March 21, 2007

The Little Geezer

Long Story Old Cheese, Long Story. And one to which I shall endeavour to do justice as the wounds heal and the weeks pass. For the nonce let’s just say that the Fickle Mistress and I have once more parted brass rags and involved in that pantomime were, in no particular order, the Bride of Chucky, a Dementor, Sir Les Patterson’s idiot nephew, and goose stepping hordes who could teach Jim Jones’ mates a thing or two about voluntary consumption of chemicals that make you do things gentlefolk eschew. Needless to say one came out on top and is a better, richer, wiser man for it. One met new members with whom one broke bread and made merry. Decent chaps to a man. Yes there were cannons to the left of a chap and cannons to the right of a chap. But was not it ever thus?

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November 18, 2005

Dad the Builder (Can we fix it?)

Hard though it may be to believe, there are positive aspects to such ghastliness. I am surrounded by a team of eight handsome, 20 year old Kiwi rugby players who exist only to do my bidding without their shirts, I get to wear a tool belt and a sort of Velcro girdle which, though ostensibly designed to save my back from injury in fact gives me the trim stomach of a 20 Yr old Kiwi. I have learned that Mohammed, my labourer, is not only a fully qualified MBA and fantastic cook but also operated a rocket-propelled grenade in the Bulgarian army.

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October 30, 2005

Time Travel and Role Reversal

If time travel had been invented then it could scarcely have done a better job of transporting me back to the headmaster's study. I bowed my head and whimpered something along the lines of 'It wasn't me, Sir'. Cheap Suit looked down on me from behind his bouncers' shoulder pads and spotted My Dearest raising an imperious eyebrow in my general direction.

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July 31, 2005

Moroccan House Boys and White Underthings

Just one thing before I go. I'm all of a-flutter as this very morning a very dear friend of mine (archetypal Yummy-Mummy) sent me a message in advance of my giving it to hordes of the teeming masses to earn my stipend. Along the lines of 'imagine them without their worsteds' it was actually quite specific in it's depiction of standing before a hall full of sixth form ladies sitting cross-legged on the floor wearing short dresses and the whitest of white underthings. A sea of triangles was how she put it. There now I've gone all funny again.

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June 24, 2005

Shed not a Tear

Orwell was wrong. It isn't the 'baby carriage in the hall' that is the enemy of great genius - though God knows that's difficult enough to work round - it's the garden bloody shed. A vile, sagging poison-filled, creosote-stinking sepulchre, yawning at the end of my own bloody garden.

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June 22, 2005

Back in the Jugg Agane

Take this person (gender non-specific) and inflate them to, oh I don't know, shall we say three hundred pounds? (Don't know how much that is in stones, and can't be fagged to work it out, sorry. Actually how many pounds in a stone? Always wondered.) Then squeeze them into a very small aeroplane and, and here's the actual problem (anything else would've been rise above-able), give them a really bad, superior, if-it-wasn't-for-us-you'd-be-speaking-German attitude. Make them xenophobic. Make them patronising. Make them grimace in a look-at-the-monkey way when they hear an accentless voice. Have them ignore the content and stare blankly when English is spoken. Give them lines like 'You! Wan' nu's?' Oh, and tease their hair, make it big, make it 'blonde' in places, load it with napalm-lacquer.

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May 28, 2005

Species of Cowboy

You are imagining, I expect, a scene from 'The Draughtsmans's Contract'. I stand on a low hillock in my commodious estate, with a scroll in one hand and a brass telescope in the other, discussing the placement of haha and grotto with a chap called something like 'Capability'. How wrong you are.

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May 22, 2005

Old Chums and Rental Frippet

My it's been a long fortnight and no mistake. Some might wonder whether you and I have wandered forever into the white light, the one you pray for when you've had seven or eight over the odds and Samson is pulling down the walls of his temple inside your dome. Small wonder though when one half of our union is upping sticks and decamping while t'other is spending a disproportionate amount of time being ministered to by highly skilled LBFMs, thence finding himself in yet farther corners of foreign fields and cet.

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April 09, 2005

An Englishman's Castle

Apologies for the delay in responding but we've been ensnared by the Hydra that is house buying in this benighted country. Not, you understand, the normal process wherein one finds the house one wants, makes an offer pays the money and moves in - no, that would be too civilised. We somehow found ourselves in a sealed-bid auction for an entirely derelict house which we had inspected once, for 20 minutes, by flashlight. This morning they told us we'd won the auction so we now own a recently squatted pile with rats the size of Buicks and no roof. God help us. To give you some idea of the challenge, as I walked around the place with our builder he felt moved to enquire... 'Have you ever seen that movie 'Seven'?

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March 14, 2005

Sausage Rolls and Cultural Disease

Now don't go getting all in a two-and-eight. I yield to no man in my abhorrence and loathing of all things corporate. And if by throwing my limp and fey corpse before a digger I could prevent just one Nan and Gramps tea room from being bulldozed aside to make way for the above bastardcorp then just try holding me back. But I'm afraid it wouldn't make a jot of difference. Except perhaps a touch of class would be imparted to the digger until I got washed off it. What would one wear I wonder? Hang on, that's not the point. I shall wrestle myself firmly back in the direction I'd intended. So,

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March 09, 2005

Penguins and Gills

I live, as you know, in North London. Camden Town, to be precise. A sort of retirement home for left-leaning intellectuals of the last few generations. In many London boroughs you can roam the streets on a Winter's evening and see all manner of vulgar display through people's front windows. Camden is different. It is de rigeur to have a subtly lit floor-to-ceiling bookcase right next to the window, displaying yards of original, orange spined Penguins.

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January 23, 2005

A Life in Boots

When we spoke at the mobile telephone the other day, you were somewhat ribald in your comments vis a vis the boots I had just purchased. I was wounded deeply by your assertion that motorcycle boots should only be worn by 20 year old podium dancers at clubs called 'The Fudge Tunnel' and then only with a white jock-strap and a light basting of oil and sweat. I retired to my study to consider the path my life has taken in re footwear and, by way of mitigation, I now share with you my recollections.

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January 03, 2005

Ho Bloody Ho

Please excuse me if I vent spleen. It's the only thing preventing me releasing a sack of starved rats into the sale department at John Lewis and picking off the fleeing provincials with a sniper rifle.

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January 01, 2005

Virgin Boyscouts and the smearing of pate du canard

First, question who it is that would ask you to such a gathering (perhaps some social pruning is in order?). Second, take a crayon and a flattened cereal box (you may need help from an adult for this) and scrawl upon it the words ‘Yew kno ware yew kan stik yore partie’. Third, have your be-wigged and powdered footman deliver the message on a silver filigreed salver, not because these miscreants deserve such quality attention, but because you are a gentleman and it is the way things are done.

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December 08, 2004

Correct turnout for iSight and matter

We live in such technologically advanced times, do we not? I hear you’ve been having job interviews by video-conference (which frankly sounds like trying to buy your wife via the internet and probably has a similar chance of long term happiness). I too, in my small way, have been experimenting. I have purchased something called an iSight and declare it the Wonder of the Age.

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December 05, 2004

Ascot on Madison Avenue

That's not to say those against whom we stand don't care about the rest of the world of course. Oh no. They care passionately about anywhere that has something they want. When I say they care I mean they care how big an army the place has to defend itself. But before I get all gloomy about this lice ridden cesspool of political crack whores let me mention something they're trying to do to educate the populace about the wider world. Yes that's right. There is something afoot to show the knuckle dragging Southern and Mid-Western Sheet Wearing Cross Burning Republicans what it's like in other countries.

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November 17, 2004

Great Miscarriages of Justice of Our Times

Thinking that Halloween had come rather late on this stretch of 'motorway' I observed the clown step from his car and approach my own. 'Lar since surr,' said the miscreant. 'Good afternoon my good man. And what a splendid one it is too. What?' I rummaged around in the glove box for some chocolates and Gentleman's Relish to put in his 'trick or treat' basket. 'Ahh sid lar since surr,' was the noise with which he replied.

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November 16, 2004

A Room of One's Own and mutton fat

With all set out to perfection I stood in the centre of the room poll-axed by choice. Should I spend my first moments in the contemplation of the bronze head of Hypnos? Should I take my place at the keyboard and give birth to the opening paragraph of some great work. Perhaps I could leaf idly through a first edition or toy with the Leica on the shelf of vintage cameras. There was only one choice when it finally came down to it. Reaching for the knackered, grubby paperback of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, I turned to chapter forty-six.

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November 08, 2004

Abroad and Working it Up

Dear Boy,

When counselling younger chaps I often look to the works of Lord Baden Powell as something of an expert. Relief, as he is reputed to have discovered, can always be found in 'Scouting for Boys'.

“Don’t be disgraced like the young Romans, who lost the Empire of their forefathers by being wishy-washy slackers without any go or patriotism in them”.

There. What more could you ask? More of the woggle-abusing pederast anon.

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November 06, 2004

Politeness, wine and small boys

Now this pal of mine is a bit tasty if you get my drift and one would not be mistaken in supposing he could be a bit lively if given sufficient reason. And the clamper was no shrinking violet either. Much used to having abuse heaped upon him he was the quiet, violent type. A potent mix indeed. So when my pal approached the clamper it looked like fireworks could well have been in the offing.

'Did you put that on my car?' asked my pal in a neutral tone.

'Yeah,' replied the clamper, equally neutral, but clearly sizing up the threat and preparing for a bit of argy bargy.

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