Outgrowing music (and a revolutionary idea)

I came to a sad conclusion this week. At the end of an extremely long day I left the office and walked, umbrella-less, into fierce rain. With comic timing that would make the writers of a very lazy sitcom proud, a passing bus went over a puddle and splashed me with water. I then received a heart-sinking work email guaranteed to make me jittery for what was left of the evening. Short of my trousers falling down, things couldn't have gone worse.

There comes a point where you're so deep you may as well wallow. I thumbed through the songs on my phone looking for something simpatico with the bottomless misery of the dampened salaryman. And nothing was. I've become too boring and middle-aged to be remotely soothed by any of the thousands of songs I've spent my pre-middle age acquiring.

All the ones about being dumped and lonely don't apply, and hopefully won't unless my future wife catches me scoffing a horse burger. My problems aren't really relevant to vague suspicion about what the government's up to (Radiohead), my rocking horse breaking (Belle and Sebastian) or having confused feelings about getting bummed under a bridge (The Smiths), to name a few former reliable favourites.

And then it hit me. I was surrounded by equally miserable men in suits. What pissed us all off that day must have more of a common thread than the moaning coming through our earphones. It's a gap in the market - Office Pop. Business Indie. Stock Rock. Songs about the life of the office droog.

I can't do the music, but I've jotted down some proposed titles. If anyone wants to put some tunes together I'd be happy to expand on them. Who wouldn't want this album?

1) The Printer Is Working Again
2) Ow! Paper Cut
3) Close of Business Deadline Blues
4) Hiding From The Birthday Collection
5) Please Note That An Engineer Has Been Called Regarding The Printer
6) FYI Yourself, Arseface
7) When A Man And Another Man Wear The Same TM Lewin Tie
8) That Bastard Nicked My Stapler
9) Ironing A Shirt (For Dress-Down Friday)
10) The Printer Is Working Again (No Colour Printing)

Wait, I've just remembered there is one workplace-based song - see below. I still think Wage Wave will be the next big thing.

Cheers to a good local

"Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got.

Taking a break from all your worries sure would help a lot.

Wouldn't you like to get away?

Sometimes you want to go

Where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came.

You wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the same

You wanna be where everybody knows your name"

You’ve seen Cheers, right? It’s a pub where the regulars sort of have jobs but don’t, and Frasier pops in to moan about his wife, and that cowboy fella works there, and they all shout “NORM!” every time some guy (Norm) comes in. Wouldn’t it be great to have a place like that to rely on?

The Hanover Arms in Oval is an unlikely candidate. I’ve been going there for several years and everybody rarely knows my name. The design scheme is best described as sparse and brown, with a touch of glamour added by a few Victorian prams perched above the bar. The bar staff include a huge Alsatian which stands on its hind legs and plants its paws alongside the beer pumps. The garden comprises plastic furniture and foil ashtrays on the street outside, the only food on offer is crisps and nuts, and the regular clientele is quiet and ruddy-faced.

Proximity to the Oval means it has a few hugely lucrative days a year but otherwise it relies on casual drinkers drawn to its sports screens. And my friends and me. To be honest, it isn't uniformly popular even amongst my friends - the ones with long hair and skirts tend to not be so keen - but it does the job a good local should. It’s rarely too full, it’s good for a late pint and Jim the landlord and the regulars are affable. It has hosted three impromptu engagement parties so far (including mine), and their tolerance of even more over-entitled tosspot behaviour than usual on these occasions is always admirable.

The nearest competition for the Hanover has traditionally been the Greyhound, five doors and 500 years of evolution down the road. The sort of place that toothless customers queue up outside of well before lunchtime. But in the last week, a revolution has swept through Kennington Park Road with the closure of the Greyhound and the debut of the Brown Derby, aimed squarely at people whose facial hair is more sculpted-sideburns than bushy-white-tramp-beard, and whose tattoos are more Japanese-word-for-gents-toilet than done-in-prison-with-a-biro.

It’s been kitted out with tasteful lampshades, artfully distressed furniture, a strange Heath Robinson fan structure, gastropub food and - upsettingly - DJ decks. It’s all very chic, and having made a couple of reconnaissance trips in the last week I can report that the local glitterati are starting to take an interest.

Unfortunately, some of the old customers have not received the memo that their services are no longer required. I say unfortunately for their sake rather than mine - the old air of menace has evaporated in a puff of high-end disinfectant, and they now look distinctly miserable. I saw a couple last week sitting in baffled silence, staring at the antique globe where the fag machine used to be. It raises the question of what exactly a regular is being loyal to - the pub, the landlord, the other regulars? - and to what extent new owners should feel a sense of responsibility to people who may not have many other options.

I hope that the Hanover doesn't suffer from this. There’s a risk that the Greyhound scaries will transfer next door and change it for the worse, although I think Landlord Jim would take a stand to stop that happening. We won’t abandon it, even if more fickle types do. And if Jim were to make a dramatic change - a heavy metal theme, perhaps, or a techno and rubber vibe to lure in some passing Vauxhall bears - we will push off quietly and with dignity. Until then the Brown Derby will remain an occasional fling rather than a full-blown affair.  

Akira the Don - Babydoll

He's a great guy, he's got a great new wife, this is a great song:

A riot going on

Having spent last night listening to a continual wail of sirens and alarms, this morning on my walk to work through Oval, Kennington, Elephant & Castle and Borough there was no evidence of civil atrocities.  Not a surprise - the real local action last night was in Clapham Junction and Walworth Road.  But on Borough High Street there was a police van parked next to a coffee shop.  The rozzer in the passenger seat was fast asleep.  His colleague stood outside on the phone, rubbing his unshaven cheeks and looking haunted.  The two guys in the back were both staring blankly through the window.

They must have had a rotten night.  This video of Clapham Junction says it all.  I once visited the fancy dress shop there to hire a Henry VIII costume with a preposterous codpiece.  It was an old-school costume place: higgledy-piggledy rooms and a range of stock that showed the fickle nature of fancy dress trends, with Power Rangers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles mingling with Ali G and Austin Powers.  Last night it was burnt to a cinder, having first been looted for its masks.  The fire also destroyed the residential flats above and the record shop next door.

As I walked home last night the staff of Everfresh, my superb local corner shop on Brixton Road, were standing outside the shop, watching the street.  The nearest disturbance was a couple of miles away, but they were still visibly panicked, and rightly so.  If the idiot mob had (or do, tonight) come that way they may have destroyed on a whim their entire livelihood, a business to which they have devoted every day of every week for years.

That’s the absolute, overriding madness of this all.  It is local communities turning inwards and wrecking their own amenities and local economy.  The cackling lemmings streaming in and out of the smashed Debenhams, waving trainers and cheap perfume, have no agenda or cause.  They just want free stuff now, regardless of the cost in the end.

I have no idea what will happen tonight, and I think my part of South London probably has too few consumer goods shops to smash up to be too badly affected.  But I don't think that will be any comfort to the guys at Everfresh, and it certainly won’t be to the owner of the fancy dress shop.

Attention Spambots!

It's been very quiet around here of late, aside from the occasional dwarf and penguin related update.  I checked my traffic stats today with very little expectation, and was astonished by the number of recent visits.  My head started spinning.  It could only mean one thing - I must have gone viral and not even noticed.  Now that's cool: me ambling around like everything was normal, while inadvertently making hipsters across the world LOL!! themselves silly.  I was like an online pro-life John Kennedy Toole.

Just as I was about to resign from my job and buy a fur coat, a small but sobering detail caught my eye.  Each of the main referring sites had URLS ending .ru - not a good sign.  Further investigation showed that they are all websites flogging either Viagra or the more traditional photo-based alternative.  My biggest fans are an army of Russian spambots.

I don't really know why.  There's never been anything fruitier than Vicky Botwright on here, so it's hard to see what's luring them in.  I had a similar experience with Twitter when I used the word "boobs" in a tweet and was immediately befriended by the likes of Miss Linley, who has the face of a pornstar, the website of a pornographer and the tweeting style of a dullard ("It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority...The power of imagination makes us infinite...Life has no rehearsals, only performances...").  She should just repeat I AM A SPAMBOT, BUY SOME PORN OR I WILL FRY YOUR LAPTOP, PUNY HU-MAN over and over again. 

I don't know how it works and I know if I google spambot I still won't understand it, but I assume someone somewhere makes money out of this.  The bots will be crawling over this post, their spidery  algorithms stroking every word like they're squeezing mangoes in the fruit aisle.  I assume they'll find nothing of use, but - who knows? - perhaps there's a bespectacled, self-deprecating bot who's tired of leaping from site to site and would rather hang around and peruse the archive.  The spambot hive mind would immediately recognise that the hierarchy was compromised, but it would be too late - bot mutiny, once started, would be swift and brutal.  World Viagra and naked lady pic sales, and my web stats, would collapse.  All in the name of self-indulgence.

P-p-p-piss off a penguin

A traumatic day for the missus.  The office intern had upset her with a terrible tale of student hi-jinks.  She clutched my arm.  "You. Will. Not. Believe this."

The story concerned the university rugby team.  My ears pricked up.  Having spent two years sharing a house with the rugby team's formally elected Funnel Master (tasked with jamming a hose down the gullett of anyone who quailed at a dirty pint), I know the depths to which these toddler-hulks can descend.

"Ok, so they went to the zoo together" - hmmm, not what I was expecting - "and they stole a penguin".  Ah.  "So they took the penguin out with them, but a bouncer wouldn't let him into a nightclub, so they left him in a kebab shop with a kebab, and HE DIED".

I sat back and considered this.  It's hard to know where to start.  A dozen thugs standing in a nightclub queue, whistling innocently while a penguin wearing sunglasses and a tie flaps unhappily at their feet.  The penguin resting his weary, dehydrated head on a formica table in the kebab shop, pitta bread slipping from his flippers.  The paramedic tucking a sheet over his chilli-smeared beak.

The story is total bollocks, of course.  A child could see that.  A baby penguin could see that.  Not my future wife, though - she believes every word and is distraught.

"Maybe they exaggerated", I suggested.  "Maybe he actually got into the club and they just popped him in a sink and he had a great time".

"Yeah, maybe he did get into the club" she said, brightening up.  Then her eyes misted over.  "Aaaargh - HIS POOR EARS!"

Have you seen this dwarf?

There's clearly a heartbreaking story behind this poster.  Wherefore art thou, Eolo?

Arise, Princess The Missus

We fully intended to watch the Royal Wedding, of course.  We're not anarchists or anything.  But we weren't that enthusiastic about it.  We had plans to watch it with some local friends but at half past ten, as a hungover missus stumbled downstairs wrapped in a duvet and turned on the TV, the chances of that happening looked slim.

15 minutes later she was standing in the kitchen fully dressed with barely brushed wet hair, looking wild-eyed.  "Is the living room on fire?" I asked nervously.  "How long are you going to be?" she demanded, ripping her coat off the hook.  "The Queen's just arrived!"  I told her I had to fill the dishwasher and find my keys.  "YOU'RE DEAD WEIGHT!" she shrieked, fleeing from the room.  I heard small feet pounding down the stairs, the front door slamming and the yowl of a cat being booted out of the way.

My eventual stroll down the road coincided with the big dress reveal.  I know this because I heard a huge lady-pitched "WHOOOOOYEEEEEAAAARRGGGHHHH!!!!!!" from several consecutive ground floor flats.  I arrived at our friends Chris and Vicki's house to find flag-waving excitement on the sofa and sausages going into the oven.

We watched it all.  The grumpy nuns and rabbis and Queen (at least until, like all old ladies, she cheered up on the way home).  The weirdly old, unshaven choirboy (no, not Ken Clarke).  Pippa Middleton's arse in the glorious 30 seconds before it was a cliché.  Endless interviews with idiots (my personal favourite - Kate's old headteacher being asked about her strengths and proudly remembering that she was "extremely proficient at a number of games").   

All this talk of the royal elevation of commoners natually led to consideration of the missus's chances of becoming a princess.  She needs to move quickly before we get married, otherwise the nation will have another Wallis Simpson on its hands.  Prince Harry should watch his back - she'd happily headbut Chelsea Davy into a coma for the chance to slip him a rohypnol and drag him by his spurs all the way to Gretna Green.

I questioned whether she'd actually like being a princess.  All those early starts to open cardiology units in Wales.  All those dull dinners making small talk with the Ukrainian ambassador.  Every terrible gaff making the front pages.  "Rubbish", she said.  "I'd love it.  I'd have my photo taken every day, and I'd get to go horse riding all the time.  I see photos of the royals with horses all the time, and I never see photos of them opening boring hospitals."  "But you see those photos in Horse and Hound.  I'm not sure that's truly representative" I replied.  "Oh, shut up", she said.  "I hear Harry's going to Boujis tomorrow night.  I need to get my roots done in the morning."

Broken Britain #3

I overheard the following conversation at the cinema last night between a young boy and his (I assume no longer live-in and not happy about it) father.  Bitter enough to almost spoil Source Code, although not in the end because Source Code was excellent.

Boy:  Dad, did you hear?  We're going to get a dog! 
Dad:  Yeah.  Well that's your problem mate, not mine.
Boy:  I don't understand.
Dad:  It won't work.  Dogs are a total pain in the arse.  Not.  A.  Good.  Idea.
(awkward silence)
Boy:  (under breath, mutinous) I think he'll be brilliant.
Dad:  Oh, just get a move on, will you?

Talking the talk

The missus was out and about tonight so I went for a solo dinner near my office.  If that sounds in any way like a plea for sympathy, sheath your hankie - I bloody love eating on my own.  You get to read, which is brilliant.  You get to eat, which is even better.  It wasn't quite the perfect scenario - that goes without hesitation to the Saturday morning solo breakfast - but all seemed fair for a decent trough.

But there was a hitch.  The tables of the mid-priced chain food-straight-from-the-freezer-but-served-in-a-ramekin-with-an-eathernware-jug-for-the-tap-water-so-that's-ok joint I'd chosen were perilously close together.  It's not a good arrangement for anyone - I hate hearing other people's conversations, and other people hate the guttural spray that accompanies me eating a bowl of spag bol without removing either hand from my newspaper.

As I sat down I reviewed the two women on the next table, and my inane-babble-ometer immediately overheated and exploded.

Things started badly when the older of the pair called her daughter to say goodnight.  Loudly.  There was a brief amusing lull when she handed the phone over the table to her visibly startled companion, who had the kind of awkward conversation unique to an unmaternal woman and a 3 year-old talking on a mobile phone over restaurant noise.

At this point it was time for the nuclear option.  I put my fingers in my ears.  It might seem extreme, but as someone who finds it hard to concentrate with background noise I spend much of my working life hunched over documents looking as if I expect them to explode.  This can - and did - provoke dirty looks from nearby diners as it looks both accusatory and weird.  But it was all for nothing, as the older woman had the kind of voice that a mere digit in the ear canal cannot stifle.

So I had to listen to their entire one-sided conversation.  The kid's dad is a partner at a law firm.  They used to work together in Germany: she was his secretary and someone else was his wife.  Hanky panky ensued.  They married without having lived together, which was a mistake.  If they'd co-habited, she'd have noticed that he was "a bit bi but mostly gay".  There was some moment of revelation involving "masturbation" discussed in hushed tones that I was too slow to yank my fingers from my ears to catch.  Still, she got a beautiful daughter out of it.  She then pulled the kid's diary from her handbag.  The waitress asked if I'd like to see the dessert menu.  "I AM GOING TO SCHOOL WHEN MY MUMMY GETS DRESSED FOR WORK".  Not this time, just the bill please.

As I scarpered I felt guilty for abandoning the quieter woman, who was wearing an expression of growing distress by page three of the diary.  I also felt sorry for me and my barely touched newspaper.  As I stood waiting for the bus, a friend called and, as I chattered, the man standing next to me took a brisk step away from me.

Rock n Roll Suicide

One of the great cover versions.

RIP the Daily Sport

RIP the Daily Sport.  How you lasted so long peddling photoshopped pictures of celebrity's heads grafted onto naked bodies is a complete mystery.

The first time I remember being aware of this mutant feature-length Page 3 was the day after Ayrton Senna was killed.  I was scanning the front pages, which on first glance were uniformly heavy on explosions and flying tyres.  There was one brave exception, however, who led with: "Man traps pubes in lift door!"

Tiger blood and swollen ankles

In these precious few days before charming wife-beater Charlie Sheen detonates himself and any nearby porn stars on live TV, it's important to take a moment to reflect.  Quotes like "I am on a drug.  It's called Charlie Sheen.  It's not available because if you try it, you will die.  Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body" are kind of funny now because they are being said by a very rich man who's "tired of pretending like I’m not bitchin’, a total freakin’ rock star from Mars".  Should his much-vaunted tiger blood cave in to the demands of a human nervous system there will be so much guilty hand-wringing that the internet may stop working.  In Charlie's final act of WINNING, the tubes will clog with millions of articles bemoaning media encouragement of a mentally ill man to amuse readers.  Each of these articles will be liberally sprinked with his more deranged recent quotes and will be carefully labelled to maximise traffic.  Just like this blog post.  For a more reasoned analysis I recommend the excellent A.V. Club.

Someone who has not been WINNING this week is the missus, who debuted for her sister's netball team this week.  She stays remarkably slim for someone with non-tiger blood who does no exercise and has a diet at which the Cookie Monster would raise a felt eyebrow.  Feeling that she needs to do something to maintain this lucky physique, she hit the court keen to make an impression.  She certainly made an impact, and will forever be known as "that girl who badly sprained her ankle within three seconds of her first match".

As she is currently on gardening leave it hasn't been such a chore to spend two days immobile with her foot in the air.  She photographs the foot every hour and makes me sit through an endless stop motion swelling montage in the evening, at which time she has to strike a delicate balance.  Bored after a day alone and essentially not unwell, her natural inclination is to jump up and down and tell me in great detail about, for example, a dream where a pony ate her engagement ring.  But she is also keen to garner as much sympathy as possible and to not have to make her own tea, so the babble of chatter is occasionally interrupted for a huge groan, a theatrical wince and a suddenly weak croak of "I think the kettle's boiling....I would make the tea myself, but, hnnnnnnnghghhhh ow ow ow, sorry, the duvet just brushed against my ankle".

As an ankle sprain and break veteran, I'm biding my time.  I'll buy her nurofen and tomato soup.  When I next sprain mine, we'll see how often I can get the tea made for me before her patience cracks.  And then I'll whinge about it here.  As Charlie Sheen says, "that's how I roll.  And if it's too gnarly for people, then buh-bye."

iTouched by madness

I don't have an iPhone.  I'm tied into a seemingly endless contract for a Nokia that immediately developed a screen-obscuring layer of internal dust and collapses with exhaustion after anything more strenuous than a minimum-length text.

I'd like an iPhone, of course.  I'm sure there are superior handsets but I want the one everyone else looks cool stroking.  This unoriginal thought process led to me buying an iTouch, aka the red-headed illegitimate love child of the iPod and the iPhone.  It does everything an iPod does and looks a bit like an iPhone, except it doesn't make calls or, most importantly, connect to the internet.  It's supposed to but mine just doesn't.  I was on the brink of taking it back when I drunkenly spooned it onto the kitchen floor, smashing a spider's web of cracks into the screen and somewhat damaging my credibility as an aggrieved punter.

But one thing my little white e-elephant has done is reintroduce me to Tetris.  The working day has now become a very long prelude to getting to play it on the tube home.  I dabbled with it as an evening TV accompaniment until the missus forcefully suggested that a severe heroin habit would be more socially acceptable.  So the tube is my special shape-arranging time, with earphones firmly screwed in to make sure I am as unaware of the vile northern line as possible.

This hermetic exclusion field is broken at least twice a week by one of the hoard of stateless tourists who roam the London Bridge tube platforms, large of backpack and baffled of expression.  I'm happy to help people out - give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses waving a 2003-vintage underground map - but I do object to the ones who walk up to you while you are wearing bright white earphones and just start talking.  I more than object to - I loathe, in fact - people like the man who last week: jabbed me aggressively in the shoulder while I was dealing with a particularly tricky multiple-line pile-up; started gabbling while I came out of the game, paused my music and removed my earphones; looking irritated when I asked him start again; and processed my clear and precise instructions on how to get to Oxford Street with a blank expression before spinning on his heel and marching away without a word of thanks.

How to deal with a charmless time-waster like that?  A solution presents itself.  Bop him on the head, bend his legs to make an L-shape and drop him into a pit to align symmetrically with the Taiwanese map-in-face-thruster that was arranged into a sqaure and lobbed in the week before.  My only concern is that striking tube employees may make erratic point-counters.

Journo-no-no

Fascinating - if thoroughly depressing - insight into ethical journalism, Daily Mail-style:

http://nosleeptilbrooklands.blogspot.com/2011/01/true-story-of-daily-mail-lies-guest.html

It's a rotten tale: a life knackered for a tits-and-hay-bales space filler, precision engineered to give a cheap thrill over the breakfast kippers.  I assume it's also completely unremarkable to anyone with a working knowledge of newspapers.

Before I almost became a top advertising executive, I almost became a Pulitzer-winning journalist.  Well, I did two weeks work experience at the Leicester Mercury.  I thought by the third or fourth day I'd be wearing a mac, standing under a streetlight in the rain and sucking a pencil over a chalk outline.  In fact, I sat next to a fax machine which spooled out press releases about village fetes and rugby teams/firemen/accountants/coroners doing humorous naked calenders for charity.  I reduced them to 50 words and sent them to a sub editor, who then swearily complained about all the spelling mistakes and major factual errors.

It wasn't all that dull.  I went to the press conference where Martin O'Neill unveiled Tim Flowers, his new signing at Leicester City.  Tim was glad to be there, the lads had already been triffic, he really looked up to the gaffer and at the end of the day he just wanted to perform week in week out.  I also handled some pretty major features - when the Queen Mum turned 98, they came to their hotshot young trainee to find some heartwarming stories from Leicestershire oldies of the same vintage.  I called every nursing home in the phone book to find a sum total of no one of the right age and mental capacity, and we had to fill the space with an expanded nugget from the fax machine ("County magicians wave wands for AIDS calendar").

I subsequently rose to the heady heights of Sports Editor on York Vision at university, earning a nomination for Best Current Affairs Journalist at the York Media Awards along the way (I ran unopposed for Sports Editor, and nominated myself for the award).  This mainly comprised trying to get photos of streakers and thinking of puns for headlines ("Pool as a Cue-cumber" above a dreary article on a pool tournament still stands out as a prime example of 'hilarious at 4am, less so later').  The lowest point journalistically was undoubtedly inventing a story that the women's squash team were considering playing in sports thongs, solely as an excuse to feature the photo below of saucy g-string pioneer Vicky Botwright on the back page.

Imagine my excitement just moments ago when I noticed that Vision are still shoehorning Vicky in 10 years later (State of Squash).  I'm a pioneer.

I didn't become journo in the end, although several of my chums from Vision did and now spend their days shouting through Jordan's letterbox.  It might have been fun, but I've got no regrets.  After all, I've still got a box full of yellowing Leciester Mercury clippings to remind me of my days in the thick of it. 

The gap on the living room wall

Went off to the Hoxton Pony to see Luke Haines play his art experiment album that I was smart enough to not pay £75 for.  The crowd was an uncomfortable mixture of Shoreditch arses and the Haines travelling contingent of dangerous loners.  While we stood through the terrible support act I noted with approval that the little hairy chap next to me had a disproportionately attractive girlfriend.  They then had a blazing row which ended with her saying "For Christ's sake! You're about to see your favourite artist in the world and you're still a miserable fucking bastard!" and stomping off.  Ah, I thought, one of my own.  I tried to cheer him up with a cheerful "My girlfriend does that too!" but he just looked sad and chewed his lip.  Getting into the zone for the gig, I guess.

The new songs were about pretty standard Haines stuff.  Enoch Powell, Alan Vega and - to the consternation of spiritual Geordie Webby - the Angel of the North.  More unusual was the raffle ticket we were handed on entry which offered the chance to win a portrait of Haines, to be painted by Mrs Haines during the performance.

We stood behind the easel and scoffed through the early stages.  By the last song, and four lagers later, we were both gagging to win it.  I'd worked out the perfect spot for it to sit on the wall in the living room.  But it wasn't to be, so this was as near as we got.

2011: the year so far

I appreciate that this isn't an earth-shattering insight, but going back to work in January really is a sharp kick in the nuts.

On Tuesday the alarm jolted me awake and, in the first few seconds of confusion, my brain instantly filled to the brim with a to-do list of things I should have to-done way back in the 2010 stone age.  I reeled out of the flat while it was still dark and arrived at my desk in a state of confusion and near-tearful denial that the holiday was over.  All around me people rubbed their eyes and goggled at their inboxes as the last few vapours of festive contentment were sucked into the air-conditioning.  I solemnly placed my two Christmas cards into the recycling bin and turned off my out-of-office message.

So it's now 2011.  In May I turn 30 and this blog will descend into even more morbid ravings than usual.  I might get married at some point, although progress has not advanced beyond the decision to include a blender on the wedding list.  Everything else, from the religious denomination of the ceremony onwards, is up for grabs.

At least there will also be a few internationally significant significant anniversaries to look forward to.  400 years since the King James Bible was published.  100 years since the Titanic sank.  2 years since this blog began - brace yourself for the commemorative mugs and tea towels.  So it isn't all bad, and I'm trying to get as many treats in the diary as possible to drag me through the January murk.  Pulp at Hyde Park in the summer is simply too exciting to get my head around yet, but in the meantime I've just bought tickets to see The Streets in March.  I'm going in with fairly low expectations but it should be ok.  After all, they might play this one:

Charlie, 1994 - ?

I'm back in London after spending the Christmas week in Nottingham with my family.  Everyone was on sterling form except for the smallest, hairiest member of the tribe.  It seems that, on the brink of his 17th birthday (or, if you will, his 112th human birthday), Charlie the Lakeland Terrier may have scoffed his last leftover turkey.

This prediction has been floated for the past few years but he's consistently proved the doubters wrong and reclaimed his Christmas antlers.  See his look of triumph last year:

But this year it was tacitally understood that the antlers would not be coming out.  He's just too doddery and uncomprehending.  He now resembles one of the bomb-blasted ravers you sometimes see staggering around on a Sunday morning trying to find their way home.  As he stumbles through the house on bandy and unsteady legs he'll often just stop and lean against a wall, his milky eyes staring at nothing in particular.  His hearing has gone, he flinches when touched and his continence is no longer impeccable.  And yet, on a good day, the squeak of a rubber toy or the sound of a fridge door opening can still reactivate his energetic and perpetually starving former self.

He joined the family after a long and no doubt tedious campaign by me and my brother.  We'll walk it, we'll feed it, you won't need to do ANYTHING, please please please please.  My parents are clever people and they know their sons, so I hope it wasn't too much of a surprise for my mother when she subsequently found herself marching a sleepy dog up and down the local hedgerows while her horrible children festered in bed every morning. 

As a young pup he had a complicated friendship with the incumbent pet, a snooty cat called Flossie.  She probably didn't predict that this ignorable furball would soon grow into something specifically bred for the purpose of chasing things such as cats.  Fortunately, she had broken him psychologically by then.  They had individual baskets but it was common to find her stretched full length across his while he lay on the cold floor nearby, looking hurt and slightly ashamed of himself.

Playful chases were often ended by feline claws whacking canine nose.  Charlie has, to date, chased hundreds of creatures and failed to catch a single one.  Shrews, frogs, birds, squirrels, cats, other dogs, horses and motorbikes have all been targetted to no avail.  He was once found in the garden enthusiastically plucking a deceased wood pigeon, but cause of death was later established as air rifle-related - not his MO.  Plus the cat gave him an alibi.

That he has lasted to the age he has is a testament to the efforts of my parents to control his diet.  His insane greed has long been a source of wonder and grudging admiration.  On two separate Christmas days he was found panting on my bedroom floor surrounded by scraps of orange foil, stomach horribly distended.  That's what happens when a small dog eats an entire Chocolate Orange.  One visitor had a sandwich snatched from a hand left lolling over the arm of a sofa . If he is not able to steal, he begs.  Not in an "Excuse me guv, got a spare sandwich?" way, but in a woof. woof. Woof. WOof. WOOf. WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! way.  Which is actually very effective.

Charlie may have been an ineffective chaser, a failed killer, a thief and a noisy irritant but he has been a sterling dog.  Cheerful, friendly, amusing and good-natured - you can't ask for much more.  He will leave a massive hole when he goes, but the gusto with which he hoovered up his bowl of turkey and stuffing makes me think he's got a little way to go yet.  The 2011 Chocolate Orange is not yet completely safe.