Conscious Images

A Twitter dream diary

2011-06-19T13:08:00.005+01:00

Where in the world can you jump on a bus being driven by a green-haired lesbian, hang out of the window as it speeds round corners without risking serious injury or death, and set off an on-board smoke machine without having even paid for a ticket?

The answer, sadly, is nowhere, unless you happen to live in my head. Yes, I lived through the above scenario, albeit through the medium of dreamland. The lesbian was great fun, as it happens - she was on her final ever shift so we had an impromptu bus rave before calming down and marvelling at the redder-than-usual lunar eclipse. Luckily the other passengers didn't mind because there weren't any.

Brilliant dreams such as these don't come around too often, so it's important to revel in their memory when they do. A flaw of the human mind, though, is that dreams tend to be forgotten in minutes - unless it involves Ann Widdecombe sitting on your face, the image of which is inescapable and will accompany the victim to the grave. Fortunately, I've never had that dream. Nope. Not even close. Definitely not, no siree. Please stop talking about Ann Widdecombe now. You're making me feel queasy.

Rather than let the good dreams escape into the memory bin, I've decided to use Twitter as a means of recording them. After all, I work in media - so like other media wankers, I've done away with the humble pen and paper in favour of 'social'. That way, I can share my thoughts and 'witticisms' with 'the world', presuming people want to read them (my last three followers are a Kent-based Labradoodle breeder, a guest house I've never stayed at in Torquay and my brother's girlfriend - the last of whom is undoubtedly a sympathy follow - so I'm guessing perhaps not).

Anyway, my Twitter dream diary isn't designed to entertain others. It's for me to remember how warped my mind is when it would rather I forget - it's sneaky like that. While this is normally highly amusing - if not occasionally borderline worrying - some dreams are just too open-ended. Take the following example from 28th May: "My dream ended with someone nondescript telling me I'll have something from Gary's kitchen."

I have since Googled (which is a bona fide verb, by the way, Microsoft Word) 'Gary's kitchen'. The first entry details a takeaway in Edinburgh; the second, rather coincidentally, refers to 'Gary's kitchen nightmares'. Whether either of these has any relevance is unlikely, so I'm still waiting with bated breath to taste Gary's culinary delights.

Until then, the only thing I have to worry about is whether to tell a friend about 'that' dream involving his mum.

A new addition

2011-06-13T15:37:00.002+01:00

Here's a thought to brighten your day: I sleep naked. And when I wake from my slumber on Sunday mornings, I tend to stumble rather precariously down the stairs, minus clothes, to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen. During this rather laborious, energy-sapping process, I usually stub my toe four of five times, mumble an obscenity or two and have a testicular near-miss with the bottom banister.

In my naked stair-descending career thus far, I'm yet to be caught by another person/mammal. However, our house dynamic shifted during the weekend. A creature now lives in my kitchen. She is called Vera and is 12 weeks old. She is an impressionable, slightly timid kitten. When I woke last Sunday, I had forgotten about her existence - I was still dreaming of sharing a pina coloada with Brendan Sheerin (who is following me on Twitter, by the way, so have some of that) in San Sebastian, just before boarding the coach to embark on our latest adventure (with those other bastard Coach Trippers, unfortunately).

When I opened the door, little Vera's expression was somewhat anthropomorphised - think the fat bloke from Jurassic Park after getting spat at in the eyes by the peacock dinosaur thing. Actually, you don't have to, and that's probably stretching your memory a bit anyway - so I suggest looking at the photograph above. Ahhh, isn't she cute?

Viva Barca

2011-06-06T19:51:00.008+01:00

The weekend before last saw thousands of Mancunians and Barcelones descend on London for the Champions League Final, and very exciting it was too if you like football, which approximately 75 per cent of my friends do not - friends who have social lives and see each other on Saturday evenings rather than sit down in front of the TV with a solitary tin of beer and a container overflowing with sweet and sour pork (Hong Kong style, obviously). So, thanks a bundle UEFA for scheduling the game when my presence was required at a dinner party, you mercenary, self-centred FIFA-esque bastards.

As a lover of the beautiful game (I've been watching lower league football for 15 years, don't ya know, gracing such footballing meccas as Welling United, Boreham Wood and, shudder, Hereford United), I was naturally very excited, providing I could keep tabs on the game from a TV in the corner of the room (permission granted. I thank you, Merlot, for your existence). Trouble was, being a neutral isn't very exciting. I therefore had to choose which team to support; a decision I arrived at after walking around central London for the day and observing the respective groups of fans.

Both the Mancs and the Catalans seemed a cheery bunch. Despite the drizzle and unseasonably cold weather, there was much merriment and anticipation. Let's take one example. Myself and my companion for the day, who happens to be a devilishly pretty girl, walked out of Hyde Park Corner tube station towards the UEFA Champions Festival, which is essentially a washed-out, over-priced beer tent and hot dog stand with a five-a-side pitch featuring an overweight Jay-Jay Okocha. We were approached by a group of enthusiastic, grinning young gentlemen with United shirts on and Lancashire accents. "Look at them," we thought to ourselves, "They look so happy they could cry."

"Alright love," one of them abruptly shouted at my companion, a shower of his spittle landing on my horrified, moister-than-usual lips. "I'd definitely fock you, I'd fock you any way you like." "Yeah, I'd fock her n'all," his feral, pot-bellied, vegetable-avoiding scrotal sack of a mate added, before the rest of the group shouted "Wheeeeeeeeey, United! United! Carlos Tevez is gay!" in unison.

Thanks to these untamed, crude little fuckwits - sexist and homophobic fuckwits, no less - I was able to decide which team to support approximately half a millisecond after their words resonated in my ear canals. Thanks lads, you made it easy. Tenim un nom, el sap tothom, Barca! Barca! Baaarca!

Pic credit: Sven Loach on a break

Dot Cotton is a harlot

2011-05-29T09:29:00.003+01:00

I've started watching television again. I didn't mean to, it just happened - normally because I need something to occupy my time while tending to a home-related activity, like making sure the building doesn't become engulfed in a raging inferno caused by some overcooked chicken thighs.

I grew out of TV approximately three years ago because a) I left university and got a job and b) all the good-looking people left Neighbours and were replaced by sadists, smarmy besuited types or insanely talented 15 year-olds who could play the Crocodile Dundee theme tune on a didgeridoo while harpooning a sprinting kangaroo from 100 yards (it's just an image, OK? Jesus. To think you thought I didn't know harpoons are the preserve of fisherman. I actually wrote that particular Wikipedia page, so I suggest you go back and start enjoying that image of mindless kangaroo slaughter. Or, if that offends you, write to McDonald's and complain - they're the real bastards, not me).

During the past week I've witnessed Barack Obama playing ping pong in Elephant & Castle; watched Dot Cotton get jiggy in the back of the laundrette (albeit relative jigginess for an 82 year-old devout Christian who thinks sex is as foul as a feral cat's breath. She's still a promiscuous harlot as far as I'm concerned, though - poor, loyal Jim was sitting in the living room all the while wondering what time his dinner would be arriving. And didn't anyone tell her smoking is banned in the workplace? Is there no end to her antisocial activity?); and seen a morbidly obese man get his scaled, blistered belly out on camera before admitting that his penis had shrunk back up inside of him and that it's a bit messy whenever he goes for a piss. He felt compelled to admit, rather unnecessarily, that he "didn't have a sex life" - which is like Sister Wendy saying she avoids smoking skunk despite understanding the pleasurable side effects such an activity may induce.

Rather than making me feel misanthropic - which I had fully expected - I actually got rather a lot from the magic box that sits opposite our sofa, and particularly from the characters it contains. Barack Obama playing table tennis at a school ten minutes from my house: exciting. Dot Cotton's scripted new love interest: charming and dapper. Obese man with wee wee trouble: morbidly fascinating. So, well done TV - you've put in a spring in my step and a smile on my otherwise soured face.

So much so, in fact, that's it got me thinking about ideas for new programmes. Listen up Channel 4 - we've had enough of Jamie Oliver's tears and blonde doctors with centre partings - it's time for something fresh, innovative and unchartered. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you BALLOON MAN. Now, I know what you're thinking - the show will either be a) a biographical documentary bore-fest on Steve Fossett, who is definitely dead or b) about a man who's so fat that his willy has disappeared… but that's been done already, remember? There is a third option, namely a show which follows the story of a man obsessed with balloons. He is balloon dependent. The mere sight of one causes body tremors, agitated excitement and slurred shouting - the kind of reaction a semi-rational person would have after ticking off five Lottery numbers and enthusiastically awaiting the sixth to roll out.

But even that wouldn't satiate TV viewers' voyeuristic demands. My BALLOON MAN (I'm keeping the capitals because that makes it exciting, yeah? The alternatives - 'Balloon Man' or 'balloon man' - are a little understated, like the small print on the back of a discarded Dettol bottle) has the rare and as yet uncelebrated distinction of being a cross between a man and a balloon (albeit for only a few minutes). How did he - namely 48 year-old Steven McCormack of Whakatane, New Zealand - achieve such a feat? He fell arsehole first onto his lorry's compressed air nozzle, narrowly escaping death as his neck, legs and feet began swelling alarmingly quickly with air.

"I was blowing up like a football... it felt like I had the bends, like in diving. I had no choice but just to lay there, blowing up like a balloon," he told the Whakatane Beacon.

Now that is truly terrifying. And darkly hilarious - a la The League of Gentlemen or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But above all, what a story. WHAT A STORY! And one that definitely needs to be told - perhaps even with a 999-style reconstruction and a Bubbles DeVere fat suit. Hell, why not bring back Michael Buerk to present the show - his calm, understated presenting style would provide the suspense-filled tension leading up to the inevitable, we-all-know-what's-coming near-tragedy that every viewer salivates over for literally minutes.

So, that's my suggestion on how to improve TV massively - for one fleeting half hour. I think an hour-long documentary on BALLOON MAN may be pushing it, unless the biological effects of having gallons of air pumping up the ol' rectal passage can be studied in detail, using the visual technology deployed in Inside the Human Body (alongside the narrative of Michael Mosley, naturally). Which is probably an excellent idea.

It's time for me to write to Channel 4's commissioning editor. Until next week, toodles.

I went to India and this is what happened

2011-05-22T21:21:00.007+01:00

Hello and welcome to my first and almost certainly last travel blog. The trouble with reading about other people's adventures is that, at best, it's terrifically boring or, at worst, you're reminded of how mundane your life is and quickly fill up with resentment for the person showing off about how tantalising the cuisine was, how the cabin was divine until the waves got a bit choppy between St Lucia and Martinique, or how the natives were surprisingly friendly and civilised despite not possessing a smoothie maker or knowing how to operate nail clippers.

This collective resentment builds and builds until the travel writer is scared away from the public domain and takes self-imposed exile in the relatively safe confines of Stockport, a tourist-free zone south of Manchester and unchartered territory for approximately 99.999999999999999999 per cent of Britons. What do you think happened to Judith Chalmers? There she went, faded 1980s bikinis hoarded in boxes in her utility room, her days spent re-living memories of always getting one over her co-presenter - the slightly overweight and uncomfortable travel companion whose name escapes me - he who tried in vain to look happy experiencing a gritty week-long break in "charming" Great Yarmouth while Chalmers was getting eyed-up by hunky passers-by in Barbados. She was a patronising, snooty, scantily-clad, aloof saucepot - and she got what she deserved (namely, being voted 88 in the list of 100 Worst Britons).

Anyway, I digress somewhat. Don't get jealous about my travels - it's not good for you. I'm not as sexy as Chalmers anyway. Heck, I don't even have a catchy theme tune, so I suggest you calm down and start enjoying yourself, you miserable, un-travelled peasant.

Destination: northern India. Travel companion: my mum. This is because a) I don't have a girlfriend to accompany me and b) I'm too much of a wimp to go by myself. There is actually another reason - my granny (I'm uncomfortable with 'granny' becoming a derogatory term for old ladies, by the way, you callous, ageist populace of Britain. I love my granny, OK? 'Nan' just doesn't sit well with our family - it sounds wrong, like 'pimple') was born and schooled in India, so my mum and I wanted to explore our recent family ancestry first-hand. Thanks to a plethora of bank holidays (high fives Wills and Kate! And one for you Pippa, while we're at it), we jumped on a plane to Delhi to begin our adventure.

Now, I'm quite an unlucky traveller. During my last few holidays I've missed flights, suffered horrific sunburn to the point where my neck attempted to detach itself from my body, been robbed by child gangsters, snowed in at train stations and accosted by unconvincing transvestites. Last time I was in India, I was hospitalised for five days with amoebic dysentery and run over by a motorbike. It's fair to say my mum was shitting herself before any butter chicken had graced her palette.

Delhi is a curious city. When I say curious, I actually mean 'god awful hell hole', but the curiosity stems from the Indian capital's remarkable ability to function on a day-to-day basis despite the relentless mayhem of energy-sapping heat, traffic horns, scam artists, lung-clogging pollution and a superbug-infested water supply. It's genuinely fascinating, but after two days the insides of your nasal passages turn black, you can drink a two-litre bottle of water in five seconds without your thirst being quenched and, most infuriatingly, you begin to lose faith in humanity.

Onwards, then, to Agra, which is essentially a miniature, industrial version of Delhi - but one that's home to the world's most impressive building. The Taj Mahal is an architectural marvel - tear-inducing, almost. It's just a shame the inside of the building stinks of piss. There's no escaping the aroma - after being moved by watching the early-morning sun reflect off centuries-old translucent marble adorned with Mughal scripture, the spectacle is unfortunately overshadowed by an invisible cloud of old wee, which hacks at your brain's annoyance cells like the Taj's self-appointed 'guides' spewing verbal diarrhoea with the ferocity of an Icelandic volcano.

Bet I'm making you really jealous, aren't I? Chalmers has nothing on me.

The subcontinental sojourn began in earnest on the overnight train to Varanasi. If you're not familiar with Indian trains, they (normally) have the following classes: chair car (avoid like the plague unless you like sitting on upright slatted benches for 13 hours and have a perverse attraction to insomnia); sleeper class (where passengers are presented with a sticky plastic padded horizontal bench and no privacy; AC 2-tier (the same, but with bedding and curtains); AC 3-tier (that with one more person squeezed in per berth - something of a lottery, let me tell you); and first class (which essentially involves being locked inside a moving box with two strangers, one of whom will have a snoring problem that urgently requires the attention of an ear, nose and throat specialist and whom, as a consequence, you will want to strangle while cackling like a vengeful witch).

We chose AC 2-tier for this particular journey. My mum wasn't too impressed with the on-board facilities and was gripped by an unwelcome bout of claustrophobia. Being a gentleman, I let her have the bottom bunk - the one with the window and enough space to accommodate an average-sized badger set. The upper bunk, unfortunately for me, was so close to the train's roof that I couldn't sit up without banging my head on the grilled metal air conditioning vent. Using all the common sense I could muster, I decided to lie down. I was immediately transfixed by a big red handle on the end of a short chain, which dangled invitingly close to my right hand. Above it were the words 'Pull to stop train. Penalty for use without reasonable and sufficient cause - fine of up to Rs. 1000 and/or imprisonment up to one year'.

Pulling this handle seriously tempted me - it would have generated enough excitement to justify a £15 fine, but I didn't fancy being harangued by my fellow passengers or spending 12 months wasting away in an Indian prison cell with curried lentils as my only company. After dilly-dallying for longer than I should have, I realised the train had been moving for 20 minutes and that I had no idea which way it was travelling. I glanced down at the bottom bunk - the curtains were closed and my mum was asleep. It was the same story over at the adjacent bunks. I spent the next 13 hours wondering whether my head was following my arse, or my arse following my head.

I had heard mixed reviews of Varanasi from friends of mine who had already visited. On the one hand, it was India's oldest and holiest city, crammed full of temples, the Ghats, the River Ganga and bucket loads of religious and spiritual significance. On the other, it was an over-populated, polluted and filth-laden sprawl of clapped-out buildings that had gotten out of control - its growth has been unstoppable, and the intensity of an around-the-clock sensory assault coupled with an unforgiving climate has driven tourists to more peaceful surroundings after only a few hours. Just as well my mum decided to book a five-night stay, then.

Religion has inspired some of the most beautiful buildings, music and traditions on the planet - and nowhere is this more evident than Varanasi. Unfortunately, I'm programmed to view all religions as over-elaborate fairy stories, which makes it rather hard for me to get in touch with my spiritual side. A whisky and a roots reggae bass line normally help, but neither was readily available in Varanasi. I therefore left my mum to the spiritual duties, and up until an early-morning row (as in what you do on a boat; not an argument. We get along quite well, thanks for asking) on the Ganges, she had done a sterling job.

On said row, we were exploring the Ghats from the peace and tranquillity of our wooden boat, trying to avoid staring at the aged testicles (they were attached to male bathers, before you conjure up some horrific image of giant bollocks splashing around in holy water) on the adjacent banks, when a man in another vessel drew alongside and tried to sell us floating candles - the idea being that you light them, say a prayer for your family, and pollute the river before a few crows choke to death on their remnants. All well and good at night, but when it's 7am and the sun is already beating down on your skin in 30-degree heat, the ritual doesn't really have the same poignancy. Still, we were quoted ten rupees for a couple of candles (about 15p), so my mum thought it would be a nice thing to do. We could take a few pictures and the family would be dead chuffed that we were praying for their wellbeing, when in fact all I could think about was mango-flavoured corn flakes and chai, neither of which had made their way down my oesophagus since the morning before.

"100 rupees," the boatman demanded.

"But you said ten rupees literally five seconds ago," my mum replied.

"100 rupees," the man retorted, rather firmly.

After two weeks of attempted rip-offs left, right and centre, my mum had had enough. It was time to let out that pent-up frustration, even if it risked robbing Varanasi of its characteristic divinity on this particular morning.

"PEOPLE LIKE YOU MAKE ME SICK," she shouted as a flock of pigeons, hunting for scraps on the opposite river bank, took to the skies as one and blocked out the sun's rays for at least four seconds.

"DO YOU THINK I'M STUPID? DO YOU?! HERE'S YOUR TEN SODDING RUPEES, NOW FUCK OFF."

From that day forward, I saw my mum in a different light. She became my friend, a future drinking buddy and a fellow unapologetic obscenity user. A high five sealed the new status of our relationship, and at that moment I knew the trip had been worth it.

We hadn't just travelled to Varanasi for the usual reasons. This is the town my great-great grandparents are from. Wilmot Charles Dover - easily the most handsome man who ever lived in Varanasi - and his wife, Alice Maud, lived in a bungalow complex in the city until the late 1940s. My granny, whose parents' wedding reception was held there, remembers almost everything about it - from the mango tree at the front to the well at the back, even sleeping outside on the veranda when it got a bit hot at night. Armed with a few old photographs, my mum and I decided to pay the bungalow a visit - the first members of our family to do so in 60-odd years.

We were welcomed by the Guptas, the bungalow's residents, with open arms. A family of 14, they told us the history of the house and we in turn showed them our old photographs. It was all rather pleasant - we were treated to a huge, all-you-can eat meal and a grand tour of the complex, which by Indian standards is pretty bloomin' big. With a little help, we subsequently tracked down Wilmot's grave, unmarked apart from a number '46' and covered in scrub and ants. It was a genuinely moving moment and felt like quite an achievement. I may have even hugged my mum, but I can't remember. Besides, that would technically be retracting to our previous relationship status. Our new relationship dictated that we could only embrace after five Stellas or a glorious sporting triumph. Like, um, Cheltenham Town winning the League Two play-offs, or something.

Chalmers never came close to any of this stuff - what a lightweight she was with her beaches (pah!) and cocktails (dismissive chortle!).

From Varanasi we returned to Delhi and headed north-east to Nainital, a picturesque hill station in the Himalayan foothills and the town where my granny went to school. This was the 'holiday' part of the trip. Up in the mountains it's a much cooler 25 degrees, which basically means you can go out and have a nice time without fear of melting into a large puddle of sweat, flesh, Fructis matt clay (Hi! I'm Matt Clay!) and eyebrows.

It was here where I met the Indian Mr Burns - his appearance and gait unquestionably similar to that of Springfield Nuclear Power Plant's owner. He was fascinated by two things in particular: British coins and the royal wedding. His enthusiasm for both was insatiable and he couldn't be calmed down - every time I opened my mouth to speak he looked at me like an eight year-old boy about to receive a Lego pirate ship for his birthday.

"You have English coin?!"

"Um, let me check. Yep, um, only about 20p though, sorry."

"Wow! I shall keep this and treasure it! You have more?!"

I replied in the negative and his face dropped. "You sure, maybe check again?!"

I felt bad that I couldn't scrape any more domestic coinage together, so decided to buy a shawl to use as a scarf to make myself feel better. Mr Burns tried to rip me off. I kind of got my own back, though, by taking a picture of him outside his shop (called 'General Stores and Sons' - Jesus, his parents were cruel, I bet he got bullied at school. Unless he became a General in adult life and his first name was actually George. Actually, George Stores is still pretty funny) standing directly underneath a cardigan, which, by virtue of him standing directly underneath it, looked like a cardigan-shaped hat. Teehee. That kept me amused for approximately three days.

So, then, back to Delhi and the end of the trip. Had I 'wished you were there', as Chalmers claimed on a weekly basis? No, I hadn't, seeing as you asked nicely, because I probably don't know who you are - and unless you look like Freida Pinto (which you don't, so stop deluding yourself), I probably wouldn't have wanted you sharing my hotel room, let alone spend three weeks with you. But, if you do get the chance to go to India, you should. Because it's nice and the food is yummy and the scenery is pretty and it's cheap and some of the puppies are really cute and the men hold hands and shake their heads in a funny way instead of saying 'yes'.

If you've got this far down, I salute you. Drop me an email and I'll send you a signed photograph of myself as a thank you. Goodbye.

Neil Lennon wears a skirt

2011-05-12T18:04:00.000+01:00

Don't go thinking the title means I'm a protestant unionist, oh no. I'm just going by what I see on the BBC website.

Rudy: 'Worms! I just 8-1! Hahaha!'

2011-04-11T18:36:00.004+01:00

Eagle-eyed readers may notice there's no picture credit this week - which means I must have dusted down the long-neglected camera, exercised the shutter and experimented with aperture openings. That's what spring does to us - the excitement sends us ker-razy. Just ask the Robin, nicknamed Rudy by my housemate, who does not shut up when the sun shines upon his teeny weeny worm-accommodating beak.

But this blog ain't about Rudy. He is a metaphor, you see, albeit a slightly tenuous one. Allow me to explain. Rudy is a Robin, right? So far, so good. And he's singing, yeah? Like football fans do, normally when they're having fun and not at the windswept Kassam Stadium in January chewing on an icy conglomeration of beefy entrails. The Robins, it just so happens, is the nickname of the football team I love - Cheltenham Town (which, if you're one of my longer-term followers, you know already). Only the Saturday before last, us Cheltenham fans weren't singing. We had lost 8-1 to Crewe Alexandra.

I would have blogged about it last week, but the pain and embarrassment were too much to bear, like a phall and buttery pilau rice after three tins of Special Brew. Before I continue to recount these feelings of despair, though, I should clarify that I didn't make the trip to Gresty Road. No, I'm not that stupid. What do you take me for? Cheltenham's season ended two months ago after a rather painful and winless run that saw us plummet to 15th in the League Two table. This is the most boring position in the whole of football - the lowest tier in the Football League with nothing to play for; we're not going to go up, we're not going to go down. The players might as well take five months off and be done with it.

As it happens, this is precisely what they did - only instead of jetting off to Benidorm or Kavos they caught the coach to Crewe and walked around a field for 90 minutes getting laughed at by the locals, occasionally putting their hands up in the air when they remembered what they believed the offside rule was. I don't know why they thought this would be a fun day out - perhaps their narcissism extends to some kind of humiliation fetish, a la Adolf Hitler voluntarily being slapped in the face by his niece on a semi-regular basis. Having been suitably satisfied, the players' guilt set in on the journey home. It was announced via Twitter that they would pay for a supporters' coach to the Lincoln away game, which induces about as much excitement as a headbutt from a farting Ann Widdecombe.

So, a small-but-noticeable portion of sick formed in my throat when Spurs fans complained about losing 4-0 to Real Madrid in the Champions League quarter final last week. The CHAMPIONS LEAGUE QUARTER FINAL, for crying out loud. Having been afflicted (I blame you, Dad, and you, Uncle Nick), with an unbreakable love for one of the country's worst professional football teams, one that will never reach the heights of even the Championship in my lifetime, I can only assume that this must feel as good as a night in with Cheryl Cole circa 2008 and winning the Lottery (not quite the jackpot, no, but perhaps five numbers. Not with the Bonus Ball, neither, that would be too greedy - this would be semi final worthy, I would suggest).

Right, that feels better now that's out of my system. I'm escaping the country for three weeks, so they'll be no blogging from me for a little while. And possibly never again - I'm going to India, don't you know, to 'find myself' and the like. The main reason for travelling, though, is to avoid the Royal Wedding, which is about as exciting as a headbutt from a farting Ann Widdecombe (there's that image again, for your subconscious viewing pleasure. Twenty rupees says you'll dream about it tonight). Toodles.

A blissful naivety shattered

2011-04-04T17:01:00.006+01:00

Cast your mind back a few thousand moons to when you were a kid - some family event (celebrating a sibling getting their 100-metre swimming badge, the arrival of a puppy, the laying of a new patio etc) was coming to an end, and it was time to kiss Great Aunty Ethel goodbye. This was about as enthralling as jaundice - but compelled by politeness (and pity), that peck on the aged cheek would always be delivered, albeit with stuttering hesitancy and an unwavering but just-about-conquerable reluctance.

When you're that young, old age and its inescapable physical reminders seem as far away as a £150 two-week package deal to Proxima Centauri. This blissful naivety continues for approximately 15 years until, as I discovered last weekend, it ends as suddenly and unexpectedly as the movement of a bowel tasked with removing days-old seafood.

There I was, sitting on the sofa minding my own business, when Mother Nature cruelly intervened by effectively slapping me in the face and reminding me of my own mortality at precisely the most enjoyable part of my week - settling down on a Sunday early afternoon after eating too many hash browns and various porcine body parts. What she revealed was shocking and appalling - my youthful, supple hands had lost some of their characteristic elasticity. The smooth radiance has been replaced by roughness, furrows and creases.

This weather-beaten appearance - usually the preserve of fishermen, farmers and gardeners - has started afflicting my innocent, weather-avoiding body. Presumably, once you're infected with the wrinkles it's a prolonged and irreversible slide into resembling a 25 year-old pug (this pug isn't really 25 - can't you appreciate a bit of hyperbole? Jesus. Besides, it's not all bad being a wrinkly pug. This one, for example, I'm genuinely jealous of. Just look at the quality of that collar - it's clearly well looked after.).

Still, there may be a way of halting my slow march into wrinkledom. According to an exclusive in The Sun published on March 28th - not April 1st - a new face cream made of snail slime could be an effective way of keeping skin "plump and silky soft". Expected to hit British supermarket shelves sooner rather than later, the news has so far been met with a mixed reaction from readers. C73 said: "I couldnt thnk of anything WORSE ..ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!", while dincron16 was slightly more upbeat: "They already sell snail slime abroad and its actually really really good!!"

I'm liking dincron16's optimism. C73, meanwhile, is clearly a whippersnapper living through the blissful naivety stage. Her time will come. As will yours. Yes yours. Probably when you're sitting on the toilet. Which is definitely not when I noticed.

Pic credit: ollie T

Fruitical behaviour

2011-03-27T19:02:00.009+01:00

Would you eat a mature, over-sized ovary? Well, that's essentially what a piece of fruit is (which isn't quite as off-putting as considering an egg a chicken's period - which, to all intents and purposes, it is).

On that saliva-inducing note, here's some more fruity food for thought:

If you munch on 250 bananas in one sitting, you'll die. Not because of potassium poisoning, but because your stomach would stretch to the size of a small banana republic.

In 2001, there were more than 300 banana-related accidents/incidents in the UK. While the majority of these were clichéd accidental slips, others were mishaps resulting from pre-planned acts of depravity (love him as I do, Julian Alsop was at the centre of one of the higher profile instances).

Grapes explode when you put them in the microwave. I urge everyone to give this a go, especially if you like annoying your housemates (which I don't, obviously).

The largest fruits are giant pumpkins, which weigh in at around 1,000 lbs. This equates to around five John Prescotts and 15 doner kebabs.

There is only one fruit that proudly displays its seeds on the outside. Answers in the comment box below - the winner, who will be drawn at random, will win a Gloucester City season ticket for 2011-12.

3.4 per cent of all patients admitted to the Central Referral Hospital on the Solomon Islands between 1994 and 1999 had sustained a coconut-related injury. Before you ask, coconuts are a fruit and not a nut. I know this because squirrels do not bury them.

You should only ever eat mangos in the bath (this was double-sourced on the internet, so it must be true).

The most common reason why people contact the Accident Advice Bureau (…ahem, after they have fallen over. In a supermarket. In the fruit and veg aisle…) is after slipping on grapes and mushrooms.

According to the World Health Organization, in 2002 each person in Israel had access to an average of 336.4 kilograms of fruit and vegetables. In Slovakia, this figure was just 124.3 kilograms. The CBI says Slovakians "do not eat a lot of fruit". The CBI is well clever, isn't it?

Belgium has the unfortunate reputation of being a boring country, but it's the only one in the world to have a museum dedicated to the correct answer to the seeds-on-the-outside question above.

During 2003 and 2004, at least ten people were referred to the Royal London Hospital's Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery after sustaining serious hand injuries while de-stoning avocados with a knife.

Cyanide is useful when mining gold and silver, but the toxic chemical compound is also found in apples. Eat too many and you risk a violent death. Cherries can be just as deadly - if the seed inside the fruit is damaged, it releases hydrogen cyanide - and not even the Accident Advice Bureau will be able to do anything about it. Because you'll be dead.

I am bored of fruit now. Next week; vegetables. Maybe.

Pic credit: artour_a

The trouble with Boris Bikes

2011-03-20T12:54:00.008Z

A couple of weekends ago I was out in Shoreditch - the night had run its course, my body had been stuffed full of salmon and cream cheese bagels and it was time to go home. Autopilot kicked in and our little group tottered off to the bus stop. In a rather pleasant development, we noticed that none of us were shivering uncontrollably as our cerebrospinal fluid began to freeze solid. Let's put these bagels to use, we thought. Screw you number 35, we're getting Boris Bikes home! We felt like mavericks; drunken, bloated and slightly unstable, but mavericks nonetheless.

I assumed the lead in this getting-home-after-a-night-out epic. Out came my bank card and in it went to Boris's machine (that's as sexy as the plot gets; I'm not cheapening this blog for nobody. But feel free to click on the adverts to your right - they're what pay for my beer).

Problem number 1: cost. It took approximately four days' worth of hindsight to work out that you pay £1 per bike for 24-hour access - it's then free for an hour, but if you go over this, you get charged. Problem number 2: access. After the transaction goes through, you receive a receipt with an access code. You punch this in to some funny blobby things that are supposed to be buttons but don't make an impression. One receipt per bike - so if you're with a group of people and you've already paid for five bikes, each of them has to take turns putting your bank card into Boris's machine; meanwhile, person number one has already had ten minutes of his allocation - the clock's ticking, and time is money. It's a right kerfuffle, let me tell you, especially when it's your bank card being slotted by drunkards.

A blissful ride through London in the early hours of Sunday - minus the Kingsland Road potholes and London Bridge gusts - saw us arrive at Wansey Street docking station (that does sound a bit sexy, doesn't it?). It was here that our evening turned temporarily sour - the station was packed full of bicycles. TfL's Boris Bikes hotline representative suggested the following docking stations as alternatives: "Ummmmmmmm, there's one space in Borough, another couple on Old Kent Road and then about three in Waterloo." If we had done that, we would have cycled and walked a collective 15 miles before reconvening for Sunday elevenses somewhere near Elephant & Castle. Instead, we did what anyone would have done - raced to the nearest docking station to try and grab a space.

Then, out of nowhere, was the unmistakeable rattle of bicycles in a trailer passing over a speed bump. This was divine intervention - there he was, a lone TfL worker driving around in the middle of the night picking up bikes from docking stations (the filthy bastard). The youngest among us (a sprightly 23 year-old; the rest of us are creaking 25 year-olds with flat feet and receding headlines) pedalled as fast as his Boris Bike would carry him, caught up with Mr TfL-bicycle-picker-upper and made a beeline for the passenger door. The rest of us arrived at the van a few minutes later, hearts pounding, where we were greeted with an almighty smile from a man who needed no persuasion to help us.

With a voice identical to Taaj from Come Fly With Me, we had found our night's hero. "The great thing about theze bikes is that they is so light isn't it." "Yeah, they are, so er, can you free up some space at Wansey Street?" "You know what, yeah, 18 fouzand of these are used every single day". "Awesome. We love them. But we'd like to go home now. Any chance…" "And in the summer yeah, 45 fouzand peeps EVERY DAY will be uzing them!" His enthusiasm would have been infectious if it hadn't been 4:30 in the morning and we weren't desperate to expel some London Pride into the south London sewers. After giving us the Boris Bikes lecture, we had a chummy game of cat and mouse to Wansey Street docking station, where four bicycles were lovingly removed by Taaj so that ours could be deposited.

So, TfL, consider this a plea to install more docking stations south of the river. Or employ more people like Taaj (not like Taaj, although that was a comical bonus, but someone to drive around in the wee hours shifting around bicycles). Thank you ever so much. Lots of love from Charlie xxx

Pic credit: andrewasmith

Chavs, pyjamas and a vision of hell

2011-03-07T14:39:00.006Z

I get offended by very little - fried mushrooms, Stuart Fleetwood's existence and Pope Ratzinger were, until recently, among the few things to irritate me to the extent that I wished the end of the universe could be brought forward a little from the predicted ten-to-the-power-of-one-hundred years (but thanks for the reassurance nonetheless, Professor Brian - the end of fried mushrooms is nigh! Not a single mushroom atom will exist in a gazillion years! Halleluiah!). Then, about a year ago, I read a story about Tesco banning chavs in pyjamas from entering its St Mellons store in Cardiff.

These hooped earring-clad women had done something truly disgraceful. Not stink out the house on Sunday morning by frying in butter (although I wouldn't put it past them); not being born in Gloucester and scoring for Hereford at Cheltenham before bragging about it on Twitter; and not covering up hundreds of cases of child abuse while prioritising a delusion over preventing the spread of one of the world's most deadly diseases. No, these women did something truly abhorrent - grocery shopping in their pyjamas.

I say grocery shopping - Elaine Carmody, a 24-year-old mum and one of the culprits, told the BBC that she had only been "popping in for a pack of fags".

Sadly, this is something that would only ever happen in Britain. In Paris, something as trivial as wearing trainers to work with your suit would have you spat at on the Metro before being guillotined without trial by the Parisian police de la mode. Cardiff may not be an international centre of fashion, but please, shopping in your pyjamas? Tesco isn't a massive bed for plebs (although I bet this is the love-handled pyjama-wearers' ultimate fantasy - aisles made of mattresses, rolling around playfully between the delicatessen and the fag counter to an Usher soundtrack, never having to stand up or, heaven forbid, put a pair of trousers on. If hell does exist, this is what it looks like).

When the story broke, it didn't really bother me. Last week, though, two girls with earrings the size of hulas and makeup so terrifying it would have made a puppy wet itself, walked past my house, Iceland carrier bags in hand. OK, so they don't subscribe to the bag-for-life thing. That's fine. And they shop in a supermarket with the culinary appeal of sawdust. Their choice, I suppose. But they were wearing matching pyjamas with pink, purple and green spots. They were so garish and big, and so coordinated, that they resembled the sails of a Damien Hirst-inspired yacht; their bodies acting as unwilling masts as the wind threatened to take them on a cruise down Walworth Road.

Things could always be worse, though - as peopleofwalmart.com proves. God bless America.

Rastamouse is coming to get you and your children

2011-02-28T15:48:00.005Z

"This is bloody awful! I would never let my kid watch this lol. id make them watch them old school classics, instead of this shit where they cant even teach decent english to young children."

The aforementioned is a stumbled-upon comment of a friend of a friend on Facebook concerning the recently-launched kids' TV show Rastamouse - a charming, upbeat programme that neither terrifies nor patronises children and is based on the premise of "makin' a bad ting good".

Extolling the virtues of Rastafarianism (which, incidentally, has inspired some of the greatest music ever recorded), Rastamouse and Da Easy Crew, the all-mouse reggae band, spread their time between the Nuff Song recording studio and solving problems through an ethos of respect, understanding and love. It's really rather nice.

Unless, of course, you're a bit narrow-minded and a borderline racist - like the illiterate fuckwit who typed the above words. Worried that Rastamouse will threaten British kids' ability to learn "decent English", he who is grammatically challenged fails to notice the irony of his point. "Decent" English, you would assume, involves a sound knowledge of where to use apostrophes and an understanding that proper nouns are capitalised.

Perhaps his flawless grasp of the written word can be attributed to "old school classics" like Teletubbies - which had the etymological credibility of a cucumber - or Sesame Street, where kids are actively taught to pronounce "zee" instead of "zed" because it's cheaper for domestic TV networks to import American shows.

Rastamouse, by contrast, is a home-grown creation that explores the nuances of Jamaican patois in a TV-friendly, non-threatening, accessible way. Not only is it linguistically credible, it fosters an early sense of curiosity in British multiculturalism and how the native tongue is spoken. It certainly never did me any harm - the son of white, middle-class parents with a penchant for Jamaican music, I was brought up on a strict musical diet of 1970s roots reggae. Not a weekend or car journey went by without me hearing patois, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it didn't compromise my ability to learn how to speak "decent English" or, indeed, how to construct a sentence properly.

This Facebook commenter's closed-mindedness is more threatening to his unborn child than Rastamouse ever will be. He's not even going to encourage his children to watch what he perceives as classics, he's going to make them. Let's hope he has a low sperm count, or something.

A tragic neighbour-induced nightmare: Steps are back

2011-02-21T14:13:00.003Z

"It's a tragedy that Steps split up. They were too good not to get back together."

"Yeah, but Lisa was shit."

Delivering a killer pun entirely unintentionally, this was a conversation between my two neighbours spoken at 2 o'clock in the morning last Thursday.

The wall between our respective abodes is paper thin, so I could hear their skewed pop critique with crystal clarity - unfortunately for me and my efforts to enter dreamland.

Let me set the scene. Our neighbours, who for reasons unbeknown refuse to make eye contact with anyone apart from one another, are two men in their late 30s. They have a cat. Make of that what you will.

Steps, as far as my pop knowledge recalls, peaked, in sick-inducing fashion, in the late 90s and early noughties, when my neighbours were in their late 20s. By that age, any person with an iota of musical curiosity and functioning ear canals will have developed a taste and a passion for a particular genre. Perhaps they will have also channelled this interest into collecting records or learning to play an instrument (the pink oboe doesn't count, boys).

Not these two. They are unashamedly proud (at least in the confines of their own home, they didn't know poor little me was being forced to listen to their ramblings) of their love for embarrassingly dated dance-pop (assuming Steps are worthy of being placed into a genre, which they're not. Look at them - they resemble actors about to get down and dirty in a low-budget porn flick remake of Star Trek).

Then the ambiguity of neighbour number one's statement hit me. "They were too good not to get back together." Did the "were" refer to them being good in the past and that one day H, Lisa Scott-Lee and that annoying blonde one with the Colgate smile will re-form because they were so bloody brilliant? Or was he celebrating the fact that they had already got back together? Surely not? They were shite, everyone knows that. Listening to Steps sounded like a flock of bird flu-infested crows flying through a sky of bramble bushes, stinging nettles and barbed wire.

A Google search confirmed my fears and brought me out in a cold sweat. Just as the neighbours began their own warbled rendition of Tragedy, I discovered that last Tuesday, Steps announced their intention to reunite for a one-off gig, which will be accompanied by a three-part documentary series.

Presuming my neighbours had spent Wednesday night celebrating the news by masturbating frantically to H's bare buttocks, seductive baby face and hairstyle resembling the rear end of an overweight cat, they had satisfied their lust by Thursday to hold their own private Steps reunion party. Either no one else was invited (we're their next-door neighbours, the rude bastards, maybe we love Steps just as much as they do), or no one else turned up. Or they had no one else to invite. My money's with the first theory - even their cat was left outside in the February chill, screeching from underneath my window to be let back inside. If I was the cat, I would have happily stayed outside freezing my bollocks off.

With half past 2 in the morning fast approaching, on a school night, I found myself listening to a pained, desperate feline and two grown men singing "when you lose control and you got no soul" - rather apt lyrics, I'm sure you would have agreed, if you had been sharing my sweat-soaked bed with clenched fists and grinding teeth. Let me tell you, it was a fucking tragedy, compounded by the nightmarish confirmation that STEPS ARE COMING BACK, YOU CAN'T STOP THEM WITH THEIR SHINY CLOTHING AND INSIATABLE APPETITE FOR MANUFACTURED ENTHUSIASM. And thus nightmare ensued.

At least my neighbours got one thing right. Lisa Scott-Lee is shit. Of that there is no argument.

Happy Valentine's Day, darlings

2011-02-14T13:58:00.002Z

So, Lorraine Pascale hasn't responded to my card, her agent won't let me speak to her on the phone to invite her on a date, and that cake I baked (which wasn't easy, you liar) for her will have to be eaten by me and me alone as I spend Valentine's Day evening watching the new series of Coach Trip, sobbing uncontrollably with a face covered in strawberries and cream.

Valentine's Day is as about as much fun as being locked up in a cold, dark cell waiting to have your head removed from your body by an axe-wielding maniac - which, incidentally, is what happened to Bishop Valentine, who got in a spot of bother for marrying 12-year-olds (as in conducting the ceremonies, not actually… you sickos).

So, my evening will be spent with a camp, tubby 50-something tour guide; in pixelated, TV form. Still, it could be worse - Brendan 'British institution' Sheerin, who I genuinely love (not as much as Lorraine, his cakes and innuendo aren't in the same league. Cake, incidentally, is neither a metaphor nor an attempt at innuendo. I mean cake. Lovely, spongy cake) could be Bruce Willis's gay twin. He could, couldn't he? Yeah? Yeah! I told you.

And Bruce Willis was this morning named the top Valentine dream date in a poll by Madame Tussauds. Which, according to my skewed logic, makes Brendan a perfectly adequate Valentine's companion. So I win. I think.

Pavement joggers and why I don't understand them

2011-02-07T16:25:00.004Z

With the fear of showing off a gaunt face in photographs and getting ever closer to being able to smash melons with a paunch, I decided to join the joggers' brigade. Don't get me wrong - I don't take any pleasure in this. There's something unnatural about shifting my weight from one narrow, creaking ankle to the next while temporarily leaving the ground; the piercing, freezing air hitting the back of my throat as I plod along to an irrelevant destination - but apparently it's necessary for a gym-shy 25-year-old who sits in front of a computer all day to prevent him from dying at the hands of a chronic self-inflicted illness.

I limit the number of humoured and sympathising looks I receive from pedestrians and fellow joggers - it's always the keen ones who scoff the most; the lean, striding show-offs - by jogging in my local park. By virtue of being a park, it is full of open space, which is a rare and welcome luxury in the south London urban jungle and completely the opposite of, say, a comparatively narrow Walworth Road pavement accommodating hundreds of shoppers, prams, dogs and solidified vomit.

Who, then, are these facially intense joggers decked out in high vis jackets who insist on hurtling down said pavement in their quest for cardiovascular perfection? Disregarding the rest of the human race, approximately 99.9 per cent of whom are travelling somewhere necessary, useful or fun, they dart from paving slab to paving slab at breakneck speed convinced that 'pain is weakness leaving the body' and that they're better people than the flabby masses surrounding them.

Their choice of route is baffling and irritating for any pedestrian not wanting to be in a fluorescent yellow and orange personified pinball machine. It gives me a slice of comfort to know that, by the law of averages, one of these fitness freaks slips on a greasy discarded KFC bucket at least once a week. There's some irony there somewhere.

Driver #12850

2011-01-31T17:26:00.003Z

Kassam Stadium, Oxford, originally uploaded by net_efekt.

Saturday, January 29th and a trip to Oxford United's soulless, three-sided Ikea-esque excuse for a ground; the Kassam Stadium. It really is awful - windswept, exposed and utterly devoid of character. Still, us Cheltonians forgot all that - and the Arctic conditions - when super Wesley Thomas scored from a sublime lob to give us the lead.

Incidentally - super, I'm pretty sure, is the only adjective that's solely the preserve of football fans (possibly commentators, too) and uber camp males.

Before the Wesley-triggered euphoria, though, I had to endure the number 5 bus journey from the station to the Kassam. The journey goes to Blackbird 'are you Gloucester in disguise?' Leys via the picturesque city centre, so I was quite looking forward to taking in some of Oxford's famed splendour en route.

What I hadn't braced myself for was driver 12850 of Oxford Bus Company. Having cheerfully asked her which stop I should get off at for the football ground, provided this was the correct route, she mumbled something inaudible with a face of thunder: "Blublule" was all I heard - which, on reflection, was probably Blackbird Leys.

Asking her again, politely, for confirmation of the stop after her initial muffled response, she replied sternly: "Ask the driver." This threw me slightly. She was sitting in the bus driver's seat, holding a steering wheel and working pedals with her feet. As far as bus drivers go, she was ticking all the right boxes. "Oh, are you not the driver?" I replied, half jokingly, half worried that my perception of reality had become warped and that I had been living in a largely-pleasant dream world for 25 years.

This exchange wasn't going anywhere. She failed to recognise my half joke or empathise with my new-found confused existence. Scared of holding up the other passengers, I asked for a return and that was it, we were off, heading into the unknown.

Two stops later and a boy of about 15 climbs aboard and asks for a return to the Kassam Stadium. My heart sinks. There he is, all alone; a sprightly, innocent football devotee about to have his Saturday ruined by the bus driver equivalent of a hungry, fight-starved Rottweiler whose tail has been squashed by a cat-shaped anvil.

She erupts. "You're not 15!" The boy is terrified. I am too scared to look up. From what I can see, though, he is the most obvious-looking 15-year-old I have ever laid eyes on. Reluctantly accepting his inflated fare fate, he coughs up the extra few pennies to pay for his adult return ticket - precisely the type I had stumped up for.

Only it isn't a return ticket at all. The boy sits directly in front of me, glances at his ticket and realises he's only been given a single. "Excuse me," he politely says to the bus driver with an obvious I'm-shitting-myself face, "I asked for a return." It's like a red rag to a bull: "IF YOU HADN'T SPENT TEN MINUTES DECIDING HOW OLD YOU WERE, MAYBE I WOULD HAVE GIVEN YOU THE CORRECT TICKET!"

Alright, you sour-faced sex-starved Lembit Opik lookalike, I thought to myself (I obviously didn't say this out loud - she would have force-fed me the ticket machine so that the next passenger buying a single to Witney would have to remove their ticket from my rear end), before sinking back into my chair and looking out of the window at happy Japanese people taking photographs of university buildings.

Fortunately, we arrived at the stadium OK and shared awkward small talk with said 15 year-old, who showed us all the way to the away end, where my beloved Cheltenham played out an entertaining 1-1 draw with those Oxford bastards.

Bovril at the Hamlet

2010-11-24T18:19:00.002Z

Having been devoid of inspiration for four months and eight days, I have returned to the blogosphere in emphatic style; influenced by 158 people at Dulwich Hamlet FC on an uncomfortably chilly November evening.

Without an in-person football fix since Cheltenham Town's cagey 1-0 win over Liverpool-conquerors Northampton in October, I opted for a trip to my new local team - albeit after much consideration; Dulwich play in pink and purple, for crying out loud. It's just not a good look. Oh, and they play in the Ryman League Division One South.

With cries of "up the Hamlet" ringing out from all corners of the ground (I exaggerate. The only person who muttered this was the 70-something man sat behind me, mongrel in tow. If he had been standing he would have been something of a football cliché. He left after 68 minutes), Dulwich played out an entertaining 2-2 draw with those bastards from Faversham Town.

My favourite character from the evening was the Irish lady working the tea bar. After serving me a sweet, meaty Bovril, I spotted the exciting sight of uncooked chips happily awaiting their fate in the deep fat fryer. Like a calm but resentful, waiting-to-explode Mary O'Leary from Father Ted, she said "Ahdown'thaveanychips". She lied to me and it made me sad. I was cold and hungry.

And then the second half happened. And then I went home. And Cheltenham beat Macclesfield 2-0. And I really hate Kay Burley.

ES-PAN-YA

2010-07-19T10:37:00.003+01:00

So, Spain won the World Cup - and I was in Spain! Which was great, apart from I was in a resort called Puerto Pollensa in Mallorca, so it wasn't really Espana at all. More Basildon/Glasgow (judging by the accents, which were two separate ones, not some Essex-Glaswegian hybrid, although that is something I would like to hear).

A guy in the bar around the corner asked me how I was finding the Spanish commentary. Trouble was, I was watching the game in the main square, Placa Capllonch, which had big screens with shaky pictures of BBC One's coverage. So instead of some exuberant Spanish commentator shouting "GOOOOOOL" in ecstasy, I had Guy Mowbray, who to his credit tried to sound excited during Iniesta's late winner, only to be undermined by Mark Lawrenson: "Yeah, well errr, well done Cesc Fabregas."

At the final whistle I tried to get a rendition of 'Championies, Championies' going, but it was echoed only by a few Scottish accents - a song that clearly hasn't caught on in southern Europe. Instead, it was ES-PAN-YA! ES-PAN-YA!, some expensive cocktails and a night on the beach. An expensive, slightly sandy, buenas noches.

Someone at the Gloucestershire Echo is having a laugh...

2010-06-02T19:55:00.002+01:00

Unfortunate juxtaposition #2

2010-05-30T13:04:00.000+01:00

Thank you Gloucestershire Echo for this little gem.

Farty counterpoise

2010-05-24T19:48:00.003+01:00

"Good Lord," I said to myself. "I believe that, by being confronted by myself in this here mirror, I have just questioned the long-held notion of painting transcending reality."

Actually, I was trying to see whether I could read the print on my t-shirt in the mirror's reflection.

As I read the caption accompanying Art & Language's 'Mirror on canvas', I slowly bit a hole into the bottom of my water bottle and let the remaining droplets of water fall on to my feet, which were protected only by flip-flops.

The relief afforded by those little splashes of H2O stopped me from saying "it's a fucking mirror" to the be-dreaded passers-by, who looked equally as unimpressed being confronted by themselves as I was.

By taking this photograph, however, I have used this reflective surface to give you a window to a world that you cannot see (at least not right now, anyway), thus restoring balance and cancelling out Art & Language's original purpose.

Exclusive: Sven-Goran Eriksson's job on the side

2010-05-14T09:33:00.001+01:00

Sven-Goran Eriksson is a man of many talents - just ask Faria Alam. Where that 8-inch candle ended up I'll never know.

On Tuesday, the ex-England manager named his provisional Ivory Coast World Cup squad before darting back to England to give David Cameron and Samantha a lift into Downing Street for the first time as prime minister and 'first lady'.

This may have had something to do John Mason, Transport for London's head of taxi regulation, who said in March that while cabbies are among the capital's great characters, there is "always room for improvement".

"Perhaps it is good sometimes to keep your mouth shut if you sense vibes from the customer that perhaps they are having a bad day," the Daily Telegraph reported him as saying.

It makes sense - Sven's lack of passion, inability to speak about anything in detail and calm demeanour make him perfect for the job.

I wonder if he had given Gordon Brown a lift in the other direction?

Canvasser etiquette

2010-05-03T15:00:00.008+01:00

James Alexander - Door Knocking, originally uploaded by time-4-change.org.uk.

I did something I probably shouldn't have done yesterday. I called a Labour canvasser a "tosser" to his face on my doorstep. The conversation materialised exactly how I had expected it to:

"Hello, sorry to disturb you on your bank holiday. "Oh, hi, that's alright (resenting the fucker already)." "Have you made up your mind as to who you're voting for yet? I'm canvassing on behalf of the local Labour party, by the way." "Yes - the Lib Dems." "Oh, why's that?" "Er, I'm not sure that's any of your business, is it?" "Well, I'd like to think I can change your mind". "You probably can't." "How do the other people in your house feel (peering around me into my house)?" "Anna! Do you feel the same way?!" "I'm undecided." "RACH! DO YOU FEEL THE SAME WAY?" "WHAT?" "DO YOU FEEL THE SAME WAY AS ME IN TERMS OF WHO YOU'RE GONNA VOTE FOR IN THE ELECTION?" "Erm, probably, yeah." "Well, there we go then." "OK, well, can I give you some leaflets and maybe you can re-think?" "Do you know how many of those fucking things I've got already?" "Well, the Lib Dems and Tories distribute the same amount." "That's not the point (you shit)." I pause and gesture that I'd like to hear some policies for Islington South and Finsbury rather than listen to him try and infiltrate the reasons for my private vote. He walks off. I say "tosser" and close the door. Maybe I should have slammed it.

This is only the second general election I've been eligible to vote in, and I'm pretty unsure what the etiquette should be towards door-to-door canvassers. Many don't seem to be any better than door-to-door salesman - this guy, as it happened, was even worse. No mention of policies, no explanation of how his party planned to improve the local area - just a stranger on my doorstep (he didn't properly introduce himself) questioning my private vote. On a bank holiday. Why should I give him the satisfaction of answering his questions without a list of pledges or policies explained to me verbally?

Incidentally, I have no prejudice towards Labour - I would have said the same thing to a canvasser from any other party. The only thing that stopped me calling my local Tory canvassers "tossers" was their ability to make me laugh. They claimed that Islington Council has been controlled by Labour "forever", when in fact the Lib Dems have bossed it since 1999. Eejits.

Disclaimer: pictured above is James Alexander, the Labour parliamentary candidate for York Outer. He has nothing to do with Islington Labour canvassers apart from that pretty red rosette they share.

East London Line re-opens today

2010-04-28T16:19:00.003+01:00

Woohoo! I'm sitting on the platform of Hoxton Overground station - it finally opened today and I'm among the first people to use it.

It seems the station assistants are yet to receive their employment contracts - the guy next to me in the pristine orange jacket is frantically calling his boss John to arrange a day off ahead of "another" wedding. He is panicky and has no idea how many days off he's entitled to, but does his best to regain composure when announcing "The next train to arrive...".

New Cross Gate here I come, oh baby.

London Marathon 2010 - giraffe man

2010-04-26T08:43:00.009+01:00

I'm not sure how tall Blackfriars Tunnel is but I imagine this London Marathon competitor would have struggled getting through it yesterday. Also - I'm pretty sure the route passes through the tunnel bit of London Wall, which would have been rather problematic for giraffe man. His neck was so tall that my lens couldn't fit it all in.

Giraffe man was my favourite fancy dress outfit at the 2010 London Marathon, although Richard Branson's butterfly ran him pretty close. Superwoman had been putting the hours in too, and was sporting a few strands of chest hair by mile 22.

War on misplaced apostrophes - Day 2, urbanest Hoxton @ Old Street Tube

2010-04-21T14:20:00.003+01:00

You'd think if you were capable of installing underfloor heating you'd know where not to insert an apostrophe. I wonder how many bathroom's there are in the flat's and whether any discount's are available if you can't quite afford the £220 a week (going up to £335 per week) rent the bunch of illiterates charge students.

Not to worry, Hive has now changed its name to urbanleaf, and this particular accommodation has been renamed urbanest Hoxton @ Old Street Tube - which, according to the company's website, is both 'cool' and 'trendy' (their inverted commas, not mine).

CBC News r lazy ppl

2010-04-20T15:48:00.005+01:00

The news-gathering arm of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC News, no longer requires its journalists to use proper words, especially when transcribing a quotation. Words ending in 'ing' can now have the 'g' replaced with an apostrophe, because that's how everyone speaks anyway.

In an interview with Ron Fitzpatrick, the boss of a Newfoundland drug addiction support group, the news provider quoted him as saying: "They were only lookin' after probably like one quarter of the clients, or patients."

I get more offended than the next man about this kind of sloppiness, so here's what I read:

"I was er like splutterin' round all over the place lookin' furrr drugs 'n' then this guy was like 'you wanna work in this place what makes you peeps feel better' and I was like 'sure do' but then all the pipes burrrst 'n' so a quarter of the clients duhhh I mean patients didn' get no help no moreee."

Southampton FC and the golden paintbrush

2010-04-03T12:54:00.004+01:00

A late entry to the April Fools highlights is this little gem from Southampton FC's website, fresh after the club's win in the Johnstone's Paint Trophy final last weekend:

In recognition of Sunday's marvellous victory that saw the club pick up its first piece of silverware in 34 years, it has been decided to celebrate the occasion by doing something to signal Saints' trophy triumph.

In the same manner that clubs who have achieved European title success often honour the victory by embroidering a gold star above their logo, Saints have decided to pay tribute by embroidering a gold paintbrush above the traditional club crest.

April Fools in the press

2010-04-01T18:27:00.009+01:00

Dodging the April Fools' Day stories and press releases has been a minefield today. Here are some of the highlights:

Gocompare.com's larger than life opera star Gio Compario is being linked with this year's Glastonbury Festival.

In recent years Glastonbury has played host to the likes of Shakin' Stevens, Rolf Harris and Dame Shirley Bassey, but this year it could be the turn of opera on the Pyramid Stage in the coveted Sunday afternoon slot. The rumours connecting Gio with the festival first appeared on YouTube and twitter on Tuesday 30th March.

Daily Express: The AA has chosen today to launch its rapid response service, which will see its patrols take to the skies with lightweight jetpacks to reach stranded motorists quicker.

Eye-catching new survey work suggests that there is an even greater link than was first thought between the geographical location of a pension policyholder and the income he or she can expect to receive in retirement.

"It's remarkable," said CRAP (Campaign for Retirement, Annuities and Pensions) spokesperson Charlie Mandew. "Wherever we have carried out this research, there appears to be a direct correlation between place names and the residents' views on the payouts they actually receive."

Daily Express (they clearly have no time for real news anymore): When it comes to saving money, the Queen is no fool.

Yesterday she took a budget easyJet flight – at a cost to the taxpayer of just £22.99. She had minimal security for the trip from Luton to Aberdeen – in time to play a joke on Prince Philip, perhaps, who is already at Balmoral for Easter.

The Guardian: In an audacious new election strategy, Labour is set to embrace Gordon Brown's reputation for anger and physical aggression, presenting the prime minister as a hard man, unafraid of confrontation, who is willing to take on David Cameron in "a bare-knuckle fistfight for the future of Britain".

Undoubtedly the funniest (well, it would be if the story wasn't so awful) article I've come across recently is this from The Times. The newspaper's Berlin correspondent has the most unfortunate name imaginable for this type of subject matter. I spat out half a cup of tea when I read the byline.

FarmVille's controversial Bulgarian flag claims first council victim

2010-03-31T17:12:00.009+01:00

Plovdiv has earned its second claim to fame of the year. Not content with being visited by Brendan's group of Channel 4 coach trippers, the Bulgarian city has become embroiled in a bitter battle over pixelated farms.

Local councillor Dimitar Kerin was removed from office after becoming addicted to FarmVille, the most popular game on Facebook, according to Bulgarian news agency Novinite.

Perhaps he got too carried away with the announcement earlier this month that a Bulgarian flag is being made available for virtual farmers from the country, a decision that didn't go down too well with self-confessed Polish FarmVille freak, Pil sudski.

Novinite reported that Mr Kernin "defended himself by saying he was not the only one in the City Hall watering virtual egg plants".

He had apparently reached level 40 on the game, which simultaneously worries and baffles me, whereas naughty Daniela Zhelyazkova, from those bastards at the Democrats for Strong Bulgaria party, had got to level 46.

While the sneaky Ms Zhelyazkova got away with planting, growing and harvesting her crops, Mr Kernin was unceremoniously fired from his position.

Perhaps the former councillor will consider using his recently-acquired transferable skills to lobby the Bulgarian government on behalf of real farmers in the country, who today expressed concern over the sale of agricultural land to private investors.

Maybe Mr Kernin is remaining upbeat. After all, he was terribly lucky that Bulgaria had a FarmVille flag in the first place, which cannot be said of Hungary (Hy, I am Hungarian, so I and all other Hungarians would really appreciate a Hungarian flag. thx), Israel (OVER 200,000 FANS HERE IN ISRAEL WANT AN ISRAELI FLAG !!!!!!) and Albania (We are 10.000 Albanian Farmville Fans SOOOOOO We want an albanian FLAG).

The world's greatest ever footballing comeback

2010-03-17T17:31:00.007Z

Cheltenham celebrating victory at the the other B I didn't make this season - Bury. Pic credit: Ingy The Wingy.

I'm usually hesitant to start a football-related blog because the beautiful game is the most over-analysed topic on the planet. And, what with my proud heritage, I'm only ever going to write about Cheltenham Town FC.

Though it pains me to say it, the Robins' performances aren't exactly going to inspire the masses into a considered online debate given the team's lowly Football League position - not to mention that most CTFC fans can't read or write and can only drive a tractor. But that don't really matter 'cos they all come from Cheltenhamshire.

However, Cheltenham Town were involved in one the most remarkable footballing comebacks ever witnessed on Saturday. Gracing the hallowed turf of Burton Albion's Pirelli Stadium, the Robins clawed their way back from 5-3 down on 86 minutes to win 6-5. Despite my record of attending 50% of Cheltenham's away games when playing a team beginning with a B - a 0-0 draw at Bournemouth and a 1-1 draw at Barnet - I couldn't make the trip to Burton. Balls.

Michael Pook, who had previously netted just five goals in seven years as a professional footballer, scored a stunning hat-trick in the space of about ten minutes. Queue scenes of wild celebration among the hundreds (about, umm, 150) away fans.

The post-match interview with Burton manager Paul Peschisolido on the Football League Show was a joy to behold. His glazed expression suggested he couldn't actually believe what he had just seen: "I'm absolutely distraught. To be at home and score five goals and lose a game 6-5... it's er, tsk, I'm lost for words."

With that victory, Cheltenham remain in the heady position of 22nd. You Reds!

London iPod

2010-03-15T23:10:00.004Z

This is a London iPod - yes, ha ha, a London Eye pod. Ha ha ha. A word of warning - don't call them 'pods' in earshot of the big wheel's staff. They get very offended because they're not pods at all, they're 'capsules'. I made this mistake and tried to laugh it off with an employee but she wasn't having any of it.

After finally forgiving me, she whispered a couple more London Eye-related facts. Did you know, for example, it can be sped up ever so slightly on busy days? And that staff at Merlin Entertainments, the company that manages the London Eye, refer to it as the 'cash cow'? A testament to the wheel's success, perhaps, but can't they knock down the prices a little bit?

February's quote of the month

2010-03-09T18:36:00.005Z

Sir Tristram, Falklands war 1982, originally uploaded by Tom JP.

It was difficult to look past Peter Kay's "what a nobhead" swipe at Liam Gallagher or Charlie Brooker's take on the iPad, but I decided to settle on something a little more heartfelt.

(Incidentally, how do you spell 'nobhead'? This is what most people seem to go with, but the Metro and Yahoo reckon it's 'knobhead'. Some mavericks insert a space between 'nob' or 'knob' and 'head'. I've always assumed 'nob' is penis and 'knob' is strictly left to doors, but who am I to argue one way or the other?)

Moving on...

The above is an image of RFA Sir Tristram in the Falklands in 1982. It was badly damaged in the conflict and two of its crew were killed in an explosion.

It is 28 years since Maggy T signalled her intent to go to war with Argentina over the South Atlantic islands. Her attitude, and those who supported the then prime minister's decision, was perceived rather well by Matthew Parris in his column in the Times:

"The English are a surprisingly bellicose people. When it comes to a fight that we think we can win, calculations of rational self-interest are cast aside. Forget this, and you will miss your country’s mood and end up spitting into the wind."

Vance Miller: a lesson in defence, Scientology style

2010-02-10T22:50:00.004Z

Selling dodgy kitchens and Scientology are as unrelated as a bottle of Fairy washing up liquid and a blue-footed booby.

At least they were until tonight, when Vance Miller, boss of forever-changing-its-name company Maple Industries, had the opportunity to defend his tarnished reputation on BBC1's Rogue Traders.

I knew nothing about Miller until this evening, but I quickly learned that he had been to prison numerous times in numerous countries for a variety of offences and that loads of people were right royally peeved about his shoddy kitchens.

His defence began with the reading of a pre-written statement to the BBC's cameras in front of presenter Matt Allwright. The interview, which had been arranged, was flip-reversed by Miller so that he could ask the questions before storming off in a hissy fit.

His attitude reminded me of Tommy Davis, head of the Cult of Scientology's Brainwashed Famous People's Centre in LA, who famously wound up BBC journalist John Sweeney on Panoroma's Scientology and Me programme.

Like Davis, Miller had 'his people' present during the interview, complete with video cameras. He also did most of the interrogating, including accusations of petty violence, until getting so annoyed that he inserted a biro pen up Allwright's nose.

So the picture of Vance Miller isn't a particularly rosy one. But I can't base my judgements on one TV programme, so off I hopped to vance-miller.co.uk to see what the man had to say for himself.

This is a website that sells kitchens - prospective customers can complete a free planning and design survey, receive an online quote and read favourable testimonials such as: "£800 quid, eight hundred quid!!!.. thats what I saved so thank you very much indeed Vance Miller."

Aside from the marketing and special offers, Miller's website is something of a defensive rant. For a company boss, head honcho, whatever, it is rather unprofessional. I counted three references to "shit" and two to "fuck", while staff at Oldham Council are referred to as "little shits".

"Anyway I'm not bitter" he says, because "I can give more to my orphans in Seirra Leone". I wonder if his money reaches them considering he can't spell the name of the country properly?

Early Sunday afternoon...

2010-02-07T12:17:00.003Z

Chinese Takeaway, originally uploaded by happylobster.

...and:

a) curry is fine to eat cold
b) pizza is fine to eat cold
c) Chinese isn't fine to eat cold.

I do not possess a microwave, sob-sob.

A feline fable

2010-02-02T21:01:00.003Z

Why would you do that?, by Andy, originally uploaded by Portrait of an LBX.

I've just finished reading a rather good book - Suketu Mehta's Maximum City: Bombay Lost And Found. In it, he refers to this parable told to him by a Gujarati doctor:

"A long time ago, a man was conducting a wedding. A cat was running around the marriage hall, disturbing things. So he tied it to a pillar. Afterwards, generations of the man's family, whenever they had a wedding, found a cat and tied it to one pillar of the hall, believing it to be a required wedding custom."

It highlights the absurdity of blind faith at a time when, in the US, the Christian right is denouncing science - sometimes medicine - in favour of prayer and a misguided trust in God.

David Cameron - the all new 'ministering angel'

2010-01-30T18:54:00.007Z

Florence Nightingale, the English nurse made famous for her work in the Crimean War, is widely referred to as the Lady with the Lamp. To readers of the Times, however, she was known as the "ministering angel".

"Her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her," the newspaper's Crimean War correspondent said at the time.

I arrived in Cheltenham this morning, where there was a letter waiting for me from Conservative party leader David Cameron. It came with an accompanying leaflet, A World Class NHS, featuring Mr Cameron, left arm outstretched, laughing with an elderly female patient.

Behind Dave's head is a fluorescent light - each end equidistant from the centre of his brow. He is smiling and above his head, it appears, is a glowing halo.

The out-of-shot hand at the end of said outstretched arm, I can only imagine, contains some yummy medicine to make it all better for the little old lady.

Opening up the leaflet, and Mr Cameron has clearly been doing the rounds in the hospital, talking to a number of patients and nurses.

The Tory party's pre-election PR machine has created its own ministering angel, the saviour of the NHS:

"DAVID CAMERON'S slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of DAVID CAMERON."

Away from hospitals, Cameron has appeared pretty keen on all things green and the safeguarding of Britain's natural environment - something that intensified as Gordon Brown was about to become prime minister.

Why then, I wonder, did my family's household receive five identical letters and leaflets? Because it accommodates five people aged 18 and over and therefore five eligible voters.

Don't worry about the trees Dave - bombard each individual with the same information and maybe we'll vote for you. Actually, sorry, we can't, because we don't live in Witney.

Football Focus puts the cunt in Scunthorpe

2010-01-23T14:21:00.003Z

The BBC's Football Focus programme must have been rubbing its hands with glee ahead of today's show. Arguably the smallest team in the Championship, Scunthorpe United, will tackle the silky majesty of Roberto Mancini and his Manchester City team tomorrow in the fourth round of the FA Cup.

Ex Bangor City manager-turned-physio-turned-manager-again Nigel Adkins will lock horns with his more illustrious Italian counterpart in a David vs Goliath clash, blah blah isn't the FA Cup romantic blah blah.

"Who needs Mourinhoooh, we've got out physioooh."

Someone at the BBC's graphics department clearly had enough of this false romanticism and decided to bring up that age-old question live on air: who put the cunt in Scunthorpe?

Not in a spoken way, that wouldn't have been allowed. Instead, Dan Walker introduced the build-up to the tie by sitting in front of a huge Scunthorpe United logo. It is designed in a way that its four most elevated letters are C, U, N and T.

There it was, the most offensive word in the English language, being blatantly broadcast for about 20 seconds on Saturday lunchtime TV. Brilliant.

January's quote of the month

2010-01-18T23:16:00.003Z

Waiter 10, originally uploaded by Meanest Indian.

"I was delighted to learn that in Britain today more people are employed in Indian restaurants than in your coal, steel and shipbuilding industries combined. So the empire can strike back."

Shashi Tharoor, India's minister for external affairs.

William Hill snowballs to moral bankruptcy...

2010-01-09T18:57:00.014Z

...ironically, "bored" gamblers are spending more money during the freezing weather.

The white stuff has been falling like snowbody's business, and much merriment it has brought to the little island we inhabit.

Scanning the letters page of my local newspaper, I have been reminded to consider the effects of snow and ice on the elderly and disabled as they go about their daily business - and granted, it must be pretty damn inconvenient.

But it has also brought happiness and excitement - I have been hurtling myself down the icy fairway of hole-something-or-other at Lilley Brook Golf Club on a sledge my dad made in 1978. It's the most fun I've had all year (January 6th and counting…).

High street and online gambling outlet William Hill is loving every second of the snowy weather - it has reported a "hundred fold increase in players" signing up to its online games because so many people are "bored" by the cold weather.

While the latter statement is a blatant lie (snow ain't boring compared to January drizzle, you know that), the former could be explained by nationwide postponements of football and rugby matches, leaving most punters with nothing to bet on. At least that's what I'm clinging on to.

William Hill believes that online gambling "certainly beats trudging through the snow" and reports that Britain's mums are ditching talking with their friends in front of the school gates in favour of spending time in the bingo chatroom. Are their kids expected to find their own way home from class?

If there is even the slightest element of truth in this, then I despair. But any disappointment is overridden by resentment towards William Hill for demonising the most marvellous of nature's marvels and instead encouraging people to sit hunched in front of a monitor staring at pixels pretending to be a bingo hall.

If that isn't enough, William Hill is championing mothers who shun their maternal duties and replace them with typing to an online avatar buddy in a bingo chatroom.

While the snow is still here and gambling shops remain closed, I urge you to show William Hill how much fun it is by pelting its grotty windows with yellow-tinged balls of snowflakes.

If only Chieveley services had a William Hill and not a Ladbrokes, this blog would almost be perfect.

Travel chaos blog #2: I've got a new daddy

2009-12-24T21:36:00.005Z

National Express , originally uploaded by steve near cambridge.

Too much of my Christmas Eve was spent stuck in Swindon coach station, another depressingly non-descript transport hub full of frustrated festive travellers.

This time it was a coach gearbox to blame - naturally, I took the inconvenience on the chin and tried to get some shut-eye during the delay. Alas, some of my fellow passengers were far more vocal, with their immediate demand being a National Express-paid-for taxi to Cirencester.

Unfortunately for the quiet minority, a ready-made replacement for Calais pig-man was in the making. He arrived in the form of a 48-year-old self-titled all-action "make sure you grab life by the balls" project sales manager. Sadly, I didn't catch his name.

He assumed the role of lead passenger, congratulating the driver on his sensible approach and assuming a paternal role that the 32-year-old average-aged passenger so desperately required at 2:30 in the morning.

If his calming influence and confident demeanour hadn't materialised, I would have probably melted into a urea-tinged puddle after a bout of panic-induced vibration in my plush leather seat avec drinks holder and power point.

Despite saving my life, I still despise this man. He was an egotistical show off, full of self-congratulation, arrogance and tales of survival so blatantly exaggerated that he might have well told me he was Mahmoud Ahmedjinidad on his way to Marks & Spencer to buy a green t-shirt.

His most cringe-worthy act was to befriend two 30-year-olds with self-confessed sleep problems. They were project sales manager's perfect victims - barely able to muster a reply and unable to sleep. He could show off all he liked, safe in the knowledge that he would be given a mandate to continue his hyperbolic ramblings by the polite mumbling replies of his self-conscious newly-adopted adult children.

Never has the journey from Swindon to Cheltenham seemed so long - I heard project sales manager's anecdotes from his time as a kayak instructor in Canada, disabled kids' helper in Australia, marketing lecturer at Brighton University, flower picker in The Netherlands, competition-entering mountain biker in Europe and bare-chested survival specialist in the Far East.

Merry Christmas. Unless you're pig-man, project sales manager, Enis, Enis's wife or the owners of Cafe Churchill in Westminster - all of whom I hope receive fish hooks and laxatives disguised as festive treats in their stocking tomorrow morning.

Chaos and Kebab Man in Calais

2009-12-22T17:20:00.014Z

Cross-channel holidaymakers became condensation-inflicted refugees last weekend after the suspension of Eurostar services between London and Paris, and I was unfortunate enough to be one of them.

I wasn't among the sorry few to be stranded in the Channel Tunnel for 16 hours without heating, food or water - but I did, like thousands of others, try to get back to London by boarding a ferry in Calais.

In hindsight, I would rather have built a sleigh from splintery fence posts and been towed to the ferry port by a Parisian poodle with a problème gastrique.

But the very helpful and patient (no sarcasm intended) Eurostar staff at Gare Du Nord insisted that sea travel was the best option, and issued passengers with a hotel budget for the night and free train tickets to Calais - because Eurostar trains cannot cope when it's a bit nippy out.

Following a delayed departure from Paris the following morning and a mass embarkation of Les Rosbifs at Lille, we made it to Gare de Calais Ville, the armpit of the French rail network. It took one hour to exit the station, such was the number of stranded Englishmen, women and children.

Two coaches stood statically at the head of a scrum of big dads wanting to travel to the ferries, with these the only vehicles provided by Eurostar, the ferry terminal and local authorities to the port.

Befriending some fellow strandees, the best course of action was to walk the miserable two miles to the ferries - luckily, we flagged down a taxi en route, the driver of which was the recipient of a few je t'aimes.

It was snowing and cold on arrival and the queue stretched far outside the ticket office. Then a man-pig turned up (bottom left of pic), shouting to everyone that he was cold and wanted to go inside - as if the other few thousand people were there to build northern France's biggest snowman.

This individual was a disgrace to humanity - a selfish, loud-mouth lover-of-kebabs who thought he was god's gift to comedy and interpersonal skills, when in truth he was a foul, vomit-inducing sight whose every breath triggered a mucous-infested vocal cord.

He sounded like a breathy elephant having an orgasm in your ear, interspersed with a rhino stampeding through a Walkers crisp factory.

I'm no fattist - but this man got through three king-size packets of crisps in a matter of minutes, washed down with a few tins of Sprite. Dessert consisted of Calais ferry terminal's finest deep fried potatoes. I cannot stress how bad this smelt for anyone within 100 metres of this one-man junk food feast machine.

His gorging was punctuated by attempts to force in-front of everyone. Naturally, I challenged his pushings - "Don't you fucking take the piss out of me, I just want a ticket", was his eloquent reply. I may have said something at this point which contradicts the non-fattist stance outlined previously.

Without launching into a tirade of abuse against a man that none of you have probably seen or are unlikely to ever see, the more frustrating aspect of my 13-hour journey between the French and British capitals was that no-one seemed to know what was going on. I spent three hours standing on the same tiles in the terminal building, unable to move for fellow passengers and without any information about when the next ferry would be departing.

The boredom and anger dispersed for a moment when one guy started playing Knockin' On Heaven's Door on guitar - a welcome distraction for those contending with man-pig.

More waiting, more confusion, more anger, but we finally boarded a ferry and reached the White Cliffs, with the promise that shuttle buses would transport Eurostar passengers to Dover Priory railway station for the onward journey to St Pancras. This did not happen.

So, just a couple of things to prepare ahead of my next trip to Paris - I need to find a fence and get one of these temperament-perfect pooches. Bon voyage pour maintenant.

Cheryl Cole gives birth to an 18-year-old boy

2009-12-15T16:33:00.005Z

Celebrities' special powers, I thought, extended to to Kim Woodburn's ability to digest pulped cockroaches and mealworms.

But I was wrong. Cheryl Cole has usurped Woodburn by spawning a male son thanks to the magic of immaculate conception.

Because he has no father, 18-year-old X Factor winner Joe McElderry has inherited all of his mother's features, including face, place of birth, regional accent and singing voice.

Oh, and free flights to Los Angeles, expensive fashion taste and victory in an ITV Saturday night talent show/karaoke competition.

Collective bum-wiping: Manchester to Singapore

2009-12-09T12:44:00.001Z

Toilet Humour, originally uploaded by pocketcanoe.

Something startling occurred to me this morning during the usual work routine. I was writing a story about Manchester Airport, or more specifically, its toilets.

They are officially the best in Britain, at least, according to a slightly ambiguous and misleading Manchester Airport press release. WCs in Terminals 1 and 2 won five-star ratings from the Loo of the Year Awards, which are recognised by the British Toilet Association. Impressive stuff.

But this pales into insignificance when you consider that Manchester Airport's 20 million annual passengers get through 43.93 million metres of bog roll per year.

As the airport light-heartedly points out, if unrolled, this would stretch between Manchester and Singapore four times and Manchester and New York eight times.

A quick sum points to the inescapable fact the average Manchester Airport passenger uses almost 2.2 metres of bog roll during their wait in the terminal - the equivalent of a person standing 7.2 feet tall.

I genuinely don't get it - how is this possible? And isn't there an environmental concern considering paper comes from trees and most used tissue is flushed down the toilet?

An article in the Guardian published earlier this year suggested that the amount of soft toilet tissue used in the US was causing more environmental damage than the country's gas-guzzling vehicles.

And according to charity WWF: "Every day, about 270,000 trees are flushed down the drain or end up as garbage all over the world.

"In fact, every time you use a toilet roll or other tissue products you might be directly contributing to this environmental destruction."

Airports and airlines are taking their fair share of flak from environmental campaigners, and Manchester probably isn't doing itself any favours by jokingly announcing that its passengers bum-wiped a collective total of 44,000km in 2009.

But maybe I'm wrong, and more passengers will be persuaded to fly from Manchester instead of Liverpool or Leeds Bradford, safe in the knowledge that they almost certainly won't combine their Mediterranean-induced tan with a bout of conjunctivitis or hepatitis.

Cafe Churchill, Westminster

2009-12-02T22:56:00.003Z

MALUB090924-109.jpg, originally uploaded by martinlubikowski.

Today I paid a miserable visit to Cafe Churchill on Parliament Street in Westminster. It is so awful that I can barely find the words to describe this aggressive little cesspit of an eatery.

The few waiters and single waitress are initally friendly, welcoming and efficient. Then they become pushy and abrupt, asking if you want everything 'large' - which is actually 'regular', but it gives them a mandate to charge exorbitant prices for apparently edible produce which is so below par that I'd rather spend my money in Charing Cross McDonald's. After the pubs close on a Friday night. Even a Saturday night.

Churchill's menu is littered with grandiose terminology. I opted for the Imperial Hot-Dog, the cheapest item on the menu at £5.60. It arrived with a salad consisting of three anaemic lettuce leaves. Mmm, yummy.

The waitress bullied me into ordering chips. Soggy, re-heated oven chips, about ten of them. £3.50. Three pounds and fifty pence. On top of the £5.60.

The 'Imperial' did not describe the hot-dog, but must have instead related to the despotic waitress who served me, whose priorities included the establishment of a warped little empire via the cafe's menu.

She served me a bland frankfurter on an equally bland white baguette. The ketchup was clearly watered-down and the cheese was from one of those cheap packets of sliced processed yellow squares found in corner shops for 15p.

The bill was sky high, which I was expecting. I was not anticipating the adding-on of a service charge however. This is a grubby little cafe, tips are discretionary, no?

No. When I asked for it to be removed, Ms Despot informed me it was a compulsory charge, and that I had to pay it because it said so on the menu and I should have noticed it.

This experience angered and saddened me. I'd always choose an independent cafe over a Starbucks, Caffe Nero or Costa Coffee because they're (almost literally) being eaten up in London, which is a massive shame.

In conclusion, do not go to Cafe Churchill. It is utterly atrocious and stays afloat by targeting tired tourists sheltering from the rain. And stupid people like me.

Just so you know when to cross the other side of the road, it's located at 49 Parliament Street, SW1A 2NH, just south of Whitehall.

This is (probably) my last cafe review, I promise.

How Thierry Henry and Tiger Woods saved the world

2009-11-30T16:35:00.016Z

If I was Roger Federer (and if it wasn't for the eyebrows, I could be), I'd watch out. A curse that began in ad land has beset the real world.

Thierry Henry was the first to succumb to its power. A mild-mannered, highly-respected, definitely-not-a-cheat footballer sent France through to the World Cup Finals by setting up a goal with his hand.

He is paying for his mistake now that his reputation as a man and a footballer is forever tarnished. The entire population of the world's 20th largest island is against him, and according to Arsenal legend Emmanuel Petit, FIFA should be offering Henry more help instead of "sitting around in big chairs".

But assistance is not forthcoming - Henry is alone.

With the furore refusing to die down, what Thierry really needs is another sports superstar to enter the media glare in acriomonious circumstances.

Step forward Tiger Woods, who has unfortunately sustained "some cuts [and] bruising" and is "pretty sore" after a car accident. A very, very strange car accident.

A drive in the early hours ended rather aprubtly when Woods crashed his Cadillac into a fire hydrant and then a tree.

Woods' wife, Elin Nordegren, told police that she rescued her husband with the most appropriate tool she could find - one that has made Woods the world's first billionaire sportsman.

So, after smashing the back window (italics equals suspiciousness), Nordegren rescued Woods by dragging him to safety.

Celebrity website tmz.com reported, however, that Nordegren had "gone ghetto" and injured Woods, before the pair made off in some kind of surreal pursuit, during which Nordegren allegedly whacked the car with the golf club, causing Woods to crash. Phewff.

The argument is believed to have occurred because of Woods' relationship with "homewrecking tabloid magnet" Rachel Uchitel.

"This situation is my fault, and it's obviously embarrassing to my family and me. I'm human and I'm not perfect," was Woods' response.

So, two down and one to go. Yes that's right, I'm talking about the Gillette advert. The one with Messrs Federer, Woods and Henry.

With two-thirds of their advertising campaign showing themselves up as a liability - and a public relations disaster - Gillette must be wondering what lies in store for Federer. Little do they realise that it's all their own doing.

The company has altered its latest advert by removing Henry's left hand completely (it happended to be holding a ball and was the same one he used against Ireland).

One wonders whether Woods' club will now be removed - which would leave two men, one minus hand, standing next to a third man with a tennis racket. That would definitely send out a "it's time to shave!" message.

It's not as if the ad was any good in the first place - last year, industry magazine Campaign named it the worst TV commercial of 2008.

"The Gillette ad is an own goal, a double fault and a bunker shot rolled into one," said Campaign editor Claire Beale.

And they keep getting worse - I'm not sure what the hell was going on with the invention of Phenom, and neither does tvs-worst-adverts.co.uk: "This, according to the advert, is short for "phenomenal" but only a pathetic wannabe hipster or middle-management wank stain would ever dare utter it in public."

My thoughts entirely.

With the curse having obviously affected Gillette's marketing department (why did they decide to keep Federer, Woods and Henry after their acting was so badly received?), it was moved on to the 'stars' of the show.

Federer is the only one left. It's set up perfectly - ending the year top of the ATP rankings, ready to spank everyone during 2010. This time last year he was behind Rafael Nadal. It's too perfect - the curse is simmering nicely, ready to shock Fed with an almighty comedown. I fear for him.

How did the curse come about? Simple - it was self-manifesting, a much-needed regulatory measure that evolved subconsciously to stop Gillette's endless quest for more blades, faster strokes and a smoother feel.

I spent a large proportion of my childhood worrying about where this would end. Every year there was a new model with an extra blade. By the time I hit 17, there would be 71 blades and 51 lubrication strips; men would have evolved massively-out-of-proportion biceps in order to lift the blade to tame their facial hair - a daily battle would have turned into the 100 years war, and the world would have almost certainly ended as a result of en masse self-inflicted slaughter.

But now, thanks to Henry's cheating and Woods' alleged misdemeanours, we can breathe a sigh of relief, stroll down to Tesco's any buy some value razors. Minus lubrication strips.

I was like, oh my God...

2009-11-22T17:57:00.002Z

...is the single most annoying phrase to have infected the English language since every TV drama produced in the UK replaced 'joking' with 'kidding'. Who the hell ever says kidding in real life?

But a much more worrying trend has emerged, and most of us haven't even noticed it.

Every single person I know recalls at least one anecdote from a conversation they have had on any given day. "He said this..." "She said that..." was the norm. Somewhere in the 90s we started saying "And he goes 'I don't think so'..." "She went 'yes please, I love them'...". I got told off for saying 'goes' and 'went' because they are verbs used to denote physical movement, not speech.

Now, out of nowhere, everyone under the age of 30 has started saying "He was like, 'no way, I hate it there'...", often with an "oh my God" surgically attached. I too have succumbed to the 'like' infestation, albeit subconsciously, because it has taken over the world and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

Why Why Why? American TV, probably.

Today's image is a photographic metaphor. I am the girl (obviously not the metaphor, ahem) and everyone else is the I-was-like brigade. They are making me feel unwell, like I have, like, a headache or something.

Celebrity chefs

2009-11-21T16:22:00.007Z

I'm not really sure about the role of celebrity chefs - there didn't seem to be that many around five years ago; now they're everywhere.

Do they exist to teach us how to cook and encourage us to be more adventurous in the kitchen? Or to make us watch in awe and get on the waiting list for their restaurants, safe in the knowledge that we can never be as good as them because we can't afford livestock and don't know where to source Szechuan peppercorns. Or what sauce to put them in.

The Heston Blumenthals are innovative, the Jamie Olivers are inspiring. The French ones scare us because of their inherent culinary expertise. Others, namely Gordon Ramsay, almost scare us before we realise they're loudmouth, narcissistic attention-seekers who shamelessly pursue celebrities in a bid to become celebrated themselves.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is almost perfect because of his lifestyle, demeanor and the fact that he still gets upset before killing an animal. He falls very neatly in the campaigning celebrity chef category because of his Chicken Out crusade.

It's a world dominated by men - apart from the straight-and-narrow charm of Delia and 'domestic godness' Nigella, who makes food in a sexy way.

The BBC recently announced that model Sophie Dahl will present a new cookery show next spring in an apprent bid to address the TV chef gender imbalance.

Where will it end? The Telegraph reckons that we'll soon start seeing programmes like How To Look Good As The Naked Chef, The Eggs Factor and Strictly Come Basting.

Janet Street Porter recently wrote in her Independent column: "The cult of the celebrity chef has had a disastrous impact [on restaurants]", because the aforementioned are more concerned with "their websites, PR and their 'brand' than with the business of giving their customers good food".

Which is strange considering her long-running flirtatious on-screen relationship with Gordon Ramsay on The F Word. But there we go.

Luckily, Saturday night is free from food-related prime-time programming, apart from Come Dine With Me on Channel 4, which features normal human beings cooking on camera for normal human beings.

Obviously the food they prepare tends to be rubbish, because they're normal. So to jazz it up a bit there's the sporadic Celebrity Come Dine With Me, which gives the opportunity for highly-respected foodies such as Abi Titmuss and Rodney Marsh to have a crack at being a celebrity chef, much to the delight of the world's most annoying narrator.

Ghost forest

2009-11-19T18:12:00.005Z

Pop down to Trafalgar Square and you'll notice a number of rainforest tree stumps resting about the place.

These represent Angela Palmer's 'ghost forest', an art project designed to raise awareness of climate change.

Ghost forest is the kind of modern art I really like - conscious, topical and minus any pretentiousness. It also required a mahoosive amount of effort and passion.

I generally have trouble understanding 'the art world', or at least people aged under 35 who claim to have (conceptual) talent and a flair for conveying and disseminating issues, thoughts and interpretations through bricks, sputum and jelly.

Perhaps the state of modern art was summed up in 2007 when an Anish Kapoor sculpture was mistakenly thrown in a rubbish bin during some building work.

There are other examples - staff at the Tate Britain chucked out a Gustav Metzger piece after thinking it was a bag of waste paper, which is in fact exactly what it was. It was designed to demonstrate "the finite existence of art", funnily enough.

I can't imagine a Canaletto being accidently thrown out of Dulwich Picture Gallery. But maybe I'm missing the point.

Anyhoo, get yourself down to the Ghost Forest before November 22nd.

How much money is in a crown?

2009-11-15T22:22:00.003Z

I don't know, but WikiAnswers does: five shillings/one quarter of a pound/60 old pennies/25 new pence, apparently.

Loadsaaa monaaay.

The latest big money news is that recession has ended in the eurozone... STOP PRESS... Jordan is going back into the I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here jungle.

"This time it's closure", she says. Whoa there. Peter Andre's well out of the way isn't he? Clears the way for Jimmy White, lucky man. I shall be tuning in tomorrow.

Please don't make yourself amazing

2009-11-13T16:53:00.005Z

Naomi Millbank Smith, Orlaith McAllister, Imogen Thomas and Niki Evans - some of the kind-of-famous-but-I-can't-remember-what-they-look-like names to have made themselves amazing thanks to... Make Yourself Amazing, the cosmetic surgery company polluting right-hand sides of Facebook pages and tube escalators.

Making money from people's insecurities is the name of the game - you name it, they do it: breast enlargement, reduction, uplift or anything in between. Liposuction; because it always looks completely natural. Rhinoplasty; which apparently has something to do with your nose.

One-time Big Brother contestant Amy Alexandra bought a new nose from MYA. "I love my new nose!", she says emphatically (because there's an exclamation mark) on its website.

So, judging by MYA.co.uk, the only people choosing to pay for the company's cosmetic surgery treatments are vacant, talentless female airheads who once appeared on a reality TV show.

Either that, or this is the target audience MYA is aiming for - pretty, young and dim girls aged 18+ who have made a few bob (or mummy and daddy gave it to them) and want to get into modelling/singing/dancing but can't, because they're too fucking stupid.

Which is a massive shame. Because Naomi Millbank what's-her-face was hot stuff in Shipwrecked, and now she's made a/two tit(s) of(for) herself. I still like her face, and her diplomatic skills were second to none on that show.

She could have been at the UN by now. If Ginger can do it...

I've got love in my tummy

2009-11-12T14:59:00.008Z

They're the best thing about weekends, as far as I'm concerned. A disgustingly unhealthy fry-up on a Saturday morning, washed down by a cup of tea. It's my reward for a week of being overworked and underpaid. I never make one, oh no, I go to a cafe and pay for one. It's the only way.

I've been worried about the prospect of abandoning the magic of Step In Cafe - which does the best breakfast in the East End - having moved away from Bow.

Luckily, I've found Kelly's Cafe on New North Road, which doesn't look like this but does look like this. The hash browns are p-p-particularly perfect. And, if you're lucky, you can share your breakfast experience with Spider from Coronation Street or Janine Butcher's old chauffeur, before he hits the drink.

Sold it haven't I? Knew I would. See you there.

Captain Arthur

2009-11-11T17:15:00.006Z

Today is Armistice Day, which marks the 91st anniversary of the end of hostilities on the Western Front between the Allies and Germany.

I fell silent for two minutes to think about Captain Arthur Dermot William Woollett, my great-grandfather (the soldier on the right, I think he looks a bit like me).

He died on April 22nd, 1944 in Burma's Arakan region after being shot by a Japanese ambush party. Aged just 34, he left behind his wife Phyllis and his two young children, Maureen and Eileen.

He was laid to rest in Taukkyan War Cemetery, just north of Rangoon. Some 6,373 other Commonwealth soldiers are buried there.

There is also a series of memorial pillars, which contain the names of 27,000 other men from India, Africa, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand who died fighting the Japanese during the Second World War.

Bus stops threaten your masculinity

2009-11-10T16:50:00.003Z

As of now they do. How is this supposed to make you feel? This ad was put up in November for crying out loud. No-one walks around in red y-fronts, especially not in freezing rain.

Decide for yourself what this man was feeling. Somewhere between borderline jealousy and hatred for metrosexuality no doubt.

Sex line love

2009-11-09T20:55:00.005Z

The above is what happens when the man on the street falls in love with the unobtainable sex line girl.

1. Noticing her presence on the shiny, bodily fluid-proof glossy paper.

2. Longing after her. How can she be mine?

3. She doesn't know you exist. She never will. Because if you call her it will be Big Mo from Eastenders, and that will cost you two pounds a minute. You can't have her. You shed a tear.

I had the mispleasue of witnessing this cruel series of events, so naturally I documented them as a lesson for others.

Location, location, location

2009-09-30T11:17:00.005+01:00

Last night I watched Location, Location, Location for the first time in about three years. The sexual tension between Kirsty and Phil seems to have escalated further - at one point Mr Spencer kicked Ms Alsop firmly but gently in the shin region, as if to release some of that pent-up frustration.

I could have done with the pair's help a few weeks ago. Having just moved to a flat in north London, which is pretty swish (relatively speaking) on the inside, I've been kept up the past few nights by Baring Street traffic - a road far busier than it was during our 20 minute viewing.

Still, it beats one house we looked at in east London - which we nearly, so nearly put an offer on. After umming and aahing in the basement bedroom, our respective trains of thought were disrupted by an altogether more literal track-gracing collection of carriages.

The windows started shaking, hinges began rattling and squirrels in the garden darted up trees - the Eurostar was passing a few metres beneath us.

So we settled in the no man's land between Hackney and Islington and the never-ending flow of vehicles - above is four minutes' worth in the early hours of this morning.

Open House

2009-09-22T17:36:00.008+01:00

Last weekend was Open House in London, meaning that hundreds of buildings across the capital swung their doors open to members of the public.

I found the two days incredibly confusing and frustrating - "No, sorry, the Gherkin isn't part of Open House, even though people said it was" and "No, you can't climb to the top of Tower 42 because you had to pre-book."

So I paid £3 to access the online events guide - a pdf file which is very, very long.

This I resorted to after typing the names of buildings I quite fancied visiting into the Open House website's 'search' page - only to come up with nothing.

There was very little distinction in the guide between the primary school extension in Dagenham and the Bank of England, apart from the 'Q' warning sign.

Off then instead to Highgate Cemetery, permanent residence of Michael Faraday and Karl Marx.

The most striking grave, I thought, was that of Alexander Litvinenko - a simple, wooden frame with a small photograph acting as the headstone.

Our guide explained to that it was "good for the soul to ponder your own mortality". Hopefully mine won't involve polonium-210.

Faces

2009-09-17T21:15:00.003+01:00

Sawubona! Now I know how to greet people in Zulu. Thanks Flickr!.

These are some people with really big heads who I saw looking at me t'other day as I was cycling along Regent's Canal in London.

Young and old, black and white, male and female - but who are they and why are they there? Does anyone know? It bothers me so.

I've been trying to work out what their names are. From left to right, starting with the top row: Grace, Patricia, Milly, Claire, Gary, Julie, Olive, Maggie, Mo and Veronica.

Poor Gary, he's completely outnumbered by Hackney womenfolk. He also looks as though he's been asked what the capital of Bhutan is on the £32,000 Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? question having used all his lifelines.

I didn't look at them for too long - Mo clearly has her fists clenched behind that window. "Wha'chu lookin' at?!"

Conscious sounds

2009-08-27T19:35:00.004+01:00

Nothing massively newsworthy here - just some conscious sounds to go with a conscious image. This is obviously a deliberate decision, it is August after all.

This is Iration Steppas at last weekend's One Love Festival - if you think they look like they might sound good, check out their sounds here.

In other news, the fight against Enis's goes on. Turns out he doesn't own the cafe - his partner/wife Jo has a mother who owns the lease on the building from Network Rail.

Sounds as though she's pretty relucant to give it up - Fishcoteque nextdoor has apparently had its eye on Enis's for a while, as has Subway.

Fingers crossed his gaff won't be around for much longer - watch this space. Yes higher.

Enis's Cafe, Waterloo

2009-08-18T20:28:00.023+01:00

Saturday morning is fry-up time. Off then to my local (quirky) greasy spoon, Enis's, on Waterloo Road - right opposite the station.

£5.95 for a full breakfast. Reassuringly expensive, I thought. Mmm, this is what I need - a meaty sausage, a couple of rashers of bacon, an egg, hash browns, a grilled tomato and all washed down with a cup of tea.

What's that? An extra 50p for tea? Oh, okay then - this must be really good.

Hmm, what's this? A card advertising some kind of elixir? Sounds slightly sinister. "Excuse me?" I said to the waitress, "What exactly is this... thing?"

"I'm afraid I'm not qualified to answer that," was the reply from Jo, Enis's partner.

Ok, so she's a little odd. And I can deal with the elixir mystery. "It's like the League of Gentlemen in here," my friend said.

And she was right. Enis's cafe became threatening all of a sudden. The elixir is advertised everywhere, while the walls are psychedelically decorated as if to try to put you off your food. As for the waitress, I began to wonder what she was plotting.

Out came Enis with the food. Phewff, a happy smiley man. "Full breakfast?" "Yes please!"

Wait a minute. What's this? Undercooked bacon avec puddle of oil, burnt sausage, slice of grilled tomato and a tablespoon of baked beans? The egg looked passable, but it was fried. I had wanted poached.

"Sorry mate, I'm not paying six quid for this. This is a kid's portion."

"It's a full portion, you can't argue with it," was Enis's sharp reply.

Jo's mood had since taken a turn for the worse. Out came the toast. "Here's the rest of your full portion," she said, sarcastically.

The crusts proudly displayed clumps of mould. She must be taking the piss, I thought.

With three out of seven appalling looking breakfasts served and not touched, we asked Enis and Jo for our money back. I was still in shock that they could justify charging in excess of £6 for this - no wonder there weren't any other customers in here.

"How dare you ask for your fucking money? You have to pay," was Enis's response as he locked us into the little hell-hole he calls his cafe.

Jo then went off on a tirade of verbal of abuse. The girls I were with were suddenly "bitches", while her sweaty, deranged face turned to me and called me a "creep".

We were completely perplexed by what was happening. All we had asked for was our money back after being unsatisfied with the shockingly awful food they had served us.

Enis then joined in, slamming his fist on the table, shouting every insult under the sun. The pair of them had flipped and there was no escape. This was getting scary.

"Do you wanna fucking black eye? Do ya? Eh?" Enis screamed at me, his nose almost touching mine.

Meanwhile, Jo was convinced this was a set-up. "I can't believe this is happening," she said. "This is so unfair, Enis. We've been set up by these naughty children."

Convinced that we were about to receive some kind of physical punishment from the new Tubbs and Edward, one of us called 999 and asked for the police, despite Enis's attempts to stop us.

We had rattled them. Enis and Jo were displaying the most extraordinary paranoia I had ever witnessed, but it was time to let us out.

He opened the door and told us to "fuck off", screaming and spitting as the police pulled up outside.

"I'm gonna watch your fucking red faces as I let you bastards out!"

Naturally, he turned the charm on when confronted by the police. One officer told me that he had called the girls "beautiful and clever" and that a simple dispute had broken out because we had refused to pay.

Because there were no other customers in the cafe - a testament to how bad it is - there was no neutral witness. He, along with his wife, got off with a warning.

But the fight doesn't end here. Lambeth Council's food safety team is "intrigued" by Enis's elixir. After some research on the internet, it turns out that a bottle will set you back £100. Its secret ingedients are not suitable for children.

It is so intrigued, in fact, that the cafe is due to be investigated for potential breaches of hygiene. Did I mention that its kitchen is covered from ceiling to floor in tin foil? Just imagine what's living under there.

If this were a review, Enis's would score zero stars out of five. As a customer, I can just about tolerate being midly ripped-off every now and then. I do not expect, however, to be imprisoned, served by psychopaths, threatened with physical violence and only escape after calling 999.

Enis, if you're reading this, the fight starts here.

Pic credit: Trixie No Lix

The struggle begins (again)

2009-08-08T18:32:00.003+01:00

This afternoon I parted with a hard-earned £20 note to watch Cheltenham beat Grimsby in the fourth tier of English football: League Two.

Yes, the Football League season has begun - and it's proper football too, no multi-millionaires and shiny hair, but spectacular comebacks from heavy-set titans of men. Julian Alsop, I salute you.

I'm hoping the general lack of money that seems to have beset the globe will inspire more people to visit the Whaddon Roads, Underhills and Aggboroughs of the footballing (under)world. Maybe it will be a uniting force - I've heard stories of Arsenal and Spurs fans buying Barnet shirts in time for this afternoon.

While the lower leagues have always been a bit of a struggle (which is part of the attraction, I reckon), there have been two extremes developing. One has been lingering and getting progressively worse - clubs running out of money and going bust.

The other is the 'rich man's toy' phenomenon, which seems to have arrived at Notts County after the club were taken over by a Middle Eastern consortium and made some guy called Sven director of football.

I don't want League Two to be polarised. As far as I'm concerned, it's one of the last footballing bastions untouched by greed and experimenting.

I do want more people to switch off Sky Sports and go and watch their local team. Football is a leveller - even for itself.

How to make home furnishings exciting

2009-08-02T22:17:00.006+01:00

Workers at a Tewkesbury furniture warehouse are among the reasons why Gloucestershire is a wonderful place.

Employees set up 41 mattresses along a carefully planned route in the warehouse, with a person standing infront of each one.

This was part of an audacious attempt to break the mattress dominoes world record, a phenomenon that apparently began in the US.

The worker at the front of the chain fell backward, triggering the domino effect to knock over the remaining 40.

Guinness World Records is examining a video of proceedings. If you haven't seen it, you absolutely must: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndYxBQXhNjI.

In something of a home furnishings excitement double whammy, I snapped the above sand sofa on London's South Bank last week.

And it seems the action doesn't stop there. 22-year-old Furniture Design student Rosetta Lau has invented the PlusMinus wall, a shower partition system which could become a common feature in the world's hotels.

Right, I'm off to do some ironing and dream of bean bags.

Nice to see you...

2009-07-27T19:37:00.003+01:00

...to see you nice. Is probably what Gordon Brown didn't say when he invited Bruce Forsyth, among others, to dine at Chequers last year.

The fabulously-named Lee Benedictus pondered in the Guardian earlier this month what it would be like if Brucie was appointed secretary of state for work and pensions.

Does it seem so far fetched following Srrralan's promotion to the House of Lords?

"A noted advocate of the later retirement age, he is also known to favour sweeping reforms to social security, which would see disability benefits replaced by a system under which injuries to the hand, leg or arm will be allocated points exchangeable for a range of prizes," Benedictus wrote.

I can see both society's older people and injuriees (I just made that word up) taking to Mr Forsyth. Yes, scandalously he's only a Mr - although there is a CBE after Brucie's name.

Consider the alternative under the current goverment, whose plans to boost retirement income for people aged 50 and over involves, yaaaaawn, slightly increasing the ISA savings limit.

Bruce Forsyth is a man prepared to make sacrifices, too. Instead of his usual £660,000 fee for Strictly Come Dancing, for example, he'll only be paid half a million pounds for the next series.

This bloomin' recession.

DFS - Right back at cha

2009-07-22T14:51:00.002+01:00

Purrsuasion

2009-07-19T17:48:00.010+01:00

Next weekend I'll be moving from my home to someone else's. I only met this person today, but they're very kindly letting me and one other move into their flat while they go to Spain for a month.

The selling point of this short-term accommodation deal was their ickle puddy cat, who followed us around during the viewing purring away as felines do.

When I arrived back home, I found out that clever people at the University of Sussex have discovered that cats use their purrs to "manipulate humans".

A particular type of cat noise called a "soliciting purr", which includes a crying-like sound, is apparently impossible to resist.

Next time you hear "prrprrwaaablublubprrprr" from your moggy be prepared to lose your decision-making powers and succumb to feline food and attention demands.

Cunning bastards.

Unfortunate juxtaposition

2009-07-16T18:38:00.006+01:00

Above is a YouTube screen cap of two of my favourite people - Richard Dawkins and Polly Toynbee - talking about the excellent Atheist Bus Campaign.

The campaign, as most of you will know, was a resounding success. It smashed its fundraising target by a whopping 2700%.

This made me proud to be an atheist. It was a celebration of free speech - a concept that doesn't necessarily sit well with religion, as Professor Dawkins explained:

"No opinion should be protected from criticism simply by virtue of being religiously held."

It was, to an extent, a triumph for reason and clear-thinking. I even bought the t-shirt to show my support.

I also viewed it as a kick in the teeth for one 'religion' in particular: Scientology. Everybody with an iota of common sense despises this pay-as-you commercialised cult, don't they?

Granted, it's not a monotheistic religion, but I think the Atheist Bus Campaign went further than criticising Christianity, Islam and Judaism by getting people to think - which explains the inclusion of 'probably' in the "There's probably no God" catchphrase.

Worryingly, Scientology has enough support, particularly in the US, to exercise its financial clout on the world's most popular video-sharing website.

This exposes the double standards of YouTube - depsite banning Scientology's video account, it still allows 'the church' to advertise on its website.

Sometimes, if you refreshed the page, an advert for Tom Cruise's website would appear where the Scientology banner was moments earlier.

Is this a bit scary or what?

My video-watching experience was somewhat ruined by this rather unfortunate juxtapositional clash of ideas.

Thankfully, it was just about saved by the fact that I've fallen in love - just a little bit - with Ariane Sherine.

A punctured head

2009-07-15T18:39:00.013+01:00

Never in my short but colourful life have I taken a photo of a bird of prey. Nevermind a buzzard. But how I wish I had.

This evening I am sparing a thought for plasterer Paul Powell (his official title, of course) who hails from my second-favourite place in the world: Gloucestershire.

Paul was two miles into a run around the village of Shurdington - former home of none other than my granny - when he noticed aforementioned buzzard swooping down on him, talons outstretched, ready for the kill.

After two murder attempts, the 38-year-old managed to find shelter in a nearby farmhouse.

The Gloucestershire Echo said Paul was "rushed to hospital". I guess this is par for the course - heaven forbid that anyone is ever "taken" to hospital again.

His injuries? Four puncture wounds in his head. Nasty.

The story also appeared on the Daily M**l website, where it received my favourite news story comment of the day from a Mr Kevin Sunderland of Sunderland (I think Kevin may have accidently typed where he was from into the 'surname' tab, before typing it again into the 'from' tab, then thinking... nah I won't delete it, I'm a- too lazy or b- it looks kinda funny, haha, aren't I great? Or he could just be called Kevin Sunderland).

Anyway, his response to the story was thus: "I get attacked by them up in the hills all the time. I use my walking pole to fend them off.

"I was chased for about three miles."

This is the best image I've had in my head so far this month. Thank you Kevin Sunderland from Sunderland. And plasterer Paul, I hope you get well soon. Love from Charlie.

PS - yes, it's a pigeon. A tame, slightly elderly looking pigeon. I know, it resembles a buzzard in absolutely no way. Whatsoever.

Ghost in the hallway... MJ is back

2009-07-14T19:40:00.003+01:00

It occured to me earlier today that too many of my blogs have taken a cheery little look at getting old and the inevitabilty of death. Well, here we go again - for the last time, promise. I'll also be using the subject of Michael Jackson (how many times - not the ex-Cheltenham town player, the King of Pop) once more.

In a quite remarkable development, MJ's ghost has decided to appear in one of Neverland's hallways - just as a CNN TV crew is exploring the building.

It's scary stuff. If you look closely it's pretty clear that the ghost is doing a moonwalk. Yep, definitely.

If you haven't seen the footage yet, click here. Oh, and don't forget to turn your speakers up.

Tick-tock

2009-07-13T21:21:00.004+01:00

These lovely-looking people are literally watching the passage of time. Us humans are obsessed with clocks, watches and other more modern time-keeping devices such as laptops and Blackberries (Should I put a TM here so you know I'm not talking about the fruit? No, I won't).

Time reminds us of our own mortality. That each one of us is... tick-tock... getting older by the second. Many have dreamed of living forever, or least extending their lives by a few years.

Centenarians are regularly asked to reveal the secrets of a long life. Some of my favourite suggestions have been having lots of moles, taking cold showers and vegetables. Just vegetables. I'm not sure whether to rub purple sprouting in my face or actually attempt to cook it.

But maybe I won't have to bother. Instead, I shall head to Easter Island to find myself some Rapamycin - a naturally occurring substance found in the island's soil.

Apparently it has made laboratory mice live past their life expectancy. And anybody who knows anything about science knows that mammals are all pretty much the same. Yep, whales are more closely related to mice than they are to fish. Ask Richard Dawkins.

I digress. We'll see what happens with Rapamycin. Until then, I'll be working tirelessly to improve my social standing, which, some experts have said, is more important to longevity than a healthy diet, access to healthcare and exposure to fewer diseases.

In other news, you may have noticed I have a new banner. Isn't it pretty?

Diana S

2009-07-11T22:12:00.003+01:00

One & Other - fourth plinth, originally uploaded by charliedotgilbert.

This is Diana S standing on the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square.

The usually-empty plinth is being used from now until October as part of Antony Gormley's One & Another project.

I've unfortunately found myself addicted to the plinth's live web-stream, which is infinitely more appealing than Big Brother.

As I write, the rather tragic Jesus Army appears to have left Trafalgar Square - and so have all the tourists.

There's just a couple of hardcore plinth pilgrims paying homage to a middle-aged man sitting on a plastic chair on the phone to his friend.

Can't wait for the glass-blower at 11.

We're not bottom anymore

2009-07-09T19:41:00.007+01:00

English tourists strike fear into thousands of Spanish, Italians and Greeks each year. Just look at them. No, not them - for all I know, they might be your parents. 'Them' - go on, use your imagination.

I bring good news fellow Englishmen and women. While the football shirts, tattoos and beer bellies are embarrassing for the rest of us, there is no longer any need to worry.

This is because our rivals across La Manche are officially the world's worst tourists. Research carried out by TNS Infratest has revealed that French people on holiday are penny-pinching, abrupt and refuse to learn foreign languages.

While there may be the occasional bon oeuf, the French were ranked second-from-bottom in terms of overall attitude and politeness.

Brits, on the other hand, made second spot on the list - mainly because we're so bloody polite.

Maybe the researchers didn't take into account the Magalufs, Cala en Forcats and Benidorms of this world.

But we beat the French. Just this once. Next time I head to Paris to visit Florian-the-banker I'll be able to salvage an iota of national pride with this little nugget of a survey.

Apportez-le dessus!

Trigger happy

2009-07-05T14:07:00.005+01:00

As I write today's blog, I'm listening to a song that reminds me of the past. Recent research has revealed that this is the third most likely thing to trigger that most pleasant of emotions: happiness.

But I could be even happier. All I have to do is find a £10 note in an old pair of jeans or look back at old photographs.

Finding a £20 or £50 note in your back pocket did not feature in Smile bank's 'what makes us smile' list. Presumably, this is because most of us would panic while contemplating the inevitable change situation.

These people are not looking at the bigger picture. What if they were to find one of those 20p coins? Apparently they're going for as much as £450 now... ker-ching.

Which would make me really, really happy.

Am I cracking up...

2009-07-04T15:50:00.005+01:00

...or just getting older? Or so Noel Gallagher once pondered. He may well have been cracking up at the time, but Oasis are still 'cracking out' some 'great tunes'. So, by process of elimination, I conclude that, like the rest of us, he is merely getting older.

Interesting fact alert: did you know that more than half of retirees in this country have retired parents?

That means more women aged 60+ and men aged 65+ have parents who are still alive. The mind boggles.

This trend will become increasingly prevalent. Some 16 per cent of the population are 65 or over, although this is set to rise to 22 per cent by 2031.

As I move from my youth and into my prime, I've begun harbouring ambitions to become the world's oldest person in 90 years' time (which would make me 113-and-a-half).

And I'm quietly confident. Statistics have shown that first born children (tick) of young mothers (26... young enough, tick) are 1.7 times more likely to become a centenarian than their siblings.

In your face Tom and Joe.

Access-for-all beach huts

2009-07-01T21:06:00.008+01:00

Beach huts are fantastic. So fantastic, in fact, that I built half of this one a whole year ago - and it's still standing.

Alas, mine is quite rudimentary.

Fast forward to Boscombe, Dorset, in the not-too-distant future.

Architects from around the world have designed new disabled access beach huts - with a panel of judges due to pick their favourite today.

I imagine they'll set you back a few quid. Recently, a beach hut in Poole was sold for a whopping £70,000.

If only mine was worth that much. It is, however, available for reservations - just check the mobile number on your left as you walk in.

Lots of space for little green men

2009-06-30T20:33:00.004+01:00

This is perhaps the world's most famous observatory. Telescopes having been gazing into space from this spot for hundreds of years - for those of you in the know, one of them stares directly at Pluto, which is visible even in broad daylight. No, not that Pluto. Yep, that's right, that one.

The world's second most famous astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, said earlier this week that he doesn't think the US should go back to moon - with current plans aiming to do just that by 2020.

Thanks to these whopping great telescopes, you can see a lot further. He says his homeland should concentrate its efforts on getting to Mars, a big rusty ball floating a few million miles away.

One can't help but detect a bit of Bing Gordyn syndrome - you know, that fictional astronaut and the "first man on the moon with a moustache" played by David Walliams in Little Britain USA.

In Aldrin's own words, NASA are recreating a "glorified rehash of what we did 40 years ago."

Oo-er. Jealousss.

Anyone found one of those 20ps yet?

Turn that frown upside down

2009-06-29T21:09:00.004+01:00

The government has finally caught on. Despite the swish graphics on BBC and ITN News, no-one understands quantitative easing. Ex nihilo, deposit multiplication - nope, it means nothing.

So instead, the clever people at the Royal Mint started making 20p coins that are actually worth £50. How did they do this? Well, tens of thousands of 20p coins have apparently entered circulation with no date on them. They've instantly become a collector's item.

This is undoubtedly good news for the economy. People are prepared to pay for money. Purchasing for one of these coins would set you back 250 times its actual value.

I live in hope that I will be given one with my change on my next visit to Amin's Hamlets Express. Then I shall go and spend that £50, and our economy will be saved.

Hurrah!

Scoop of the decade

2009-06-26T19:39:00.009+01:00

Thirty Mile Zone, aka TMZ, was the first website to report the death of Michael Jackson, beating the LA Times by a good few minutes.

Although my dad ran it pretty close - texting me at half ten to inform me of Jacko's death. How does he do it?

It's quite possibly the scoop of the decade - although most people didn't believe it was true until reading the LA Times article (which took about five minutes to load at around 23:00) or hearing about it from another respected source.

It was a quick dash to Liverpool Street after work today to witness the flashmob moonwalk in celebration of Michael Jackson's life.

Pretty good turnout, too.

Holidays

2009-06-24T15:10:00.005+01:00

It's my first posting from work. I should be writing stories but my mind is elsewhere - having just got back from holiday, 'tis all I can think about.

Bryher Campsite was my destination, and this beach, Rushy Bay, is a few minutes walk from it.

A mere three days ago the Daily Telegraph named Bryher Campsite the best place in the UK to pitch a tent by the sea.

"During the summer Bryher can, in the right weather, feel like an other-worldly paradise, with a stunning sandy beach at Green Bay and a quieter cove at Rushy Bay for swimming," it said.

How I wish I was there and not here - high-up in a glass bubble in east London.

To dream on, have a mooch: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/campingholidays/5577827/Britains-20-best-coastal-campsites.html

The longest day

2009-06-21T21:03:00.011+01:00

As I write, the sun is setting on the longest day of 2009. I should be outside watching it, but I've just come back from a long and unpleasant train journey between Penzance and London.

The attached photo is from two days ago at the south-western tip of England, the Isles of Scilly. This will be the last place to get dark this evening - but it's too late to get there now, sorry.

As many as 36,500 people rolled up to Stonehenge in the wee hours of this morning, although the sun sadly failed to break through the clouds.

To think the nights will be getting shorter from here on in.

Calm down, Ryanair

2009-06-13T12:22:00.008+01:00

More people are booking cheap flights this year because of the effects of the (insert relevant cliche here).

A number of surveys have revealed that holidays are the last thing people are prepared to give up during the downward monetary spiral (haven't heard that one before eh?).

Which is great news for airlines like Ryanair. I could write an essay about the agressive quotes from chief executive Michael O'Leary, but one just has to read the carrier's press release headlines to understand what an unpleasant company it is.

Misleading also - especially over its web check-in development, where Ryanair suggests it is doing you a favour by charging you a fiver to check in on your own computer. Pah.

And £1 to use the toilet? I don't think so.

Strike ends... for now

2009-06-11T20:47:00.005+01:00

"If we don't make progress and come to an agreement with Transport for London, then we will definitely strike again," said Bob Crow, leader of the RMT union, earlier today.

Which means more people could be cramming into buses such as this in as little as two weeks' time.

How much do Tube drivers earn? £40,000 per year (and that's for a 35-hour week), which is £10,000 more than nurses receive.

Oh, and there's 43 days' annual leave and free public transport around the capital for themselves and their partner.

Nice work if you can get it.

Life through a lens

2009-06-10T13:53:00.004+01:00

The health and safety police strike again - flash photography is now banned in the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, a popular pedestrian link between the Cutty Sark (or what's left of it) and Island Gardens.

Presumably this is to stop people being dazzled by a momentary flash and walking into the tunnel's wall.

This would be enough to ruin anyone's day.

Chopper to the rescue

2009-06-09T23:03:00.004+01:00

The "ludicrous and unnecessary disruption", as Boris Johnson has called it, has begun - no tubes in London until Thursday night.

Luckily, I have the next two weeks off work - meaning I'm not one of the three million commuters affected.

I've also invested in a Raleigh Chopper to help me get around during the 48 hours of panic and confusion.

First stop is South Bank at 6am tomorrow. Apparently the skies will have cleared, meaning there are some nice potential shots of angry-looking commuters to be had. If any turn up for work.

Hopefully they'll be more canoes and skateboards than normal.

Sum, sum, summer summer murder

2009-06-08T22:34:00.013+01:00

It is becoming normal to carry a knife if you're a young person. This is according to a report by the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, which highlighted the "arms race" that exists between rival gangs in Britain.

Nowhere is this more prevalent than London, where 22 people under the age of 20 were stabbed to death last year. The latest fatality was 17-year-old Jahmal Mason-Blair, a promising footballer, who was stabbed in the neck in Hackney last month.

Mason-Blair was the ninth teenager to die violently in the capital in 2009.

While examples like this seem to come around with alarming regularity, you only need to scratch the surface to begin to understand the scale of the problem.

There were 4,786 reported knife crimes in the UK in 2007-08, which amounts to nearly seven attacks every day (a knife crime is one that involes a knife being produced - it does not have to be used).

This is 42 per cent increase from the number of incidents reported in 1996-97.

Why the pretty canal scene above? This is Regent's Canal, one of east London's most tranquil locations.

Yet the city turns its back to the waterway. While this is attractive for cyclists and walkers, it can also encourage a breeding ground for unrest under the cover of darkness.

Earlier this month, eight teenagers were arrested following the stabbing of a 15-year-old male.

The schoolboy was found bleeding in Palmer's Road, which runs alongside the canal.

Two main points. Firstly, knife crime is confined to deeply urban areas - this is not a problem that will spread to surburbia, spa towns or the Welsh valleys.

Secondly - and this is in spite of the Metropolitan Police reporting a fall in knife crime - the issue will continue to raise its ugly head in our cities until possession of a blade carries a mandatory punishment.

Until then, there is very little deterrent.

High rises for orange dogs

2009-06-07T16:54:00.006+01:00

High rise tower blocks such as this were supposed to provide much-needed housing in overcrowded cities.

Until now, the option of living in a high rise extended only to humans.

According to the BBC, 40-feet towers could be built above Leeds' canals to provide a habitat to the city's foxes, birds and bats.

The towers, which would be constructed from recycled materials, hope to reverse the decline of urban wildlife.

Let's hope they can survive the weather - only today a block o'flats was damaged by a lightning strike in north London.

Mildly interesting fact: everyone knows that female foxes are vixens, but few realise that males are known as dog foxes.

Tamil protestors

2009-06-06T21:30:00.005+01:00

The Tamil protest at London's Parliament Square continues despite the Sri Lankan government announcing the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. As many as 5,000 people have gathered in an attempt to persuade the government to mediate the release of those detained in internment camps in the north of Sri Lanka. Similar protests have been held in Toronto, Paris, Berling, Washington DC and the United Nations headquarters in Geneva.

Red sky at night

2009-06-05T18:04:00.004+01:00

"When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and louring."

Just as well this was taken in the evening then.

Personified cigarette

2009-06-04T21:33:00.007+01:00

A discarded cigarette mimics the relaxation he (and it's definitely a he, look at the Elvis haircut) gave to his puffer.

Expensive tents and soft furnishings

2009-06-03T19:02:00.012+01:00

It feels as though Google and Tesco are taking over the world. Google can see everyone, Tesco is taking everyone's money. Unless you're Jamie Oliver or Alan Hansen. Or Lulu. To be honest, I don't really have an issue with Google - my relationship with them is take-take, and I quite like that.

Tesco, too, is hard to argue against. Britain's largest retailer has become just a short walk away. For everyone. Everything you need to keep you alive for one more night is there - under one soulless roof.

Where Google is taking over our computer screens, Tesco is taking over our streets. High streets, the road to the retail park, on the way to the work, on the way to uni...

But it's not just Tesco. Our streets are becoming clones. It is predicted that, by 2015, there will be just a small clutch of indepedent shopkeepers left. Most will have been swallowed up by the the Caffe Neros, Nexts, Eats, Pret A Mangers and Starbucks.

Nowhere is this epitomised more than the O2 Arena, formerly known as the Millennium Dome - an empty, characterless name, for an uninspiring, insipid venue.

The 'tent in Kent' is awash with the same chains and retailers you see on the high streets of Hull, Plymouth and Swansea - only with the novelty of being encaged in yellow scaffolding and canvas.

What they should have done is convert the empty dome into everyone's favourite soft furnishings store - Ikea. All you would need to do is paint the canvas (can you paint canvas?) blue.

Why Ikea? Well, it seems they have earned a reputation as a company that pays scant regard to design legacy. According to one website, they "defaced" a Marcel Breuer building in New Haven, Connecticut.

They should have been allowed to run riot at the dome - setting up their showrooms, robots capable of battering chairs and finger print-tainted skewy mirrors in an almighty bargain basement.

Yes, they're a massive company with disgusting gravy and debatable meatballs. But I'd take that over a bunch of chavs singing karaoke in American Bar & Grill, or dodging people on their way to see Boyz II Men or Daniel O'Donnell at indigO2 (see what they did there?), the arena's in-house club.

Here's to Stor Matt Kupol - Ikea's would-be daddy.

Dustbin hovering

2009-06-02T18:12:00.001+01:00

This would have been quite the metaphor pre-credit crunch, but thanks to the ongoing "economic downturn" (shudder), the colours in this painting look that little bit brighter. Some six million Brits have planned to holiday domestically this summer - with a further 14 million set to join them. Wonder if the apprentices/apprenti helped?

Tree witches

2009-06-01T19:58:00.000+01:00

Woohoo - back in blogland. And with a new address. Guess this is where it all begins... Check out my tree witches. I snapped them in Tower Hamlets Cemetery getting up to no good, tut-tut.