Parklife

Every morning I walk through Kennington Park on my way to work. It's usually quite pleasant - the squirrels scampering, the joggers huffing and puffing, the council estate devil dogs tearing across the grass, weights dangling from their necks as they train for their next cage fight.

Unfortunately whoever opens the various gates each morning has set up his own version of the laboratory experiment where a rat has to sniff out some cheese in a maze. The gate in is always open, but it's become a lucky dip as to which gate out will be unlocked. On Wednesday, already late for an early meeting, I was blocked at two exits and and ended up doubling back half the length of the park.

I assume I was being watched by a park keeper wearing a lab coat and perched on a tree branch, making notes on his clipboard. "Subject 17: grows increasingly panicked and kicks a pile of leaves in frustration. Other active subjects openly amused by this display of effeminate rage. Note: tomorrow, see if Subject 17 is fooled by fake Exit sign pointing towards pit filled with dog crap".

Bad Santa

Wandering around a grimly festive Tesco last week sparked a long-forgotten memory. I was shopping with my mother at the age of about 8, and my eye was caught by the cover of the Christmas Radio Times. It was a photograph of a chortling Santa sitting on a snowy log and brandishing his Radio Times. He looked pretty excited about the Birds of a Feather and The Russ Abbott Show seasonal specials, and rightly so.

So far, so unexciting. But then I realised what Santa was holding. The same magazine that I was! With the same cover showing Santa on a log waving a Radio Times. And in that picture, the Santa was holding a magazine with a cover showing Santa on a log waving a Radio Times. And so on until the final miniscule image of Santa's magazine was indecipherable.

Bear in mind that this was in the days before Photoshop or digital trickery, and that I had a tiny brain more used to thinking about Silly Putty and Micro Machines. I literally stared at it for about 10 minutes, trying to comprehend what this could mean. Was I dreaming? Did Santa travel in time? I asked my Mum how it was possible, and she said she didn't know. I felt unnerved and uncomfortable, and thought about it for days afterwards.

I think that was the first time I really wrestled hard with a problem that I couldn't make head nor tail of. I've obviously had plenty of practice since (the last episode of Battlestar Galactica recently provoked a similar reaction) but that was when my general ignorance in the ways of the world became brutally clear. Thanks, Santa.

Oi won’t harve it!

Don't worry readers - I survived the stag weekend. Phew.

The cult of the stag is presumably an invention of the International Drinking Games Association and the Guild of Strippers. Luckily the best man sensibly rejected the lure of the grottier parts of the easyJet empire and booked a house near Exmoor that could sleep 20-odd thirsty men.

My group arrived late on the Friday, having spent a while hopelessly lost in the depths of Devon's windiest lanes. At one point I went to a B&B for directions and had a bellowed conversation with the owners through the glass door. The wife wanted to let me in ("Oh, you poor dear!") but got extremely short thrift from her proto-Tony Martin of a husband ("Absolutely not - oi won’t harve it! Oi don't know 'im, see"). God knows how anyone actually gets a room there.

We made it in the end and had a boys night of booze, crisps and pool. But then Saturday dawned with black clouds and horizontal, thunderous rain. "Shame", I said to one of the stags, just about containing the glee in my voice. "We'll have to not go paintballing or quad biking. I'd been so looking forward to it. Drat!" I then just about contained the panic on my face as he reassured me that both are designed to be enjoyed in Somme-like weather conditions, and that there was no chance at all of a cancellation. "Hooray!" I croaked before going to my room and staring at the pitifully inappropriate selection of clothes I’d packed. I would be fully waterproofed, but only up to my ankles.

Hours later I was standing outside a portacabin in a dismal strip of wood. The other stags milled about adjusting their face masks and overalls, except for the husband-to-be who was dressed in a full-body fox costume. A distinctly feral guide whittled a stick into a spear and bragged about taking down a pheasant that morning with his trusty paint-firing penis extension. We ran around for a bit - well, some people ran. I took the coward’s option whenever possible of defending our flag which, due to the fact that the arena was a three-level crag that a mountain goat would find a bit tricky, was rarely in any danger from the other team.

For the last game I was sent on a diversionary run to draw the other team’s fire. The team captain cut an inspirational figure as he emphasised the critical nature of the mission, before re-adjusting his tail and grimly flipping back his nose and whiskers. This was war. I headed along a steep, densely wooded ridge, stopping only to fall into bushes and trip over roots. I heard a distant round of paintball fire and fired a few rounds in its general direction. After a short pause I was immediately shot at least five times in the chest and started the long stumble back to the portacabin, passing my fellow crack divertee as he howled in pain after a tussle with some nettles. Our captain may have over-estimated our capabilities.

I skipped the quad biking as I was literally 100% sure I would die, and probably take out a few other people, if I went anywhere near it. Then it was back to the ranch for a great night of steady boozing, including a simple drinking game based around rude words that led to a 20 minute argument about whether “hymen” qualified. The final say went to the most passionate objector, who thought that if a word could appear on the 6 O’Clock News it could not be construed as being rude. He then undermined his argument somewhat with the example “Bong! A female celebrity was today involved in a road accident. She may have injured her hymen.” The drinking game dispersed and I moved to the pool room where I was having a grand old time until around 4am when someone described Showgirl by The Auteurs as “boring” and skipped the track, whereupon I went to bed in a huff. I am 28 years old.

It’s the hen night this weekend. Rollerdisco. Girls are too smart for paintball.

Ambush dream

Sleepy girlfriend trying to remember what she was dreaming about this morning:

"It wasn't a nice dream - it was an ambush dream. Turned out Captain Kirk wasn't my friend after all. Hold on - I was Captain Kirk! Oh, no, wait - I wasn't."

Not a word of this is exaggerated for comic effect.

Duke Luke

I've written here before about my vast affection for Luke Haines, the evil rock genius behind The Auteurs, Baader Meinhoff, Black Box Recorder and a slew of bonkers solo albums. His new album, 21st Century Man, came out last weekend and the neighbours have been treated to it on a deafening loop ever since. I seem to remember my girlfriend shouldering her way out of the front door laden with overflowing suitcases around about Wednesday. She's left a letter, probably about how much she likes the album.

The problem with loving Luke Haines is that so few other people do, and despite everything he does being packed with melody and intelligence he can be a challenging prospect to the uninitiated. Alexis Petridis of the Guardian brilliantly described him as "a lavishly gifted songwriter, but never a man likely to dazzle onlookers with the bewitching symmetry of his features". His voice can be harsh and reedy on the first listen, and the humour in his pitch-black lyrics is an acquired taste (as shown by the banning of Black Box Recorder's first single, Child Psychology, from UK radio for its chorus of "Life is unfair / Kill yourself or get over it").

Haines gives every impression of being happy to be a cult concern. By the end of The Auteurs he was already resigned to not getting his due credit on songs like Future Generation ("The future generation will take me to their heart...the next generation will get it from the start"). He also takes a patrician approach to fan relations, which is either admirable or suicidal depending on whether you're his biographer or his accountant. The forum on his website used to be a brilliant place for his cabal of dedicated followers to bicker over top 10 lists of b-sides. Rather than nuture this ragtag platoon of committed product purchasers, he took umbrage about complaints over a solo tour featuring no band and a 30 minute set and closed the forum down, although not before announcing a "Whinger of the Month" competition ("The winner will receive a prize of Luke Haines playing a set in their living room/ stone they live under. This prize is not optional. Haines turns up whether you like it or not. He will play an excruciatingly short set".).

But if you do get the bug and starting exploring the back catalogue there is so much depth and quality to get immersed in. I suggest either Baader Meinhoff (a concept funk album about German terrorism filled with brilliant pop tunes) or - why not? - the new one as being ideal for the newcomer. The epic title track is below - go on, give it a go:

Mr Mop

The flat had become disgraceful. A few weekends away and the darkening evenings had halted all forms of domestic management. So I got up at 8am and started cleaning. And carried on cleaning. Floors were mopped, bathrooms were scrubbed, the fridge was audited (the prize find being a jar of ancient sun-dried tomatoes that had turned into candy floss). I was being so sensible that I even emptied the hoover bag without the usual mushroom cloud of filth erupting over everything I'd just cleaned.

My girlfriend was banished to the spare bedroom with a bin bag to start working through the tonnes of unwearable clothes that, as an inveterate hoarder, she insists on filing in a growing pile in the middle of the room. Progress was made, although I expect to be finding items from Topshop's summer 2004 collection hidden at the back of cupboards and under the bed for the forseeable future.

And now it's all done. We celebrated with a large brunch only slightly ruined by me following her every move around the kitchen with a dustpan and brush. There's still 3/4 of the weekend left and I've achieved so much already. That tricky debut novel should be polished off in time for Come Dine With Me.

Web £2.0

The newspaper industry is in a rare old tizzy at the moment. As the Evening Standard chucks caution to the wind and goes free, desperately hoping that coating London in a sodden blanket of gratis copies will give advertisers the chronic horn, Rupert Murdoch has kangeroo-hopped in the other direction. Old lizard-face apparently blames the internet for the modern expectation of news being on tap for free (as opposed to, for example, his decades of competition-slaying price wars) and will soon be charging for his paper's websites.

As the mack daddy of modern media mogulling he can, of course, do what he wants. Good luck to him, although I wouldn't pay a penny for any of his sites. But what if my beloved guardian.co.uk wanted a piece of my pie?

To say I love the Guardian website is an understatement. Tooling around its endless nooks and crannies is the purest form of addictive contentment. At some point in the last few years I've convinced myself that eating pomegranate daily is crucial to my short and long term health, to the point where if I miss a day I start to feel genuinely uneasy. The same goes for my mental health and the Guardian site. To put it another way, if I ever end up in a Tom Hanks/Cast Away situation on a desert island, all that will remain of me (aside from a half-eaten basketball) will be crude images of the site's masthead daubed in blood and tears on all the palm trees.

As befits a newspaper group run by milquetoast liberals, the paper doesn't actually make money. Once the hessian office windfarm and free copies of the Female Eunuch for the cleaners have been paid for they'll need to find some dosh from somewhere, and I imagine at some point it will be the site. So fine - just tell me where to send the blank cheque. If anything, it might weed out some of the more tedious Comment Is Free contributors who pop up under the blogs, endlessly whinging and slagging each other off (whilst getting hysterical if anyone slags them off in return). A typical exchange is:

Shithawk1976: Oh God, another Guardian blog about Big Brother? I've never seen it. I thought this was supposed to be be a quality paper???!?!!!

Sir Gavin of Burpsalot: IF YOU DON'T LIEK IT WHY BOTHER COMMENTING??

Shithawk1976: I'll comment where I want to. And the low brow nature of your reply has only confirmed my prejudices about all reality TV and the sliding standards at the Guardian. Good day.

Sir Gavin of Burpsalot: this comment has been removed by a moderator

Waiting for quad

Yesterday I spotted this almost demonically self-fulfilling headline on the BBC website: "Are nervous women cyclists more likely to be killed?". The main problem for nervous drivers is the vicious cycle of being permanently liable to panic and do something catastrophically stupid, and the knowlegde of this making them more nervous. The BBC suggesting that the grim reaper is in the passenger seat can only lead to ladies across the country hysterically veering into oncoming traffic, off bridges and through busy zebra crossings.

I speak as a nervous driver myself. I don't remember if it took five or six attempts to get my license but, however many it was, the process beat out of me any residual enthusiasm for motoring. I did vroom about for a while but hung up my string-back driving gloves after an ill-judged trip through match day traffic to see a Nottingham Forest game that left a car full of schoolmates visibly ashen. I've not turned an ignition key in anger for about 7 years.

Luckily, one of the many ways in which living in London retards maturity is eridacting the need for a car but there's a revving, chugging cloud on the horizon. In November I will be at a stag do where the eyebrow shaving and mooning will stop for a brisk bout of quad biking. I couldn't be more uneasy if the BBC ran the headline "Are nervous Gareths more likely to be ground into the mud by the enormous chassis of an upturned quad bike?". It's inevitable that I'll perform the full Brian Harvey and run over my own head. And if by some miracle Saint Jeremy Clarkson answers my prayers and I survive, the relief will be short lived as within hours I'll be having my balls shot off in a hail of paintballs. Which idiot invented the stag do?

So. What do you do?

My school reunion was supposed to be next weekend. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the organiser, it was crushed by only attracting four acceptances on Facebook and has been cancelled. I think there were two problems. One is the hideously public nature of the Facebook invitation system which encourages lurking on a massive scale, with dozens of people waiting for enough of their friends to break rank first. That’s certainly what I was doing.

The other is more fundamental. Facebook has killed the meaningful reunion. I am friends with at least 20 people on there that I haven’t seen since the glorious day in 1999 when I strode out of the school gates and became a man (-ish, given that I looked like a lesbian hippy. Ah, last day fancy dress - what a hoot). I’ve got Facebook friends from school that I couldn't pick out of a line-up containing them, my parents and the Cadbury’s gorilla. Why would I go all the way to Nottingham to eat sausage rolls with them? All I need to know is who has a better job than me and who is balder than me - I can find that out at home and sob over my own sausage rolls.

Just to prove I’m not the dangerous loner that the paragraph above suggests, I spent Saturday lounging around on Primrose Hill with my girlfriend. Seconds after I alerted her to the high-celeb count in the area we chanced upon Alexa Chung and a Geldof. Chung was beautiful of face and terrifyingly skinny of leg. The Geldof, with her peroxide fright-wig, fag hanging out of messy red lips and bovver boots, looked she was in a Saved By The Bell ‘issues’ episode about falling in with the wrong crowd and ending up looking like a picture of a punk drawn by a dog. I expected Zack and A.C. Slater to leap out of a car and bundle her off to that shit canteen for some magic tricks from the creepy owner. Obscene hereditary privilege - just say no.

The blog of doom

This week brought the sad news that Keith Floyd has finally conked out after a lifetime of drinking like a pissed fish and smoking like a laboratory beagle. I have previously written about my affection for the old git, which raises the question of whether this little-read snicket of the interweb has somehow become cursed. I often brush off the heather-flogging gypsies in Covent Garden - perhaps the angel of death has been summoned to use these ramblings as a shopping list? If Jarvis or Luke Haines go next then I'm calling in Doris Stokes.

By all accounts Keith's last TV appearance (which he was settling down to watch when my evil eye polished him off) being interviewed by that rancid bully Keith Allen was almost unwatchable. Obviously on death's door, he raged against the TV chefs that prospered in his wake while he, in his own addled opinion, got shafted. Whilst this is a sad last gasp for someone who made a genuinely significant contribution to British TV, better that be his final appearance than this assault on common sense: