Airborne terror

In the silly season there is often a light relief news story about a bird that, having taken a seemingly random dislike to a particular person, amuses itself by swooping down on the poor wretch's head whenever they leave their house. This is hilarious because the story is often accompanied by shaky camcorder footage of said avian hooliganism as the victim screeches and flails. But I don't think it's funny. I think it's utterly terrifying.

I would happily stroke a snake, tickle a tarantula or mollycoddle a mouse. I'm happy with heights and cool with confined spaces. But I absolutely cannot bear anything with feathers. I hate their eyes, their beaks, their claws, their wings - particularly their wings. The sight and sound of them flapping.....euurrrgh. The idea of any physical contact with one makes me feel nauseous; the sight of deranged pigeon feeders swarmed head to toe with them has sometimes made me break into a near run. Once every couple of weeks I have birdmares - recently I dreamt that a large goose kept jumping into my arms whilst delivering a rather withering monologue.

The one thing I will say about birds is that they mostly do a good job of moving in the opposite direction of humans, I assume out of a sense of self-disgust at their intrinsic horribleness. But one kind of bird doesn't even have the decency to do that - dead ones. All the things I am repelled by splayed out on the pavement, beady eyes following me all the way down the road. I few months ago I came home to find a large pigeon had been ripped to shreds and flung around my roof terrace, which is equivalent to a claustrophobic waking up to find they've been walled into the chimney. I spent an hour or so gibbering before my girlfriend came home, took in the scene and strode outside with a bin bag, a dust pan and a grim expression as I babbled encouragement from the furthest part of the flat.

This unmanly neuroses has Freudian roots. My father was an award winning exotic bird exhibitor in his younger days, and for the first 12 or so years of my life kept birds in the house. They would occasionally escape and hurl themselves repeatedly at the nearest window until they smashed their heads in, which I maintain created my phobia. My poor Dad is understandably disappointed that one of his great passions causes his eldest son to nearly faint with terror.

I am happy to take suggestions on how to beat this. It's hugely inconvenient shrieking like a girl at every feathery corpse and I'm not sure I can ever own a cat, unless there are breeds that don't ever proudly drop my absolute worst nightmare on the kitchen floor. Please don't offer any solutions that involve any form of contact - hypnotism or magic pills only.

As this blog believes in the right to reply, here's Mr E of the Eels offering an alternative viewpoint. He's wrong.

Saturday Kitchen

Saturday Kitchen is on and there's nothing I like to do more to start the weekend than watch Saturday Kitchen.

I love the old cookery show extracts (particularly the Two Fat Ladies, which has not so much dated as turned sepia and started curling out of the TV screen). I love the pig-faced, pseudo-homely pushy alpha male edge that James Martin brings to every conversation with his guests, especially if they are a man of reproductive age. Plainly a terrible bastard. I even love the ridiculous wine expert, who has gradually developed into a cross between Beau Brummell and a gay provincial butcher.

But I love more than all of these any glimpse of Keith Floyd. With his leathery face and reptile glare even the most generous viewer would guess that he's trouble, even before noticing the compulsive wine slurpage. But he also has a brilliantly warm and compelling voice and real old school cad's charm. Apparently his cooking did all sorts of revolutionary things to a nation that viewed garlic and basil as poofy foreign muck. But I'm more interested in the stories of his various bankrupcies, rows and appalling behaviour. Like closing his restaurant halfway through the dinner service after a blazing fight with his wife in front of the entire, appalled dining room. Or his habit of wandering out of the kitchen to recommend an expensive wine, then joining the table of his starstruck customers, quickly knocking back most of the bottle and then being nowhere to be seen when it appears on their bill.

The old soak announced this week that he has cancer - perhaps not an enormous surprise after a lifetime of appalling living. But I hope that isn't the last we see of him.

Down with the kidz

I've just returned to the chicken bone littered streets of Oval after a thoroughly good weekend with friends in Devon. Having been outwitted by the local mackerel over a two hour fishing trip on Saturday, where the occasional scaly face could be seen grinning from below the surface of the water as we enthusiastically reeled in each other's lines and got fish hooks caught in our fingers, we headed to a field for some rounders.

I am not a sporty man. If this blog were a film a montage would now kick in of my speccy younger self being hit in the back of the head by footballs, being ground face-first into the mud by a heap of rugby-shirted adolescents and vomiting half way through 100 metre sprints. But despite having hand-eye coordination so poor that earlier civilisations would have burned me as a witch, I quite like mixed-sex rounders. My male friends, aerobically pristine specimens to a lean man, are forced to handicap themselves to the point where the girls can join in, and I can find my level in the slipstream of their chivalry.

As battle raged, two little boys aged about 10 in replica Arsenal and Man U shirts nonchalantly inched their way closer and closer to us. When they couldn't get any nearer without being brained by a bat, a whispered team talk was concluded by the blonde one marching up and asking if he could play, pointing at the other boy (now bashfully kicking the grass) and noting that "he'd like to too".

I was delighted. This could only increase my position in the sporting pecking order. Sadly, it became obvious that Cameron (fastidious blond quiff, polite, confident - will probably be my boss in 15 years) and Alfie (dark, pug-nosed, also well groomed but in a more proto-Club 18-30 way - will probably organise a burglary of my house on Twitter in 5 years time) were significantly superior athletes, a problem highlighted when Alfie ran me out within minutes.

My standing increased marginally with the arrival of James, a hyperactive 7 year old who treated instructions like "run!" by giggling and throwing himself to the floor. This may have been his age or evidence that he is a congenital idiot - having not met a 7 year old since 1988, when I was 7, it's hard to say. A game of football then broke out, where Cameron and Alfie unveiled a range of flicks, tricks and bicycle kicks and James demanded to go in goal, and then announced that he didn't like goal, before deciding to play in goal. My sporty friends played the groovy uncle role to perfection (one of them being asked by Cameron if he played football every day, whether in awe of his skills or in stern disapproval of his training regime we never found out), while I trundled happily around the edge of the action.

It should be noted at this point that their various parents were in a distant play area, seemingly unconcerned by their little treasures joining a dishevelled group of complete strangers. They didn't even bat an eyelid when we started giving them drinks and getting them to lie spreadeagled on the floor (to play sleeping lions, although to a social worker's eye it may have looked like the start of a ritual sacrifice).

It occurred to me that this was a glimpse of the future. I hope that I will be holidaying with the same friends over the coming years, which statistically are going to be bringing sprogs into the equation. It had been fun to hang out with the boys for a couple of hours. But as we packed them off in the direction of their parents and headed to the pub, it was nice to have that a little way off yet.

Ahead of my time

I was standing at a level crossing this evening, waiting for the lights to change. The song I was listening to needed changing (it must have gone past the first chorus - I now have the attention span of a goldfish with a head injury). While I was thoughtfully thumbing my iPod wheel I felt my Blackberry vibrating in my jacket. My company needed me. So I fished it out and checked the message with my non-iPod hand.

"Your mailbox has exceeded memory capacity". Important to know. As I was manipulating the two separate pieces of technology, one eye on each like an early adopting lizard, I heard a noise over the music along the lines of "WOCCCHAFINKOOUKUKIKE YOU WANKER!". I looked up at the gurning face of a chimpanzee behind an open window at the wheel of a white van. I glanced at the girl waiting to my right to check I hadn't imagined it. She was laughing. Not smirking, actually guffawing.

The lights changed, the monkeymobile pulled away and laughing girl pulled herself together. I crossed the road and started deleting the larger messages from my inbox.

What humiliation will happen on the walk home tomorrow, I wonder? Will my trousers fall down as I walk past the all-girl sixth form college netball court?

Merry Sven

The appointment of serial pay-off trousering horndog Sven-Goran Eriksson as Notts County's director of football has focused an unprecedented level of attention on the world's oldest professional team. God only knows how Colin Slater, BBC Radio Nottingham's famously prolix and hammy County correspondant, is coping with thrill of it all given how excited he usually gets about disputed offsides against Macclesfield Town. There has also been much speculation about how the famously urbane Eriksson will cope with the deprivation of living in Nottingham, a city noted more for its eye-watering crime statistics than for being a hotbed of chi chi metropolitan comfort.

Having grown up in a village near Nottingham and gone to school in the city centre, I feel it is my civic duty to suggest a few ways for him to spend his leisure time. True, I haven't been a full time resident since 1999 save for a few desperate post-university months working in a call centre, a period so distressing I had to go into exile at a North Wales woodchip factory for six months to get over it. But that's a subject for a different, much longer post. And some things never change, so here it goes:

Don't believe the rumours

A very popular myth is that Nottingham has a girl/boy ration weighted heavily in favour of the chaps. This has been often repeated in the media coverage of Sven's arrival given his reputation as a swordsman of some considerable prowess. Unfortunately, it's bollocks. On a Saturday night competition for the ladies is as fierce as in any other provincial town (and the ladies are considerably fiercer).

Don't go to The Tales of Robin Hood

This may now be a multi-media extravaganza where the sensation of wearing wool tights, eating nettles and getting inappropriately touched by Friar Tuck in your sleep are beamed straight into your cerebral cortex. Or, more likely, it's still a piss poor tourist trap where bored students in fancy dress listlessly mime child-friendly renditions of the Robin Hood myth. I had a friend who spent a summer as a merry man, and I can confirm that they spend far more time bonking each other than they do worrying about historical accuracy.

Go to Rock City

Ah, Rock City. Sticky floored, sweaty and dank. Like I'm sure thousands of others, blagging into student night with a phoney NUS card was my introducton into the world of clubbing, and aside from the even stickier Ziggys in York there's nowhere else that's come close since. Getting in was always a moment of pure elation, as my May birthday meant I was behind most of my friends in turning 18. I spent many an evening out nursing a mounting tide of panic that my baby face and amatuerish ID would ruin the night for everyone. But buoyed by Flaming Lamboughinis and Alien Test Tube Babies from RKOs next door I somehow always brazened it out. And then we were in, surrounded by goths, shabby student wankers and tons of other furtive school agers, all united by the the desire to hear Britpop played hideously loudly. They always had someone dishing out temporary tatoos, and a little cafe area to eat cheesy chips and make appallingly clumsy advances on girls in. That's where I imagine Sven would be - if he phoned ahead I'm sure they'd stock some Swedish meatballs. He and Tord Grip could have a snack, get matching Notts County badges etched on their forearms and go and jump around to Smack My Bitch Up.

That should be enough to see Sven through these nervous first days. Let's hope he turns County around and gets them in the same division as Forest so there can be a decent rivalry for the first time in years. As a Forest fan I'm bored of the rivalry with Derby and don't subscribe to it at all. After all, it's nobody's fault that there are so many lonely fans and sexy sheep in Derbyshire.