Disaster Appeal - Heathy needs your help

This Christmas no doubt you are enjoying precious time spent in the company of your loved ones, taking advantage of extensive food and wine, and laughing happily.
But for some there will be no celebration this Christmas – only the ongoing battle to survive. Heathy is just one such individual.
By modern standards, Heathy never had a chance in life. Before he was six months old, when his family were away on holiday, he fell out of a tree and got his paw caught on some barbed wire. A week later he was discovered, thin and not having any fun at all. Fortunately he was brought back from the brink, thanks to emergency medical care and a ridiculous bandage that made one leg twice as long as the other, and that stuck out like a handle when he tried to curl up. Tragically he lost 2 toes in the incident.
Over the years his senses have gradually dwindled – his teeth are weak, his hearing is thought to have completely gone, his whiskers have started coming out in all the wrong places. And this Christmas he has suffered a loss of eyesight, as his retina has slipped off his eye.
As a result he is a shadow of his former self. He can see no prospect of a return to his glorious days of catching mice, then allowing them to slip through the gaps in his teeth.
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But you can make a difference. The Disasters Appeal Committee has arranged a special fundraising activity this Christmas which aims to make a real change to Heathy’s prospects.
Just take a look at the options listed below. Whatever you can afford, it will be richly appreciated. Please.
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1p will buy heathy an oat, which can be used to make porridge, from which he will be able to lick the oat-flavoured milk, nourishing himself for a few more valuable seconds.
5p will buy him a cat biscuit, which he will be able to sniff and then reject, giving him a much-needed boost in self-esteem.
45p will buy heathy a sachet of cat meat in jelly, the aroma from which he will inhale, dreaming he still had the teeth to actually eat it.
90p will enable him to experience life untroubled by fleas, or the eggs of fleas, for 24 hours.
£2 will keep him in drugs for a day.
£5 will purchase the material so that a new cat bed can be constructed in his honour, such that he can ritually disregard it with the appropriate measure of disdain.
£10 will enable Heathy to have reconstructive ear surgery so that he looks like an actual cat.
£15 will provide him with the services of a carer, so that he can be freed when he gets a claw helplessly caught on a chair or some carpet.
£21 will buy Heathy prosthetic toes to replace the missing ones, so that his footprints in the snow don’t give the impression that he is permanently flicking some kind of ‘horns’ symbol.
£36 will enable Heathy to have much-needed eye surgery so that he will be able to see, and not walk into the wall so often.

If you can help, please direct your contributions to Paul Harland, who will be collecting on behalf of DAC.

Thank you.

View from Park Hyatt, Tokyo

Paul Harland

Steve Fung leaves - the end of STFU

Steve STFU Fung has now left us to go and work for IFS Spain. He’s a lucky boy.
We had a big send off event at Sarah, Van and Gem’s place, the designated setting for all such functions when one cannot afford to hire a village hall or similar. Or maybe it is actually a village hall and they are actors. There were about 20 hangers-on there, some of which I recognised from work.
The theme, coincidentally, was a Spanish one. As a result Steve was dressed as some kind of slippery Iberian waiter and made to wear a broad hat and moustache in the style of a typical modern-day Spaniard. He had bought the misinformation that he was being taken out flamenco dancing, but then, so had I. There was a cake, which was in the style of the Spanish flag – I think credit for that goes to Sarah Hale, or possibly Gemma Copping. I don’t really know, because I was just flying back from Paris and got in a bit late, and I was a bit jetlagged from my holiday, and everyone was talking a bit too fast for my comprehension. It was just a blur of words and food. For all I know, Van Wyk Louw might as well have cooked the Spanish cake. Oh now I remember there was also a lot of other food. This included things like tapas and paella, which are commonly found in Spain. I believe some of these were home made while others came directly from specialist dealers, Nandos or Wickes or somebody.
At one point a PINATA emerged. This is a species of which I retain a deep suspicion, for I am sure it didn’t exist prior to MAY 2009. I had never heard of them anyway. Then suddenly in May 2009 I was surrounded by Pinatas and their uncanny proliferation seemed to me as if everyone else had had Pinatas in the backs of their minds like a nightmare for years, but had collectively somehow forgotten to actually tell anyone, and then suddenly realised and invented them and portrayed me as some kind of hermit paedophile for not having encountered them previously.
Anyway, a piñata came out and Steve took to demolishing it with The Wrath Of Fung which is some form of intense kung fu/maypole dancing derivative involving a gaily-patterned wand. It took a number of strikes before the piñata was battered out of existence and an array of chocolate and sweet type objects poured out. These were eaten, not least by Hayley. The gaystick was then reinvented as a limbo dancing bar.
I am finding this blog a bit hard to write, as my memories are a little vague. I am only writing this because Hayley bade me do it. This event took place almost 9 days ago.
Steve made a little speech, something on the theme of gratitude and parental influence, and some people started dropping things. Mostly this was Hayley, who found some breakable chinaware, glassware and some such, and dropped it. This made a mess. A bit later we got out Beatles rock band and played it. This is a game on the Xbox involving guitar playing, drums and singing. But this got a bit emotional and then Steve had to go home.
Otherwise most of the entertainment revolved around people taking the comedy moustache and wearing it in humorous positions other than upon their lip. Numerous photos attest to the hilarity engendered by this opportunity.
I can’t remember much else, except the following day, I was performing some kind of silky hat-snatch in the kitchen but the presence of my Force-distorting jedi nature induced a half-empty bottle of wine to slide across a table and down onto the floor. Upon hitting the floor, the glass of the bottle surprisingly came apart into a number of pieces and the wine itself emerged. The fluid nature of the wine meant that it flowed over quite a wide area, and being red, was in fact both visible to the naked eye and potentially liable to cause a small degree of stainage to vulnerable floor-coverings such as carpet. Meanwhile the smaller pieces of glass were considered by some to represent a minor physical danger to humans, especially children. On the plus side removing the glass and wine from the floor proved a straightforward task and I suspect, the coating of alcohol helped to kill off harmful microbes dwelling in the floor-grout.
My appreciation to Sarah and Gemma for assisting with the clean-up operation there.

Piss up / Outdoor bath

Yesterday it was again raining cats and the species that shall not be named so i went on a totally inappropriate jaunt into the mountains around Kyoto. The villages up there are called Kibune and Kurama. Going to Kibune was not entirely worthwhile as there was nothing there, but I walked for 1 hour over a mountain and arrived in Kurama. Here I had an ice cream and then went to the onsen.
An onsen is a hot spring resort found all over japan, most commonly in hilly areas where the water is believed to be capable of healing pretty much anything. It was basically really nice and hot, a little pool to sit in and look at the autumn foliage on the opposite site of the valley, while listening to the water coming in from a little spout, and trying to ignore the vastly overweight, bearded, naked man from osaka splashing around hopelessly at the other end of the spa like a blind whale.
It was just me and him mostly and we talked about some stuff, although my bit was in english and his was in japanese, so the likelihood that we were actually discussing the same thing seems fairly remote.
I stayed there for about an hour, until the overwhelming heat began to give me a headache. Then I got out and tried to take a photo of the steaming bath without being seen doing do and hence being taken for just another western pervert. I got the train back down to Kyoto and visited the International Manga Museum, somewhat not what i had expected, then retreated to my lodgings and made the mistake of going out drinking with half a dozen guys from various former colonies, and spent the night in reggae bars listening to Snow's Informer (1992).
This morning required a pretty enormous breakfast, fortunately one where unlimited orange juice was on the table, and then i jumped back on the train to this place- it is called 'Takayama' and is located in the western part of the japan alps. I am staying in a Zen Buddhist temple, an experience known as 'Shukubo' in which i sleep like a monk and stuff. There's a temple where I may go and meditate for some minutes if i feel so inclined, and there is a curious underground dark tunnel, which apparently i can go into to try to locate the 'key of enlightenment'. There is also a kitchen with unlimited green tea.
There is a playstation but the abbot only has really poor games like dance dance revolution 1 & 2, i may sit him down later and tell him that although he may know Zen, he doesn't know crap when it comes to games.
Takayama is noted for the continued presence of traditional japanese houses, such as sake breweries and others. There is a morning market, which i shall hopefully go to tomorrow and also an open air museum of old houses.
The weather is really nice now but it is bitterly cold. There is a pretty deadly looking kerosene heater in my temple room, but thankfully also an electric blanket.

Temples overload

I have been in Kyoto the past 2 days. It seems like all of Japan is here too - yesterday was 15th November, hence apparently the 3/5/7 festival, in which children of ages 3 5 and 7 dress up unwillingly in kimonos and visit shrines and temples. This will hopefully make my photos a bit more interesting at least, nothing like a whining child to brighten an otherwise tediously positive photo.
I am a bit confused, when I arrived here and went into shops the japanese invariably call something liek "rashmashee" in a friendly voice. At first i didn't know what this was, assumed it was a greeting, and said it back. Then i got a vague memory that they answer the phone with mushymushy, and i started saying this, but then i got scared and thought that MushyMushy must be what people in the arctic say to start their dogs moving, so how could it be that? So I figured out that the shopkeepers are saying "Irashimassee" which means welcome, although i don't really know what the correct response is, so I say Konnichiwa. But now the man next to me who is trying to use skype is clearly saying MushyMushy. So it must be acceptable, Or he is an eskimo skyping his dogs.
Everyone spent today trying to take the perfect photo of autumn foliage. I travelled around on a hired bicycle, it was quite rubbish but at least this ensures it doesn't get nicked. At one point i rammed a guy on a motorbike, this was not a sensible fight to pick, but i lived to tell the tale.
Now he's just saying hi...hi...hi...hi..chang...hi...hi.., poor chap, but then that's skype for you.
This evening i had a kind of omelette with treacle. One feature of japanese food is that they like to put something soft in the centre of everything. I bought 2 slices of cheese on toast from somewhere, result i thought, until i found it had custard in the middle.
I have a plan to go and try to see the sumo wrestling tournament in fukuoka this weekend. Another good thing here is that you can swear and get away with it... just quickly thing of a place name that starts with your chosen swear word and construct a sentence to follow.

correction- regarding rain.

I'm a bit disappointed about that, the phrase I was attempting to use 2 posts back was "It was raining cats and Banned Animals", a reference obviously to the fact that i don't get on with hounds, but because i put it in strange characters on a dodgy japanese keyboard, it just came out as "cats and".
Rubbish.

unusual sleep

Ｉ　ｈａｖｅ　ｅｘｐｅｒｉｅｎｃｅｄ　ｓｏｍｅ　ｖｅｒｙ　ｕｎｕｓｕａｌ　ｓｌｅｅｐｉｎｇ　ａｒｒａｎｇｅｍｅｎｔｓ　ｉｎ　ｔｈｅ　ｐａｓｔ　４８　ｈｏｕｒｓ。　Ｈｅｎｃｅ　ｔｈｅ　ｔｉｔｌｅ　ｏｆ　ｔｈｉｓ　ｂｌｏｇ．Ａｆｔｅｒ　ｍｙ　ｄａｙ　ｌｏｏｋｉｎｇ　ａｔ　ｔｅｍｐｌｅｓ　ｉｎ　ｎａｒａ，　ｉ　ｒｅｔｕｒｎｅｄ　ｔｏ　ｍｙ　ｐｌａｃｅ　ｏｆ　ｒｅｓｔ　ｆｏｒ　ｔｈｅ　ｅｖｅｎｉｎｇ．　　This was a ryokan, or traditional japanese inn. It had paper windows and tatami mats in the rooms, which are in fact used as a unit of measurement. 1 tatami is about 1.5 sq meters apparently. For example a large spa pool may be rated at 100 tatamis. The lady there was very nice and made me take off my shoes and replace them with generic slippers, in brown. then i made my way upstairs and found a little tea set on a very low table, and i made a cup of green tea. the kettle took a long time to boil.Then i found a blue thing in the cupboard -this was a yukata, or simple japanese night robe, like a cheap kimono. i put this on and did internet. The ryokan did not have showers in the rooms, just a common bath on the ground floor, and by bath they meant bath. Nobody came into the bath with me when i was in there, which was a relief, for it was not all that large. in fact it was tapered, so i don:t know what we would have done if someone had come along - maybe sit next to each other, or else at opposite ends and try to minimise intimacy of leg brushing. Without doubt, all bars of soap would have been tightly clutched.I had a very good night`s sleep, but for a strange nightmare involving someone throwing eels on my face whike i lay there.I have so far damaged one paper window wtih careless swinging of my umbrella, but i:ve noticed that they quite often have to replace single panels in the paperwork. So i`m not the only muppet.The next day i went on 11 modes of transport in order to spend the day in Koya San, a mountain temple complex. This was another impressive place, so i took photos of it.eventually i got back down the mountain and made my way to osaka, to try out the "Capsule hotel". I actually thought it was quite nice. you put your shoes in a locker, then give them the key and you get another key to another locker-this is where you will put your things. then you get changed, and basically get into your box and sleep. they adamantly refer to it as your "room" when you check in, despite it being only 2 cubic meters or so, i went for a slightly larger one, for greater comfort. The only thing wrong was i didn:t sleep all that well because the holes don:t have doors, just curtains. so you can hear all the drunks coming in. you get a tv, with some decidedly mature entertainment on channel 1, a radio and an alarm.The complication was the attached sauna. This was a man-only hotel, a new experience, and that should already have been a concern. Again there was no private washing area, but in this case a massive set of rooms with pools and saunas and showering places, full of naked people and or people in hideous "sauna pants", provided when entering. This must be what it is like at the ymca methinks.When i went into the sauna i locked my bits into another locker. i got really confused at this point about all the lockers involved.Today i went to see himeji castle, another big points score on the harland sighting scale, and now i am in hiroshima, a place with an interesting history. There are some monuments to the bomb victims and a museum, which was quite powerful actually. in an emotional sense.I thought my bag had been stolen today, but i had put in in locker 789, and then put my money into 788 and locked that one up instead. what a tit!Low quality writing caused by tiredness - my apologies.

Osaka and useful signage

yesterday morning it was raining the proverbial cats and so i decided i would not let it piss on my day in kyoto and i would instead jump on the shinkansen to osaka.　
Osaka is a very large place, I calculate the 3rd largest city in Japan. First I went to the aquarium, because it has a roof. Osaka aquarium is very impressive and features whale sharks in the middle. Whale sharks are the biggest fish in the sea. I felt ever so slightly sorry for these as they looked a bit like 2 guinea pigs in a shoebox, with not a lot to do except follow each other round, not having many options other than to move into the space that the other one is trying to move out of. Fortunately they were only 5m long; if they had been fully big whale sharks they would have had to be folded in half to be shoved into the tank in the first place. Somewhat like a baguette being inserted into a carrier bag.
At the start was a model whale shark wearing a santa hat, beside which I had a photo taken. Then I went up a big escalator to the top, and made my way back down slowly past otters, dolphins, and assorted fish. Also octopi, jellyfish and other such things. At the end there was a petting area, oddly featuring a capybara.
There was also a shark and ray stroking area, which hayley would have loved. I didn’t think there were many creatures in there at first, but then I saw a large pile of sharks in the end, sleeping apparently. These were only toy sharks, about 18 inches long or so, in a variety of colours. I found that the rays and the first few sharks were smooth and quite squeezable, however my attempt to impress the blonde Australian who was following me around fell somewhat short as I chose that moment to stroke the black shark, which had rough skin, and I pretty much leapt off the floor in terror. A notice here caught my eye:
“sting rays have dangerous barbs in their tails, which can kill people. However the barbs in these rays have been shortened” – oh that’s great, so thanks very much for shortening them, I would hate to know that the dangerous bit had been removed entirely…
After that I went to Osaka Castle and took loads of pictures, and answered a questionnaire which was in Japanese. Then I checked out the pachinko parlours and managed to find a sign that explained how to play. I did not have a go however.
It was still raining quite a lot, but I had borrowed a very manly black umbrella, which I used as an imitation sword. Japanese people don’t do this with their umbrellas, it would seem.
The last thing I did was to visit Umeda Sky Building, a new tower that is structurally not dissimilar to a polo balanced on top of 2 thin sticks. At the top are some glassed in escalators that take you across empty space through the middle of the hole 40 storeys up, this was mostly terrifying. Then you go out on the top and for some reason all I could think about was earthquakes. Basically if there’s one now, don’t even bother...
The view was impressive, all the way across Osaka in the East out to Kobe in the west. Can’t really describe it but it’s pretty cool to be able to see an aeroplane come all the way in and land. I noticed that there was nothing to stop me throwing my umbrella into the ‘hole’ and it falling to kill some Japanese man down below. “Don’t go over handrail” said another helpful sign.
Today I have gone on to Nara, the first permanent capital of Japan, about 1300 years ago. There are some very old temples here, most impressively Todai Ji, which features the largest wooden building in the world, a hall called the Daibutsu-den, containing a large bronze and gold Buddha called the Daibutsu. Also there are 1700 deer. I visited a shrine in the woods as well, this being called Kasuga Taisha, but was prevented entry by some kind of tedious ceremony in which a man in a white habit was positioning things on his mat. I did notice however an interesting thing, in that what I took to be a sheet of music I could see was written in Kanji script, i.e not our sheet music. This is probably not surprising, but as Vincent Vega pointed out, it’s the little things.
After that I visited a traditional Japanese house and went in some shops.
Other interesting discoveries:
The existence of a ‘ladies only’ carriage in the train;
The Japanese form two orderly lines for train doors, not like our vermin-like scrum for access;
Today I saw a tshirt slogan telling me about ‘opinion polls’ – a first for me;
A lot of them wear white surgery masks to keep the bugs off. This is fine, but it is a bit unsettling when the shop assistants do it and eye you facelessly when you enter;
There is a shop that sells the plastic models that depict plates of food, which restaurants use to illustrate what meals look like, and so that westerners can easily point to order. This really caused me problems, because I was hungry and went to order something I fancied and he just picked up the plastic thing and shoved it in a bag. This was not what I had in mind…

Tokyo, Fish and Geisha

Hello from Japan.
I got here on Saturday, it's a long way from home and i keep waking up at 4.30 and wandering out into the Tokyo night to try to see some sights, before realising that it's still dark and nobody wants me to be out yet. My average start time on this trip so far has been unbelievable, but well worthwhile, for example i had to get up at 4.40am to go and see the tokyo tzukiji fish market, where all the morning tuna comes in and restaurant types bid for it. This was a bit of a mixed interest for me as i do care about the tuna, time magazine only last week described the bluefin tuna as one of the ocean's most majestic beasts, and they will soon be extinct, but then on the other hand it does taste very nice. I don't think my presence there has any effect for or against the japanese fishing it so never mind. It was fascinating and pretty dangerous, especially in a morning daze, hundreds of little carts zooming around with great big tuna on the back, (they are about 5 feet long mostly).I saw how they prepare the tuna by cutting it off the bone with a massive sword, then one of the spines was getting discarded possibly and some other man manged to muscle in and convince the owner to let him try some scraps of the raw fish, and then i got in there too. it was lovely, a bit bloody in places, but the man added some soy sauce, which just balances the flavour in a lovely way. Even the way to get it off the bone was cool -we used half a shell of a scallop or some such, which is just the right shape to scoop it out.
In other news i am staying in the same hotel as robert pattinson, he who is in Twilight, who was supposed to be leaving back to usa until he met me, and he said i just make him really happy and therefore we have both stayed here. We are basically sharing the top floor of the tokyo Park Hyatt. It's a bit like the 2003 fillm 'lost in translation' but with men instead of Scarlett Johannson. He's asked me to take him back to see 'High Wycombe', but i'm not sure I will do it. Not sure I can fit him in.
I have been to Yasukuni shrine, this is controversial because it honours the japanese war dead, and the tokyo museum, asakusa Senso-Ji temple, Akiba electronics place, Shinjuku area and some other stuff. Shibuya crossing is very cool, this is the place with diagonal pedestrian crossings and big TV screens on the buildings. Here there was a 'Standing Sushi bar' where you stand up while having sushi. I ordered things in Japanese. Then like a muppet of true harland proportions I decided that the green powdered substance must be powdered wasabi (it was actually green tea).
In this vicinity is also many love hotels, i was disappointed by this though. They are supposed to have exotic themes like arabian palace or undersea paradise but they are just hotel-room like. The entrance is through a sneaky door and the receptionist cannot see you, and on the wall are illuminated pictures of the rooms. Perhaps all the good ones were already 'taken'. The pricing is as follows: 8 hours "Sleep" ~ 7000Yen; 3 hours "Rest" ~ 3000Yen.
My trusted packet of chocolate caramel digestives are serving me well. However in the flight they suffered a bit, and all fused stickily together, so that what i now have is the cylindrical god of all twixes. It is 6 inches long and 2 inches in diameter. I calculate that its volume is 19 cubic inches.
Today was pretty cool. I got on the Shinkansen and travelled to Kyoto, which was the capital of Japan from 794 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868 (which was when the imperial family was reinstated at the expense of the shogun). This means it is the most interesting city in Japan. This took 2.5 hours. On the way I managed to see Mount Fuji, an unexpected bonus. I have taken a photo of it- it is very striking, while all other mountains in that bit are quite flat looking.
Then I found out that in the Gion Kaiken, the geishas were performing the last dance of the autumnal season today at 4pm. This remarkable coincidence caused me to buy a ticket immediately, and make my way there. Gion is the most famous Geisha district in Japan, and is found in the east of Kyoto. This strange afternoon involved a tea ceremony in which the geisha methodically spoons hot water into a cup, stirs it with some kind of hair clip, then another apprentice geisha 'Maiko' brings it to the crowd. Then I went into a theatre and they performed 6 dances, which was excellent I thought. There were maybe 7 geisha and 6 apprentices or so. Also 3 women playing the 'Shamisen' a traditional 3-stringed insturment, and 3 other women singing. The dancing is not exactly drum and bass where tempo is considered, and is elegant and appears to have the purpose of storytelling. I believe one was a story about some cats and some birds they wanted to kill.
Otherwise today I rambled around the streets of Gion quite a bit in the rain, but only saw 2 very young geisha sat on a bench. However there are many ladies in kimono and i tried to get photogrpahed with some of them. I have been to a couple of other temples - it ius a good time to be here as the autumn 'Koyo' season is in the kyoto area. This means the trees are in various different colours...
That will do for now. Thank you for reading. I will now contemplate how the intermittent rain shall affect my actions tomorrow.

Thoughts from the sky

Almost got arrested at the security checkpoint this evening – but it is not my style to get arrested the conventional way, such as by taking lots of forks in my hand luggage.
The French are a bit keen when it comes to security and the whole process takes quite a long time, during which you lose interest and begin to daydream. So when it eventually becomes my turn, and the fairly attractive security woman asks me to take my belt off, surely she should not be surprised when I absent-mindedly begin unzipping my trousers and make to whip them off? This was the most embarrassing moment of my week.
Now I am in the food hall at Charles de Gaulle airport. On balance, considering service, setting and culinary expertise, I suspect it is not in the Michelin guide.
This is an extremely sad place. Everyone here has a beer and a laptop, and is trying to work out how to get the wireless to work.
I wanted the Poulet Curry, but instead she offered me Poulet Masala, which I took, even though it looked a bit odd. This was my first mistake. I think she must have said Boulet, because it definitely isn’t chicken. The pieces are of some arbitrarily-shaped aquatic species I do not recognise, almost like some kind of generic seafood, possibly krill or plankton. In fact I think it may be salmon. They are of a remarkable pink/orange colour, and in that regard share something with a lady I saw on the train here.
Just before she served this dish she put it in the microwave for about a minute. I admire an establishment so comfortable with its station as to make no effort whatsoever to deny that your food has been microwaved warm. Even more admirably, they provide additional microwave ovens in the corners of the restaurant for customer use, presumably to reduce complaints of cold food.
When flying, I like to count morons.
These include the people who ask for directions to their seat when they get onto the plane. I cannot comprehend this, and I have the utmost respect for any cabin steward who can keep a straight face while basically saying the following, in fewer words…
‘I see you require assistance in identifying the location of your designated seat. Allow me to help by revealing to me your boarding card. You can see here that the boarding card is telling you that you are in seat 15B. This is apparent from these words: “Seat 15B”. So what you need to do at this point is find a seat that has the name 15B. Conveniently, the airline took the measure of labelling each seat with its name, to make this achievable, even for a foreign idiot like you. This seat right here is labelled 4C. So you need to keep walking until you reach row 15. Don’t worry; just walk in this direction, it’s almost impossible to get lost. We use a numbering system known as counting, in which first the number on the right goes up 1 by 1, and when it gets to 9, then it changes to a 0, and another number 1 appears on the left. This is nothing to be afraid of. Just keep going until you get to 15. When you reach row 15, you need to find a seat called 15B. To do this you need to be familiar with something called the alphabet, in which we put all the letters you can think of in a line. It goes A, B, C, D and so on. But luckily you can stop at B, because that is your seat. So all you need to remember is the letters of the alphabet up to B. God speed, simpleton.’
This life diminishing exchange is received by the passenger either with heartfelt thanks, expressed through a relieved nod and a ‘thank heavens you’re here to help’, or with yet further bafflement, expressed through a profound Gallic shrug as the person gazes at their boarding card, mystified by its complexity.
Distressingly, I think it is correct to say that the first people to fly were French.

Hounds all around me

This weekend has been full of dogs. This is a problem for me, as I can’t cope with them.
I am back in Derbyshire, my homeland, visiting my parents and Heathy, my beloved orange cat. When I finally left home a few years back I was effectively replaced by a stray dog which my dad named Bryn, and we’ve never really seen eye to eye. If and when people inquire as to his breed, I respond that he is a violent, yappy, sadistic, clumsy, boisterous, arrogant, detestable black&white son of a mofo. This seems to satisfy them. He feigns warmth on seeing me for the first time in a few weeks, galloping down to the gate and rubbing aggressively against my legs. But it is crucial to remember certain rules when in his presence. For example, when eating, the rules are: feet down, knees together. A Bryn inserted between ones’ thighs is an unthinkable fate.
I have over 4 scars on my hands from previous attacks.
This weekend I have spent significant time at Helen’s house and it’s even worse. They have added an extra dog to their previous collection, which numbered 2. 3 dogs is a critical number, because 3 dogs are enough to surround you. They approach, separated from each other by an angle of 120 degrees – much like velociraptors. They are also very different from each other and complement one another’s battle skills, a bit like Charlie’s angels would have us believe they are – or like the usual formation seen in a fantasy game (barbarian, bow-wielding elf, magician). One makes out that it is a big softie, about 38 years old, and looks like just a sack of flesh from which the bones have been extracted – such that it looks like you could throw it onto a couch and it would just remain in whatever position it arrived. It’s only attacks involve gentle extensions of its forearms. I see through this deception, and fully understand the peril and the pain it could cause me.
The second hound is a small, fast one, with short legs, and is described as a ‘ratter’. I seem to remember this was a character in Harry Potter and the something of nothings. It makes a deafening noise as it bolts towards me, trying to bite me above the knees, punch me in the thighs etc. It also has the ability to appear suddenly from beneath chairs. The most frightening thing is when it bares its teeth, which suddenly appear to be outside its head, reminiscent of the aliens in Pitch Black, or Alien itself. It bares its teeth and emits a gnashing sound, and its eyes move independently of one another, and its head vibrates with the desire to kill something.
The new hound is a big brown one with a black head, which I think can only be a wolf. This one concerns me the most as it is an unknown quantity and clearly has a mouth big enough to kill me. Its leash is just a length of rope, like a noose. This is the hard one.
More distressingly, Helen and Helen’s mum sometimes talk on behalf of the dogs, using what I must assume is the dog’s voice and mannerisms. I found it difficult at times to know at what point the person ended and the dog began. They had lengthy conversations on which bed they would be sleeping in and such. Really unsettling stuff – especially the first time they did it, as it was like I was in the dogs’ heads, a place I hoped never to go.
How to tell a dog’s age: chop off a leg and count the rings. (Or better, chop the hound through the middle and count those rings).
Let’s send all dogs to France.
I am going to start referring to ‘The Bearded One’. This is something Diego Maradona did this week – he means God, and I think this is genius.
Yesterday I went to Derby to shop for bits to make an outfit. Although I got the pieces I needed I am starting to think the outfit may turn out to be disappointingly unrecognizable. But we persevere as ever.

This evening I have been booking some delightful traditional Japanese accommodation in Tokyo and Kyoto in advance of my forthcoming official visit.

Advanced lesson in selling accommodation: Always talk a place up. (Ryokan = traditional Japanese resthouse) :

"Taito Ryokan is not a palace hotel, but an old ryokan, appreciate your consideration and imagination from the price, JPY3,000, before you inquire = which means that it is not suitable for someone who cannot overcome gaps = ups and downs all over the house, very steep stairs and basic/authentic toilets. No perfect room temperature even there is an air-condition, no insulated silence, no high tech gadgets. And also, it is advisable to bring your own gear such as shampoo, soap, towel and hair dryer. Thanks a lot, Arigatou gozaimasu for your being patient. Please note that sometime someone might misjudge ryokan as 5-star with meals provided in your own room with full attend and service with onsen attached. We are the most basic and most simple ryokan. We have been ryokan since 1950."

Might just give that one a miss…

Adventures in the new forest 06-09-09

Hayley and I have been in the new forest this weekend, camping in a little pop up tent. Things started in a unpromising manner last week, when I entrusted her with the responsibility to select and book the campsite. Soon after this she forwarded to me the confirmatory email, stating quite blatantly in bold that the campsite she had chosen had no facilities, but did welcome dogs (I hate dogs). When interrogated, she revealed that she had not actually bothered to look at the details of each campsite, but had just booked the one with the nicest name. She’s a simple girl. She did however manage to highlight in bold red text for me the detail about dogs being welcome. Very thoughtful.
Fortunately we managed to change the booking, to the disappointment of many of my colleagues and in the event it had lovely showers, thanks Dan Bunder for showing such concern last week. The only problem was that this campsite also welcomed dogs, and in fact boasted of ‘Dog Showers’, something I cannot picture (how would the dog operate the shower?). As we approached the wild woods where the campsite was meant to be there seemed to be nobody about, and I became concerned that the site was being occupied by hostile packs of wild hounds, enjoying the hospitality on offer.
We sped down there on Friday night, stopping only to buy some crap music (RnB hits or some such, with shiny people on a beach on the cover) and some fuel. In the petrol station was a guy who said he’d taken a wrong turn, and how could he get to Exeter? Turn right and carry on about 300 miles, muppet.
Arriving was a relief in itself, for Hayley drives a mini as if she’s taking part in the Italian Job. Her solution to any adversity is greater speed. Can’t see what’s ahead? Accelerate, so that it comes into view more quickly. Approaching a roundabout and suddenly realise you don’t have time to slow down? Just speed up a bit, and try to jump it. She almost killed me at Cressex last week, heading the wrong way around a major roundabout in the wet before shuddering to a halt in front a green light.
Handily she has a pop up tent, which meant we could build it in a few minutes. We did have to drive around in total darkness for a while trying to find a space at least 10 yards from anyone else, without any puddles or haunted woodland. Our drunkenness and ipod speakers were sure to upset those nearby.
Then we drank a bottle of wine each, as I tackled the job of plugging the gaping hole on one side of the tent, which I managed to do with 2 blue and white plastic bags, although it did look a bit like a trapped dolphin. We seemed to have major condensation inside the tent, which I suspect can be blamed on there being something wrong with Hayley’s breathing. On the second night she added to the internal moisture content by knocking over a can of stella, which poured beer under all the bedding. She tried her best to pick it up quickly but then burst out laughing and couldn’t reach it, so the rest poured out as well. Reach for it Hayley! Just pick it up as soon as you can! There’s a clever girl. Oh, too late.
On Saturday we were very excited to be able to visit Paultons Theme Park, no apostrophe, and apparently no theme either, unless the theme is ‘Pauls’, and I don’t think it is (I would know). We tried hard to find a good sign to photograph me in front of the ‘ton’ and make ‘Paul s Park’, but they weren’t really playing along.
This is the biggest theme park in the new forest, that’ll be ‘Only’ then, and boasts over 50 attractions – although most of them are just a shed with some totally irrelevant, worn sign on the front proclaiming something incredible to be inside, such as ‘Magic Carpet’ or ‘Digger Ride’, or a bloke wielding a stuffed animal in a mildly threatening manner.
We headed immediately to the ‘Cobra’ the most fearsome rollercoaster on site, rising to a height of some 10 yards possibly before plunging terrifyingly into a sequence of turns and loosely-bolted bits of track. To be fair it was quite scary, but not necessarily in the way intended, more the shambolic construction of the track.
We managed to resist going on the log flume, which went round in basically a square route, and the flying frog, which like all the roller coasters, disappeared into a shed for a short section. I think Paultons must have done a deal on about 300 sheds from Wickes.
There were also go-karts, on a course described creatively as ‘a classic oval’. Nearby was the swamp of ‘grunting dinosaurs’ I had been so looking forward to, but the grunting was not what I had hoped for. There was a fairly generic loud roaring noise on repeat, that I suppose was ascribed to all the dinosaurs simultaneously.
At this point we studied the map looking for anything to do that was not entirely lame. Our attention was drawn to ‘Wizard Percy and the Lost Dragon of Paultons’. Wizard Percy is just a man dressed as an Owl, albeit with a face that looks suspiciously like Nemo. Later in the shop there were hundreds of unsold Wizard Percys available. It got me thinking that in a development oversight the owners must have suddenly realised they had no mascot and no money left, and come up with the idea of buying up a huge quantity of cheap faulty yellow Nemo faces, and wondering what kind of body to stick them onto – and coming up with the idea of Percy the Wizard/Owl.
The Lost dragon of Paultons Park is not a man dressed as a dragon, as might be expected, but for some reason a man dressed as a knight, holding a blue toy dragon about the size of a cat, with a terrified look on its face. Check him out here:
http://www.paultonspark.co.uk/2009/ridesattractions/attractionsall.html
Further merriment followed at the Wind in the Willows attraction, a big shed with a bunch of slowly rotating woodland mammals inside. Some of them looked quite unsettling and whoever knocked that place together must have been really high. Nearby was the magic forest, which Hayley was very excited about, but it was just another shed. Before going in I was secretly hoping it would be an even more weird woodland experience dreamed up to use up the leftover moles and badgers from Wind in the Willows, but inside were a load of strange nursery rhyme scenes, like 3 men in a tub and a woman living in a shoe.
We had a go on ‘Jumping Bean’, a ride that goes up then down, etc. This actually made me feel quite sick. I was also a bit troubled by the simplistic naming used on many rides. Here are some examples: Rabbit Ride; Ladybird Ride; Percy’s Bouncer(?); Penguins. Genius. ‘Penguins’ surprisingly featured a number of penguins in a pool. They were being fed fish. Another of the rides was a pair of tractors, making agonising progress around a circular track. The name of this was Trekking tractors.
Underneath the ‘Jumping Bean’ was the tagline “It’s a Hoot! Hoot!” I don’t get this.
Here’s a better name: Meerkat Manor. It was a shed with a meerkat sat thoughtfully outside – there was no apparent door to enable the meerkat to enter his manor though.
Incidentally, visiting Paultons gave me the idea for a new theme park – Single Mum Land. It would feature rides like “The Double Buggy of Doom”.
At this point we cut our losses and turned our attention to obtaining a disposable barbecue and some food. We eventually got these at a Morrisons store, no apostrophe, along with other camping essentials like beer and a magazine. On the way back we stopped in our town of Lyndhurst to look for things like tongs, a blanket, possibly some cutlery. Brilliantly there was a camping shop, but it had nothing useful, only daft contraptions like “Ipod Chairs”. I bought 2 forks. This was the first time I have ever bought 2 forks.
There was also an array of nice cars and a Ferrari showroom, where Hayley got a little bit inappropriately aroused, as she did over a Porsche parked at Morrisons too. We did manage to buy a blanket in Budgens, in a fetching burgundy colour.
Then we made our way back to begin the barbecue.
Barbecues possibly were not invented with me and Hayley in mind. I have the common sense of an 8-year old and Hayley is not exactly the holder of a PhD. They told us to elevate the disposable barbecue off the ground, so I positioned it on top of the cardboard box it came in, on top of the rug. What’s remarkable is that everything didn’t go up in smoke sooner. We managed to cook the burgers without incident, except for Hayley not knowing where my 2 forks were, and hence trying to flip the burgers with a Pringles lid.
Then on went the raw chicken pieces, Hayley using the same forks, and licking them clean. A few minutes later I became aware of a thickening of the pillar of smoke and a slight glow around the base of the cardboard, which rapidly spread and engulfed the box in flame. My reaction was one of panic, as I assumed the whole blanket and tent were about to burn down. ‘This is becoming a situation’ I remarked to Hayley, who helpfully burst out laughing. I had already burnt myself twice on the barbecue so I had to use wet wipes to pick it up and cast it away onto the grass. Fortunately the rug was melted in a very neat hole, but evidently not very combustible and the fire went out pretty quick. This meant we had a nice red cape, and I put it on the next morning to try it out for size.
We just about managed to cook half the chicken. Hayley asked me if we should leave out the rest for the wild horses to pick at.
We went to sleep at about 8pm. Staggeringly uncomfortable, at one point I was awoken by Hayley coughing straight into my face from about 3 inches.
On Sunday we packed up, which took ages because those pop up tents are a bit tricky to fold. Eventually a young lady on reception sort of helped, and we drove to Beaulieu, “Bewley”, a country estate and museum of motoring. If Paultons was full of children, this place seemed at times like a rally for personal mobility vehicles. The motor museum was pretty interesting, featuring some old cars and some of the land speed record cars. It also had some of the vehicles used in the James Bond films. There was a little exhibition on Top Gear and some of the modified cars they have had on the show.
Running around Beaulieu is one of the most pointless monorails I have come across. It goes between 2 stations about 400 yards apart, and potentially saves you about 20 seconds compared to walking. It might be argued that it enables those of limited mobility to get around quickly – until you realise the station is at the top of 2 flights of steps. The train itself is rickety and appears to be rather unsafe – it shut down for half an hour today for “testing” – and the track looks like it’s made of cereal boxes and bobbins. But then, are not all monorails pointless, almost by definition?
Elsewhere was Beaulieu Palace house and gardens. This was worth seeing, although unbelievably Hayley walked in, went straight to the visitor book and wrote ‘This place smells funny’ – and put my name first. She also had a quick go on the piano which had ‘Please do not touch’ written on it.
There were some interesting items in there, such as a kitchen and pantry with a lot of bells on the wall, one for each room.
There’s also a ruined abbey, where Hayley took a picture of the chives.
Another feature I disapproved of was the ‘Dog Waiting Area’. This is ridiculous – it featured a wall, some bowls and some chains, rather like a medieval dungeon. I cannot imagine any dogs, hateful things, wandering around Beaulieu and thinking to themselves, ‘I need somewhere to wait an indefinite period of time but I can’t abide these ghastly human waiting areas… oh look, a Dog Waiting Area, I shall chain myself up at once and behave impeccably.’
And then we drove home, and I’m still alive.
I still wonder at the sanity of these people who have perfectly good homes, but choose to pack up hideous specialist camping clothes and drive into the woods to sleep in a small bag with some other people. For a couple of days it’s fun, but no more than that.
To be fair our tent was unusually small. Sat in it, in one of the photos I look like I've just arrived from space in some kind of interstellar egg.

On canine intellect and high fiving 20-08-09

I am in Glasgow Airport. Suffice to say, I won’t be coming here for my honeymoon.
The Lockerbie bomber is coming through here shortly on his way home to Libya, so there are several policemen around and a police dog, I hate dogs, which is of the wrong breed I think, and on the side of the dog it says “Please don’t distract me”. I find this hilarious on a number of levels.
For one thing, the use of the word “me” implies that they think someone, somewhere might be stupid enough to believe that the dog itself wrote this message. Ridiculous! I suppose this means that if it just stoically said “Please do not distract this horrid, vicious hound from its godforsaken calling” they think we would be less emotionally affected by it. I also like the idea of distracting dogs from their work in general, presumably with some kind of high-tempo piano tune or tap-dancing routine, which is something that wouldn’t even have occurred to me had there not been an explicit instruction on the side of the dog telling me not to distract it.
In the event they have only aroused in me a determination to somehow distract the dog from its unspecified task and thus slightly reduce the efficiency of the universe.
There’s also a small and useless football store leaning against a wall, featuring lots of Celtic gear but only in a yellow and black bee-like design.
My dad used to keep bees, large numbers of them, in the orchard. They made honey. Then they all left. The daft white masked spacesuit has hung unused on a hook ever since.
I went home last weekend. My sister Cathy and her husband were there, back from Sydney where they live, and also their child names ‘Noah’ who is very small indeed. I will write more on this topic later.
Specifically I am in Frankie and Benny’s and I noticed that my pizza was burnt underneath, quite a lot, to the point that I was forced to take the moral high ground, assure them (when asked) that my food was fine, scrape off the topping and eat it, then turn over the burnt base and display it to the world. I still didn’t get a free dessert, although they did give me a £5 voucher off my next visit, which was rather presumptuous of them. Now they are looking at me funnily, as though I should have left before now.
I have just left and sat somewhere else.
Things to do in a lift when everyone’s being uncomfortably quiet and you’re Paul Harland: half-suppress a giggle while looking at the ceiling, look anywhere but other people’s eyes, pull out one’s blackberry and perform flicking stunts, don’t drop blackberry because the lift might stop just when you’re bending down to pick it up, don’t mention the weather in post-ironic tones, don’t stare back at the small child staring at you, don’t ‘beep’ in anticipation of lift beeping, don’t bruno oneself in the narrow side-mirror, do completely ignore any attempt by others to initiate conversation, thus maximising their subsequent discomfort, do maximise female’s discomfort by starting out facing the door, but then halfway down turn around so that you are face to face with her, do not under any circumstances do jazz hands or elbow-down break dancing.
Last night I stayed on floor 9 of the Jurys Inn, no apostrophe there because they are muppets.
I dislike dogs. I also dislike high-fiving, though less than dogs.
High fiving is a ridiculous activity that leaves all involved feeling uncomfortable and slightly ashamed. It is designed to occur in the aftermath of some sporting achievement or other small victory, but to me it never feels a remotely sensible thing to do. If I have potted a ball in an inconsequential game of pool, making the short but painful journey around the table to high-five my partner seems a pointless and totally unrewarding detour, culminating in a gentle and somewhat gay hand-slap. As my hand rises to engage in a high-five I am a mixture of shame, self-consciousness and unwillingness. I suppose it does not fit with my macho image. I invariably need to be told to high-five, by someone enthusiastically saying ‘High-five!’, which appears to disprove any spontaneity that may be imagined to exist. This is coercion.
On the other hand, were I to score a winning goal in the world netball final, high-fiving would be totally below my aspirations by way of celebration. I would most likely be engaging in some vigorous hugging with my team mates, not camply high-fiving them so that our chests don’t quite meet.
The other thing about high-fiving is that it’s very easy to miss, creating a limp and regrettable tap, possibly involving nail-jabbing and pain, such that the entire objective, namely generation of a loud clapping sound, is lost.
I am now back in High Wycombe. I had to repeat the name of this place to everyone I met in Scotland. Next time I may just say London. On Saturday is an intriguing ‘Sri Lankan’ day on the Mead, a park near here, apparently consisting of cricket and curry, neatly distilling any simplistic stereotypes we might have of Sri Lankan culture. I am looking forward to this.
I have set up a small sideline business dealing in small pots of body lotion nicked from hotels. Contact me for prices.

Harry Potter and the Breasts of Pigeon 06-08-09

Today I am staying at the Benefield Wheatsheaf. This is a pub in Cambridgeshire or thereabouts, noted for good food and hot waitresses – a different one for each course. I like the one with dark hair who talks in very complete sentences. I am fascinated by the way it is impossible to get her to stumble on her words, or begin a sentence halfway through like normal people do (even if I accidentally flick carrot from my cutlery). For her it is a complete sentence or nothing. Sometimes she realises in mid-sentence that the current sentence is no longer entirely relevant and that she needs to switch to a different sentence. This does not trouble her – she calmly completes the obsolete sentence, pauses and then gets on with the more appropriate one. I admire this. I don’t know her name.
Cambridgeshire is a simple place, that doesn’t seem to have any hills or weather.
Tonight I dined on pigeon, which is so small you have to have 2, followed by venison, cooked medium apparently, and 1 beer and 1 glass of wine no.22.
I am now 27 years old. This is 3 cubed, or for a graphic representation of my age, you can picture the little boxes in a Rubik’s cube. It makes me feel a bit old.
I had a birthday recently, which lasted for about a week, and revealed what I have been missing by not having any birthdays for about 12 years. First we went to London for a school disco, which was in a school and didn’t have air conditioning. Everyone enjoyed this greatly but I for one can’t remember much after we got onto the minibus to London, and judging by the photos I just spent the night grinning at anyone I recognised and trying to unbutton my shirt. One girl made the mistake of trying to steal my hat, an orange golf visor, very appropriate to the theme. I have had issues in the past with hat theft so my policy is zero tolerance, and this takes the form of throwing myself angrily upon the thief and pummelling them until I manage to retrieve the hat, which is not a pretty sight when I am drunk and the thief is female.
There was a bit of innocently intentioned homoeroticism with Carlos, which no one is allowed to talk about because his family back in brazil might come and kill me for scarring him. So I’ll just mention that.
We had badges with my fictitious school St Pauls and little ‘Most likely to…’ badges made for us by Gem, not to mention a cake. Vijay dressed up as a headmaster and gave me a ukulele.
This week I saw Harry Potter and the Something of Somethings at the cinema with Linda, my flatmate. Not having read many of the books, I had no idea what was going on, except it featured a lot of odd-looking adults dressing up as children. There was no apparent story linking the scenes together. I do think though that Emma Watson is hot.
I should also make a note here that this week I drove past a dead seal by the side of the road in Wiltshire. I guess this is something to do with Stonehenge.
I would guess that JK Rowling looks back on her decision to call the headmaster Dumbledore with embarrassment, given that it is such a daft name. When she wrote the first book she presumably thought she could get away with silly names and it was only when the books became popular and intelligent people started reading them that she realised she had made a massive mistake giving such a central character such a daft name. It really grates when Harry or some other loser is saying some otherwise quite sharp sentence but then has to put ‘Dumbledore’ in it, as if he is talking down to a 5 year old child.
Last week we went to London as part of the grand plan to do more spontaneous stuff. This involved driving to Wandsworth where there was a little pub doing a music session performed by the ‘2nd hottest guy in the world’ apparently. He said I looked a bit like Jason Mraz. Is this a good thing? It can’t be easy when your entire life is a spelling mistake.
The other thing I did for my birthday was buy cakes for people in the office. This was well received and I didn’t know but when one does this one receives numerous best wishes emails, and lots of people come up and shake one’s hand. I tried to accommodate numerous interests by offering muffins, flapjack, animal shaped biscuits and other stuff. Not many people are into animal shaped biscuits, I discovered. I also bought in some weight watchers cakes. I bet not many IFS people do that.

Perils of misheard lyrics 13-07-09

Today I welcome Hayley Clark to the creative side of Live Blog. Welcome to Hayley Clark; may your blogging be as colourful as the rest of your interesting life.
I went to the gym this evening and I enjoyed the first bit in which I ran 3km. But then I didn’t like the last bit, in which there were lots of loutish types gathered around the multi-gym, sweating and grunting. I would assume they no longer know their mothers. I aspire to one day attend a gym that has more demure female people and less of these. On the plus side I found that there is a sauna round the back which is ‘mixed’. Saunas are permitted. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITWj5UWkzwY
A new discovery has been made in the paul misheard lyrics category. It turns out that Gwen Stefani is saying that she ain’t no ‘Hollaback Girl’, which has no apparent meaning, unless she is saying that you can say something to her and she will not respond in a grating hiphopish way. I much prefer the me version, in which she is saying ‘there ain’t no heart in that girl’, meaning cleverly that the other girl in question is a heartless cow. This joins the classic misheard Justin Timberlake lyric in which he creepily asks ‘tell me your rhythm’, some kind of crude demand for details of one’s preference of humping rate. Actually he was just saying ‘Cry me a river’, which is lame.
The Haynes project is finished and Penny sent out the glorymail last week. It amuses me that as well as manuals for Austins and Fords, they also do a dinosaur manual. I hope to read it next time I am there, and find out how to take apart my dinosaur and put it back together.
I rate my parking this evening at 95%, given its near-perfect alignment to the kerb and the fact that I was performing an upper body dance to Snow Patrol at the time.
I really hate dogs. I may have mentioned it before, but they really upset me with their wobbly jaws, sharp teeth and pointless enthusiasm.
My hair is unnecessarily long.
I noticed something today about the IFS fire marshal team. It is probably the foxiest fire marshal team I have come across. It contains Clare, Cassie, Becky, Gem, EJ and Jeremy Brett, and I think this could present a problem, as it almost encourages arson. I would quite like to have been asked to be in the fire marshal team but I suppose it could be said I lack the necessary attributes, common sense and such.
Jeremys are the most successful people. This I read in a magazine.
Jennifer Love Hewitt has not physically changed in 12 years – I find this unusual. She sounds like a tennis player.
This week will be interesting, as it features the IFS presentation room quiz on Thursday, and Cassie has warned Paul Massey about me although I don’t know what about, and Sarah’s barbecue on Friday and Chantazia’s birthday party on Saturday back in the homeland (Derbyshire). Chantazia is not her real name, but is much better. Tomorrow is Yo Sushi though in Bluewater shopping mall, which looks spiky like this:
http://www.virginmedia.com/images/bluewater-shop-centre.jpg
and obscurely reminds me of this place in Turkey:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheCvs8QlXKGNos9uHnIZaXq1zCk0f7XoldL89ZMC_5HMnNhJ7wXlDLosVGztkQlCgPj1KJ3lMtdNLII3A-tuCo5Mef-Mj-7ybR1d4xFE8c8IrXXuFd30GKBKwhyvOD864W4Tgb0F0g7Ooq/s320/2370804360029147320wvbuzy_fs.jpg
which I didn’t have time to go to.

Seniority measured in tea spheres 01-07-09

Linda and I have been learning the dance moves to Thriller for 3 nights now and I think we are pretty much nailing it. As it is a world record attempt it has to be over 5 minutes apparently and feature the original dance moves. This means it is quite tiring and we still need to learn how to link all the bits together. But Hayley Clark has agreed to also join in, so that will make a total of 3 people. Simon Green laughed heartily when we started practicing and I bet he is regretting it now, but I’m not going to let him in our group when he comes begging.
Nor is Dan Bunder likely to tag along after his disparaging words towards Jackson last week. The Thrill the World event will be in London in 2 or 3 months and everyone is invited. If we get 29 people we can have a local event, but I’m not sure that’s a goer – as I would then presumably need to lead the dancing myself. Learn the dance moves here if you are up for it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVvnBiBYcvY&feature=related
I should be quick to point out that we are definitely not only doing this because He is dead.
I tried performing the moves after the IFS outing on Saturday night – this was without music, across some discarded suitcases and other rubbish, and with alcohol in me, in other words in a challenging environment – and it was fair to say the performance worked for all observers. My expression was described as ‘serious’, which I like.
The IFS outing was amazing, though would have been better if more of the people I know had been there. As it was I talked philosophy and ate chips with the casually dressed Peter Donnelly and learned something profound, though I may have since forgotten it. Peter Donnelly now knows how to use my phone to update his facebook status, although it takes him quite a while.
I won £12.50 on race 3 then promptly stopped betting and sat drinking with Becca Charik, whose nickname should be but isn’t Charbecca, Iram and Irram, who are spelt differently.
Irrepressible minx Clare asked me for a dance on the boat rather than vice versa. Luckily for her I said yes.
I think I am now approximately 5th in command at IFS. This is evidenced by the fact that when everything went wrong on Saturday and everyone was grumbling on the jetty, it seemed to be my job to find Cassie and get her to the scene, inebriated though she was. Currently Paul Massey, Cassie, Jeremy Brett and possibly Simon Ball are senior to me (I calculate). I made a cup of tea for Jeremy today, which was a major step forward for my tea sphere. He received it well but I was probably undermined by the unexplained replacement of milk by bottles of curdled butter, a substance which sits on top of the tea in an oily and suspicious way.
The girl downstairs on the boat who served me the burger which was then partially stolen from me by Cassie was called Harriet, and she goes to Manchester University and has just completed her first year. She told me she didn’t really want to go up on the deck and dance to YMCA with us though. This was understandable, in the cold light of day.
Angela Lovett is a dancer of the highest class. I suspect she is ballet trained or some such. It takes grace to recover from falling over on a boat in front of ones colleagues with such calm.

Avoiding nuisance in Newcastle 02-06-09

I have chosen to spend Tuesday 2nd June 2009 in Newcastle upon Tyne, which rhymes a bit. This formerly great city clings to such northern objects as conspicuous flour mills in the town centre, phone booths pasted with adverts for films that no longer exist and sad little allotments. I am concealed within Holiday Inn Express in an almost deserted lobby watching a tedious NDubz video with some beer-drinkers in tatty and ill-fitting Great North Run tshirts and a smart, nervous looking man who is slowly coming to the realisation that he is hideously overdressed and likely to be followed home by someone or something.
Newcastle features a football team and although it is 9 days since they were relegated I can still see a morbid gathering of filthy, abandoned souls mourning the event, either curled up in a mess of ale cans and half-eaten chips outside the stadium or draped like broken corpses across steps and other concrete objects in the immediate vicinity. The council should do something about that.
They do good sushi here. I had 24 pieces 6xSalmon, 6xPrawn, 6xCrabstick and 6xTuna +1Asahi. The chef was of average ability in the art of juggling eggs and catching them in his hat, but I felt I could have taught him some superior jedi egg-handling moves if he had bothered to ask.
I went to bed at 23.25 last night and got up at 4.39am, exactly 6 minutes ahead of schedule and my alarm, which adds further weight to the theory that I have a miniature alarm clock in my head that measures time not in seconds but in fear.
I took a Cooper’s car to the airport. This new limo-driven lifestyle very much suits my style and ego, although I have noticed that I am required to make polite conversation with the drivers. I have deduced that the way I should make conversation with my limo driver is slightly more upmarket than the way I should make conversation with someone back home who is cutting my hair. Nevertheless the exchange is equally likely to meander towards a mutually apathetic conclusion.
My customer here is Wellstream, a relatively interesting company that is noted for making pipes which carry oil around under the sea, or what they might call ‘a wide variety of offshore fluid transportation applications’. This justifies my standing in corridors looking at explanatory posters which show boats operating amidst shoals of truly enormous fish. Amusingly they are located right next to Byker Grove- though as I recall, in a curious oversight the makers of that program never had the courage to explore this potential gripping, locally-flavoured, global-energy themed plotline.
In a slightly embarrassing slip I just performed some seated, upper body-only dance moves to the Black Eyed Peas’ Boom Boom Pow and then realised that the smart, nervous man was watching me.
Last night some shocking new images related to the Piñata scandal came to light. In one I appear to be riding the abused animal bareback, chained to its fractured horn by a pair of fluffy pink handcuffs while gamely inserting some kind of decorative pole between its hind legs. I remain confident of coming up with a plausible explanation.
In a totally-unrelated thread Gemma received a pink birthday Piñata last night which was somewhat tougher to break open than we had expected. I only had minimal time to buy it, wrap it up, write words in the card and all that preparatory stuff so I didn’t really manage to have cellotape or a ribbon to hand. This provided me with an opportunity to experiment and I found that the flex of the battery charger that comes with a Sony DSC-P235 Digital Camera is an almost perfect reusable solution to the task of tying the gift wrap around a present. Meanwhile this was a functional piñata, containing not only sweets and pink handcuffs but also a tube of Colgate. I had failed to allow for the beating the piñata would receive though, and in the event some of the toothpaste had dribbled upon the minstrels, giving them an After Eight-like taste.
We went to a Thai restaurant too and had it to ourselves, a situation I find very relaxing compared to the horror of a restaurant full of rival diners all glaring competitively at me. I managed to completely fox the waiter though, in one of those situations where they misunderstand something you say and you can never quite bring yourself to put them right, and end up telling outwardly-spiralling lies to paradoxically maintain the integrity of your message. So he thinks I live in Twickenham, just a couple of miles from Beaconsfield, in some kind of commune with many other IFS consultants and their families, and that Gem is a live-in slave, related to some or most of us, and that I pay £800 a month rent, equivalent to £100 a week.

Thoughts on pain and Barbecues 31-05-09

I have major/life-threatening damage to my tongue and foot. Hayley kicked me in the face twice for as yet unknown reasons and I am still trying to think of ways to blame her for the foot injury which was mostly caused by me kicking a bag full of bottles.
Carlos very kindly went to Brazil so that we could sample the local beef, and then dragged it through an enormous amount of salt and put it on the barbecue, where it was cooked by Matt. We were then careful to slice it up using the same knife and fork we had previously used to slice up the raw chicken and enjoyed it very much.
Carlos reminds me of an interesting fact about Brazil nuts that I learned in Australia. Brazil nuts fall to the floor encased in a remarkably tough outer shell which only one animal can chew through, that being the Agouti, a pointy rabbit with an excellent memory. This way the nuts are protected from being eaten by other animals. However the shell is so tough that even the shoot of the nut itself cannot get through. This means that the only brazil nut trees that ever grow occur when an Agouti finds a nut, nibbles the end off, then buries it and dies, thus forgetting where it buried it – and allowing the shoot to grow out through the hole.
The temperature of the surface of the sun is 6000 degrees but in the centre it is exactly 15 million degrees.
Paul has been in the garden doing Yoga for 8 minutes.
If you have 16 sausages and 7 equally-hungry people they should get 2.28 sausages each.
Right now a red kite is circling overhead.
Gemma had a birthday party yesterday which was mostly a barbecue and an exchanging of strange gifts. The central gift was a paddling pool full of 4500 buttons, which was well received although it is worth pointing out that she has an almost irrational love of buttons. The pool makes an excellent goal for my lightweight football which almost everyone kicked over the fence at some point, but I got told off for kicking it into the buttons and sullying them.
Sarah is now starting the barbecue again. This is a bit like being in Australia – where you start the barbecue every time you get hungry and they love it so much the council puts out public barbecues with gas and trowels to scrape them clean with. The garden is now full of the swirling ash of Brazilian beef and Stephen Fung.

Boy loves fish 25-05-09

I like Japanese art so on Saturday we went to see the Kuniyoshi exhibition in the Academy of Art near Piccadilly. My friend Gem needs culture according to her dad so by assisting her in the obtaining of this I appear wise and eligible. I was keen to experiment with driving into London and finding a tube station to catch a train, in my mind a cunning and efficient travel solution.
We got somewhere near St John’s Wood, incidentally the only tube station name in London that does not contain any of the letters in the word ‘mackerel’, and found a very expensive underground car park full of Aston martins and porsches, that also seemed to feature many fake doors and false exits designed to trap the unwary, possessing the air of a convenient place to dump stolen vehicles or unwanted corpses.
We discovered immediately that the trains were not running from this station and instead caught buses, but this presented me with further dangers as I discovered I don’t know how to use an oyster card. The bus driver took advantage of me until I flapped my card repeatedly at the scanner and then got stuck in the door. This was in Baker Street and reminded me that no matter how comfortable one feels with technology one is seldom far from humiliation.
The exhibition was notable for the “warrior art” such as a boy wrestling a large fish or giant toad and also some strange pictures of apparently ordinary scenes with something untoward in the background, such as a lady snoozing and drooling in a room while behind her a giant octopus attacks and consumes a ship.
We had bonus time and managed to go to the Science museum, a place I have always feared because of all the children touching the little puzzly experiments before me, leaving me with an urgent need to wash my hands. On this occasion we avoided the horrid, inquisitive little things and learned about plastic and other materials instead. We also went to a coffee shop but I don’t like these places as they are too formal and require me to know what to do, and I don’t know where I am meant to stand, sit, say etc, or when to go and pay the bill or make polite conversation. They had some good pots of sauce on the table.
Yesterday I went to Yoga class in the morning. The lady who teaches it is very bendy and has poked me on both occasions when I have been, sneakily when nobody else could see. Most of the postures are ok but I am not yet comfortable taking one breath every 2 minutes or sitting there flapping my legs and making hummingbird sounds. Also I have issues collecting cosmic energy from my spiritual entity of choice as shining globes in my hands and absorbing them into my solar plexus as I don’t know where my solar plexus is and I’m not allowed to open my eyes and see what the others are doing. So I’m probably putting my globes of energy in the wrong place, which presumably may have dire consequences.

experiments with food 24-05-09

Unlikely phenomenon yesterday - Paul "WhiteWineandOrange" Harland attempted cookery and it went to plan. This followed the debacle last saturday in which I tried to cook an "ethnic" dinner for Gem and ended up in the wrong continent. Spaghetti bolognese should be straightforward even for a mummy's boy but it quickly emerged that I had failed to ensure spaghetti was available. That would have been fine, for one can use Penne, referred to sometimes incorrectly as pasta quills, but I then discovered that the jar of sauce I had just opened was also not bolognese but Lloyd Grossman's jalfrezi. To complete the fusion we went with wensleydale cheese in place of the regular parmesan. Remarkably Gem is still speaking to me. This is doubtless due to the thai-style star shaped carved carrots. We decided that although the dish would certainly never occur again in this or any other universe, it should take the name of Beef Jalfrensleydale...
And this gave me the idea for a cockup-cookbook full of apparently familiar recipes, but during each recipe it has amusing but non-catastrophic mistakes. This would almost certainly be successful but I haven't written it yet.
The next day concluded at Sarah's house with Sarah feeding me and her flatmates and her family, me sitting between her mum and dad, calling her mum 'baby' and playing a very brief and quite one-sided game of footsie with her under the table. Sarah's mum and I also share a total unawareness of Pinatas, which I find strange, if they really do exist - apparently the Spanish make them out of papier mache and hang them from washing lines. How could that be true? And if it is why has nobody ever told me about them? I had to lie down to make sense of it, and tried to control Sarah's family through the Xbox joypad. Further revelation on Smurfs, which are much older than I had previously thought, as apparently the footage dates from the late seventies, whereas when I was watching them circa 1998 I assumed I was watching it live. This is discussed in Donnie Darko according to VanWyk, which is a film I haven't seen. Gemma Copping then ironed 5 of my shirts, and in my consequent gratitude I made a small but telling donation to the IFS ladies race for life thing which is to do with running.
The kitchen despair continued when I tried to do Japanese rice a few days later using a steamer and a sheet of kitchen roll but this only ended with me burning Linda's pan. It is mostly ok but I may have to buy a new one to appease her anyway. I owe her one birthday present at any rate. Then I went to Yo Sushi on Thursday in Bluewater, on IFS expenses which is the best way to do it, and managed to only eat only pink plates, which is an achievement which I find pleasing. During a 147 break in snooker there is a moment when the commentator slightly nervously remarks, "that's 6 reds, 6 blacks, and I bet his mind's turning to the £147,000 available for a maximum..." and it's much the same when you've had 3 pink dishes in Yo sushi and start to wonder whether you can complete the meal without having an orange, or purple or a blue. Without the money I suppose.
Ambitiously I tried to cook again yesterday (incidentally it went extremely well this time) but in the car park I balanced a bit too much in my bag for life (as it's important to me when in a supermarket to be able to fit everything exactly into one bag) and sadly the chicken breasts fell out the front and under the tyres of the trolley. This greatly reduced my speed of motion, until the error was pointed out by my co-shopper and the slightly gritty chicken breasts were retrieved from the ground. My suspicion is that this was the first ever experiment into the effectiveness of chicken breasts as brake pads.