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.

Something for the Weakened

Watching consumate professionals Tim Lovejoy and Louise Redknapp on the flacid neither-one-nor-the-other Sunday morning stodge Something for the Weekend.

Saving grace chef Simon Rimmer is explaining what he will be cooking this morning.  He starts with fish soup and moves on to mushroom pie.  But as the pre-recorded pie images appear Tim cuts in.  He isn't happy.

"I'm not sure about the fish soup, to be honest".

Simon is thrown.  This didn't happen in rehearsal, and he knows it looks shoddy to be talking about fish soup over a visual of mushroom pie.  He flannels.  Louise, sensing that the train is coming off the tracks and the need for extra input, deploys her unique brand of inarticulate repetition posing as insight.

"What gets me is, you know, it's fish......SOUP?"

Tim steps in and clarifies his objection.  Fish is wet, and soup is wet.  It's just not quite right.  We are now back to Simon, having seen every stock mushroom pie image in the BBC library.  He looks like he wants to cry.  He now has to cook fish soup for these morons.  When he does they don't like it - it contains coriander, which they both HATE.  They can't really explain why, though.

Ad hoc

Once upon a time I wanted to work in advertising.  I thought it was a way to get paid to think of puns.  This theory was shattered during a work experience stint at a flash London agency which largely entailed reuniting hundreds of video cassettes with their cardboard cases (except for the day I spent touring toy shops trying to find plastic tiger claws for a Frostie’s product launch - the equivalent of a sending an idiot apprentice out to fetch some tartan paint).

That wasn’t what put me off advertising, though.  What did it was someone explaining to me that the majority of people in an agency are battling to reconcile two opposing forces - the client and the creative team.

Take a commercial for ketchup.  The client wants a 30 second shot of the sauce slowly leaving a prominently logoed bottle and landing deliciously on a salad or one of the other healthy foodstuffs people generally put ketchup on.  The creative team don’t give a toss about sales of ketchup but do want to impress their mates and win awards, so suggest something surreal and nonsensical - a gorilla playing the drums, say - and promise that it will set Twitter ablaze.  Everyone else then has to find a way of combining art and commerce in a way that won’t get them fired.

This interplay has been playing on my mind recently because I’ve become completely obsessed with this omni-present tube advert for Cheltenham racecourse:


It has to be assumed that the client took the driving seat for this one.  Imagine the creative meeting.

Agency ponce: "OK, we’ve brought some samples of the tube ad and we think you’re gonna be rilly excited, guys - the creatives have really thought their berets off on this one.  We’re seeing a clean white background, big central image of a beautiful black racehorse - but what’s this?  That’s right - it’s got human hands holding banknotes instead of hooves!  And it’s wearing a fez and smoking a pipe!  I know, eye-catching or what?"

Client: "That’s very nice, Julian, but could you do something a bit more, I don't know, wife-beater-y?  Just off the top of my head, I’m seeing a florid complexion and a screech of self-loathing as the children’s trust fund gets blown on an 11-1 long shot.  Boozy simple-minded aggression.  This ad needs to be like looking in the mirror for every overpaid city worker with anger-management issues.  Are your guys up to the job?"

Agency ponce: "Hmmm.  Marcel is very attached to Tote the Gambling Stallion but I’m sure he’ll come up with something.  Just to clarify - you want an image that will put all right-minded people off ever visiting any racecourse ever again?"

Client: "Exactly."

Web 3.0

Akira the Don has a storming new website.  Check it out: www.akirathedon.com.

Going engagement ring shopping today.  My wallet is whimpering and hiding in the bread bin.

POST-SHOPPING UPDATE: I am also hiding in the bread bin.

The engaged tone

So, after 5 years together and three years of cohabitation I popped the question to the soon-to-be-official missus last weekend.  I don't like to be rushed.

I was perhaps dangerously unprepared, having arranged nothing but two expensive-error-avoiding Haribos rings (different colours for choice) and a weekend away in a Suffolk town I'd never been to before.  This necessitated on-the-hoof thinking.  I had to spot the appropriate moment and act immediately.  Whilst walking down a charming quay I saw a hexagonal Victorian rain shelter approaching.  Perfect - quaintly old-fashioned setting, plus no gawpers.  I manoeuvred her in and reached for my gelatine ring.  Her nose wrinkled. "This is a bit like a toilet, isn't it?".  The ring dropped immediately back into my pocket.

I eventually managed to find my moment at the end of the quay, creaking down to one knee as she turned away to film the view and berate me for not showing more interest in the local wading birds (not my preference at the best of times).  She said yes and the sky was black with hats.

It does feel somewhat like getting to the top of what appeared to be a large mountain only to find a much more enormous one towering ahead.  We are two chronically disorganised people who both really should be marrying someone practical enough to actually arrange it.  I am fairly relaxed about the content and theme of the wedding itself.  I fear she will be more exacting, and may have something like the following in mind.

She enters the enormous church on the back of her horse Stoney, who is serving as one of two best men and has transformed into a unicorn for the day.  She is serenaded down the aisle by a Madonna medley performed by Take That.  I am waiting for her dressed as she wishes I would always dress i.e. as if I've covered myself in glue and charged indiscriminately through Urban Outfitters.  She is wearing a dress so intricate and complicated it has had to be assembled in a shipyard.  The Very Reverend Gok Wan compliments her on her bangers and performs a beautiful service, during which the second best man ET presents the rings on a long glowing finger.

As we exit the church the Black Eyed Peas strike up one of their terrible hits, to the distress of both groom and congregation.  Jean-Luc Picard ushers us into the Starship Enterprise, parked illegally outside. The excitement of this means that she misses the commotion in the church as will.i.am is brutally gored by one of the best men.

Onboard the Enterprise her expertise is called upon to defeat the Borg, the Cylons, the Daleks and Darth Vader.  The occasionally tense atmosphere on the bridge is eased by the reformed Pink Floyd playing a few 4 hour song suites about despair and hopelessness.  We are then dropped off at the reception, which is being held at a stables filled with dressage horses carrying trays of drinks on their heads.  Neil Young provides the entertainment by playing 74 songs about his truck on a guitar with one string.  We dance as the flashlights of Grazia, The Stylist and Horse & Hound pop and flare around us.

If you don't know her, this may seem a confusing mix of influences.  It is, but I am reconciled to living with it all for the rest of my life - the future well-being of which, regardless of what wedding traumas await, now seems far more secure.