Staggered...

It's now Two weeks since the completion of my epic Stag weekend. I've had time to reflect and decided that yes, I would like to share it's tale with perfect strangers over the Internet.

I had decided to go to Snowdonia. One of my very good friends has a family cottage nestled in the mountains which I always yearn to visit as often as I can - 'tis simply heaven and I couldn't have wanted to be anywhere else for my stag, in the end. Not for me a night out in Blackpool or a trip to Ibiza. Oh no. Give me the Withnail experience every time: A group of chaps holed up in a remote cottage for 4 nights with only a feral peacock, a field of timid-looking sheep, inadequate food supplies and copious amounts of alcohol for company.

Unfortunately, it will only house 8 or so brave souls, so it couldn't really be the all-encompassing stag I'd originally thought it might be. So the idea was to have another night out with a group of mates in London, after a visit to watch our football team play in Wycombe.

Sadly, Stag#1 ended up being a total wash-out due a disagreement on how the night should progress. Basically, all but two of us wanted to spend the night in London, the rest wanted to drink in the Wetherspoons in High Wycombe. That was not really what I had in mind for my stag night out, to be honest.

That evening then became one of the more low-key stags it might be possible to have, with two friends having a perfectly charming Chinese meal in Holborn before slinking off home to bed before midnight.

And so, Stag#2, the trip to Snowdonia, became the one & only stag. And what an event it turned out to be too.




The wonderful cottage: "We've gone on holiday by mistake!"

 

It's normally a good 6 hour drive from London to the village of Llanbedr, nearest settlement to our fabled cottage in Snowdonia. To cut some time off, myself and my Best Man decided to drive through the night and left on Thursday evening, arriving at the cottage very excited at 1215am.

There we found the first arrival, having been there already on his own since 5pm, slumped in front of the fire, Withnail & I on loop on his portable DVD player, having polished off 2 bottles of wine alone. This was an accurate portent of the ridiculous antics still to come.

After a quick re-stoke of the fire embers as they threatened to go out, we three sat together and polished off a ridiculous amount of alcohol between us, and 8am came and went before we saw our beds.

This area of Wales is simply stunning at dawn, the detailed night sky giving way to a beautiful sunrise to the East, and it's always tempting to stay up in an alcohol-infused state on your first night in the cottage, to see it in.




Seeing dawn in with a bottle or two.

  That we did, although I couldn't tell you what then became of the rest of the morning as I did not stir again until 3pm on the Friday for 'Breakfast'.

Very little occurred until the arrival of the rest of the party on Friday evening, but that night saw the beginning of the Stag's legacy... my ruddy gout. Despite one friend arriving with a portable disco with lights and lasers and some raucous fun being had by all - I felt the need to stop drinking shortly after midnight as I could feel the tell-tale signs of Mr Gout beginning to stir in my knees.

And thus I became slowly more sober as those around me got more and more drunk. There's nothing more depressing than watching an impromptu conga snake it's way through a building when you are unable to join in. Ho-hum.

Saturday came with many hangovers. What better cure than by jumping into the freezing cold river half-naked? It was a stag weekend after all and a homo-erotic moment is fine in these circumstances of manly-bonding.

Cold Water: Invigorating.

The water did the trick, but a disappointing curry in Harlech Tandoori that evening left everyone with a terrible post-prandial torpor, and Saturday evening was a little more low-key than the two before it.

Sunday I awoke in lashings of gouty pain. We were meant to be climbing a mountain that day, but how was I to move around freely in such a state? By Sedan Chair of course! So the chaps lashed together a makeshift chair and carried me all of ten paces before giving in and returning to their beers. Was a nice thought though.



Off for the Elephant Hunt. Tsk Tsk.

Having dulled the pain with lashings of Belgian beer, there was nothing left for it but to charge on up a mountain for no apparent reason. We were in Snowdonia, after all. We chose this one below - it's called Carreg-y-Seath.

Carreg-y-Seath: Deceptive.

It looks pretty simple enough, doesn't it? It isn't that high. It isn't that steep. No problem, take us about 45minutes.

Except it doesn't actually have any paths up it. So we were off-roading up the side of a piece of rock that probably hadn't had any humans attempt to mount it in a good while. Unless Snowdonia had also recently played host to a similarly idiotic bunch of ill-prepared adventurers such as us.

We started off easing our way through the terrain quite comfortably enough, but it soon became either boggy or thick with coarse heather that scratched mercilessly at my poor bare legs (I was in shorts, not naked).

Heathery Bogs: Not an approved Rambler's Association Route.

By the time we'd struggled through to the base of the mountain proper, a good 30mins had already elapsed. Yeah, it was probably going to take us a bit longer than we thought... but stubbornly, no-one was going to be the first to say this, were they? So we pushed on, all in the insane belief that all the others still wanted to climb it rather than return to the cottage and a nice cold beer.

It started to rain, shortly before we reached the final rock-scramble to the top. At this point I could clearly hear Michael Buerk's 999 voice in my head - "The stag party had set off in sunshine for what they thought was an easy ascent of the mountain. Little did the ill-prepared party realise what lay ahead for them..."




Rock Scramble: Daunting.

 A couple of us even got slightly vertiginous on the final heave over the top. It was blowing a fucking gale by now as we had got to the top and a clear stretch to the Irish Sea and the winds blowing in off of it.

Yet we all got there, to the top. Christ knows how, and more importantly why, but we all got there. And if we ever form a Prog-Rock band we now have the front cover for our first album.

Now all we had to do was find a way down - there would probably be a path down, right? We'd be able to see it from the top. Well, no, there wasn't. There was a sheer cliff drop on two sides and the boggy heathery mess on the other two. Our one alternative route was to follow the top of a dry-stone wall back down the mountain. It was dangerously loose, but better than the bog we'd come up in. It didn't take long for someone to fall off though...

Dry Stone Wall: Falling Off

We eventually found our way back to the car about 2 and a half hours after having set off on our 45min walk, shattered men one and all - but we had tamed the wilderness. We were STAGS OF THE MOUNTAIN.

So, we returned home to the cottage to find that the one left-behind member of the party had baked us all a Stag Crumble for our efforts. What more fitting end to a boisterous lads weekend away than a bit of plum crumble?

Stag Crumble: A Manly Dessert (serve with cream).

STAGS! GRRRRRR!!!!!!!

Regeneration's What You Need

A few weekends ago, Mrs Ox and myself decided to take a trip to Stratford, East London to see the progress on the redevelopment around the Olympic site. It was of keen interest to us in fact, as we have started to think of buying a property in a few years' time, and it would appear that Stratford is pretty much the only London location we'll be able to afford whilst keeping our commutes reasonable.

At the moment, other than a promising-looking building site, it's still a bit skanky, if I'm honest. Certainly though there are worse places to live in London. Yet Stratford is a bit more run-down that what I'm used to, and I did feel slightly on edge at times, to the amused delight of MrsOx.

Stratford station Regenerated:
Still as much chance of a stabbing.
Photo by Clive Power (It says I had to tell you that).

"You've never really lived anywhere poor, have you?" she commented when we were on the bus home surrounded by vagrants and mouthy drunks.

I wanted to correct her and assert my working-class roots - My Dad left school at 15 to work down the mines, ffs! But the fact was, she was right. My Dad's upbringing was not my own thanks mainly to his own work ethic & industry (thankfully not down the mines for very long). I in fact grew up a Landlord's son mostly in quaint coaching inns in well-kept villages and well-to-do market towns.

I did live in a rough dive-pub in Southampton between the ages of 3 and 6, but other than that, I've led a pretty charmed life of locations. My formative years were spent either in the not-very-ghetto'd Cotswolds, within the midst of straw-boaters upon the regatta-loving Thames or in the shadow of royal polo tournaments in Sussex.

At one point, I could even boast Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page & spoon-bender Uri Geller as next-door neighbours (Well, I could boast about Jimmy Page at least).

Stratford: Easy to get out of, at least.

Either way though, Mrs Ox was right, I've never lived anywhere 'edgy', 'up-and-coming' or 'vibrant' as the estate agents refer to Stratford* in their window adverts. Perhaps I have lived a rather sheltered life in that respect.

This is the odd thing about these areas of London though - you could live on a very nice middle-class street but there could be a problem estate at the end of the road. You can have run-down social housing blocks down one side of a road, and on the opposite side some new-build yuppie flats exchanging hands for silly money.

Everything is on top of everything else and areas once thought too dodgy to venture into at night are now becoming gentrified. One problem of that of course is that the poor are often not taken along with the regeneration but actually forced out by rising property prices.

East London Regeneration: The Luftwaffe started things off.

Hopefully, Stratford (which isn't really that bad, obviously) will indeed benefit from the Olympic regeneration and become one of those areas where people want to move to without driving out the less well-off, so that they too can benefit from it. Maybe I will benefit from it too, one day.

Although I'm not saying it wasn't nice growing up where i did, I feel truly grateful to be a resident of London - there is a lot to be said about how enriching it is to live amongst a melting pot of people from such diverse backgrounds and culture all mingling together.

Still less likely to get mugged and stabbed in Moreton-in-Marsh though.


*For 'edgy' read 'dangerous'.
 For 'up-and-coming' read 'still pretty run-down, but they are building some stuff.'
  For 'vibrant' read 'large ethnic minority population living below the poverty line'.

Rabbit Loving-Woman

I just read this ridiculous story about the below woman, Annette Edwards.

Edwards: cartoon rabbit-fucker wannabe.

She has spent an incredible £10,000 on plastic surgery to look like the famous cartoon zoophile Jessica Rabbit. Why she has attempted this I am not quite sure - presumably in an attempt to try and lure away husband Roger for a night of lapine lust. 

Jessica herself appears below for comparison.

The real Mrs Rabbit: Large cartoon breasts.

Mrs Edwards has clearly failed in her attempts.

I have little else to say on this matter.

Nós Somos Família...

Went to a family wedding this weekend just gone. In Coventry.

Well, just outside Coventry in fact. However, an argument with Mrs Ox in the car on the way up and the silence we gave each other for part of the journey certainly brought the phrase "Being sent to Coventry" to life in a quite literal as well as the traditionally more figurative manner.

Coventry: Best enjoyed in silence.

It was a fantastic event, the wedding. For the most part because I got to catch up with my extended family for the first time in ruddy years.

Getting to know Mrs Ox's family and how close they are to each other, has only highlighted for me how little effort I've put in over the past decade in keeping in touch with mine.

Aunties & Uncles I hadn't seen in years, Cousins I hadn't even considered were now adults (a bit of a silly thing not to consider, considering they are around the same age as me) and indeed, in some cases with their own children. Fully grown, adult children, that is.

And by the term 'Adult Children' I don't mean some scary genetic disaster of a giant-like, inflated child with  elephantiasis, I mean it's my cousin's children, but they are now practically adults. Obviously.

I also found out via one of my Uncle's research that there is some Portuguese blood in my ancestry. This may explain my short-fused temperament and love of port, but I can't therefore understand why the very thought of Salted Cod has me retching air. Other than it tastes shit, of course.

Salted Cod: Retch-Inducing.

Nonetheless, I'm rather excited at my new-found exotic roots, and the next time I see Ronaldo playing I won't instantly dismiss him as a greasy-haired diving fairy, but a fellow countryman. Albeit a fairy-like greasy-haired diving one.

The flag of my Fathers' Mothers' Fathers' Fathers' Father. Maybe.

I also quite like the funny little ç & õ characters that they pepper about so ubiquitously in Portuguese. I might start calling myself Senhor Fantastiço Õx or something. If that works. It probably doesn't.

Nice thunderstix, Mum.

My main point today though, kids, is that family is important.

Which is why I am determined to try and organise a Family Ox get-together at least once every year to catch up and maybe even celebrate our general Portuguesishness.

Salt-Cod all round. Bleeuurgh.

Curb your Sausage Enthusiasm

I have come to two conclusions today.

1.) I eat too many sausages.

2.) I am turning into Larry David.

This morning, I had a conversation with a coffee shop attendant that turned into a bit of a slanging match, which only ended after I realised it was like a scene from Curb Your Enthusiasm.

First I'll set the scene.

Most mornings upon arrival at Feral Ashford train station, I step off my train and straight into the over-priced café on the platform, to purchase a small latte and a sausage bap.

Now, I should add that I don't always do this - sometimes I have already purchased a healthy yogurt and berry compote at St Pancras Station, if I'm feeling flush and have time. But often, I find myself arriving at 8.20am in Feral Ashford very hungry, and the only option at that time and place is the Platform Café and a dirty sausage.

Said sausage baps come in a plastic wrapper, which you hand to the server who then SHOULD (notice I emphasise 'should') place the bap in a paper bag, remove the plastic wrapper and put in the microwave for 30 seconds.

After said 30 seconds, the bap is then handed to the customer, piping hot and ready for catsup application and subsequent devouring.

HOWEVER - there is one particular server in the café who for some reason does NOT remove the plastic wrapper before inserting into the paper bag and microwave. Let's call him Roger*. This may seem a trivial matter, but it makes the bread all the more soggy and makes the experience of eating it an altogether less appealing one. These things are important at breakfast time.

Quite why Roger has decided to buck the accepted standard practice of plastic removal, I don't know. Perhaps he is ignorant to the fact that his Sausage-microwaving technique differs to his colleagues, or perhaps he is aware but is simply an ingrate deciding he wants to 'give it to the man' and buck the system.

Either way, it annoys me and if I walk into the café to see him at the till my heart sinks, knowing I'm going to get a sub-standard sausage if he takes my order.

Today, I was joyed to see one of the lovely young ladies, correctly-skilled in the art of plastic removal, at the till. As I approached bap in hand however, up pops Roger from underneath the counter, who asks me if he can help me.

Now, normally I'd be British about it and just allow him to incorrectly heat my breakfast sausage. This time though, I'd been caught off-guard having expected to be served by the girl. So I piped up "Oh no, don't worry - I think she was going to serve me."

He looked perplexed. "No, that's fine Sir, I'll do it. Just the sausage was it?"

"Umm, I'd rather she served me actually, if that's alright..." I timidly replied back, trailing off at the end.

He continued "Sir, I'm quite capable of serving you fine. Amy* is making all the hot drinks, I'm on the till."

I couldn't back down now. "No sorry, I want her to serve me, please".

I thrust the sausage in her general direction. Amy, clearly alarmed, stepped back slightly. The man raised his eyebrows in a concerned manner. Great. Now they thought I wanted to be served by her because I was some perv who wanted to try it on.

There was a moment of silence. Then Roger said "Why do you need her to serve you, exactly?" His tone was clearly one I did not expect to encounter from a representative of the service industry. I wasn't going to pull my punches now.

"I'll tell you why" I began, "Because you don't know how to heat the sausages correctly!"

"What are you on about? It's a bloody microwave! I know how to use a microwave!"

I shook my head. "No you don't. You are meant to take off the plastic wrapper. YOU don't take off the plastic wrapper. Everyone else does. Amy here does, don't you?"

Amy didn't respond. She wasn't going to help me dig my way out of this hole.

Roger was now laughing. "Are you serious? You are causing a scene all because you want me to take the wrapper off the bap?"

"Yes I am!" I almost screamed. "Because it makes the bread go all soggy! You are the only person who works here who doesn't take the wrapper off, so I asked her to serve me, because it's my money, I want a non-soggy bap and she does it right!!!"

There, I'd made my point. He must feel stupid now I thought, having not been taking the plastic wrappers off all this time! What a goon!

His reply though, was "Well, I'm sorry I didn't realise that taking the wrapper off was so important to you. Why didn't you just ask me to take the wrapper off?"

He had a point. "Well...because I thought it'd make me look a bit pathetic."

"Good point Sir. At least you have avoided that today."

And with that, Roger took off the plastic wrapper and popped the paper bag in the microwave. We stood there in silence looking at each other intently for the next 30 seconds. It seemed like 30 minutes. Amy shuffled nervously next to him.

There was a ping from the microwave. Roger handed me my sausage bap. I could have walked out and left it at that, but no. I opened up the bag and showed him how the bread wasn't as soggy as it would have been had he left the wrapper on.

"Very good Sir. I'll pass on your comments to everyone else here."

My parting shot to him was "You don't need to pass it on to anyone else - you are the only one who hasn't already realised you are meant to do it!"

I was already walking out the door when Roger retorted after me "Well I do now, thank you for educating me. Have a good day, sir."

I think we all know who won that argument.

I might give up my morning sausage bap though, for a while. At least from that café.


*Names have been changed to protect the innocent

Sweaty Betty

Muggy today.

I hate muggy weather. I'm a bit of a sweater, you see. I always have been. It's not actually related to the fact I'm a bit fat these days - I sweated just as much when I was a lithe teenager. I'll never forget the sheer hell of first hitting the brick wall of 90% humidity when stepping off the plane to spend the summer of 1997 in Hong Kong. In that insanely close weather, I was having to step into a cold shower just to dry myself off 3 or 4 times a day.

I've always considered it an arse of a condition to be honest. If you are fortunate enough to not be much of a sweater, then thank your lucky stars. For you, a hot, muggy day is probably heaven - the chance to soak up some rays, sit out in that heat and sip pina coladas. You swines.

For the Sweaty minority however, it's hellish. Waking up on a close, humid day is always depressing for me, soon realising I'm going to have a shirt saturated in my salty excreta within mins of leaving home, then having to spend the rest of the working day with sticky, clammy clothes hugging me like a second skin.

This probably repulses you, and frankly you'd be right to be repulsed, as it is pretty repulsive. It's also a damn inconvenience to me. By the time I get home from work I just want to rip off my clothes, stand in an ice-cold shower at last feeling free of my clingy, sopping shirt and trousers with a decidedly musty gusset - flinging said items haphazardly around the flat as I prance around naked for the rest of the evening.

This always brings consternation from MrsOx, especially if her parents have popped over for dinner.

There is an answer of course - Air Conditioning. Despite almost drying up from lost salts in the humid climates of Asia, pretty much any indoor environment in the developed Far-East caters to the sweaties by blowing cool, clean air onto the streets to entice you inside. None of that here in the UK. I know it's often only Two weeks of the year we have to worry about it, but frankly that Two weeks is enough to drive a sweaty crazy with humidity-induced mania.

The UK isn't even set up to provide easy access to foods and drinks that might alleviate the nuisance of the heat a little. In Japan, you are never 2 feet away from a vending machine serving Ice-Tea, Ice-Lattes and all manner of Icey-Ice Iced loveliness. In America, a dash into any 7-11 will bring you the chance to make your own personalised frozen slushee, nom nom nom.

Japan: Vending Heaven

This morning though in rubbish old Britain, parched and desperate for something cool, icy and refreshing on arrival at the train station, I found the over-priced cafe there could provide me with luke-warm colas and hot, stodgy sausage rolls only.

Disappointing.

Anyway, I seem to have gone off on a tangent from my sweaty news to a 'What's Wrong with Broken Britain' feature. I didn't mean to do that.

Nailin' Palin

I met a legend last night - a genuine national treasure.

Now, I'm sure many of you probably think "Oh for Christ's sake, that phrase is bandied about all too frequently these days to describe every other endearing, charming old codger who had some populist success decades ago."

Maybe so - but if you were to take a look under the dictionary definition of 'National Treasure', you'll surely see a picture of this particular man.

"Oh BUGGER OFF!" you now scream, "That fucking cliche is even worse than the first! 'look in the dictionary blah-de-fucking-blah!' ".

Well, fair enough.

But this guy surely is one about whom few will have any bad words to say. Surely Sheffield's most famous son...OK, you don't like that one either? Jeez! 

Well, the fellow I'm referring to is Mr Michael Edward Palin CBE FRGS (I'm not sure what the collection of letters are at the end of his name either - perhaps he just likes amphibians or something).

I was at a literary dinner in a posh restaurant at St Pancras station in order to meet the man himself. This was really just a rather expensive way of re-launching the paperback edition of Michael's latest diaries. Expensive for me and MrsOx at least, as poncy fish dinners don't come cheap when you are dining with Comedy Royalty.

However, I can actually say I was at dinner with Michael Palin last night, rather than at a book-launch. Which I of course did on Facebook and Twitter like the saddo I am. OK, so he was eating at the other end of the room. But he was eating the same thing in the same room at the same time. So I think it's acceptable to say I had dinner with him. I don't care if you don't think so.

I also managed to say something ball-achingly sycophantic to the man himself when getting my copy of his book signed after we'd finished our chocolate fondant puddings. Something along the lines of "Can I just thank you for changing my life?" Then trying to explain away this ridiculous and unnecessary outburst in relation to my passion for travel being enlightened after watching his Around the World in 80 Days series as a 10 year old.

Mr Palin was quite good about it, remaining jovially upbeat and indeed appearing outwardly pleased his work had made such an impression on me, whilst also managing not to look too worried as I lent across to try and shake his hand as well. Although he could have been hovering his other hand over the panic button for all I was aware, so in awe was I of being in the presence of one of my childhood heroes.

Despite getting a bit over-excited at the end though, It was indeed a pleasure to meet the man, hear some of his ripping yarns and share an expensive dinner in his (distant) company. I'm just glad his wife Sarah wasn't there*.



*That last one was actually MrsOx's joke, so please don't blame me for it.

Have a Break, Have a Shit Chat.

Look at this.

This is a copy of 'Chat' Magazine I noticed on the shelves of my newsagent this morning.

Now where do you start really? I'm not actually sure I need to say very much, so ghastly is this oh-so-alluring cover spread.

With Chat's promises within of the holy trinity of "Life! Death! Prizes!", I'm sure many of it's catchment audience would already have been half-way to the cash register before they even realised they also had a wonderful upbeat leader about a girl murdered by a paedophile.

Yet the Paedo that lured her to her death was no normal paedo, going about his paedo-business as you might expect. "Good morning, young man!" "Come sit on my lap, sweet girl!" "Would you like a sweetie, m'dear?" 

No, none of the normal paedo-charm for this fucker - this one is a KILLER PAEDO! Christ alive! Lock your doors!

If that worry wasn't bad enough for the Chat reader, it seems that some other poor girl has gone and got knocked up by a rapist. Oh no, I'm sorry, I mean a RAPIST. Not to worry though, as those cute little rapist's babies are such little gigglers! Phew, thanks for lightening that mood, Chat. It's not all about killer paedos & rapists, you know.

Sadly, we can't stay in the cutsie world of giggling babies for long though - as sooner or later, you have to realise that your body may let you down. If it's not your fat arse breaking the toilet as you shit out the constant fecality that Chat has given you to digest, it's your tits rotting away. And if you still don't believe it - there are some "Yucky Photos!" within.

As it says on the cover - it is "Packed full of Puzzles!" The biggest puzzle for me though, is why does anyone actually read this shit?


What sort of person is drawn in by the promise of life, death & prizes exactly? More to the point, what does that actually mean?
Do you like an exclamation mark at the end of every sentence?! Do you?!!!
And who is the random woman with the nice hair-cut & perfect smile? Is that meant to represent you, the reader?
Are you meant to feel an affinity with this attractive, well-rounded & fun-loving go-getter, whilst also feeling superior to the unfortunates of the world stuck with rape-babies, decaying tits and lardy arses?
 
"Thank heavens my womb hasn't split in two like this fucker in Chat! Now where are my prizes?"

Cultural Holocaust?

Interesting report on the BBC Website today about ethnic minority numbers on the rise in the UK.

Ask many people who bemoan the amount of 'foreigners' in the UK the percentage of ethnic minorities in our country, and you'll probably get an answer anything from ⅓ to over 50%. Such is the ignorance.

As this report shows, it's currently 8%. This is so ruddy low it's almost funny people make such a deal about it.

This 8% figure is everyone who does not consider themselves 'white', which according to organisations like the BNP & EDL are the very people that are over-running our country and swamping our culture.

I remember a few years back having a similar discussion with someone who was adamant that the Mujahideen were camped in his privet hedge. I asked him to take a guess as to what percentage of the UK was non-white. After clarifying if I was including ALL non-whites ("you mean all of them? The yellows as well as the darkies and curry-munchers?"), he said it must easily be near 60% now. He simply didn't believe me when I said the figure was well below 10%.

People like him who see danger in ethnic migration, see colour everywhere. They swear blind that you can't walk down the street without bumping into a dreadlocked rasta off his face on pot or a Muslim wife who's been forced into her hijab.

The fact is, that street will more than likely contain 7-10 white people for every 1 Asian, African or Oriental person you see. Try it yourself - spend 20 minutes counting how many people walk past you and how many are of each ethnicity. Obviously your results will vary on where you are - In many parts of London or larger cities you'd obviously expect it to be a higher ethnic count, but I'd wager that except in certain obvious areas, you'll still find the ratios very much in the white majority. Southall may indeed see this ratio volte-face - but Bourton-on-The-Water* will be a decidedly pasty place.

Although the point of this BBC article is showing that the report estimates the figure is expect to rise greatly over the next 40 years, I think you can also look at it as a way of showing that this country is not actually 'swamped' with people of different ethnicity who are going to destroy our very British way of life.

How can a 92% majority consider itself swamped? How, even if the non-white population does rise to 20% by 2051, can 4/5 of the country actually feel threatened by this, even if we accept the extremely ridiculous notion that all of the estimated 20% will go out of their way not only to avoid assimilating a single aspect of existing British culture and customs, but to actively try and destroy it?

Not everyone likes what the UK stands for and wishes to preserve it's finer aspects. But the likes of these chaps below don't look in any rush to me to settle in Saffron Walden over the next few years.

Perhaps, if our culture is going to be removed by such a small minority of perceived outsiders, it's actually for the better as clearly such a cultural holocaust could only take place if such a whopping majority didn't actually care about their current circumstances enough to preserve the good aspects of it?

Or perhaps more likely, that 92% white majority aren't being swamped at all, as equally won't the 80% in 2051. Despite what the Daily Mail & Express and their readership would have you believe.

Cultural Holocaust? Nah, we'll still have some wankers just as racist and unpleasant to those of different backgrounds, with or without an extra ethnic influx.

Similarly, the good things about this fair land will also remain - chief among these, thank god, will be wide-spread tolerance and acceptance of minorities.

As the French say - vive la différence!

Mind you, I'd have a different slant on all this if it was mostly French people coming in, with their smelly cheeses, their hairy armpits & their surrender-monkeying.



*I grew up near there in the extraordinarily-white Cotswolds. At my school of around 800 children, there was 1 Chinese girl, 1 Indian girl and 2 black boys during the time I was there. The rest was ethnically Caucasian.

"Moaty, It's Gazza..."

Am I the only one gutted that Raoul Moat shot himself before he got the chance to realise his mate Gazza had turned up with some chicken and a fishing rod?

This has to be the most bizarre twist in what turned out to be a bit of a damp squib after promising to be an epic stand-off that might have rivalled the end of Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid.

Had Gazza been allowed to talk to Moat - it would have been an image to savour, and most probably would have saved Moat's life, with Gazza turned ultimate siege negotiator.

For those who haven't heard the story - it's here. Apparently Gazza had heard his pal 'Moaty' was by a river, and took along his fishing rod so they could sit down together for a man-to-man chat and a little bit of fishing on the riverbank. Might have been difficult to get that manly-bonding experience going with the entire North East constabulary 20 feet away with tasars & assault rifles aimed at old Moaty's head, but you know, it might have worked.

If you have time, I'd recommend listening to Gazza's Radio Interview here (My favourite bit is his response to the police not allowing him to see Moaty for fears he'd be shot - ""I've just been in a car crash at 90mph. If I can survive that I can survive a bullet").
Poor old Gazza. Truth is, I still love the man despite the fact he's clearly loopy and hard on the booze again. He also allegedly beat his ex-wife up in the past of course, but because the nation views him as such a loveable yet tragic hero, the media tend to write off those sort of incidents merely as evidence of his fall from grace.

Aside from the wife-beating stories, he is the epitome of a great hero fallen from grace though. During the recent World Cup, there was a documentary about Italia '90 where Gazza's tears were the resounding memory of the tournament for every Englishman. The interview with Gazza showed that re-living the evening still affects him now, welling up as he remembers what he didn't realise at the time would be the pinnacle of his all-too short career.

Since those days, when he was still the golden boy of English football, he has become a joke figure. This latest drunk radio interview about his mate Moaty is just the latest in a line of moves that has done nothing but embarrass him and lead him closer to the loony bin. I always find it such a great tragedy when a man of his stature within hearts of the people doesn't have the gravitas he deserves to have. He should be pontificating on Match of The Day, opening hospitals and a figurehead of our World Cup bid. Instead he turns up pissed to a man-hunt with some chicken and a dressing gown.

The real tragedy of this whole side-story to the Raoul Moat manhunt is that actually, if there was any scenario available that might have led to Moaty giving up his gun and taking the prison time, it would have been for Gazza to turn up and have a bit of a fish with him.

He is still a hero for anyone who remembers Italia '90, especially if they happen to be from Newcastle, as Moaty was. Regardless of whether he did actually know him personally or not, even a deranged steroid-crazed killer wouldn't harm 'Daft as a Brush' Paul Gascoigne.

I can't therefore understand why the police didn't take the same view Gazza did and realise Moaty wouldn't have shot him.

Perhaps though, Moaty had simply overstepped the line in being given the benefit of the doubt on this. As Gazza says - "He has killed someone, which isn't very nice really."

Quite true, you daft but loveable man.

RSS-pect

OK, so I'm pretty slow on the uptake with recent spurts in technology. But I should really know my way around the web and it's functionality better than I apparently do.

Like many of my 30-something generation, I can't be expected to be quite so tech-savvy as those in their teens and very early 20's of course, who have had access to modern PCs and the Internet since a young age. The web only really started to be widely available when I was at University, after all.

I remember well my first forays into the Internet & email back in 1997 - The black & green DOS screen for typing out emails, and the little red postbox you had to click on to retrieve your post, such that there was any.. It was a revelation at the time, but of course would seem as clunky and un-user friendly now as loading a game by cassette on a Spectrum 16k would seem to a spotty teen now used to killing heavily-pixeled orcs online in World of Warcraft. Good analogy, that.

Today, I found out what an 'RSS Feed' was for the first time. I'd heard people talk about it quite often. I'd seen the lovely little orange box with the white lines in it on my browser. But I honestly hadn't known what it was for, so I just ignored it and assumed it was some pointless thing only programmers would find useful. But it's actually quite useful.

So if you are similarly ignorant, I can tell you that it stands for Really Simple Syndication and if you click on the orange thingummy on either a web page or on your web browser, it lets you know the next time content has been updated on that website. Of course that's great news for those who wanted to know the next time my blog was updated but got bored returning for 4 months with no new posts. Now, all 8 of you can just wait to be told i've updated it via your RSS Feed update. WOW, CUTTING EDGE!

I'm sure some of you are guffawing that I'm finding such excitement in something so simple and of which there is already widespread knowledge. Well, don't be so quick to get on your high-horse, boffins! We all have areas we are stronger in than others, knowledge-wise. Do you know what the capital of Montenegro is, for example?

Oh, you do. Fair enough. You probably googled it, you techno-geek. Or had it come through on your RSS Feed when they seceded from Serbia. Get you.

My techno-ignorance is all a far cry from being an inquisitive child of the 80's, when computer technology first encroached upon the home. In between mastering Yie Ar Kung Fu* on my Amstrad, I would often dis-assemble VHS players just to see how it all worked, before putting it back together before my Dad found out what I was up to. Technology was a lot more simple back then- you can't do the same with DVD players nowadays. I've tried it - when you take the cover off there is a great big red sign there saying you'll get cancer from radiation if you open up the player any further. Have a look if you don't believe me. Go on.

*I loved the way these old games would just return back to the first level once you'd completed the game. I think on this particular game, I ended up 'lapping' the same levels 6 or 7 times until I got bored.

Let the Good Times Raoul!

For some strange reason, I dropped the blog updates in Mid-February.

I was warned by seasoned blogger Mjohnson that this would probably happen. That I'd be very enthusiastic for a couple of months then drop off the face of the silicon blogway altogether. I laughed in his face -metaphorically at least. I wasn't actually in the same room as him at the time, had I been I would have LITERALLY laughed in his face. As it was just an email conversation, i merely snorted to myself in disgust and replied to his email with something along the lines of "oh no, I'll keep this one up don't you worry."

Well, I should have known better than to tangle with such a webbing sage as he.

As it is, I've disappointed many of my readers with four months of silence. For this, I can only apologise. I'm sure the absence of my blog in this time has left you all more alarmed than a Tyneside policeman hearing the unexpected creaking of footsteps on the other side of a farmhouse wall.

Which brings me back to my favourite ever tweet, discovered yesterday by @LukeHoosTawking in relation to the hunt for mentalist & peculiarly-named North-East cop-killer Raoul Moat:

"Police have just discovered Raoul Moat's camp...I could have told you that, his haircut is pretty gay, tad Jimmy Sommerville/Erasure."

Priceless. What a big old gay he is!!

If you are reading this Raoul - come and have a go if you think you are hard enough*.

Anyway. Here is a blog entry. It's not big and it's not clever. But it's here.

I hope those 8 readers that were reading it in February haven't all gone away. Come back. It's nice. More soon, I promise. xxx



*I know he isn't reading this, you see. He's sleeping under a gooseberry bush somewhere stalking the police. I'm not stupid in actually asking him out for a scrap - the guy is a fucking lunatic. With a gun. And a gay haircut.

An interesting post? Of Gorse It Isn't!

In late December whilst holidaying in Cornwall, I managed to fall over on the coast path and into a gorse patch. It could have been a lot worse, but I did get many thorns from the nasty little plant in my hand.

Yesterday the last one finally worked it's way out of my palm. Amazing that I've spent the best part of two months with foreign, unwelcome bodies in me. I feel like a Bangkok whore.

I found this on an online forum- "My son stood on a sea urchin in Croatia last Summer and only last week did I manage to get the last one out. They were savage needles!!! He also gets alot of gorse thorns in his legs from mountain-biking and I spend many an unpleasant evening removing them from him."

I just thought that was funny at the time.

Edit - I didn't actually just write this. I wrote this back in February but didn't post it, as I thought it was pretty weak material. Well, I now don't have as much material, hence why it's now published.

The Dumbing Down Effect

Not wishing to sound like a moaning old sod but I'll tell you what fucks me off these days....

Consumers being treated like we are all fucking stupid with the dumbing-down of almost every purchase/experience we encounter.

In fairness, a lot of consumers are fucking stupid, hence I suppose the reasoning behind the child-friendly warnings and disclaimers that vendors and public bodies seem to have to put up and the consumer has to sit through, often bending the truth in our answers just to get to the end of the escapade sooner.

This morning, I encountered such mind-numbing stupidity in the form of a grilling from some spotty Trainee Dispenser at a chemist over my purchase of cold & flu tablets. The verbal equivalent of the childproof cap was in the first instance in the form of a question:

"Are these for you or somebody else?"

Well, they were for me as it happens and the coughing, spluttering bunged up person I had just presented them with should have made that clear anyway. Yet had they not been for me, most people, me included would probably have said they were lest we be subject to further questioning for fear we were attempting a Harold Shipman-esque escapade.

Next question was "Have you taken these before?"

Now here I made the grave mistake of not just saying yes. "YES! I have taken these beauties before and I love them and they love me. These tablets are fucking brilliant and I've managed to not kill myself yet Miss Dispenser, so please fucking sell them to me before I die here on your shop floor."

This is what I should have said. What I actually said was "No, but I have taken the other brand which I can see is exactly the same." 

Oh dear. This now unleashed a whole new world of futher questioning designed to see if I was in fact one of the Fucking Stupids or not. Apparently, just in case I was a Fucking Stupid, I was not qualified to read the packet for myself and decide these were the tablets I needed based on the rather thoughtful notes the manufacturers had already put on the packet.

A more senior Dispenser (this one had a different coloured jacket from the rest of the staff) was all of a sudden on the scene and proceeded to ensure I was buying these for the right reasons and was not going to stuff them up my arse or feed them to a Labrador or something.

"Is your cough a dry one?"
"Yes - listen" I coughed dryly in her direction.

"You know you should not exceed the stated dose?"
"Yes, I will use the instructions on the packet to take the recommended dose as I want these tablets to make me better. This is why I'm buying the tablets - to make me better. I'm not buying them to make me die, and if I was I wouldn't tell you anyway."

"Don't take with any other tablets"
"The chance would be a fine thing. I'm having trouble as it is purchasing these fuckers!"

"These are Night & Day Tablets - Make sure to take the Day tablets during the day and...."
"The Night tablets at Breakfast-time?" I finished the sentence for her. Needless to say she corrected me that actually, the Night tablets should be taken at night.

By the time I'd left the shop the cold had got bored and fucked off already.

In fairness, a lot of consumers are fucking stupid. Which is why they feel they have to do this, as it only takes one Fucking Stupid to ruin it for all of us by trying to sue a chemist for a lacerated throat having swallowed the entire blister pack in error.

Am I therefore wrong in thinking that these Fucking Stupids should be left to their own devices to fall off cliffs/overdose/boil themselves alive? Therefore removing themselves from the gene pool and sparing us non-Fucking Stupids the agony of being made to waste our own time?

I don't think so either.


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