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.