up a rope.
Why don't they just throw a bucket of shite over the screen and be done with it?

I think I shall bathe and change the bed linen whether it needs it or not.

I Know, Let's have a party. A summer one. Yay.

Rock on, me bredren.

2008-12-31T00:06:00.005Z

2008,
So farewell then…
It’s been a funny old year. Bit too bloody funny if you ask me. Still, horizons broadened, no arrests, met Boyo: Yeah, all things considered I’d say it was on the credit side.
And, there was the odd touch of genius about the place.

Which was nice.

Here’s one here;

Why does everyone have to bang on about sex the whole time? There are other things, you know, and I don't mean food or sums.
Here is a list of other things:
The M25 upgrade
Co-ordinated half-point rate cuts
The Clone Trooper Helmet
Salford Quays
Noble rot
Jonathan Kelsey for Mulberry
Foinavon
Broviac catheters
Arnold Palmer
Ambre Solaire
The Hillman Husky

Oh, before I forget, If God spares me, I SHALL. Every single day.

See you all in 2009.

2008-12-29T20:29:00.002Z

2009 Resolutions

As God is my witness,

I will follow my own script.
I will visit Las Vegas for the first time
I will go back to New York
I will use my spectacles to read the Indie on Saturday and the Observer on Sunday
I will accept my weird eating habits
I will buy wonderful bread and make sandwiches
I will watch TV under a blanket
I will eat olives and smoked salmon and blinis
I will visit the pub on Saturdays for two drinks max then return for a nap at four
I will have just one glass of wine on Sunday until I have helped with dinner
I will remain kosher
I will be charitable
I will be faithful
I will be honourable
I will write about Islamist terror cells in Clackmannanshire
I will never compromise
I will tell the world about Dr Maroon
I will be me
PLAY IT LOUD!! ALRIGHTAH !!

2008-12-12T19:44:00.004Z

Have arrived Windhoek 1300 hrs today.
No jetlag just knackered.
Had two bloody marys on flight from Johannesburg [sp?] and fell down stairs gratefully onto Namibian soil.
Locals thought I was so pleased to be back that I was kissing tarmac just like JPII. They weren't far wrong
Luckily it is full summer here (42 Celcius) so have sweated it out in 20 minutes and am now ready to hit the town. No sign of any cholera YET.
Cannot embed song (shitey bloody hotel computers) so will type out link below.

Back soon.

2008-12-01T00:13:00.004Z

See when I'm pissed? I do love led Zepplin. They've got sumpfing, god knows what it is, but it's summpfinn.
This is for you because I love you all so much. It's almost poetry. It isn't, but it almost is. Whatever it is, it has balls, and that is what matters at the end of things, it has balls and gumption and they were a fantastic band. They were the very best of bands.

If the sun refused to shine etc.

2008-11-29T19:57:00.004Z

Minus 6 all day.
The first sniff of a deep frost is always profoundly evocative for me. It’s an acid flashback is what it is. I am returned to the bedroom I had as a fourteen year old, God knows why I am transported back there, it’s just where I am taken is all.

It was a cool bedroom, everyone said so. I had painted a big Oor Wullie sitting on his bucket on one wall and a big version of the face on the King Crimson LP on the other. I had posters from Sounds and pictures cut out of NME, especially Frank Zappa, tacked and sellotaped to the wall and I played my records on a huge valve radiogram the size and shape of a chest freezer. I bought it at a scout jumble sale and they, the 72nd Troop, brought it round in a van and bustled it into the house in their kilts totally ignoring my mother’s embarrassing objections.

And then there were the fabulous mobiles that I made out of tin foil hanging from the ceiling. It’s a thirteen foot ceiling so they worked really well. I had painted the ceiling and frieze deep blue and stuck white stars on it. I loved those mobiles. They were an excellent embodiment of some-sort-of-Roger-Dean-type-mysticism.

Back to the green microdot. On just such a cold night as last night then, I sloped back in, having dropped some LSD. Well I ask you. There I was, fourteen and a half, eyes like organ stops, sitting up in bed listening to Wishbone Ash considering the mobiles and the soft focus girls in Mayfair, when God unexpectedly turned up in my head to tell me everything.

I mean the lot. The whole meaning, the structure, the point, 42, everything. I felt very pleased with myself. It was a marvellous privilege having God explain everything. After an hour or so, once God was sure I understood all these marvellous revelations, they were gently withdrawn, in the way you would remove a book from the hands of a sleeping child.

By December the room was emulsioned white, the mobiles, posters, and radiogram were gone in favour of Habitat Scandinavianism and I had inveigled my way into the 17th birthday party of a girl whose boyfriend never turned up. Obviously I kept the Frank Zappa pictures, because he, more than anyone, I realise now, was who I wanted to look like! Can you believe it? Frank Zappa. Me.

35 years later I was floating through Tate Liverpool on its disturbing sprung floor, tutting and sighing to myself at their utterly pisspoor mobiles when I was arrested by something much more to my taste; the altogether breathtaking sight of a beautiful woman. Well, who would have thought it?

If you are very, very, good, I will tell you what the smell of woodsmoke does to me. RZZZZZ!

2008-11-25T10:58:00.001Z

I cannot believe the gall of David Miliband.
Instead of putting his shoulder to the wheel on the home front, he rushes off to Syria to kowtow on our behalf. Syria is at war with Israel with the avowed intention of invading the Golan Heights (Israeli sovereign territory) in order to launch terrorist attacks against innocent civilians.
He must know that you cannot have any truck with despots like Bashar al-Assad so what is his game? In what way can this nauseating appeasement of Hamas and Hizbullah and the Sunni insurgents advance Israeli or our own homeland security?
I hope Miliband’s road to Damascus takes him through Tel Aviv where some sense might rub off on him.

2008-11-23T15:56:00.002Z

I have a Geraldine who helps around the place sometimes; she it was who had the misfortune to answer a bailiff’s adamant knocking upon my door yesterday.
It being just noon, I was still foetal under a downie on the chaise longue; a shelled clam of a man, my bulging eyes peeping out on a fearful dangerous world. I listened.

“Is the old devil in?”

(Please God, do not forsake me now. Stop up my ears!)

“I’m sorry?”
“You will be; is he in?”
“I’m afraid Dr Maroon is incommoded today.”
“Is he pissed?”
“I really don’t think…”
“No, you probably don’t. Is he fearful pissed?”
“You cannot measure genius by such a yardstick.”
“Oh yes I can. Where is he?”

There was a two second absence of sound, then eager footsteps. Christ, she’s coming this way! Duck! Incoming!

“There you are. Or are you? Why are you trembling?”
“Clarissa.”
“Stop croaking.”
“I may feel like it but I hadn’t thought to croak just yet.”
“Yes, très drôle. Your voice, what has happened to it?”
“I have been singing.”

She stared at me an uncomfortable minute then busied herself at the sideboard. There is no finer sound than the preparation of a complex drink by an expert.

“Drink this.”
“What is it?”

Another uncomfortable minute and perhaps the beginnings of an impish smile.

“A cure.”
“Some verse springs to mind.”
“What? ‘The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle, the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true.’?”
“No, I was thinking of ‘…And when the Angel with his darker draught, Draws up to Thee - take that, and do not shrink.’.”

My hand reached out of its own volition.

2008-11-19T15:51:00.000Z

I see I haven't lost my touch.
What day is it and where is Clarissa?

2008-11-12T08:33:00.001Z

I can’t keep it in! I want to tell everyone, shout it from the rooftops!
Not five hours since, the most beautiful and magnificent human being it has been my privilege to know, paid the singular honour of asking if I would join them in perhaps the most sacred adventure remaining to me.
To say I am overjoyed would be an obscenity.
I am jubilant!
It is fitting that you, my dearest friends, should be the first to know.
It was here after all, on these unworthy pages, that I tentatively introduced the individual in question. There was some friction at the time, I remember, a natural anxiety that my attention was being diverted from you, but nay, for my part, that was never the case. At any rate, we are a family at peace again, all water under the bridge and I hope you will join me in offering a Cape to Rio welcome.
I know you will.
I have been engaged previously in similarly uncertain circumstances but I have given my assurance this time that I will not drop the ball.
James (Jimmy) McGlinchey, the Cumbernauld Cat, wants me as his ghost writer! That’s right! ME! Can you believe it? I haven’t slept.

Three nights in another town.

2008-11-06T21:03:00.003Z

Jimmy Page kept a better hotel room. I was not embarrassed by the premium TV channels on the bill but £14.40 extra for laundering the bed linen was a first. Just desperate. Desperate.

I questioned everything on the bill of course, (Scrooge) big mistake. They would not listen to me as I tried to explain that the stains were chocolate. Just that. Chocolate: and how I had obviously fallen asleep on a Fry’s Chocolate Cream.

I was mortified, just mortified.

I don’t think they approved of my torn carrier bag of munchies on the second night either. A trail of Monster Munch and Wotsits across the lobby floor will exasperate the most taciturn of concierges. I had an excuse; before leaving Perthshire I had been given some top notch pollen to try out and had developed an insatiable appetite for corn based snacks at around 4 am.

Le weekend had gone so well up till then: the very best of company (a truly magnificent woman) copious strong drinks and a benign city eager to welcome us.

What day is it now? Thursday, right? Jesus. 72 hours.

72 hours and that’s me just coming round, that is to say, able to face a hair of the dog.

Where was I? Why, Heaven of course: dolts!

I promise to explain.

2008-10-27T19:00:00.003Z

She's a local girl, "Our Shirley"
You can tell. Wee ferrety face, attitude, skinny, I like her.
Fab song, she wrote it, good band too.
Yes, cheers me up.
I have spoken!

2008-10-26T09:25:00.000Z

On the twentieth day of the month I made an amazing resolution. Life in my leisure hours had been strenuous during the whole of September and most of October, so when I awoke with another frightful hangover, I decided emphatically to abstain for the duration. Teetotal.

I had to tell someone.

“Teetotal!” exclaimed Mrs Pouncer, much shocked. “You shouldn’t joke about such things and you in the throes of a hangover. Surely a hair of the dog at dinner?”
“Not one drop.”
“Tut tut Achilles, one glass of wine.” she persisted.
“Not even if it was champagne. My mind’s made up. Drink is a curse and I’m done with it for I can’t stand it.”
“Nobody is asking you to stand it, I’ll get them.” she explained, “I am not without means.”
“It’s no odds,” I said “not another drop will I taste –“
“Stop, stop!” she interrupted, more shocked than ever, “Don’t say anything rash for you might be struck down dead and then you’d be sorry for what you said. Do you mean to tell me that you are going teetotal altogether?”
“Hardly. I’m not that desperate, I wouldn’t care to go all that length, but I’m going to be teetotal until Martinmas.”
“Well I think you foolish Achilles,” she said, “October of all months. Why, summer is hardly over and Christmas is coming. Could you not put it off for a more sensible time?”
“No, October is the month for me, forbye, it’s half over. I tell you I’m thraiped with it.”
“How do you mean?” she asked.
“It’s neither muckling nor mickling.” I explained.
“Are you taking a rise out of me?”
“No, of course not.”
“Well just talk as your mother and father brought you up to talk then. Now sither, we won’t go over the ins and outs of this, but I think I aught to talk to your mother. What do you say to that?”
“I don’t know,” I muttered, hanging my head.
“Well don’t look like you’ve lost a shilling and found a sixpence, you’re not dead yet. Straighten up! Now sither, you’re not a young man, you have a long way to go, but you can’t do it by thisen. Think on.”

She left me feeling she had said something sage and shrewd although I was unable to fathom quite what she was getting at. It took a couple of drinks before I understood.

2008-10-19T10:29:00.004+01:00

Daphne reminds us how much easier it is to rise than fall. For many, the very prospect of modified cloth cutting is too much and they hang themselves (quite ingeniously) in the front hall stairwell.
A young neighbour of mine did that. I discussed it with my closest friend.*

“Why d’ya think he did it? There must have been an alternative.”
“He was tired. He couldn’t face starting again. There was no alternative.”

I love when laymen give an opinion on economics. Small business men are the best. They come out with the funniest remarks. What they never consider is that they are testing predictions against an intelligent system. They haven’t a hope.

*My closest friend lies buried in the ash pits of Lanarkshire, put there by his lazy doltish family.

2008-10-18T22:18:00.002+01:00

For Inkspot

Three Deborah Kerrs in Colonel Blimp and three here at

Cape to Rio

I know which is my favourite.

2008-10-15T20:37:00.001+01:00

Because I'm Worth it.

2008-10-14T00:54:00.006+01:00

You may be interested to know that I shall soon be opening a Berkshire branch of AHK Maroon Chiropractology Limited.
I shall cater for sciatica (leg pain) sport injury, migraine, stress, bullying in the workplace, slipped disc and arthritis.
I have already insured my hands for One Million Pounds at Lloyds of London. That is £100 000 per finger!

I am presently auditioning 25 year old assistants. You know who I mean, no make up, fresh, beautiful, pony tail, anais anais. I will pay full equity rates plus 50%. You must not skimp on professionalism.

Berkshire is wonderful. I love it. Sooooo bucolic. Constable country.
Its lanes are spattered with charming pubs and twists and bends which the motor just adores.
One strange thing, the livestock form swastikas when feeding in the field!
I assume the farmers have a sense of humour and lay out their cattle cake upon the sward in that unfortunate symbol for some English reason that is beyond me.
It's like the hoax forest swastika in East germany.

2008-10-11T21:29:00.002+01:00

With me along some B road yet unknown,
That just divides the desert from the sown
Where name of Costa and McDonalds scarce is known
And pity Gordon Brown on his throne

Here with a Loaf of Bread not far from Slough
A Grand Cuvee, a GPS - and Thou
Beside me panicking in the wilderness
And Berkshire is Paradise enow.

Ah, fill the Cup:-what boots it to repeat
How time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn TO-MORROW and dead YESTERDAY,
Why fret about them if TO-DAY be sweet!

2008-10-08T05:11:00.003+01:00

For some time now I have had this terrrrible realisation.

Within the next five to ten years I will suffer an embolism. I will be confined to a Bath chair and only the philanthropy of the Royal Society will keep me from the poorhouse.

Worse, I will be provided with the services of the most beautiful and magnificent woman to care for me. I shall be unable to move, react or speak. I will write notes in a small crabbed hand to her which she will ignore.

Worse, in the course of taking me to the bar and putting a straw in my mouth her magnificent body will brush past me at every opportunity and there will be no way for me to react or cop a feel.

Worse, all this will be plain to her and she will take advantage of me, pretending to listen as I try and whisper in her perfumed ear whereupon she will take the complete opposite meaning quite wilfully.

Worse, she will answer enquiries on my behalf taking care that the answers she gives cause the most consternation.

Worse, she will be punishing me for a lifetime’s slacking and wasting and dissolution. I will deserve it and know in my heart that I deserve it.

2008-10-05T22:10:00.008+01:00

Today, Mater and I enjoyed the West End sunshine and pushed out through the Byres Road throng for lunch in Ashton Lane.. She was on particularly good form and never once brought up her disappointment that Peter Mandelson was back in cabinet for the third time and I have yet to be called. (such high expectations). We had lunch in a little Italian bistro and there were no cracks in the crockery and the ladies’ lavatory was clean and well stocked with paper towels and soap. Result!
We were in her crowd. That is to say 50 000 Glasgow West Enders of all ages; involved at the university, or in art or the media or just plain flamboyant. Ask Eryl, she knows what I’m talking about.
We had a bottle and a half of some Italian wine which was red I believe. She put it away like the old days and we stumbled off over the cobbles for a fag and a coffee and a sticky bun. In the next hour, we watched another multitude, there were no clones, none of them were ugly and Viviane Westwood would have passed unremarked.
I am so old.
Hey! I noticed young men are back into Bono boots! The ones you tuck your trousers into, with straps and buckles and stuff. Dead 1980’s.When the fucking Hell did that happen?

2008-10-04T19:09:00.008+01:00

CSI Miami vs CSI Glasgow.

Consider the scene. A man is engrossed in a private passion when from 36000 feet a small meteor of blue ice, not the size of a football, crashes through his roof killing him instantly.

Miami

Within the hour, CSI Miami arrive, they take samples, temperatures, they shine a laser up through the holes in the ceilings to verify trajectories. In another hour they have the flight path of the plane and the name of the stewardess who pressed the button.

Glasgow.

Three days later, CSI Glasgow kick in the door.
They are appalled by the crockery in the sink and the piles of bed linen awaiting laundry uplift. They step round the body, sneering at the red tartan pyjamas. The blue ice has melted over a pleasing Turkish rug.

“What a stink!”
“Jesus look at this, he’s been so drunk he never made it to the bog”
“Dirty…drunken…bastard”
“Aye.”
“Christ look at that”
“What?”
“There’s a hole in the roof and the lazy fucker hasn’t even put a bit of felt over it.”
“What an arsehole.”
“Drink is a terrible thing”
“You said it mate”
“Right, call it in, I’ll see if there’s any whisky left in the house.”

As they return to their flashing car, they comment on the state of Scottish alcoholism.

“Did you see how his dick was stuck in that syrup tin?”
“ Yeah. Now, that WAS fucking weird.”

2008-10-01T22:07:00.003+01:00

That historic meeting.

AHK: Clarissa, darling! What can I get you?
CLdeM P: A taxi?
AHK: I tried to warn you. Brandy, that’s good for shock.
CLdeM P: I thought you were being modest. Jesus! Make it a Bushmills and coke.
AHK : Shall I supersize that?
CLdeM P : What do you think?
AHK : It’s just shock, it will wear off.
CLdeMP : I fucking hope not. Oh God, those emails!
AHK : You said they were erotic
CLdeM P : Yes, but at the time, I imagined they were sent by…
AHK : Who? Cary fucking Grant?
CLdeM P : Well, not Norman fucking Wisdom.
AHK : Cheers.
CLdeM P : Sante.
AHK : Another?
CLdeM P : Keep them coming and what the hell is that?
AHK : What is what?
CLdeM P : I take it you have nothing in your pocket?
AHK : I’m sorry, it has a mind of its own just now.
CLdeM P : Well can’t you drape a coat over your lap: it’s distracting?
AHK : It has been a problem; there isn’t a stone wall left unmolested in Scotland.
CLdeM P : You’d stand a better chance with a stone wall.
AHK : I’ve got gravel rash for Christ’s sake.
CLdeMP : Are you quite sure your parents weren’t related?
AHK : God, I need another too.
CLdeM P : In that case, get to the bar!
AHK : I can’t stand up now. It happened when you walked in.
CLdeM P : Carry your coat in front of you.
AHK :.Carry my coat? I could fucking hang it on it.
CLdeM P : Jesus, call him over then.
AHK : I could hang an anvil off it.
CLdeM P : Yeah, yeah, just call him over.
AHK : So you’ll stay for another?
CLDdeM P : God! Why not?

Cont. page 94

2008-09-27T22:04:00.003+01:00

COMMENT FUCKING MODERATION!

Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? That little bastard Glark must have chewed through some wires in his demented frenzy and to think of all the virtual steaks I fed him. Fucking ingrate! I will get this sorted. I promise. While we’re waiting, whatya think of the stark modernity? I like it, me. It’s a whiteout on the top of Ben Macdui in the spring when even your sat nav compass is useless. I love whiteouts up there. You have to stand still and wait them out. It can be ten or thirty minutes. They are incredibly disorienting and you feel totally free. I was hit in the forehead by a snow bunting during one. It must have been doing 30 mph when BLAM straight into the Tefal brow of Yours Truly. It was a spiritual experience for both of us. I survived right enough, the poor bunting didn’t so it was probably more life changing for her. I buried her in the snow 4500 feet up in the Scottish highlands. Great days.

2008-09-24T00:52:00.006+01:00

Glark's Gone!

He heard his master's voice and chewed through his chain.
I tried to stop him but the little fucker bit me and ate the whole sidebar.

I am confused and upset, so while we're waiting for site repairs please stay tuned for
Charlie and the Chocolate Starfish.

A small post about anal bleaching in post feminist Britain.

2008-09-20T01:35:00.003+01:00

You will be delighted to know that this is the last from the jukebox for a while
Hurrah!
Back to Debbie.
Well, she's a looker ain't she? I like the squinty shapes her mouth makes as she sings. Like a Gibbs SR toothpaste advert.
And such a snappy little dresser!

2008-09-17T19:19:00.002+01:00

May I be indulged? Not long now, just a little longer.
We're coiling up the ropes and polishin' the gimbals, raking throught the signals chest for the blue peter.
Wind's changin' see. Turnin' warm, turnin' offshore, tide's stopped too.
It'll turn soon now as well.

2008-09-16T17:21:00.002+01:00

Think we'll have some more Janis.
It has been a very Joplinesque week. And I have been singing White rabbit for days, esp the intro (one of the best ever) and I need to clear my palate.

Play LOUD!

2008-09-14T22:51:00.005+01:00

I am, you may be surprised to hear, a brave man. I take no credit; it’s a trick!
I learned how to do it on an Outward Bound course. Any fear, you just switch it off. I have to qualify that by saying I am also shot through with a craven cowardice like veins of gold in quartz. That’s right! It’s the cowardice that keeps us all alive.
Anyway, I have made the drinks run to Tesco these last five nights and bought the exact same items every time. Three litres of perry, two litres of squeezed orange juice, a bottle of Basics vodka and some fairy liquid just for the look of the thing. I have made sure my shirt is tucked in and my shoes are polished. (cowardice, see?). This is all to do with Kim Ayres and me saying to him that I wanted to work the checkouts. I’m sure of it.
Anyway, the other night there was a young student type on the till and bugger me if he didn’t engage me in conversation the little weasel. lets call him "Overly familiar checkout guy"
(OFCG)

So, while he was packing:

OFCG: alright?
Me: yeah...
OFCG: been a hard day, eh?
Me: yeah, something like that..
OFCG: hard week more like!

I thought; this is just what I need. They are either squashing all your stuff down the end of the conveyor belt or doing behavioural science 101 on you. So, I LOOKED at him. I looked into his very soul and he shut the fuck up.

So next night I bought the exact same stuff and I’m walking down looking for an empty till and I see him again. My first thought was “fuck” then, “Christ, I am a customer! I’ll go to any till I please.”
So he says hi and starts to put the stuff through. He stopped at the Basics vodka. Something had clicked. He looked up at me and it was all I could do not to wink at him.
That’s right my friend, the psycho’s back for his fix.
He never bothered to ask for a loyalty card.

2008-09-13T20:32:00.000+01:00

Am I a domestic god? I have spent the best of the day cleaning the Perth foot on the ground. It was far from improving. Fear and loathing in the heart of darkness more like. I am concerned that a future burglar might disapprove of my obvious corner cutting and leave me a note calling me a slovenly bastard.
When do you know when it’s time to change the bed? When your very best Egyptian cotton sheets look like the Turin fucking Shroud, that’s when.

That’s not the whole reason right enough. No. I was on the drinks run to Tesco and overheard four boys talking at the door. One of them made a remark to his friend about a girl he knew and I was suddenly so angry. So very angry indeed I will never repeat it so don’t ask. I looked at the four of them and I knew I’d get a beating and I still wanted to jump up and down on his vile head. I’d be in fucking Broadmoor unable to explain myself.
Ho hum, a nice Jaffa cake and milky tea will cheer me up.
Nothing beats the smell of lavender pledge. Know what it smells like? Smells like victory. One day my war will be over.

2008-09-13T00:34:00.011+01:00

Derange! That's what they said. However, here it is because I love her so very much. The beautiful white song, sung by beautififul white kids, for beatiful white kids, in a beautiful white summer. white rabbit.

Nine years later, we, the punks of this world, spat in their eye.
Hooray!

nb play it loud!

I had a terrible terrible crush on Grace Slick, I finally shook it off three weeks ago last Wednesday. She's a bloody good singer.

2008-09-12T00:35:00.000+01:00

But, we must not leave the Jukebox just yet.
Ah yes London in the eighties.
Wasn’t it more sunny then?

2008-09-07T17:20:00.001+01:00

I was twenty before I took any notice of Janis Joplin. There was a film documenting her life on tour for a year. I watched it in a smelly little cinema in Cambridge high on hash. Fifteen minutes in, I was a convert. Watching her matured me and I was devastated to discover she was already dead.
This trip down the Maroon tow path must be a pain in the friggin’ haggis for you all.
I know SheBah will be reaching for her Gucci sick bag and we may not be here tomorrow (according to Ayres), so get it while you can.

Update: the bastard thing won’t embed so if you want to see it (and by Christ, you better) you must follow this link.
late update! It does embed.

These songs will finish soon I promise, there is nothing worse than a drunken host hogging the Dansette at the party.

Everyone got a drink?

LET’S SNOG!

2008-09-06T00:16:00.000+01:00

Love this song, and after all my mathematical profundity, what a welcome change!

2008-09-03T23:19:00.003+01:00

You will all be familiar with looking at a misshapen vase only to suddenly see the silhouettes of your handsome father and beautiful mother. Imagine then a remarkable young schoolboy surfing through mathematics like a bowl of frosties and now under the tutelage of a famous Cambridge don returned to his old school talent spotting. The young lad is struggling with something, it’s instinctive, and the old don tells him to relax, not to think, not to try and grasp the concept, just keep going, and see what you will see. Well, none of you know the language of mathematics, no offence, it’s not your fault, but that afternoon, something went clunk and the boy stared at the old don who wasn’t that old at all now that he noticed and the don smiled back, because he knew that the boy had just seen a landscape that he never knew existed. More, he knew how privileged the boy felt to have been led to such a precious gift.

Well the boy grew up and pissed some of his life away having a high old time of it, but that profound feeling of understanding and privilege returned to him today 10 minutes before he met his brand new chairman. So he smiled and his eyes watered a bit and he girded his loins and met his new chairman. He looked the fucker in the eye and led his team. He ran over his allotted time by an hour and at the end the new chairman thought the sun shone out his ass and shook his hand and told him to come and see him in Toulouse and Dick was furious because he said fuck all to him and he was back in his car on the M90 by 8pm and here I am, sitting here, wondering not for the first time, if there might be a God after all. If there is, She is smiling on me. I have been so lucky recently.

2008-09-02T06:12:00.002+01:00

And so, back to work keeping Britain's balance of payments in the red. The prospect fills me with such dread. I'd rather put my hand in a bag of ferrets. Aren't Monday nights awful? I once confessed to Ayres that I'd like to be a checkout girl at Sainsburys and just sit there all day pushing stuff past that laser thing. I said it would be great. After a while I would start making comments to the customers about all the rubbish they were buying. He was right, he said I'd hate it and I should buck my ideas up.
A Maroon was never beat! I shall set my lantern eyes and gimlet jaw to the wind and all shall break against me like hurricane Gustav (shit name for a storm) but I shall remain. Gigantic and magnificent.
Something like that. I'm off to work, wish me luck.

2008-09-01T15:04:00.001+01:00

I'm just a little blue today.

Here she is.

2008-08-31T19:18:00.003+01:00

Ok, that was good ol' Blondie.
This one's going out to a 'very good friend of mine, Mr Conan Drumm, I think he'll preciate it.
and also anyone else who's tryin' to get a handle on the ol' doctor, (yrs truly) here.

LETS ROCK!

Please stay tooned for Ella Fitzgerald,. (the best singer ever.)

2008-08-31T09:37:00.007+01:00

"No, I don't believe in luck..."

This week I have been mainly listening to Blondie and that little teaser who says she kissed a girl and liked it- the taste of her cherry chapstick. Well I ask you.

I had forgotten just how beautiful Debbie Harry was, so here she is.

Well it was either going to be her or Rick Wakeman.

2008-08-30T20:20:00.003+01:00

Doctor Maroon’s Hangover Cures Number 1

(There IS no number 2. Trust me, I’m a fucking Doctor)

Take 500 mg Paracetamol
Take 500mg ibuprofen
Take 500 mg aspirin BP
Take 1 Beecham’s powder.

Wash down with copious shambuie.
An Auld Alliance of Scotch and French, d’ye see?
Liqueur and champagne
You mix it 4:1 champagne to liqueur.
Put the champagne in the glass first you dolts!

(That carpet was cleaned last month.)

Swallow!

2008-08-29T23:11:00.000+01:00

2008-08-28T00:09:00.006+01:00

Just had a call from Mater. I was expecting it; they have a quality much prized by secret intelligence services around the world. They can pick up the slightest nuance, careless word, pause, anything and then focus on it with forensic ruthlessness using every lever in the toolbox to get IT out of you. It’s intrusive telepathy like in that film The Village of the Damned.

Hi mum,

Achilles, it’s your mother

Yeah I know, it tells me before I answer

How is everyone?

Fine thanks

How are you? How was your day? Still busy?

Well not so much…

Still having to work away overnight?

It’s tailing off now, we…

And what about within yourself?

What?

How are you, within yourself?

Is everything all right mum?

I am perfectly fine, it’s you I’m worried about.

Why are you worried about me?

How did you get on last Saturday at the dockyard?

It was fucking awful

That, is a terrible way to speak to your mother. Anyone could be listening.

Everyone’s out.

Someone could be listening at the exchange.

Really? I don't think so.

Hmmm

What. What is it?

Something’s different.

I’ve got to go mum there’s someone at the door.

Please keep in touch.

Right-mum-bye.

That was close.

2008-08-20T21:43:00.008+01:00

Shite for shore eyes.

What’s the old clown thinking about? Not only has he produced a bewk, but also called it “Being a Scot” Pass the sickbag Alice. Here’s a tip for you Shir Shean, STOP.
‘kin Hell. I mean, getting your nutty wife to ghost write your autobiography; why, that would be like me writing a tedious pisspoor tale about the True Cross being found in Scotland (Pilate’s birthplace) in a weak formulaic attempt to jump on the Da Vinci Code bandwagon…
Oh.

2008-08-14T20:29:00.012+01:00

Hi everyone, it’s time for MIDWEEK ROUNDUP! Foot Eater is in Sood Effrika (mid winter there) and is moaning that Cape to Rio is rotgut. Well of course the FIRST one is, but after that there is no finer raw white spirit currently on the market in Southern Africa.. I like mine with ice and bitter lemon, -ZESTY! Talking of which, our zesty southern belle Savannah, and Kitchen Bitch Eryl apparently visit our good friend Mr Gorilla Bananas, (Best Blog yeah, yeah, get on with it) but both remain silent. See that? Mr Bananas? I’ve still got it mate. Me an’ Sav go way back, back to the days of Dick Headley, and quite often we’ll burn the midnight oil with a tincture or two, And Eryl said she would spit in the Vice Chancellor's crème brulee if it came to it, so, you maybe get the awards chum, but I get the burds. Talking of which, Kim Ayres is moving in on Pat when we had an agreement, - he took an oath the bastard, - that he wouldn’t. The future of the Blogosphere is at stake! Funny how life in the unreal world of Russia and Georgia (not that one Sugar) is mirroring life as we know it here. Back off man, I’m a scientist. You’ve been warned. Conan Drumm, Chipping Norton MUST be a corruption of the French. Which brings me back to Foot Eater, and his solipstic claim that I was never further south than Kirkintilloch; Johannesburg mate! That’s the furthest south I’ve been. Any further south and you’re in Shackleton territory, which brings us back to… Nearly forgot. Harry Hutton (leader of our Order) posted the perfect post on the death of Solzhenitsyn. It was exactly what I wanted to say but was too crap to manage . It begins; "Champion bore Alexander Solzhenitsyn has died." That's the spirit.

Down the hatch! Now!

2008-08-07T21:25:00.005+01:00

Live, on videotape, from the stardust room of the British Legion, Chipping Norton…

It’s the MAROONS!

Before we open the envelope,

[and…clear! Two minutes everybody!].]

Some of you may have noticed recently that a new blogger has turned up. Mrs Pincer or Pounder or something, I can’t remember, I’ve hardly exchanged a word with her. Still, nonetheless, it would be inhospitable not to welcome new blood to the group, so to this end I’m off to Edinburgh to have a tryst.

What about Mrs Maroon? I hear you call. That is a problem I’ll admit, but I had a brainwave - I’m not going to tell her! She would only get the idea into her head that I was somehow dissatisfied and had decided to “play away” and this sort of thought can be disturbing to a woman so I thought it better to make up some tale about overnight project meetings, hey! It could happen, the globalised 24/7 world we live in…
I’m much more worried about Fatmammycat, my Ether Soul Mate and focus of all my hopes; but she seems determined to fall in love and live happily ever after, so I’ll just have to sit out the next 25 years (I have the patience of the Sphinx, well who wouldn’t with such a prize on offer?)
So that’s what I’m going to do.
In the meantime, because SafeT and Binty have turned up again, I am going to do the Maroons and for a change, there is going to be only one winner and we all know who it is. It’s like the football league, we know at the start of the season who’s going to be there at the end. MY DECISION IS FINAL.
I had planned to increase the tension by some means but couldn’t think of anything.
What I will say is this. The women bloggers are much, much better writers than the men. None of them can drive a car to save their lives but they all write better than any of us; Harry Hutton included [Leader of our Order]
I’ve wondered about this, whether blogging is a medium that particularly suits women for some reason, whatever it is, their quality of writing is ahead of ours by a country mile. Having said that, you get a bloody good laugh with the men, it’s a testosterone thing, the godam wimmin wouldn’t understand, right…

[back in 5, 4, 3, 2…]

Welcome back everyone. The winner of the Maroon 2008 for getting everything right and being the best of bloggers, like, all the time, is neither man nor woman but Mr Gorilla Bananas!

Tarra!

Mr Gorilla Bananas, couldn’t be with us tonight so his good friend Mynah Bird will accept the award on his behalf…

Quick, turn it over, I think Morse is starting on channel 10.

2008-08-04T23:03:00.004+01:00

Ivan Denisovich. Yeah, you and me both, mate.

2008-08-03T20:19:00.006+01:00

O.K.

Here's the skinny for all you budding ranchers out there.

You take the top one and breed it with the bottom one, then let them loose on the wide prairee.

2008-08-02T11:38:00.001+01:00

The secret of blogging!
This is my theory and it belongs to me (I own it).

When you’re at work you’re obsessing almost non stop about crap. You can’t turn it off. You have weird meetings about nothing and instead of tackling whatever it is we’re all there for, you’re wondering:
“Is my position strengthened or weakened by this? What did Dick mean by that last remark? Is he having a laugh? He won’t be laughing when I give him a fat lip for his trouble. Hmmm, Geraldine’s looking well these days, has she lost weight? SHE dressed in a hurry this morning hmmm… What was that? Maroon pay attention! Did I say that out loud?...”

It’s endless noise and then when you get into this world, the blogging world, all the noise stops, and it’s a bit silly; it’s a dinner party without having to feed anyone or polish the table.

That’s the secret.

We’re off to Perth Show today. It is a bit “county” but the show jumping at the end can be fun as can the guest of honour, who is always some American rancher called Hiram Pipesucker the Third…“who has come all this way, to buy a bull.”
Where else is he gonna get one? Wal Mart?

2008-08-02T00:06:00.003+01:00

Haloscan and blogger are shit.

I'm tryin to have a conbersation here and the comments are all over the shop.
the level of servive offered by British isps is bloody awfyul

2008-08-01T20:53:00.001+01:00

Bon appétit Mrs Pouncer.

(haloscan won't let me reply.)