Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Petition

Dear Friends,

I have just read and signed the online petition:

"Save The Aberfan Memorial"

hosted on the web by PetitionOnline.com, the free online petition
service, at:

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/aberfan/

I personally agree with what this petition says, and I think you might
agree, too. If you can spare a moment, please take a look, and consider
signing yourself.

Best wishes,

Luton types - #1 in an occasional series

A man of average height, uncut grey hair and a bulbous red-veined nose. He fumbles for his ticket, blocking the barrier at the station. He's wearing a tweedy herringbone-patterned suit... and a lime-green baseball hat.

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

John Peel

I didn't have a post today. Then I found out the news when I stopped-by here. Plenty of people who know more than me will express themselves better, but I actually feel bereaved here, as if I've lost someone in the family. I'm shaking.

Friday, October 22, 2004

Dead Iraqis

I had some time to spare yesterday afternoon so went to the British Museum. Whenever I go, despite the staggering range of artefacts on display, I'm always drawn back to The Assyrians. Shunning the namby showbiz of the Egyptians and those ineffectual poseurs the Greeks, I find myself in the martial world of Ashurbanipal, Ashurnasirpal and Tiglath-pileser III. Theirs is a story of rapine and conquest: to see the reliefs depicting their kings and Gods is to feel the presence of a people who ruled through strength and fear. Their deeds are recalled in bas-reliefs of battle, siege, slavery and severed heads, yet their art has great formal and stylised beauty. In honour of the Assyrians, this weblog will in future be written entirely in cuneiform script. Anyone got a syllabic font from about 600 BC? (It's not like Comic Sans, not really, no. More like Webdings).

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Not a trainspotter oh no, not me guv.

I saw my first one of these trains (picture) while playing football at Wormwood Scrubs in 1976 or '77. We all stopped playing to point at it: "ooh it's one of those new trains!"- it must have been impressive. Or we must all have been real sad-hats. I think that was also the day I scored my only goal for the work team - off my shin came the 6th goal in our 7-1 victory.

Monday, October 18, 2004

Boggins' anabasis.

Higlight of the weekend was a mass welly-boot stomp round Sharpenhoe Clappers (although I of course wore my posh Brasher walking boots).
Stop pretending you're not enjoying it! It's fun. Yes it is... you can't be cold.
Let's go home then. Wassup, you missing The Simpsons?

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Elderly

"Hold on a moment, you've got a hair". Hair in question is resting on my top lip. "I'll just get it off for you". "OW!".

It's ATTACHED. It's growing from the INSIDE OF MY NOSE.

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Uselessnessabounds

Scientists are baffled by new figures which show an astonishing world-wide explosion in human uselessness. These figures include a staggering 300% increase in "children unable to find their own shoes", a 12.5% year-on-year inflation in the number of people unable to operate automatic ticket barriers and a 30% hike in the number of people unable to program a video recorder without accidentally taping something off Animal Planet instead.

Overall human uselessness and daily incompetence are estimated to have risen on average by at least 10% over the last decade: 8 of the last 10 years have shown the highest rises since records began in the early 18th Century. Speculation has focussed on fluoridation, Cartoon Network, multi-player role-playing games, OK magazine, Ocean Finance, or any combination thereof.

A spokesman for UNIFWIWTA (United Nations I Forgot What I Was Talking About) said today that this phenomenon could not be ascribed to natural background fluctuations alone. She would have continued but instead accidentally pulled the back off her mobile and the battery fell out.

Monday, October 11, 2004

"George" The Epilogue - I hope

A knock on the door at 10:30 Sunday morning. Boy answers door. When I see who it is I gently push past in an "I'll take over here now son, there's nothing to see" sort of way, because it's the drunken idiot from next door. Has he come to wreak terrible vengeance, because if so I'm fully prepared to tell him, in no uncertain terms, that, actually, my wife is out at the moment and would he like to call back later?

But no. He's come to apologise. He's completely bladdered and gives the kind of abject apology that only the truly drunk can - "I'm ree' ree' fxxxin' sorr' I wascompleetliootofordrr ye've gotalovelyfamily an' that". Up close you can see the mess the booze has made of him: he's as pale as the head of his pint & his face is cratered like one of the minor satellites of Jupiter. I do feel sorry for him - he'll probably not trouble the scorers much longer, and no-one will miss him when he's gone. How on earth he got to that condition I'll probably never know.

London Buses

The link in the header isn't to a new news story but I wonder how truthful the figures can be - London Buses in the central area these days work on the principle that you buy a ticket before boarding - so all the driver has to do is register people boarding and, I suppose, the type of ticket they have, on his machine..
Only 3 of us got on the 88 today at my stop and no-one got off, so why was the driver punching buttons like a man in the terminal stages of Tetris? There must have been about 400 people on that bus, so I was very lucky to bag a double seat.

Friday, October 08, 2004

POETS day

Not much in here this week. It's just been a shitty week at work and we've got a new dawg which takes up a lot of spare time with its endearing shitting and pissing agenda.

Will there be "George"ing tonight (see below) I wonder? Last post until Monday probably.

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Monday, October 04, 2004

"George", Part 2

I drafted the entry below on Friday 1/10, but didn't post until today. That (Friday) night the whole shenanigans started again, but this time matey broke a window downstairs trying to get into "his" house. Police were called and he was arrested for criminal damage. On Saturday night there he was outside again, calling everybody in the street bastards. He doesn't know it was us who called them out...

Friday, October 01, 2004

That's your boyfriend, that is.

I live in a street which houses people from all over the world. No-one causes any problems, in fact we're all very nice to each other, except Mr E.Jitt (probably not his real name) in the Celtic shirt who lives next door, insofar as he lives at all. He comes home at about 1 a.m., any day of the week. He's so pissed he can't find his keys, or if he can, he can't find the lock. So he shouts in the street to be let in. "George!" he yells, and again "George!"."Let me f***in in". "George!". And so on. The eponymous George, another Scot, is asleep, having been on the piss all day since his Breakfast Fosters. I think it's probably our turn to call the police, 'cos Mr & Mrs Siddiqi from over the road did it last time, all of 2 days ago. Mrs Massup, a gentle soul, is contemplating, no longer whether she should commit foul murder, but has moved on to method. I favour an Animaniacs-style suspended piano/head interface, but I realise that this may be difficult to set up, and it'll be tricky hiding the evidence.

I find that Fosters is such an inelegant drink for breakfast, n'est-ce pas?

The weekend debate

In 1978, a Mr.Mercury (prompted by a Mr. May) asseverated thusly: "Fat Bottomed Girls, you make the rockin' world go round"(words). Can this be true? Given what we know of Mr. Mercury's lifestyle choices, can we give credence to such a proposition? Are YOU a fat-bottomed girl? Do you want to be? Do they make the rockin' world go round? Should they? Over to you!

Manhole Covers

All those years ago I tried to tell you that manhole covers were interesting. I was Japanese at heart it seems. See?