What a REALLY Good Idea...

Dear Readers! Have any of you heard about the Sarc Mark? Oh, have you not? It's really great.

Basically, some chap has decided that people are fucking stupid enough to not realise something may be written sarcastically and they need a further item of punctuation in their lives to avoid this. But of course, he's copywrited his 'SarcMark' and you need to pay him to download the software for this really, really good invention.

My favourite bit of his website is the FAQ's - featuring these classics I reproduce here for your delectation:

Q: Why use the SarcMark? I don't like sarcasm.
A: The Merriam Webster dictionary defines sarcasm as a mode of satirical wit and states that a similar word for sarcasm is the word "wit". Wit is defined as "The natural ability to perceive and understand; intelligence". Therefore, when you use it, you are intelligent.

What he's basically saying here is "You are a bit of a dick if you don't like Sarcasm. Try and be a bit more sarcastic unless you want people to think you are a bit thick." Shit, I better start using it then. I really had.

The FAQ section soon descends into a tirade against alternatives to the SarcMark.

Q: Can't I use a smiley face?
A: Do you really like those things as they dance, talk and jiggle across your screen? They look like a cross between a gremlin, zombie, and some smiling pervert

What I think he is saying here is "Are you a fucking paedophile? You are if you use those smiley faces instead of my SarcMark you fucked-up freak!" Next up:

Q: Can't I use a tilde?
A: That's the character that looks like ~. It means "approximately" in math, "not" in logic, the "user's home directory" in programming and when placed over a character, it denotes a palatal nasal sound. Oh yeah, let's now use it for sarcasm

Now this is the FAQ I really don't understand. He is saying that the tilde is already used for many things - and as such I'd have thought he'd go on to suggest surely that we have exhausted the tilde's possible uses and that it would be silly to also use this for sarcasm. But then in his last sentence, he seems to contradict his point by saying "let's now use it for sarcasm". I don't understand where he's coming from. I mean he can't be being sarcastic, can he? There is no SarcMark there at the end after all...

Either way, this is clearly a really good idea. I can't wait to pay my $1.99 to get the SarcMark Software. Oh yeah, I'm really quite erotically excited about it.

Did you notice the sarcasm? Hopefully you did, unless you are backward. Notice I didn't need to use the SarcMark? How Ironic!

Speaking of which - how about a symbol for when you use Irony in a written statement? I'll call it the "Ironica"®.

I've done a rough mock-up of what the Ironica® will look like - here it is on the right.

But here's the funny thing... I don't even care about punctuation! How Ironic.

Bugger off Winter

Winter makes me miserable.

I'm not exactly a sun-seeker - if anything I'm inclined to be more uncomfortable if I'm unable to escape from the heat in mid-summer. Yet this long, cold winter has gone on too long for my liking.

I think I may actually suffer mildly from that SAD syndrome - but then I think everyone feels slightly more miserable in the winter of course.

I went along to a local football game last night, to stand in a cold, windy field for Two hours. It also meant a 3½-mile walk each way along pavement-less roads in drizzly rain to get there. Lord knows why I did it to be honest but sometimes I fancy the idea.

I don't think I'll fancy the idea again having nearly contracted frostbite & influenza in the process.

I wouldn't mind so much if it were a REAL winter. Like what they get in America when it's -20°C and snowdrifts are deep enough to bury a man in (and are frequently used for this purpose). Then you can wrap up in serious heavy-duty gear, get your 4x4 out and follow the snow-plow into work. I certainly wouldn't have been convinced walking 7 miles last night in that sort of weather was a good idea.

Here in Britain though, we have a small percentage of a normal continental snowfall and everything is fucked, plus personally we don't ever seem to have the right clothes ready for anything approaching freezing temperatures. You know it'll get cold, but it's never THAT cold - so we are always unprepared for it.

Britain just seems to do all the seasons a little half-heartedly. Winter for me is a constant worry about whether I need to be carrying scarf, gloves & hat around with me, then either freezing when I do not take them or sweating like a beast when I do.

Then there are added hassles like using the tube in winter. Ye gods, if that's not a misery in rush hour if you are wearing seven layers and your winter woollies. By the time I get to my destination, there is enough sweat streaming down my back to drown a Shetland pony.

At least it's not raining too much. No, that's Springtime's little treat. Then it's a whole new thing to be annoyed about.

I don't have anything funny to say today. I just want it to warm up.

Dead Good Place To Visit...

On Sunday I took two of my blog readers on a trip to Highgate Cemetery to thank them for their readership.

Now, for those who know nothing of Highgate Cemetery, you should take a look here. It really is a fascinating and enchanting place.

We arrived late in the afternoon and managed to convince the old lady locking the gates that they should lay on one last tour just for the three of us of the West Cemetery (this part of the cemetery is actually only open to those willing to part with £7 each for a guided tour). I had myself been on this tour just a few years ago but was very happy to do it again whilst taking a couple of friends along - it remains one of the best tourist things to do in London for my money.

So our guide began our wonderful personal tour. He was an enthusiastic fellow in his early 40s who works merely as a volunteer for the Friends of Highgate that now run the cemetery- and he clearly relished the opportunity to show us more than taking a large group of infirm and incontinent oldies would normally allow him to do.

It's not really a cemetery you visit just to see famous people's grave markers though - there are actually few very famous people*- most laid to rest here were just the wealthy of the Victorian age rather than the uniquely famous - although obviously there were many who were certainly 'famous in their own time' even if history has not been so kind as to remember them.

There are some great stories attached to some of the graves in this respect - such as that of bare-knuckle fighter Thomas Sayers, about whom our enthusiastic guide waxed lyrical over for quite an extended period, treating us to a near blow-by-blow account of his 42 round fight with the American champion John Heenan which took place (illegally) in a field near Farnborough in 1860. Plucky old Sayers fought much of the match with a broken arm and was still probably favourite to win were the bout not broken up by police.

Then there is the grave of the eccentric Managerist George Wombwell, who took a punt on purchasing a couple of boa constrictors that turned up at London Docks and soon made his money back showing them off in all the pubs and alehouses of London. George then built up an amazing menagerie of wild and wonderful animals that he toured around the country with - animals like elephants, lions, kangaroos, rhinos, giraffes - the like of which most people in early-19th Century Britain could surely have only ever dreamed of seeing. Upon Wombwell's grave is a marvellous marble carving of his docile lion - Nero.

We also saw a grave of a poor girl who "Died of the effects of fire after her dress accidentally caught alight ten days previously". Fantastic Mrs Ox-to-be wondered aloud why no one had helped the poor girl put the fire out as she wondered around with her frock ablaze for 10 days.

We were also taken 'off the beaten track' - something our guide was not meant to do for health and safety reasons he told us (It's PC gone mad - Back off Brussels!!!), where we were shown an unmarked pauper's grave.

This was no ordinary pauper though (had it been I may have been annoyed that the guide had risked our health and safety to show us); he was actually a survivor of the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879. He'd been taken from Isandlwana to the hospital at Rorke's drift, having had his legs crushed in an accident the day before the Zulu massacred the British forces at Isandlwana. The fellow might have thought he'd got lucky until 5,000 Zulu's showed up at Rorke's Drift and attacked the 139 British soldiers stationed there too. He did survive however only to return home and end up in a pauper's grave after all that. Poor bugger.

Highgate is also still a working graveyard today - if you have the money to take your place alongside the great and the good of yesteryear.

The grave of Alexander Litvinenko is also in the Western Cemetery - an eerie photograph of the poisoned ex-Spy atop his path-side grave, adorned with glowing, growling & mutated flowers.

We also found out that George Michael's mother is buried here - although our guide also told us he wasn't meant to tell us that. Presumably to stop Andrew Ridgeley desecrating it.

All in all then, a cracking afternoon out and well worth a visit. Next time you are in North London with time on your hands - I heartily recommend a stroll around Highgate Cemetery.

Just avoid the public toilets near the entrance - in case George is visiting his Mum.









*With the notable exception of Karl Marx of course - but his grave is in the less-atmospheric East Cemetery, which does not require a guided tour to visit.

Patchy Service

Some of these blog entries are weaker than others, I accept that.

But try not to get disheartened. There are some good ones in the old bonce just waiting to come out, so keep coming back. I'll try not to put two crap ones on consecutive days though, so if you see a crap one, prepare for a cracker the following day.

Try and remember that I am trying to get something down every weekday, so there will be times when I'm simply not able to think of anything decent.

Like today.

Barking Mad

'Can Nick Griffin become an MP in the battle for Barking?' this Video from the BBC website asks.

The answer is No. No he can't.

Here is why.

At the 2005 General election, Labour had a 8,883 (or 30%) majority in Barking, with 48% of the actual vote compared to the BNP's 17%.

Granted they were a mere 27 votes behind Conservative in 2nd place, but give than the Conservative vote is expected to strengthen further in places like Barking, I can't see the BNP making any headway at their expense either.

Put simply, he's not going to overhaul that margin, even if he had got his melty face on the secrets of the Ark of the Covenant to help him.

SuBollocks

Now, I know it's been a while since this Susan Boyle phenomenon first took off. I'll be honest I almost missed it first time round last year actually, as I was travelling at the time everyone went mental over her.

I just came across this article on the BBC website this week about how she is being snubbed by the Brit Awards this year.

Now, I'm not really surprised by this, for a number of reasons.

Firstly - there is the argument that she's not actually that talented. Yeah, she can sing very well. But have you heard Barry from Eastenders? He can sing as well in real life too - really well as it happens, and he's never been nominated for a Brit award.

OK, so she's had the commercial success that Barry from Eastenders has not. But this is clearly just piggybacking on the back of the success of the Britain's Got Talent TV show, rather than any actual breakthrough achievement of her own.

Plus she doesn't write her own songs either, nor is her album worthy of note for any original work- As I understand it 11 of the 12 songs on her album are covers with only one original composition, which she didn't write anyway.

So although as I say she can sing and has sold records, so can other people who actually have original songs and have generated success based on their music alone rather than the publicity generated by a very popular TV show.

Yet I know the real reason she's being snubbed. This real reason she's being snubbed is so transparent that I can't believe no-one has noticed it yet.

I mean it's so patently clear - the reason she's not going to win any awards, the reason why she'll never truly be a real star, the reason she's being snubbed.

So ball-shatteringly undeniable is this real reason for her being snubbed, that I cannot believe it's not been picked up on yet by the media these past 6 months.

Once I've told you, you will actually kick yourselves for not realising sooner the real reason she's being snubbed, because it really is so obvious...



The fact is - SHE'S REALLY UGLY.

Racist in the Woodpile

My boss has the manners of an old gentleman, is softly-spoken and seems a very tolerant and calm individual. Certainly I would never have him down as a racist or a bigot.

However, he from time to time uses the phrase 'nigger in the woodpile'.

I'll be honest, it's not a phrase I'd really ever come across before. However, having mentioned his use of it to a few people and done some online research I've discovered that apparently it was once a commonly-used term for something being the one stumbling block or undisclosed fact in an otherwise fine situation.

Two things...

Firstly - I wonder what was so particularly annoying about finding a black person in a pile of wood in times gone by?

"Derek, why haven't you brought in the firewood?"

"Well I would have done Mavis, but as I was sorting through the wood, there was a black man hiding in there! The shock put me right out of sync with my otherwise fine chopping motion and frankly I've found it to be a stumbling block to the whole firewood-gathering task for me today."

"Why was there a man in the woodpile, Derek?"

"Didn't think to ask him to be honest and that's not the point - don't you see? He was black! Had he been white like you & I, It wouldn't have been so much of a stumbling block to completing the wood-gathering. But I swear Mavis, he was as black as the ace of spades! I mean, it's just an annoyance Mavis."

"I'm leaving you Derek. The man in the woodpile was my lover."

Once you get over the initial shock of finding a man in your woodpile, I'd have thought that irrespective of his race, the first thing that would come to mind was not "hullo- this is going to be a stumbling block to completing the wood-gathering task" but to ask him why the fuck he was hiding amongst your pile of wood? I don't think I'd brush it off as a slight annoyance like Derek did and go on to coin a phrase out of it. I'd have chased him off of my property with my wood-chopping axe before calling the police to tell them I'd just found a man hiding in my fucking woodpile.

Were black people constantly popping up in woodpiles years ago? Perhaps you couldn't move for woodpiles full of ethnic minorities at the turn of the last century - asking them to leave the woodpile all the time might indeed have been an annoyance if you had fires to constantly keep fuelled I guess.

I think it more likely though that there were very few instances of people of any race turning up in woodpiles at all - let alone it being some form of widespread social nuisance.

I think it more likely that a bigger nuisance to the woodpile-owning classes would be TB-riddled badgers jumping out at you to be honest.

It just seems an odd phrase to have ever fallen into popular use.

Second point is - should I pull my boss up on using this phrase? Clearly I don't like it, but I'm pretty certain it's just something he has probably always used since a time before political correctness and has not really ever stopped to think that he might be being racist.

He is though, obviously and I feel that maybe It's giving tacit acceptance to this casual racism if I didn't mention I found it offensive.

For now I'll continue to wince slightly at the very least.

Brown & Out!

According to this article - it's going to be a Landslide for Brown at the election!!

It's not talking about Gordon Brown though, you IDIOTS!

It's actually about American Politics. Specifically the election this week for the vacant seat in the US Senate left by the death of Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy, and apparently some Republican called Scott Brown is likely to win.

Ummm....Massachusetts is a funny old word, isn't it?

I have nothing else to say about this story.



However, going back to the impending UK election, I did see this doctored David Cameron poster on the Guy Fawkes political Blog and think it was rather amusing. Chortle!

The Infamous Five

I now have 5 confirmed regular readers of this blog.

That's quite exciting.

4 of them are actually just old friends, so they may just be being polite. I'm even marrying one of them, so she is definitely just being polite (Not about marrying me, about reading this).

I thought I'd give you a few FACTS I do know about these 5...

- 2 of them are multi-Lingual.
- 3 of them have willies (unconfirmed).
- 1 of them invited me to his house to watch a movie about wrestling last year.
- 3 of them I have lived with at some point in my life.
- 2 of them have lived in Hong Kong.
- 1 of them has attempted to hunt and kill a squirrel with me.
- 2 of them are engaged.
- 2 of them are vacant.
- 2 of them I've never spent New Years Eve with.
- 2 of them I went to university with.
- 3 of them have never seen active service in the armed forces. Neither have the other 2.
- 1 of them used to live in Hackney, but always said it was 'Finsbury Park'.
- 1 of them I used to work with.
- 1 of them thinks 9/11 was 'just a bit of a laugh, really.'
- 1 of them once danced with me in my garden at dawn, both of us only in underpants.
- 1 of them grew up 'on the edge of the Cotswolds'
- 1 of them is neutral.
- 1 of them is living in a 'Truman Show' style constructed reality TV show but doesn't know it.
- 1 of them once pissed in a washing machine whilst drunk, in Holland.
- 3 of them I have slept in the same bed as.
- 2 of them have no concept of The Avocado.
- 1 of them has children.
- 2 of them have been children at some point in their life, but are not anymore.
- 1 of them is entitled to Irish citizenship & thinking of applying, even though the closest they've been to Ireland is stroking an Irish Setter once.
- 4 of them have been to at least one football game with me.
- 2 are openly racist and when drunk usually get round to saying that Enoch Powell 'wasn't all wrong'.


Interesting, eh?

Marauding Baboons

For the past 5 years, I have been a travelling England football supporter. Hey, before you jump to conclusions - no I'm not a hooligan. Not all football fans are you know - and I'll cut open anyone who says I am.

I have suffered mostly crap football though - seen England destroyed in Copenhagen, outplayed in Belfast, self-destruct at the World Cup in Germany and endured the misery of a trip to Zagreb and have to suffer an over-zealous baton-charging by the Croat police in order to get into the stadium to watch such shit.

I enjoyed visiting some of the random countries I got to of course - I don't know many people who've been to Macedonia, Israel or Kazakhstan and I wouldn't have discovered any of these places were it not for the football.

The Football though was beginning to be an annoyance which got in the way of an otherwise decent trip, so I decided after the trip to The 'stans of Central Asia last summer to retire from international duty.

However I'm almost guaranteed tickets to the World Cup Finals this summer in South Africa. So I applied for tickets because I knew there will be a nagging sense of regret if England did get to the Final and I could have been there.

So I decided at the weekend (subject to approval from my Fiancée of course) that I'll go out to watch the Semi-Final & Final IF England get that far. It would only be for a week, and it would be a nice mini-break to boot.

I was coming out of retirement for one last hurrah.

But this changed when I read about Cape Town's wild baboons here.

I'm not going all that way to be punched in the face by a fucking baboon.

Baby Got Back

I was initially pleased to read this article about the healthy attributes of carrying extra weight on your bum and thighs, because I myself have a FAT ARSE.

Sadly, if you DO have a fat arse, you are still more likely to contract heart disease anyway as it's unlikely you will not also have a fat belly, high cholesterol and clogged arteries.

Unfortunately I do also have the fat belly and also about 20 chins- so I'm still going to die early and be buried in a shallow grave.

Apparently if you DON'T have a fat arse, you are more likely to have metabolic problems. I would say though that you already had metabolic problems to some degree if you had a tiny waist but couldn't shift an arse the size of a beach ball.

I love the way they bring out these stupid and pointless scientific studies every now and then that seem to be based on nothing tangible and get medical science absolutely nowhere.

In fact, this research is basically saying the only people who will benefit are those who look like this -
There are not many people who look like this. Perhaps the study was done taking just these three ladies as examples, and it just so happens they all have wonderful metabolic & cardiac health.

If not, I want to know how wide the study was, because it's just taken me an hour to find three examples of a big arse & small waist combination that wasn't hardcore porn. Perhaps the scientists in question just wanted to see pornstars with huge arses and made up some research to justify putting "Red Hot Big Ass'd Mommas 3" on their expenses.

That is not the reason I chose to write this article though. It was not under any circumstances because I actually wanted to trawl through a google image search of "Huge Ass, Tiny Waist" with SafeSearch off. No - I did this for purely journalistic purposes.

[I will just add that I wasn't trying to be sexist by only picking pictures of female arses, but there do not appear to be many men out there with big arses & slim waists. Or at least, not as much demand for pictures of them to be put on the particular porn sites that I came across].

Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 1

I really am having a terrible week at work.

Everything seems to be conspiring against me it seems. Just when I think I've got one problem solved, something rears up to totally fuck that solution up and mean I have to start all over again. Normally because someone else in the chain thinks 'pro-activity' is a fucking yoghurt, not an idea to bring into the workplace.

Truth is, a year ago I'd have gone up the wall and started back-snorting my own saliva through my nostrils by now, but I'm reasonably calm today*.

In many ways it's just down to realising there is little point in getting too stressed, yet this is not something I'd have been able to convince myself of 12 months ago.

I guess, now I'm well into the 2nd year of my 30's, that you could say a certain "pfffftiness"† comes over me when placed in situations like this - and that is quite a new feeling. No longer young and full of rage, I'm now more full of a silent disdain for the world and what it throws at me.

But I would also think that I'm just really bloody happy with my life these days. I've got a nice home to go back to, a nice person living in it with me, and generally bright and lovely prospects for my future with that nice person. So it's difficult to let the daily toils of a job that can at times be frustratingly shit really get on top of you when you know you have the good times just around the corner away from the work desk.

That said - I would still like to garrote some of the incompetent bastards I have had to speak to today with piano wire.

*I say reasonably, but of course that is still relative. I'm hardly reaching a Buddhist transcendental plain of calm, but I have only punched my seat and screamed "Aaaiiiiiiii!!!" once today.

†This is a noun I've decided to invent to better describe a feeling I sometimes have. It's kind of like a stereotypical dismissive Gallic shoulder shrug of "what can I do?" coupled with a genuine misanthropic disdain for the situation I've been put in by some incompetent human being somewhere. A 'Pfffffffft'.

Bugger ME I'm busy!

Having one of the worst weeks of my working life, which I think is quite incredible considering how bad it was last week. I won't bore you with the details, dear Reader, except to recommend never trying to truck chilled meat to the UK from Bremerhaven.

As such, haven't got an awful amount of time to write owt- but just wanted to put something up.

So here is a picture of me on a plastic gorilla.

Daily Ex-Princess

I decided that Friday's attack on the Daily Mail was a little unfair - as I'd forgotten to also include an attack on their sister publication The Daily Express!

Not got a lot to say except that it's equally full of shit.

I do have a picture to show you though which I think very well proves two stereotypes of this particular blue-top tabloid to be accurate.

1.) They are obsessed with Diana.
2.) They are Convinced immigration is out of control.

This was basically a picture I took back in October 2009 of the International Edition of the Daily Express which I saw whilst in New Zealand.

I love the fact that they say it's "56 pages of News from Britain" When the front page features not news but instead reactionary opinion and a story about a woman who has been dead for 12-years having been previously lusted over by the former French President.

All the latest news from Britain!

Priceless.

Nativity Scene

Not got much to say today, so just thought I'd post a picture of me with Baby Jesus.

This was a nativity scene I found in Boscastle, Cornshire during the festive period, which I presume had been put together by children from the local primary school.

Mainly because;
*The depictions of Mary & Joseph were CHILD-LIKE.
*Jesus' crib was frankly SHODDY WORKMANSHIP.
*The baby messiah himself had been represented by a FUCKING PIECE OF CARDBOARD wrapped in some FUCKING DIRTY RAGS.

Also, where were the Three fucking Kings? Stupid, ill-conceived and even more poorly put-together.

Children shouldn't be left alone with this sort of thing with their child-like abilities.

Die Hammond, Die.

Do you know what really fucks me off? The Fucking Daily Mail.

I know it's become rather passé to hate the Daily Mail- it seems these days it's more cool and trendy to be dismissive of those that hate the Daily Mail.

But I don't care. In fact, I intend to try and start a new trend of a backlash against these 'neo-trendies'. Starting now.

What got my goat recently though was an article I searched out from last August after I watched Stewart Lee perform his latest stand-up routine about Richard 'The Hamster' Hammond earlier this week.

Now, I'm going to give it to you straight (like a pear cider made from 100% pears*), I don't like Richard 'The Hamster' Hammond. Actually I wish he HAD died in that crash.

Now this is basically what Stewart Lee said in his routine; he said he wished Hammond had died in the car crash and elaborately described how he wished his death had been terribly drawn out and painful.

Now for those offended out there, he didn't actually believe this. He was parodying the predilection of the "It's PC gone mad" brigade (i.e. Top Gear fans & Daily Mail readers) to explain away their own rude, obnoxious, racist & homophobic crap as "it's just a joke". By extending this diatribe against Hammond to a ridiculous degree he is very accurately parodying & ripping apart the time-worn defence of the politically incorrect that the liberals should 'lighten up as it's just a bit of fun'.

Lee also told a story about Hammond being a shit whilst they were at school together. He afterwards told the audience that despite them actually being at school together, he didn't know him at all and the story was all made-up for the routine.

But obviously, the Daily Mail in their typical manner decide it's worth whipping up into a storm and claim that there was "speculation that their shared school experience may have prompted Lee’s diatribe."

Where did this speculation originate then? I'll tell you where it originated, in the fucking keyboard of the bastard journalist!

The very last sentence of the article even quotes Lee's spokeswoman as saying "I don’t think they knew each other at school." Thereby pretty much ending any 'speculation' of a long-standing grudge.

What annoys me though is that this is not just lazy journalism- It was not that it was badly researched or missing key information, as is often levied at these scurrilous sections of the media.

It's basically knowing exactly what has happened, realising it's a non-story and thus trying to squeeze something out of it that doesn't exist before backing down pathetically in the last sentence with a "yeah, but it probably didn't happen like that really".

Wankers!

For what it's worth though - I thought Lee's routine was crass and in extremely bad taste - and I hope the fat, ageing & no-longer relevant comic dies in his sleep tonight. Although I hope he wakes up briefly just before he dies and has some agonising pain in his balls as well.

Ha, do you see what I was doing? I was parodying the parody! ha!

Someone put me on the stage.




*an in joke there for those that have seen the routine. I love in-jokes.

POISONED BY THE FRENCH.

I'VE BEEN POISONED!!!!

Food Poisoning, in fact. Pretty sure it's the first time I've ever had it and must admit it was rather unpleasant an experience.

It came at the end of a lovely New Year's break in Cornwall with Fantastic Mrs Ox-to-be. I'm not going to be childish enough to name the offending restaurant but it was* The Napoleon Inn in Boscastle. Typical underhand tactics of The French.

This, dear readers Three, is one of the reasons for the extended absence of a blog since my Christmas sign-off. I was really ill. Vomit was involved. As was Watery Diarrhoea. As was child-like wimpering from the toilet as my good lady sat in the hotel room watching TV and wondering if she has made the right choice in life.

I don't think I've ever felt so desperately ill this decade.

What was overly annoying about this bout of food poisoning was that it was contracted the night before a lunchtime trip to Rick Stein's Emporium of Overpriced Seafood in Padstow. There he is look - taunting my salmonella-riddled self with his fishy fishes in what he believes to be an amusing way. Bastard.

Truth is, the food was pretty good. You'd expect so at £92 for two people mind you. My starter of Quenelles of Gurnard with Shellfish Sauce was simply marvellous. My main course (fillet of Sea Bass) was actually a little bland but the good lady had the most fabulous bouillabaisse she has ever eaten. But I couldn't really enjoy the food as I had started to feel queasy on arrival in Padstow. Shellfish sauce clearly didn't help the matter and by the time we got back to our hotel room in Boscastle that evening I was very, very ill and so began the viscous expulsions of the foul bacterium from my system.

It wasn't quite what Mrs Ox had expected of her last night in Cornshire. She had been hoping to be sat in an oak-beamed Inn, drinking hoppy ales, eating cornish pasties and listening to tales of sea monsters & storms from salty seadogs. Instead she had to make do with cornish pasty-flavour crisps, sat on the end of the bed watching Eastenders and listening to les vomeurs de Monsieur Ox. God bless her.

This frightful tango with terror didn't ruin the break away though. It was the perfect getaway for us both after a few weeks of house-moving and wedding planning and the hustle and bustle of life in pyow pyow Central London.

Back now though, and enjoying the misery of the weather this week. Ye fucking gads.


*Can't be 100% sure, obviously. Don't sue me if somehow this blog becomes widely-read and someone shows you the article please Mr Bonaparte.