I got nothin'.
NUFFINK.

You wanna piss?
What’s that?
You wanna piss?
No I don’t ! Thank you.
Whatabout the liedy? She wanna piss?
I’m fine thank you.
You sure? No wanna piss ?
Quite sure.
Well the lovely bambinas, THEY wanna piss!
NO!
SURE they do! They ALWAYS WANNA piss!
Right that’s it…
Pissa cake? They ALWAYS wanna pissa cake. We gorrit all. What kinda piss you wan’?


Bloody foreign waiters!

I’m sitting reading an old Pilot when by the pricking of my thumbs…

‘Dad? Can you “look at” my homework?’

‘Absolument!’ (I live for these times) ‘When’s it due back?’

‘Tomorrow’

(fuck) ‘Get it out then. What is it?’

An eternity as a rucksack is dragged in then rummaged through. The tension’s killing me. Edmund Hillary never had such a backpack.

‘It’s about dividing and percentage.’

‘What’s holding you up with it? Is it crossing down the remainder?’

‘Crossing down the…what’s that?’

‘It’s quite straightforward. I’ll show you, but first, we should return to first principles. Number Theory!’ (a joke)

A shadow of disappointment on the fairest of faces. His hair’s too long and curly for a tenyearold. It’s girlish. Three of his fingernails are black; what’s he been up to? He’s leaning over the table. There is no smell of woodsmoke or petrol or larceny coming off him. He points to the photocopy:

‘Em, we’ve to put the workings in the spaces.’

‘So I see’

‘Without a calculator!’

‘Precisement. That’s as it should be.’

‘Why?’

He’s close enough for me to check the cleanliness of his ear. I bet his pockets are a disgrace. His shoes are.

‘Say you were on a desert island.’

‘That’s what Mrs Wilson said!’

‘Who’s Mrs Wilson?’

‘My teacher.’

‘What, the one with the pony tail?’

‘Why would we do percentage on an island?’

I feel almost compelled to touch the top of his nose where his frowns meet, just to see what it feels like.

‘What happened to Mrs Thompson?’

‘That was last year.’

‘If you were on a desert island there’d be no batteries for a calculator.’

‘It doesn’t need batteries. See? If you put your finger over this bit, it goes off.’

‘What happened to your fingernails?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Say it [the calculator] went down with the ship. What would you do then?’ ( kids really hate a smart ass )

‘Well it’s just…numbers.’

‘Ah yes, you say that, but could you divide 576 oranges by 24 miles per hour?’

‘What?’

‘This first one is 576 divided by 24, so to start, we say: How many times will 24 go into 57?’

‘Em,’

‘Cover the 4 and the 7’

‘Eh?’

His mother comes in and puts on the kettle. I stop the torture. I put on a creepy moaning voice:

‘Oh NO! The Mummy Returns!’ (his favourite film)

‘No’

He’s trying not to laugh, trying to stay cross, but it’s too late. I’ve stood up with my arms out in front of me like a sleepwalker.

‘No!’

I grab his jumper as he runs for the door. I’ve got my arm round his neck in the death grip. I whisper in his clean ear:

‘The death grip of the Pharaoh, little one. Don’t move; your neck might snap.’

He keeps wriggling and sniggering in spite of himself. I know this sort of malarkey between us will end soon. Next year, next week.

‘Ugh, you’ve been smoking! Mum! He’s choking me! Mum!’

‘She cannot help you now.’

Recently, I am more conscious not to take these things too far, so I release him back to the hated homework. But a light bulb has come on over his head. Ping.

‘I’ll get Mum to help me.’

‘What good would she be on a desert island?’

‘She got the bonfire going.’

‘Yeah, with firelighters. I don’t think desert islands have a corner shop. Anyway I meant if you were on the island and she wasn’t.’

‘I’ll ask Mum.’

He smiles in a cheeky victorious way. Total victory. His stuff is scattered everywhere. He turns to plead his case with her. Anyone can see the answers to the first two are roots, ie 24 and 36.

‘You’ll get no help there Sunny Jim! She did history or something; so she says! Go on then, take the path of least resistance! See if I care! You’ll be back!’

Behind his back, Mum gives me The Vics. His lack of numeracy is a shocker.

Broadsword calling Danny Boy, Broadsword calling Danny Boy, come in, over?

Now, let’s say it like Richard Burton.

Right to the back of the room everyone! With me.

Brawd-sawd cawlling Danny Bhoy, Brawd-sawd cawlling Danny Bhoy, come inn, Danny Bhoy.

And rest.

Very good.

See? That’s what makes Where Eagles Dare the crackerjack film it is: the rich Welshness of Richard Burton’s bloodshot eyes. That and Clint Eastwood’s machine gun. The one with the never-ending supply of homing bullets.
The book on the other hand, is torture. One of MacLean’s worst. On paper it’s got it all. Alpine setting, treachery, Germans, even cable cars for God’s sake! You cannot beat a good cable car scene. Just thinking about a cable car scene makes me feel funny, throw in some Germans and I might faint. And yet, and yet, the book is awful. I know, I just read it.
I hid it inside the cover of “Hot Gas Flow And Other After Dinner Tales” by Mayhew [one, long, murdered, darling, later] where were we? Oh yes, where eagles dare the book discuss. Fukkit. The time the cuppa the biscuit I’m off.

Back again (buttered scone and a jammy dodger)

What it needs is some Celtic mysticism along the lines of Sam’s glen of the dead. Imagine, they make it down the mountain, they’ve blown up all the cable cars, shot all the Germans, now they’re in the bus with the snowplough crashing through roadblocks on their way to rendezvous with the escape plane, but they go up the wrong road in the dark, they follow the lighthouse beam thinking it’s a signal, they pass the standing stones…

Now THAT story’s got legs. Am I wrong? Am I wrong?

30 Second Cinema.

Take a film break every day with Dr.(Doccy) Maroon.


The Big Lebowski [cont. perf.]


This aggression will not stand.

The old man told me to take any rug in the house.

It’s a league game, Smoke.

Don’t say people, I’m doing business here.

My wife’s a pain in the ass, she’s always bustin’ my friggin’ haggis.

As Brandt is my witness.

I could be sitting here with just pee stains on my rug.

Brother Shamus.

No Donny, these men are nihilists, nothing to be afraid of.

Two oat sodas Gary.

You may be interested to know that we have a trophy stove. In the same way that Mrs Maroon is a trophy wife even though we’re not married, our stove is a status symbol even though we can’t cook. Just before he put the house on the market, the previous owner installed it. Oh clever clever man. The cynical bastard never thought to fix the medieval wiring or upstairs plumbing. Sod that for a lark.
It’s not like other stoves. For a kick off, it’s English and has its own enamelled inspection man. He comes in a very smart van and wears a tie. You only get what you pay for. Jealous visitors to the kitching studiously avoid looking at it, except those who also have a trophy stove who therefore must remark on it, to show, well you know what I mean. Catholics, Etonians and Oxbridge graduates have a way of telling you within 30 minutes. Same with trophy stoves. It’s called the half hour rule.
To confirm stove ownership, the opening gambit is usually a recipe for something complicated. This never works with us because we never know what she (it’ll be the woman) is talking about. So the man, to save any conjugal abuse in the car on their way home, will come to her aid by getting technical about servicing the inlet manifold regularly. This doesn’t wash with me because I am technical. In fact I have a degree in technical from Cambridge for which I said many rosaries (Let Eton Flourish).
So it’s due an inspection for the good housekeeping seal of approval or something which means I spent last night, FRIDAY night, cleaning it with non abrasive cleaning solutions. Since we are irretrievably working class, we couldn’t have the chimney sweep going next door afterwards saying what clatty middens we were.
“That Mrs Maroon ‘ad ‘arf a pork chop stuck down ‘er diverter plate. Disgrace it was.”
Good lord no. So when he has his tea, Mrs Maroon will scorch some Marks and Sparks all butter shortbread with a blowlamp to pass it off as her own, and I shall know he has done FA because I’ve done it already, using the handy toolkit and spout brushes provided. The kitchen is now a total coup but the stove is ready. We shall eat pot noodles to keep it clean until he’s gone.

They say it might rain Tuesday.

They’re taking the hobbits to Isengard.

You human paraquat!

The airplane has crashed into the mountain.

What a piece of work is a man.

Colin’s been abducted.

The shit’s in the fan.

Yeah by a crocodile or something.

Late night on Watling Street.

Radio Scotland traffic update: a loose tarpaulin on the southbound Forth road bridge which has been causing major delays has now been removed…

Bert Scoggins pressed his heavy boot further into the wooden floor eking every horsepower from his grumbling Bedford. If he could just make the border and the A6 before nightfall. Four tons of tractor parts lashed on the back of his three tonner. Rush job. If the rozzers stopped him now… He peered through the split screen at the bridge up ahead, hypnotised by the wipers and the protesting whine of the crash box straining in third and the thought of Elsie and her tea urn waiting for him in the caff at Shap.

He’d parked overnight in a bombsite just off the Fife ring road and as he slept, a gang of motorcycle thugs employed by a rival haulier had undone all his half hitches, retied his ropes in running sheepshanks and let 2 lb of air out one of his rear wheels into the bargain.
“That’ll sort you out Granddad.” sneered Spike, the gang’s leader, “Right, let’s scarper, we’ll meet at the milkbar on the B672 just before the bypass and then we can do a ton-up down that long straight that runs outside the children’s T.B. and polio hospital.”
“That’ll wake ‘em up!” agreed Snot, revving his BSA Goldstar threateningly.

Now in the grey morning, as his grey lorry stubbornly shoved its way through the grey Scottish weather, Bert, the tough cockney ex-soldier in his ex-army lorry took a woodbine from his flying jacket and smoked it. “Blimey,” he thought, “wind’s getting up.” He never heard the tarpaulin slip its bindings, to be blown off and land catastrophically on the southbound A90 behind him, blocking a major thoroughfare and arterial route vital to the economic wellbeing of the nation.

Commuters on the bridge, panicked by the sight of 10 square yards of green canvas lying silent on the asphalt, have stopped to await emergency instructions. Luckily a dashing engineer, on his way to an important meeting takes command. To the astonishment of onlookers, he ignores the risk of getting oil on his tie and drags the tarpaulin to the side, rolls it up a bit and dumps it over the railing onto the footpath where it will no doubt wrap itself around some poor pedestrian or cyclist and suffocate them to death. As the traffic starts moving again, the dashing engineer is alarmed to see in his mirror, that the tarpaulin comes to life again, rearing up in the wind, shaking its ropes in fury at him, but the wind, ever a fickle mistress, pulls the monster over the side to a watery grave, far, far below.
“Phew!” he thinks. “That’s that.”

250 feet below, the supertanker BP Hapag Lloyd III is making its way down the Forth from Grangemouth with 200 000 tonnes of high octane aviation gasoline for light aircraft and 150 000 tonnes of ethylene gas. The Forth River Pilot has control and is pointing out the normal hazards to the vessel’s master…

Maroon Island 2.

For more than a decade every bit of me was as hard as your elbow. I weighed in at 10 stone 13. (153lbs US). Pristine I was. Solid. If he had seen me, Michelangelo would have smashed up all his statues. And stamina! At the stamina, I was just sublime. I could run with the impala.
So it was around this time one Sunday afternoon that Mrs Maroon and I were reading the aspirational supplements and I found an article on Japanese naked food eating. There’s all these pot ugly Japanese company men in well cut suits and they pay over their horrid filthy money to eat seaweed off the naked skin of some fine-boned mathematics graduate (more often than not with delicate pert breasts). The degradation is so awful on every level you can think of.
The Japanese are pathetic. Oh, on the surface everything’s all neat and tidy, but I wouldn’t mind a look in their washbags. I bet every one is all gungy with old toothpaste tubes and hairy razorblades just like ours. What mingers they are.
So anyway we had a bit of a discussion about all this and the upshot was that I was sent up the street to the shops to get strawberries and a can of Anchor whipped cream. Yep. You’re there ahead of me.
I sometimes worry that today’s young people (who invented sex) get too many of their ideas off the internet. Woe to us if they do; it’ll be the end of love as we know it. We shall be like the beasts of the field, thoughtlessly rutting for status and that most transient of empty pleasures, procreation. We will flip, just like Spock did in that episode where he sat up the tree and played his space-banjo.

So you rode upon a steamer
To the heartland of the summer

That’s the trouble with midweek drink; it gives you such optimism. Our aesthetic bar is lowered. It’s like full five senses beer goggles on steroids. Up to the bathroom for a pee and the scent of toothpaste and face creams and shampoo and so on; it’s so evocative; the world is NOT a bad place, it’s a NICE place, full of nice people, just like us. (If you’re reading this Twenty Major please be assured I would beat you at arm wrestling, left or right. I have the arms of a blacksmith). Then there is the company. No matter who they are or what weird philosophy they follow, they are the best of company for the duration. Under no circumstance shall I betray my own ethos (in all its moral perfection) but I may indulge their flawed beliefs for the hell of it.
I of course, have suddenly become The Wise Seer Of The World. It’s such a privilege, an honour; I must not misuse My Gift. If I come out of this without a fat lip I will have done well. I’m on Torres 10 and Pepsi Max. It tastes better in Spain but who’s counting?
I could snog the face off Fatmammycat right now. I bet she smells really, really good. She’s a great kisser, I just know it. I am a seer.
Don’t fight it baby, we were destined…

And you see a girl’s brown body
Dancing through the turquoise
And her footprints make you follow
Where the sky loves the sea

Kim and Eryl and Pat and Justin and Devin have started an aural entertainment over at the storytellers blog.
Terribly good. Calming, exciting, fascinating, always pleasurable.
Like, check it out man. Press the button over on the right.
That's the way.

So, like, we had that panel I was talking about. Dick’s been suspended. That’s the long and short of it. Well, he was pretty rude to that girl. And, I grassed him up anonymously. It was for my own good. Stress works in mysterious ways. Caught him in the carpark jumping on cars. So I told him. Leave it man, they’re all tossers. I had to stop him. He was making a show of himself; what’s more, he was getting near my car. It’s only a Volkswagen but a car’s a car.
Another of mine enemies; for him the war is over; he is kaput.

For sale: Old lady with unwanted Victorian carved legs.

This week there is a worrying story about a very tall thief working in partnership with a very small thief. Police say they are pulling out all the stops in their hunt for the men. They’ve been mugging the elderly in their homes in and around the Forteviot area.

The crime page reports the audacious theft of the church organ and pipes from Saint Angela’s, Main Street, Luncarty while the Rev Julie Maguire, 24, had been on retreat in Ibiza. A hard pressed Superintendent McGlinchey said they were leaving no stone unturned.

Also from the crime page comes the disturbing tale of a drunken postman from Errol who had stolen a road roller from the new flyover on the A85 and driven it at police officers injuring one of them to his serious endangerment. During the chase, the villain had the presence of mind to jettison some vital evidence in a pile of rocks on the construction site. A spokesman for Tayside Police said it was a worrying development.

An unknown sex offender has been using the photo booth at Perth bus station to photograph his exposed private parts then leaving the resultant strip of pictures in the machine for the next hapless user of the facility to find. Police are puzzled.

The so called “Cross Word” poison pen pest is still making life a misery for the residents of Abernethy. In an effort to catch the rancid riddler, CID officers have enlisted the help of a forensic scientist with a successful history of psychotic behaviour. Police say to be on your guard if think you know who he is, as he may be dangerous and should not be approached by members of the public.

And finally, on a lighter note, the owner of a Chinese restaurant in Bridge of Earn called Brian Murray, had the winning numbers in the lottery but forgot to buy a ticket because he was so busy cooking Chinese food. However, in his distress he found his lost mother’s wedding ring in a food mixer used for mixing the Chinese food that he sells in his Chinese restaurant. As family friend, Morag O’Donnell, 37, quipped: ‘It has been a “bittersweet” week for Brian!’

When you are born here, when you are only seconds old, the midwife asks for a glass of water or something to get the bystanders out the room and while your mother is distracted, perhaps looking at all that funky stuff on the sheets, the midwife takes you aside and performs a secret pagan association on you. She shows you the lid off a shortbread tin and tells you you’re Scotch and forever will be. It’s called imprinting. At this point you start crying.

From then on we are cursed, for all our lives, to be crashing bores about our mystical land of haggis. If you let us, we’ll tell you how we invented the atom bomb and the chandelier, penicillin, the bath plug not forgetting the steamship and the soup spoon. We become as welcome as a Rechabite at a highland wedding. The Greek tragedy is that we know we do it. We just can’t stop.

If you are foreign, you may have experienced us at first hand. Let’s say you are from Milwaukee on vacation driving across the Mojave Desert to the Joshua Tree National Park. You’ve borrowed a forty foot motor home and it is running like silk. It’s a duplex on wheels is what it is. Just the open road and the wife and you’re like teenagers again; you’re both wearing Stetsons for the hell of it. Made love on the roof last night under the stars, it just happened. She really does suit that hat. Up ahead in the distance, through the shimmering light, looks a good place to stop.

“Whatdya say honey? Shall we pull over for the day?”
“You’re the driver Hank.”

You downshift early just to hear the growl of that diesel; it’s like music, makes you feel good, makes you feel like Burt Reynolds in the Bandit films. As you pull in, you can’t stop grinning. This is turning into the best trip ever. There’s a mini mart for stocking up and a gift shop selling souvenirs made out of rattlesnakes. There’s a custom Peterbuilt with polished rims in the parking lot. You must get a picture of that. They’ve got cool shaded bays where you can plug in for the night, and the rest rooms and showers are as clean as an operating theatre. Best of all, there’s a grill restaurant and a flashing neon ‘Budweiser’ because suddenly you are hungry and you’d love a beer right now. Caught up in the moment, you put on your best John Wayne voice.

“I’m gonna have me the biggest steak - smothered in onions!”
“Gotta keep your strength up hon.”
“Care to join me for a beer ma’am?”
“Don’ mind if I do, pilgrim.”

By God you swear you love her more each day. She is the best, and you are the luckiest man alive. Your appetite is rumbling out of control as you enter in search of dinner. Coming in from the desert, the interior of the grill restaurant is impressive. There is a lot of cedar and maple and oak. They haven’t skimped. It is a distillation of the Continental United States in timber. Movie starlet waitresses carry plates piled with steaks and mashed potato, pitchers of beer, frozen martinis. The room is filled with the comforting background hum of a world now replete and thinking about another glass of wine. Here is America in repose, at peace with herself. Hey, we really lucked out, finding this place. Except. At the bar, two red-faced sunburnt Scotchmen with red arms and accents are explaining to themselves how they invented the jet engine, the aeroplane, the windscreen wiper, the doorknob…

“Honey, what say we press on? It’s only 300 miles to the next stop.”
“Amen to that.”

Bret and Gemaine and Joe Pesci

Me an’ Dick were standing at the cooler yesterday and I wasn’t on good form at all at all. Must say that straight off. He’d been trying to strongarm me over some accounting disaster and I wasn’t buying it. It’s typical of the man, discussing stuff like this in public, it’s right up his Clydeside expressway, he’s got no class.
So anyway there we were, shootin’ the shit, me with a face like thunder and up comes the office asshole. You know the type. All collar and cuffs; young go-getter smartipants straight out the college thinks they know it all; thinks everyone finds them funny; buffalo briefcase with brass buckles bastard.
As I say, I wasn’t in the mood.
So we clammed up while this young office wit grinned at us and bent down to fill one of those shitty paper cones with water, but that wasn’t enough was it? Oh no, Bozo the junior executive, she just had to make a comment about us.

“You two look like ‘flight of the conchords’ standing there.”
“You saying I’ve got a big fucking nose or something?”
“Sorry? I didn’t mean…”
“My nose is offensive to you?”
“That’s not what I…”
“Because you are no fucking Rembrandt my friend.”
“I meant the TV show.”
“Go on, take a fucking hike.”
“What?”
“Keep moving - while you’ve still got some fucking teeth.”

Well, off she runs to The Mekon which is what we call the MD. The union’s up in arms about it and I might have to face a panel. I’m not bothered, I’ll tell them she had the painters in or something. Nice looking girl.

Not a little discord in the household the other night. We were watching some cookery programme on the TV waiting for University Challenge to come on and I made a foolish remark. I’ve met Bamber Gasgoine twice. Once officially and once coming out the tube at Euston station. He remembered, which was most gratifying. It’s the little things. Anyway, back to the discord. I cannot for the life of me remember any of the recipes except a disgusting mixture made in the liquidiser for breakfast. It had a frozen banana and instant coffee powder in it. Grue. I can’t recall the recipes because I spent the whole programme wondering what it’d be like to have good kinky sex with the presenter. It wasn’t Gordon Ramsay. Obviously sex with Gordon Ramsay would be a foul mouthed tedious affair; he’s too working class for a start. Anyway I’m mildly homophobic, Jesuit schooling you see, so I find the whole gay thing upsetting and I don’t have the social sophistication to enjoy their company. Back to the discord. I wasn’t just wondering about those few blissful seconds of the actual sex, I was taking a holistic approach. I was wondering what perfume she might be wearing, how she’d look pulling off her tight sweater, she’d probably toss her hair and turn and gaze at me over her shoulder, would she fold her jumper or just throw it on the

“What’s up? You haven’t spoken for five minutes.”
“Sorry, what? I was miles away.”
“Like cooking do you?”
“I was wondering what it’d be like to have sex with her.”

Oh, fool, fool, one hundred times fool. When o when was blunt honesty the right course with a woman? Not only had I admitted the thought but also seemed to have reached the conclusion that having given it my consideration, sex with her would be very agreeable indeed. I couldn’t hide it. It was all over my face like guilty chocolate. I followed to her bedroom and she pulled back her fluffy duvet and lay down in all her naked yearning magnificence except for the briefest pair of flimsy

“You’re still doing it!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Look at her.”
“Who?”
“She’s a ridiculous slapper for God’s sake.”
“Um…”
“Face painted up and hips like…she should know better.”
“Uhuh.”
“This isn’t even about food it’s soft porn for tits like you.”
“She is a famous cook.”
“Her puddings were good everything else is shit.”
“Give us a kiss.”
“Fuck off.”

I’m not one to draw attention to myself but in recent days I’ve noticed two separate references to Achilles the Superb, the great warrior of old They’ve been rather disparaging references to be honest and I won’t dishonour the guilty parties here, but perhaps Mr Ayres and Mr Bananas aren’t quite as smart as they sometimes think. Surely by now they know how sensitive I am regarding the name Achilles.
There now. That’s that.
We’re all friends again and we’ll say no more about it.
All I’m saying is some of us carry the burden of an altogether more iconic, some would say ridiculous, nominative. Every day some of us have to see it on our credit cards, our passports (I can not return to Corfu) and drivers licences. Try talking to someone when they’re staring at your security tag, reading and re-reading your name, mouthing it silently. The so-called friends who write out your name in full for the amusement of the postman even though you’ve begged them not to.
I mean, I think we’d all agree that I’ve been pretty supportive when Kim bemoans his name; I keep telling him straight that it’s common.
My father says that Gorilla Bananas may be the best essayist since Orwell. Well, could be, but he’s never getting on the South Bank Show with a name redolent of an East End Glasgow hood.
Walk a mile in my shoes my friend.
That’s all I’m saying.
Walk that mile.

Talking about the great English essay, I often wonder how that book got on.Remember the one they put together for charity last year? Yeah, how’s that whole thing going? I wonder how they are handling all that fame. Haven’t seen it on any reading lists yet, don’t remember it on the bookshelves down the supermarket. Yeah, wonder how that’s going. Yeah.

So Tony Ryan dies and wakes up at international arrivals.


Angel: Thank you for flying Ruin-air…
Ryan: Very funny, is this Heaven?
Angel:…we hope you had a pleasant life.
Ryan: Yeah I get it. This doesn’t look like Heaven.
Angel: It’s near Heaven.
Ryan: Is it Purgatory?
Angel: We prefer to call it Heaven South.
Ryan: God help me, it’s not Hell is it?
Angel: No, but there’s a regular bus service.
Ryan: How regular?
Angel: Every Tuesday.
Ryan: You’re splitting my sides, where am I?
Angel: Limbo.
Ryan: I didn’t know you could fly to Limbo.
Angel: Neither did your passengers.
Ryan: What I mean is; how did I get here?
Angel: Again, a question your passengers have often asked.
Ryan: Look, let me speak to your supervisor.
Angel: Did you pre-order a supervisor?
Ryan: Please, no jokes; what do I do? How do I get out?
Angel: Alas, there are no return flights.
Ryan: Well what about an onward connection?
Angel: Full scheduled fare, cash only.
Ryan: Book me on it.
Angel: Please proceed to the designated waiting area.
Ryan: What about coffee?
Angel: There’s a vending machine.
Ryan: Now we’re getting somewhere.
Angel: It only takes doubloons.
Ryan: This is Hell isn’t it?
Angel: It’s Hell North…

Euripides?
No, they justa fall aparta.

Being tagged is sweet and sour. On the one hand, you’re invited to the wedding, thanks Eryl http://thekitchenbitchponders.blogspot.com/,

on the other, it suggests you’re not grand enough to refuse. The blogging greats, the heads of our order, never reply to memes. Stuck up ratfinks. That’s right Hutton, it’s you I’m talking about.

My seven blog rules.

Rule 1. Poetry. Don’t try it. I am a poet in the Classical tradition and have often tried to elevate the dismal lives of my blogging friends via that medium. They hate it. It’s not worth it; they can set you back years; so fuck them.

Rule 2. Swearing I wish you’d been here two years ago when we all swore like Mexicans. We went straight for the ‘C’ word. It was very liberating at the time. Everything and everybody was a ‘C’. It’s tailed off, now we know that Matron isn’t going to come bursting through the door and send us all back to bed. The very best of people swear like thunder sometimes.

Rule 3. Rants. Ranting is only valid when the target is valid. For example; mentally shouting at ditzy young women with too many children in SUVs parking in supermarket carparks. That’s right dearie, OPPOSITE LOCK when reversing. Yes petal, there IS a reverse gear. REVERSE. NO NO NO you’re doing it all wrong. Don’t look at me like that, it’s your fault for having all that sex in first place. Did you actually pass a driving test? OK poppet, you’ve parked, you can open your eyes now…

Rule 4. Musings. “musings” is the most common word in the Blogosphere (after “Blogosphere” and “I” and “me”). It implies wisdom. What pearl has our sage thoughtfully abstracted for our delight? Turns out The Sage is “musing” on his latent alcoholism and the hyperbolic curves to be found on intermediate compressor blades. Big fat hairy yawn! Is that a musing or a random thought that fell into your empty head? Keep it tight, people.

Rule 5. Flaming: most bloggers hate flaming. It doesn’t bother me, I like the whole thing about blogging, I don’t want to analyse why, I just like it. I’ve always wanted a resident flamer, it sort of means you’ve arrived. That’s not an invite, it’s got to be spontaneous.

Rule 6. The Harry Hutton Double Bluff Impasse.
Beware.
Personally, I think warm-hearted sarcasm is the utter pinnacle of humour but virtually no one else shares this view. A lot is lost in translation and they can’t see the clever smirk on my face so they take it seriously and fire back their own witty sarcastic comment, but because I can’t see THEIR clever smirk and they are just plain rude and offensive I feel justified in escalating with a sharper wittier retort which they totally take the wrong way the petty bastards…

Rule 7. Mortals only. The BBC and other media groups now run blogs. This is totally counter to the whole idea. To them I say: You’ve already got an infinite outlet for your crap, leave us this bit for ourselves! Go on, piss off! You just don’t get it.

Killer Fact!

Top five countries by per capita beer drinking.

1. Czech Republic 278.2 pints
2. Ireland 265.4 pints
3. Germany 216.6 pints
4. Austria 188.1 pints
5. Luxemburg 177.6 pints


OK so Luxemburg’s what we maths nerds call an anomaly. Let me explain; you and three of your friends stop off in Luxemburg and have a small refreshment; before you know it you’ve totally skewed the results. That’s right numb nuts, skewed, without the ‘R’. But look at Ireland! Big respeck. In the week that Scotland tops all the BAD polls for ugliness and obesity and early death and black depression and suicidal thoughts and the low self esteem thing, Ireland’s back up there in a GOOD top five, second time in a row. See what independence does? Look and learn Scotland. I’m surprised Britain never made it. In the north of England beer is all they drink, especially at lunchtime. Remember Pie and a Pint? You can still get that in England but not up here; up here it’s Pie and a Pie. I’m ashamed to say that the lunchtime pint is no longer a Scottish institution; The roads are safer, mind.