HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Well, Pither's "annus horribilis" is, at last, very nearly round the "Rex Doulton ubendus", bound for the "crappus depositorium".
"Would you swap two of your old 2006s for our new, improved year?" "Yes please, Malcolm. Bring on fresh and fragrant, stain-free and starched 2007."
I am sure Saddam Hussain would agree with me, wherever he is, that 2006, while undoubtedly memorable, has not been the best of years. In fact, speaking as an Englishman, it's right up there with 55AD, 1066, 1914 and 1939. On a more individualistic note, it ranks alongside 1964 (my brother told me Santa didn't exist), 1965 (my first day at school - after which I returned home to be told that I had to go again the next day, and the next, and.....), 1974 (I started smoking), 1979 (the Thatch creature began her reign of terror) and the whole of the '80s!
Still, the beauty of being a complete idiot is that you always think the new year will be better. This time, however, I am SURE it will be. I have plans!!!! (pause for demonic laughter).
Here's to you and yours. We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.
PS. 2006 for Grantham? Ho yuss! I think so.

"I'm Spartacus, and So Are Trevor, Robin and Barry!" - Doh!

Silent, but ultimately deadly.

You didn't think that one through, admit it.

I feel deflated. Not physically, you understand. Indeed, the seemingly endless supply of brussel sprouts, stuffing, chocolates and mince pies has left me feeling and, to some extent, looking like the R101 - for God's sake don't light a fag near me or I could go the same way. No, I feel deflated spiritually.
It is all my own fault. I decided this evening to watch one of my all-time favourite films, featuring one of my all-time historical heroes - Spartacus. I have seen it scores of times but for some reason - probably post-Christmas melancholia - this time I put some real thought into it and analysed the story. Big mistake.
Even though the Hollywood version is a hugely romanticised tale which is less than historically accurate, Spartacus WAS a hero to the slave classes, he stood up against the might of imperial Rome and proved a brilliant general and leader who inspired tremendous loyalty. The most famous scene in the epic is where the vanquished slaves are asked to identify Spartacus in return for their lives. Antoninus - aka Tony Curtis - stands up alongside Spartacus - the great Kirk Douglas - to proclaim that he is the eponymous hero and his selfless action is copied by all the other slaves in turn. They would all rather die than betray their leader.
Then it occurred to me. The surviving slaves are surrounded by thousands of their massacred comrades. If Spartacus was such a bloody bright spark and all round Johnny Good Egg, why didn't he just say to the others "I'll handle this lads" then point to one of the dead slaves and say "Uuurm, ooh, let me think now, oh, yes, that's him over there, the one with his legs missing and the top of his head gone, honest"? That way he and all the other chaps would have escaped being nailed up. What a divot! As it was, the whole lot of them ended up with a date at the ironmongers and a lofty view of the Appian Way.
Later still, Spartacus and Antoninus are the last two slaves waiting to be crucified when they are ordered to fight each other to the death. They do. Maybe it's just me but why didn't Spartacus say "No, won't fight, shan't fight, so there"? What were the Romans going to do to punish them for refusing? They were going to be crucified anyway! As in The Life of Brian, would one of the Romans say to the condemned pair "You're only making it worse for yourself"? The plot has us believing that each wanted to kill the other to save him from the agonies of crucifiction. Well, they'd had a few days together while their mates were being "put up for the night" alongside the road. Why didn't one sneakily bash the other over the head with a half-brick or push him under a passing ox cart some time during their wait if that is how they felt? And another thing. If Spartacus was such a spiffing, honourable cove, why didn't he step forward while his other pals were getting the Spear and Jackson treatment and say "Look guys, enough's enough. Point made. It was a bloody joke. I'm Spartacus. See? My mum sewed my name tag into my toga. Can the lads come down now?"
The shattering of the Spartacus legend is almost as painful to me as the time in my youth when a pal smashed for me the heroic status of Captain Lawrence "Titus" Oates. Oates, who was suffering from terrible frostbite, wandered out from the Scott expedition tent into a blizzard to commit suicide so as not to hold back the others in their attempt to reach safety. His famous last words were "I'm just going outside and may be some time". His act of amazing gallantry was ruined when my pal said: "Do you know what he said just before he told the others he was going outside?" "No," I replied, inviting trouble. My friend's reply? "Who's farted?" Kinda spoils the story, don't you think?
I think finding out your heroes and heroines are men and women of straw after all are revelations for the folk of Grantham.

The Curse of Tutankhamun, the Tyrant and the Toilet.

It's a few minutes before 3am. What the Hell am I doing awake? Well, seeing as you asked, I'll tell you.
I was roused from my sleep about 25 minutes ago by a loud chime and, bleary-eyed, I rolled over to knock off what I thought must have been the alarm clock. Thinking it was time to face the world again I put the wireless on, as is my custom, and was greeted by news on the World Service that Saddam Hussain was to be hanged imminently - in fact, he is probably having his collar size decreased as I write these very words. I then realised it was still the middle of the bloody night but couldn't get back to sleep because I found it spooky that I should have been woken up at the very moment the not-so-Sunni moslem was taking the trapdoor to Hades. It was a bit like Lord Carnarvon's dog howling back in England the moment the illustrious sponsor of the Tutankhamun expedition rolled a seven in Egypt. I don't remember being that close to Saddo. All right, I don't like curds (although I am partial to all other dairy products) or people who are shites but I would never take it to the extremes he did. I never had so much as the odd piss-taking Easter card or a barrel of engine oil on my birthday, so no-one could say we were spiritually as one. I wondered if perhaps mine had been one of the last names on his lips? "Death to the imperialist infidels, all praise to Mohammed, peace be upon him......and tell Reg I won't be at his New Year's Eve bash."
Just as startling was the news that the execution was to be filmed! I bet some money-grabbing git is already rubbing his hands with glee at the thought of a pay day when he gets the footage screened on Animals Do the Most Final Things or Khan-Dead Camera?
My mind then wandered back into the real world and I guessed where the chime which woke me up had come from. It was a message alert on my mobile. My mind still buzzing with the eeriness of the situation I checked the message, expecting to find a news text alert, or something similar, about the execution - it was, in fact, from one of my mutant pals, obviously somewhat tired and emotional, and he had sent a blurred photo of what I assumed was his toilet! At 2.35am!!!
Glad to see my chums are as concerned about the imminent escalation of bloodletting in Iraq following the demise of the dictator, I thought. Then again, maybe it hadn't just been a friend's drunken entry for the Turner Prize? It could have been a warning to me, a metaphorical prophesy. I find life very confusing at times. I decided in the end that I couldn't give a shiite either way.
There is just time to finish this off then go back to bed where I am safe from the world (and it is safe from me).......oh, and Saddam to Grantham, obviously.

To Hill and Back.

I had planned to give cyberlife a rest until 2007 to concentrate instead on the real world - namely Father Christmas, peace on earth and goodwill to all men (sic) - but something forced me to put down my creme de coconut shandy and crawl back to the keyboard - I have been proved right!
Now, first of all, I am rarely, if ever, proved right. Secondly, it is not always the best thing since big bosoms to be proved right. I'm sure the world wasn't overly chuffed when Churchill proved to be right about what he thought were Hitler's travel plans for 1939-45. It wasn't an all round result in the long term for Jesus, healthwise, when he had his suspicions about Judas confirmed. Sometimes, however, being proved right makes life just about worth living.
I have just watched a programme called "Is Benny Hill Still Funny?" I thought it would only be on for a few seconds - time enough for someone to shout to camera "Of course he bloody is. The man was one of our finest ever comics. Now get back to your mince pies!" It went on a bit longer than that but by the end I felt vindicated for watching as I believe it backed up a number of beliefs I have held for some time.
Those beliefs? 1. Thatcher's decade - the 1980s - was truly dreadful, almost everything it produced was awful, superficial, ephemoral, without value, selfish and uncaring and it will take hundreds of years to recover from it, if we ever do.
2. Some things are either funny or they're not and there is no such thing as "alternative comedy".
3. Fashion is for the brain dead.
4. Ben Elton is a cunt (sorry, I hate that word but it is the only one in the English language which adequately describes him).
All that justification from one programme. Not bad.
The idea behind the show was to get together a gaggle of young trendies who claimed never to have heard of Benny Hill and let them see some of the great man's sketches to see if they raised a laugh or two. They did! So much so that the market researchers who conducted the test said the results were sufficiently good that if commissioning editors had put the show before them as a pilot they would have been able to tell them they had a hit on their hands.
The findings proved that the dark days of the '80s were well and truly over and people had come out into the light again. Audiences in the '60s and '70s had roared with laughter at the comedy genius but then came the '80s when the politically correct brigade and the rise of "alternative comedy" forced Thames Television to unceremoniously scrap The Benny Hill Show. It was deemed sexist (because there were flashes of girls' suspenders, knickers and cleavages - Christ, give me strength), racist (because there was a character from China who could not pronounce the letters "n" or "l" etc - and "Wossy" can't pronounce his "r"s. Does that make anyone who laughs at his speech Wossist?) and dated (because people were still laughing at it after 20 years - because it's FUNNY!). The young, mixed sex and mixed colour audience watching tonight's show found BH neither sexist nor racist and the fact that they all laughed out loud surely means they didn't think him dated.
I have nothing against "alternative comedy", as it is dubbed - Eddie Izzard is one of my comedy heroes and I love The Young Ones, Alexi Sayle etc - but it is the bloody label I hate. What IS the alternative to comedy? Depression? Something is either funny or it isn't. I once met a trendy, metroseuxual-type twat at a party who was droning on and on about how "brilliant" The League of Gentleman was. The Jack Hawkins film was "brilliant", I admitted, but the catchphrase black comedy was merely "passable". When I dared to expand the conversation to ask who his early comic heroes were he said: "Oh, I don't find anyone pre-1980 funny." Seriously! He liked The League because it was "trendy" to like it. He no doubt likes Little Britain for the same reason. I should have told him putting a loaded gun to your head and pulling the trigger was all the rage these days. Wanker!
Back to the "Is Benny Hill Still Funny?" programme, we had Ben Elton piping up that he thought Benny Hill was one of our finest comics. You've got to admit, Elton's got some neck! He was among the most vocal in the '80s who decried Benny Hill. Sadly for him, the programme makers screened a sketch he did nastily taking the piss out of Ben and his humour. They also showed an interview in which this little "cunt" actually implied that the traditional closing scene of the Benny Hill Show, in which Benny is chased by scantily clad women, was inciting men to commit rape in parks! Elton made a career out of being right-on, politically to the left and PC. We all know what happened when Lloyd-Webber flashed a fistful of moolah at him? I wouldn't trust Elton to piss accurately into a river from the bank. If he said he was a man I would insist on a DNA test. The nicest thing anyone could ever say about Elton was said by the great Billy Bragg. Referring to Elton's about-turn from left-wing politics and ideals, Billy said: "To be fair, Ben was never really comfortable with it."
Like Elton, however, the right-on fashion ebbed away and people could get back to the real world of enjoying what was funny and not what some wanker had told them was funny.
My colon is now knotted, my eyes are bleeding and the dogs are hiding under the bed, expecting the inevitable explosion, so I must stop.
In short, the whole bloody '80s and everything they spawned can go back to the town which gave birth to them. Good riddance.

Pither, The Pirate and the Traumatic Trim.

I know I'm old. I know I'm confused. I also know that I am an orphan tagging along behind the 21st Century Family - but I've just had my hair cut BY A FUCKING PIRATE!!!! What the Hell is going on?
It was time for the traditional, pre-Christmas Pither haircut but this year a woman friend veered me off course and suggested that I needed "updating" so she booked me into one of those "international, unisex styling salons to the stars".
Now, I'm nothing if not a traditionalist. Since I was a schoolboy I have always had my hair cut at Tommy Dunn's. Tommy's is one of the last proper BARBER'S in the northern hemisphere. You know the kind? There is a red-and-white, swirly pole outside, red and white, curling lino on the hair-strewn floor, flypaper, cracked tiles and a gaggle of sullen blokes waiting their turn while they all read the Racing Post in silence - and, of course, there is Tommy. He is a chronic depressive, he chain smokes and the only words he ever speaks after you sit down are "whaddya want?". Customers down the years have then said things like "a little off the sides, shaved in at the neck and just a light trim on top". Tommy then proceeds to give everyone the same German-helmet-style cut he has been giving since V E Day. The cut takes as long as it takes for the fag in his mouth to burn down to just above the filter. When the ash finally falls to the floor, he has finished. You can spot Tommy's customers in town a mile off. "You've been Dunn, haven't you?" is the familiar greeting.
Well, things have apparently moved on. I went to the "salon" I had been booked into spot on 11am to be greeted by a gorgeous, blonde FFF (fit, filthy and forty-something) dressed up as Santa - complete with beard! I was shown to a seat and offered a glass of sherry and a mince pie (appropriately enough) by a majorly limp-wristed young lad who made Charles Hawtry seem butch. Fuck, it was like being at Larry Grayson's house. Then the bearded FFF came over and dropped two copies of OK Magazine in my lap to while away the time until my "stylist" was free. I can't say the articles appealed to me - "Jordan Exclusive" (What the fuck is that? We've seen everything we can, apart possibly from her hypothalamus), "How Kate Garraway lost three stone" (Probably by taking off her fucking makeup!) and "Inside the mind of the Beckhams" (Christ, that is one small crawl-space).
It was at this time that I noticed something you don't see at Tommy's every day - a gaggle of absolutely gorgeous women "stylists"...........all in fancy dress. There was Batwoman (a total wet dream if ever there was one), a '20s good-time-girl and a harem girl. Then MY scissor sister walked over. Another FFF, absolutely beautiful - dressed as a pirate! It's hard to tell someone how you want your hair cut when all you can concentrate on is trying to make your erection go down! Anyway, by that point I didn't care if I came out looking like fucking Shane McGowan!
To cut (pardon the pun) a long story short, she did what she does best (although, all the time I was hoping it was what she did second best) and I ended up looking like someone who had just stuck a waxed badger on his head.
Tommy charges £4.50. He's always charged £4.50, ever since I was a kid. Like me, he doesn't move with the times. The cost of my 21st Century bouffant? £14.50!!! I assume the extra tenner was for the pleasure of having a pair of pneumatic breasts rammed into my neck and round my ears while the cut was proceeding?
No, sorry. It was all too surreal, all too much. Give me Tom every time - no hard-on, no sherry, no pirates - just "something for the weekend". Let Grantham have the rest.

Let's Get Ready to Rumble!!!

The Life (or is it death?) of Brian - pictured in happier times.

It's that time! It's show time!! He's arrived, or rather I collected him. Meet Brian, the Christmas turkey.
My boy is going to spend a couple of days chillin' out - literally - before he takes centre stage on Monday. Ok, so he's not so big - just 10lbs to be precise - but I am the only one here who will enjoy his oven-bronzed beauty on the big day, owing to a slight hiccup in the marital stakes. Still, it could have been worse. Whereas I got Brian from the Acme Joke butcher's in my village, a pal ordered a turkey from "the posh butcher's" just round the corner. It weighed in at 14lbs - and cost him £60!!!!! For that, I would expect the bastard thing to baste itself, having entertained with card tricks and prepared all the veg! I learnt my lesson at "the posh butcher's" many years ago.
I should have known there was going to be a problem when I walked in and noticed the whole shop was laid with shagpile carpet - seriously!! The 247 assistants all wore pristine, matching uniforms, unlike my guy who staggers out in a blood-stained tunic, with a fag on the go, and clutching a chopper and a chainsaw. Then I heard the sounds of one of the miriad blue-rinse, posh, pensioner types in there - "Two rashers of bacon and a sausage - and have them delivered!!!" Jesus! Not my kind of territory.
Anyway, Brian and I are going to spend a couple of tender nights together - any port in a storm - and then he's stepping up to the oche.
Posh turkeys for Grantham? I don't know - and Brian and I don't care.

Jingle Bells.....................and Teachers and Gordon's and Smirnoff and..

Please read this very quietly - and try not to make a noise with your chair. My head hurts...................LOTS!!!
It was THE Christmas party last night - for the sports desk on one of the paper's I used to work for. Oh....my.....God! When will I ever learn?
By 2am today I could best be described as a sophisticated organic machine for turning booze into urine.
This morning..............LATE THIS MORNING........I awoke with the feeling that something unpleasant had died and begun rotting away inside my mouth. I could actually hear my pupils contracting. Even my hair ached! Then came that oh so familiar, dawning realisation of what had happened the night before. You know how it goes. Pieces of memory start dovetailing together like a cerebral jigsaw puzzle - perhaps those little comments about a former colleague's wife which seemed funny at the time were not quite so amusing after all, why did I have to sing "Ernie, The Fastest Milkman in the West" AGAIN and did I really tell the radical feminist lesbian features editor that she had "big tits for a vegetarian"?. I want to die!
No more to say. Sod Grantham. Just leave me alone.

Things You See When You Haven't Got a Gun.

Pither News International has closed down for Christmas (or rather all PNI's customers have!) and so I have a week off. One day into the hols and I am already scouring Yellow Pages for the services of a hitman!
Who really should be rubbed out? Well, while re-laying some tiles in the kitchen (life on the edge, no net!) I had the TV on as background noise. Then it came on - The Jeremy Kyle Show. Aaarrrrggghhhh!!!!!! To quote Indiana Wants Me by R. Dean Taylor, "If ever a man needed dying, he did."
This type of four-beddings-and-a-fight-for-all show, featuring shellsuited chavs and other assorted pondlife, is lower than Douglas Bader's bollocks. I thought we'd got rid it when that British pioneer of programming pus, Trisha, disappeared up her own voluminous arse and was fucked off. No! It's back, this time in the shape of cockhead Kyle, an opinionated, no-mark, thick, self-obsessed, tosser!(allegedly).
All the same Trisha ingredients are there - trailer trash teenagers, dredged up from the nation's worst sink estates, spewing out their sordid, chav life stories, an audience which just a few hours earlier had been a drunken, vomit-covered queue in a kebab shop and a range of topics for discussion which are only of interest to unicellular pond dwellers. You know the ones? "My granny takes it up the wrong 'un", "You're sister is also your mother", "I slept with Hull Kingston Rovers" and "I may have plastic tits but I still want to be Archbishop of Canterbury". Double aaaarrrrggghhhh!!!!
I managed to switch the box off quickly enough to prevent any permanent damage to my already inadequate brain but I know this porn is still out there and being lapped up by millions. What hope is there for the future? Bleeding little! You can see the regular viewers of this shit all around you. Like the Wayenetta-type out shopping for a Crucifix who was shown a simple, plain cross and was then heard asking the assistant "Ay ya got one with a little man on it?"
Give me strength. Snakes belly, chav TV - get it Granthamed!

Riff RAF.

Camping it up for Christmas. Squadron Leader Pither and "a friend".

"Bunch of monkeys on the ceiling Sir! Grab your egg and fours and let's get the bacon delivered!"
Forgive the banter but I've just returned from Christmas shopping in Little Town, after which I popped in for a dry sherry and met up with one of my mutant chums - to find we were both sporting flying jackets! It looked like a bloody Dambusters reunion and didn't go unnoticed by the tanked-up town smart arses - cries of "chocks away!", "cabbage crates over the Briney" and "bally tenpenny ones dropping in the custard" every time we went to the bar were funny for the first hour but then.........
I say, Wingco, matching Bomber Command outfits only for those johnnies in Grantham - roger and out.

Away From a Manger - And Into Care! (It Could Have Been So Different.)

Just click below.

Indignant Pither and the Lantern of Toons.

I was up and about very early yesterday and, having downed several cups of tea, I slumped into my favourite armchair with eyes like a Japanese sniper's to watch a little TV.
The aim was to catch up on the news overnight and see if it was worth getting dressed or whether Bush had finally hit "the button" and life as we know it was about to end.
What did I get? Wall to wall bloody cartoons! They were everywhere. Now there is nothing wrong with cartoons - Hell, Leonardo Da Vinci drew them but his characters never caught on!! The trouble was.....well....they were all SHITE! (Those on the telly, not Leo's). Cheap, poorly drawn Jap and American imports mostly involving slitty-eyed space kids fighting ludicrous monsters. Humour? It would have been easier to find a pork pie in a synagogue.
No wonder our kids are off the rails! They are being fed shite by the fast food chains and now shite through the box. Hard pressed parents no doubt plonk their little Jakastas and baby Hermans in front of the Devil's Lantern for hours in the mornings so that they can get a few extra hours kip. I understand they need a break but, Jesus, isn't there some other way to keep their little thugs of the future occupied? Peg them out on the washing line? Put them on a treadmill? Teach them how to climb a tree - but not how to get down? Enlist them for national service - abroad? Anything but feed them a diet of this televisual crap.
When I was alive we had REAL cartoons. Heroes with humour. Whatever happened to those days? Obviously, they never did me any harm. Grantham can have the cheapo, galactic wank warriors. Give me a duck falling over everytime.

Now these were REAL heroes!

Every one a winner? Oh, please yourself then.

Top Toons?
	Atom Ant
	Daffy Duck
	Dangermouse and Penfold
	Deputy Dawg
	Dick Dastardly and Mutley
	Droopy
	Mutley (a king alone?)
	Roobarb and Custard
	Rooster Cogburn
	Top Cat
	Wile Coyote
	Yogi Bear
	A. N. Other
Free polls from Pollhost.com

A Prickly Problem.

He ain't heavy, he's my hedgehog (actually, he's very heavy!)


It took hours!


I love animals. I adore animals, of all kinds, except possibly cats (murdering, self-obsessed, feminine-like bastards) but I have kept a few of them in my time - oh, and I'm not keen on ganets - they mess their nests (sorry, creaping off into Python there).
Anyway, Pither Towers is a haven for wildlife of all kinds. I have a pond populated by miriad aquatic life, I spend a fortune feeding the birds all year round, there are more bird boxes in the garden than hovels on a Goven council estate, I have mice nesting in a wood pile at the bottom of the garden, I have moles, I have ducks which come to enjoy the pond, I have dogs, I rescue and foster other dogs for a charity, I have a lobster (long story), I have marine fish, I have tropical fish, I have foxes (lay off them, they're all right), I have bats nesting in boxes provided for them by yours truly, - I even have boxes for bees and hammocks for buttlerflies!
You get the picture. Well, when I first moved into the Boulevard of a Thousand Broken Dreams, one of my first actions was to build a hedgehog box. It took hours. Finely crafted, waterproofed, with a ventilation shaft, a snug little tunnel leading inside and the softest hay you could find for the hibernating little ones. That was five years ago. Since then, have any hedgehogs taken up the offer of free accommodation? Have they 'eck as like! My mutant pals found my efforts and lack of results so amusing that they even bought me a concrete hedgehog to put outside the box to cheer me up.
Well, this year has been particularly stressful for hedgehogs. Apparently, because it has been so warm (ice caps melting, CFCs, we're all doomed I tell you) the little critters have been having three litters and not the usual two. The result is that the young from the final litter are being born so late that they do not have enough food, the light is all wrong, and they are confused and so end up staggering about in a seemingly drunken state. With this crisis, I assumed that they must at last take refuge at Pither Towers. I checked today. Nothing! Not a sausage! Bugger all!
It would appear that they prefer to starve and freeze to death rather than keep me company. This is the story of my life.
I feel rejected. I am off hedgehogs at the moment - ungrateful gits!
From now on, independent, free-roaming, "wherever I hang my hat that's my home" hedgehogs can make their way down to Grantham. Leave me the home-lovers, please.

Noel - and No Sleep!

I have been more than a little tired today. It was the office Christmas party last night. Not mine, you understand. I work for myself and so my festive bash is held in a phone box. No, it was my soon-to-be ex-wife's annual thrash. She went while I, obviously, didn't. Why then am I tired? Let me explain.
I was awoken at 4.05am when the dogs started going crazy, running around and barking. I leapt out of bed, thinking there might be an intruder, and then heard a strange noise. Tap, tap, scratch, tap, scratch, scratch, tap. I went downstairs and discovered the noise was coming from the other side of the front door. I tentatively opened the door to find the remnants of my STB EW, sporting a pair of flashing, red, plastic reindeer antlers, and trying womanfully to get her car key in the front door lock. "Would you pay the taxi?" she said as she stumbled past me. "I'm skint." Great! I went to get cash and then wandered outside in my dressing gown to pay the driver, pausing only briefly to wave cheerily and say "morning!" to my next door neighbour who was squinting out into the darkness through his bedroom curtains to see what all the row was about.
Back inside Pither Towers I dragged myself wearily back up to bed, only to be followed upstairs by STB EW who was slurring on about what she had been up to that evening. "The taxi driver was really interesting," she belched. "He's from Kurdistan." "Couldn't you get a local company?" I asked, hoping it would throw her into confusion and hence silence. "No, no, I mean he was really interesting. You should do a story on him." "Yeah, ok," I said. "'Interesting illegal immigrants I have known.' Do you mind if I start work on it in about eight hours, only it's still the middle of the flipping night here on planet earth?"
I hauled myself back into bed, turned out the light and rolled over, hoping to knock out a few Zs before the alarm went off. No such luck. STB EW had followed me into the bedroom and, in the pitch darkness, continued chuntering on and on. I could hear her disembodied voice but all I could see was a pair of flashing red antlers - a surreal experience. "I've got an idea," I yawned. "Why don't you go downstairs and jot down on a piece of paper all the things you want to tell me and then, when I'm dead, you can toss it in the grave and I'll read it in Hell?" "You never want to talk," she snapped, stumbling out of the bedroom in the darkness, still flashing. "If we were wombats I would willingly listen, dear, but not being nocturnal by nature I'm finding it difficult to concentrate," I said, in an effort to stave off a row.
STB EW proceeded to half fall down the stairs and then put the radio on to listen to the Ashes Test match. Sadly, the more people drink, the more their ears close up and so she had it on at almost full blast! I think I managed another half an hour of kip but then gave in and shambled downstairs, just in time to pass her on the stairs going up to bed. "Night," she slurred.
The last I saw of her was when she stumbled into the bedroom, accidentally slamming the door behind her so that the ceiling wobbled, and within five minutes all I could hear from within was what sounded like a warthog in labour.
I have, consequently, had about two hours' sleep and been up since about 5am. I must write Santa a new note. "Dear S, please can the people of Grantham be subjected to the results of Christmas parties they are not invited to? Love, Reg."

Oi, Branson! No!

Further to my rant last month about Virgin West Coast Mainline, this came my way today (thanks Phil).
I for one shall be printing it off, filling it out and sending it in. They just love feedback, apparently, because us travellers, excreted upon by the company on a daily basis, are "important" to them, much the same as healthy, living tissue is "important" to gangrene.

Gizza Job.

I have been to Big Town today (doffs cloth cap, adjusts gaiters, shuffles straw to other side of mouth). I went for a job interview, well an interview at an agency to be precise - I don't think it went too well.
I didn't really want to sign up with this bunch but I felt compelled to as there is apparently something in the smallprint of my mortgage whereby if I don't bung the building society some money every month they repossess my house.
Anyway, I had arranged to meet a fluffy from the firm's Human Resources department. Do you remember when it used to be "personnel" i.e, appertaining to people, as opposed to "resources" which are there to be used up and then dumped? The interview was scheduled for 11am _ note, pronounced "shedule" and not "skedule" as pronounced by the fluffy and our trans-Atlantic cousins.
I arrived at the company's offices at 10.55am and, after noticing how mega-plush they were (a sure sign that the firm regarded buildings as "a good investment" and employees as "a drain on profits"), I was shown into the interview room bang on 11am. Sadly, the HR fluffy didn't show until 11.15am. Well, after all, that's understandable. I had had to travel 16 miles for the meeting but she had had to walk from her office next door. There were bound to be roadworks in the corridor! Below, to the best of my recollection, is a transcript of the salient parts of the encounter:
Fluffy: Good morning!
Reg: Evening (ouch!).
Fluffy: So, what skills do you possess?
Reg: I'm a journalist! Would you ask a coat hanger what its main skill was?
Fluffy: Urm, well, what would you say your strong points were?
Reg: I find things out and then write about them. Oh, and I've got good teeth.
Fluffy: Oh, right, but what skills do you possess in particular?
Reg: I can read and write a bit - urm, and, oh, yes, and type and do shorthand. Oh, and I do a passable Tony Blair impression.
Fluffy. What impact did you have on your last employer?
Reg: I never hit him once. I swore a few times and threatened to make him wear his arse for a hat but there were no actual fisticuffs.
Fluffy: No, I mean what IMPACT did you have?
Reg: Well, to the best of my knowledge, they're still in business. I'm not sure that they've scaled the heights of the FTSE since, though.
Fluffy: Let's put it this way, if you hadn't been there what would the difference have been in the end product?
Reg: There would have been blank spaces in the paper?
Fluffy: Moving on, what is your immediate goal?
Reg: To wake up in the morning.
Fluffy: No, I mean career-wise?
Reg: To wake up in the morning, win the Lottery and then pay some fuckwit to do my job.
Fluffy: What kinds of employers would you be willing to work for?
Reg: Ones that pay me.
Fluffy: No, well, urm, put it this way, what kinds of employers wouldn't you want to work for?
Reg: The Nazis?
Fluffy: Do you have a degree certificate?
Reg: Yes.
Fluffy: What in?
Reg: My briefcase.
Fluffy: No, no, I meant.......never mind. Can I see it?
Reg: Yes.
Fluffy: Well?
Reg: It's by my foot. The black, leather thing with the handle.
Fluffy: No, I meant the certificate.
Reg: Oh.
Fluffy: What salary would you be expecting?
Reg: As much as I could cream out of them.
Fluffy: Are you prepared to relocate?
Reg: No, this chair is fine, thanks.
Fluffy: You're not taking this seriously, are you?
Reg: You started it.
Fluffy: I mean, let's say, are you married?
Reg: Hell, that's a bit sudden. Let's get the interview out of the way first.
Fluffy: It's just that if you're single it is easier to relocate.
Reg: Well, as it happens, I'm separated - but I still don't want to sit over there.
Fluffy: I think we've covered everything for now.
Reg: Michelangelo said that when he'd got the primer down on the ceiling of the Cistine Chapel.
Fluffy: You really aren't interested in joining us, are you? Is there anything you want to ask me?
Reg: Oh God, loads. None of it to do with work. In the meantime, have you actually got any jobs for me here at all (would she know Python's cheese shop sketch?).
Fluffy. Not at the moment.
Reg: (She might just know it.) You haven't? Well when then?
Fluffy: Well, I'm on holiday after today. Some time in the New Year?
Reg: (Too much to expect she would have known it. Better leave the "then I'm afraid I'm going to have to shoot you" reply). Certainly put my mind at rest on one or two things there.
Fluffy: Ciao. Miss you already.
Reg: Fuck off.

She said she would ring me soon. I said I thought she might just be lying!
Human resources! Urgh! Get rid of them. Off to Grantham you go.

Staying In - The New Going Out (and Lying In The Middle of The Road).

It's not often I post twice in a day, let alone three times, but............Jesus H Christ!!! Can you get your mind round this?
Tense, nervous headache? Then why not have a quiet night in and unwind in front of the telly? I'll tell you why. Below, for those of us without Murdoch World Domination TV Inc, is a sample of things on the Devil's Lantern this evening (with one notable exception, I quote verbatim from the TV listings):

* Channel 5, 11pm - Killer Instinct: A bride proudly walks down the aisle but before she is able to complete her vows she explodes.

* BBC 2, 10pm - Coupling: Steve has recurring nightmares about being pursued by an axe-wielding foetus.

* BBC 1, 7pm - Super Vets: Nadia the camel undergoes a biopsy while parrot Cocky is given a risky anaesthetic to remove her cataracts.

* Channel 4, 10pm - Film: Secretary; A shy and lonely woman who often self-harms is released from a psychiatric hospital and returns to her home town where she takes a job as a secretary. But she soon embarks on a sadomasochistic relationship with her domineering boss.

* ITV, 7-11pm - Programmes for the mentally disadvantaged.

You couldn't fucking make this stuff up! Get it all Granthamed.

Love Me Do.

I am in love - there's the rub.
You see, every time in my life I have tip-toed down Love Lane it has always ended in tears. The reasons can be categorised thus:
1. The women I loved had staples in their navels and turned out not to be real (adolescent phase).
2. The targets of my affection didn't love me.
3. I met the targets of my affection on the internet and they turned out to be hairy dockers from Merseyside.
4. The targets of my affection were eventually worn down by my persistence but realised, after some years, that I was an arse and they turned lesbian/ran off to join the Foreign Legion/hid in the attic until I went away.
Well, my latest love interest is.................someone off the telly! Sounds as though there's a future in it, eh? She is Claudia Winkleman, daughter of the pneumatically breasted newspaper big cheese Eve Pollard.
Thing is, I don't think young Claudia is likey to be passing Pither Towers in the near future and I have, to date, received no letters or phone calls from her inviting me to ruin her for other men.
I therefore need help so here goes:

How Can I Make Claudia Winkleman Fall Passionately In Love With Me?
	Send her a photo of my knob?
	Send her a photo of someone who has a big knob?
	Compliment her on the size of her mum's huge tits and offer to buy her a boob job to match?
	Stand outside her house for a month dribbling?
	Become Prime Minister and pass a law ordering her to fall in love with me?
	Ask my friend Bill to chat her up and then tell her he has a mate who is an international lovehorse?
	Ask my mate Bill to chat her up and tell her that in addition to his international lovehorse mate he also knows me?
	Send her passionate, tender and romantic letters, along with a cheque for £3.4 million if she will go out with me?
	Have a complete face and body transplant and then hang around her house looking nonchelant?
	Walk up to her in one of the Chelsea winebars she no doubt frequents, tap her on the shoulder and say "get yer coat, you've pulled"?
Free polls from Pollhost.com

..............then again, I think I might just forget about her. Unrequited love can go to Grantham.

Spies, Damned Spies and an Accident Statistic.

Captain's log: Stardate; Thursday, December 14, 2006. The place; London, England, on the planet earth - Lord Stevens delivers his "long awaited" final report on the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in a car crash in Paris in 1997. Verdict? It was an accident (Well, fuck me! That's a bit of a surprise).
Meanwhile, on the same stardate but from Loonytown, Lalaland, on the planet My-Brother-is-in-This-Matchbox-You-Know, somewhere in the distant galaxy of The-Straps-Are-a-Bit-Tight-Nurse, Mohammed Al Fayed, speaks out. Al Fayed, whose son Dodi was porking the late princess and who also rolled a seven in the smash, is not a happy Egyptian bunny.
The diminutive and cerebrally challenged shopkeeper set about telling us on Radio 4, via an increasingly frustrated and irate Jim Naughty, how the whole thing was a cover up, how only he knew what actually happened and that he knew Di better than anyone else.
Who's to blame then, Mo? Name the guilty party. We'll have them taken out and driven home by one of your pill-popping, pissed up drivers. Mo duly delivered - it was all arranged by MI6, he dribbled. They wanted Di whacked because she was thinking of marrying a moslem.
No wonder Al Fayed can't get a fucking British passport! He would fail a basic Britishness test because, unlike the rest of us, he doesn't know that MI6 couldn't organise a fucking Bukake in a sperm bank! The only competent operatives in MI6 are Russian spies who haven't been found out yet because they have cunningly changed their names to blend in, eg. Uri Igor Jenkinson and Andrei Mihilovich Postlethwaite. None of them speaks English and so they wouldn't have understood orders from above had any been given. The only way our fuckwit "intelligence" service could have been involved was if an order had been handed down to "take that Merc out and get it valeted for me, would you?"
Sorry Mo, baby, you're barking up the wrong palm tree there. You fucked up. Accept it. What do you get if you cross Paris with Henry Paul? About half way.
Anyway, time for you to go to Grantham now, there's a good loony. There's a nice, padded room waiting for you.

Laugh? I Thought We'd Never Start.

So, now we know. Little Britain is the funniest programme in the world, ever.
I have just watched the British Comedy Awards. I was brought up with comedy. It is a subject dear to my heart. When you have a mother who announced to you and your sibling in your formative years "Well my lads, you've cooked your goose so you can lie on it!" you have no choice but to welcome comedy into your heart. This comedy inspiration also once told me "He's dead! That Elvis Priestley is dead!". Can you top that? Possibly. How about "How ridiculous is this, son? 'Automatic duck'!!" "No, mum, it says 'aromatic duck'."
Was this greying, comedy icon in the running for funniest thing on the planet ever? Was she 'eck as like. Instead, we get Little Britain coming out on top - catchphrase comedy take-247. Oh please! What next? Ian Paisley becomes Pope? Heather Mills wins arse-kicking contest? Buddha new heavyweight boxing champion?
Give me a break. Please, let Grantham have Little Britain. It IS Little Britain, after all. Just leave the rest of us with the also-rans - like Eddie Izzard, Peter Kay, Partridge etc.

Tabloid Tales.

I have been, to say the least, somewhat under the weather lately - hence the absence of posts - but musings on my profession have generated sufficient adrenalin to drag me back into the real world.
Two news stories have broken nationwide in the last few days, both of which have left me bracing myself for what is to come here in the good old UK of A in the newspapers (and hence on the TV news as all the camera-loving fluffies do is read out the papers on air anyway).
Christmas is normally a completely dead time in newspapers so hacks are asked to write about absolutely anything NOW (what they did on their summer holidays, my granny's recipe for seedcake etc) and stockpile it. These bits of crap are stored centrally, usually in computer baskets called "Christmas Specials", "Festive Extras" or something similar, and then dribbled out a bit at a time over the Christmas period to fill what would otherwise be gaping holes because nothing is happening.
Well, Father Newsmas has dropped two big stories in the hacks' laps over the last few days to keep them happy over the festive period, and beyond.
The first, and you will forgive me if I find little or no humour in it, is that a psychopath is going around the Ipswich area murdering women - three confirmed victims to date and two more suspected. It is the predictability of the coverage of these awful events which leaves me wanting to bite my own foot off. The Press has already achieved its primary goal which is to dismiss the poor victims - "Well, they'me just prozzies, ain't they?". That done, they are now free to concentrate on the nutter himself and give him (I am obviously making an assumption here) the infamy and lofty standing in the annals of criminology he so desperately craves instead of dismissing him as a fuckwit, inadequate, pathetic, no-mark, evil, little cunt. There is just one element missing from the coverage to date which both the hacks and the murderer need, in fact insist on. Got it yet? Yes, a cliched nickname for the bastard! I am not even going to suggest the sort of names I bet you are already being considered - it is too sick - but just you wait. A nickname will come, it has to.
The second news item to keep the presses rolling comes in two parts. Part one is that the final report into the death of Di (you know, O-Level in shopping, bad choice in men, worse choice in taxi drivers) is due out tomorrow. That should make interesting reading. How on earth did she die? Well, having established the fact that she got driven home in the dead of night at 200 mph by a driver who was pissed out of his mind, I would have thought the final chapter was pretty easy to write! The second part of the seemingly never ending Di story is that next year is the tenth anniversary of her death and the little princes are organising a concert to mark the event. Fuck! Pages and pages and pages and pages AGAIN devoted to "England's Rose", to "Did She Hump so Was She Hushed?" and to "The Day the Muesli Died". That is bad enough but there is even worse to come. It is rumoured that Elton John, despite having previously vowed not to, will again play his tribute to Di - "Candle in My Arse", or whatever it's called. Oh my dear God! Save us. Didn't the woman suffer enough. It can't be our turn again already, can it?
All this was appearing in the papers at a time when I spotted two paragraphs - yes, just two pars! - in a tabloid which said that a British soldier had been killed in fighting with Taliban militia in Afghanistan. Remember Afghanistan? The place the Yanks and us invaded but where everything is hunky dory now because the Taliban was defeated and it's not a fuck-up like Iraq?
Can't Grantham's news pages be stuffed with Di "news" and leave us with coverage of the important stuff.
FOOTNOTE: A MERE TWO DAYS AFTER THIS WAS POSTED HER MAJESTY'S PRESS DUBBED THE IPSWICH NUTJOB "THE SUFFOLK STRANGLER".

Reggie, The Pooh and The Miserable Day.

Dear Diary,
Awoke 6am, trudged barefoot to bathroom, straight through pile of steaming dog pooh, AGAIN! Good start. Showered to rejoin human race, shambled downstairs to find more excrement in hall. Dogs been staging overnight dirty protest, apparently. Strong words, Henry in Naughty Corner. Must buy canine colonic corks or some such similar.
Looked out of kitchen window - rain, grey skies, rain and rain. Plan for mind-calming gardening day gone same way as gathered up dog shit.
Decided to attempt to sort out finances once and for all. Sat with calculator for two hours, surrounded by pieces of official, headed paper strewn about lounge, most in red. Either calculator bust or heading for financial meltdown. Funny, seem to be working - just no money coming in. People obviously think I am charity a la Financial Fuckwits-R-Us. Memo to self: "Must write strongly worded letters - or get the boys in".
Soon-to-be ex-wife momentarily lifted glood by announcing discovery of odd saucepan lid to fit lidless stock pot. Hurrah! Deep joy! Result! Not all bad news, then?
Copped an earful of Archers omnibus. Failed to get mind round plot whereby Ruth DOESN'T have affair with cowhand Sam to get back at David for NOT having affair with Sophie. Rest of prog taken up by chat in Borchester gay club and talk of ladyboys! World HAS gone mad - official. Haven't heard farm animal mentioned let alone making noise on fucking show since don't know when. Beam me up.
Back to world of work. Bashed out handful of applications and business-touting pleas. Must generate more moolah. Funny, remember being told while PAYE that too young for promotion. Also recall later announcement that too old for promotion. Don't know when just right for promotion - must have been on holiday.
Took dogs for walk on Green to lighten mood. Got piss-wet-through, all dogs caked in mud, me left like Martin Sheen emerging from swamp in Apocalypse Now. Hour spent hosing down and drying animals. Second shower of day. Fresh togs.
Decided to prepare dinner for later. Only tins in cupboard, labels off most. Daren't risk it. Shoot off to nearby Nazimarket to buy steak as treat. Grinning, spotty, fat bird at checkout delights in shouting to rest of queue that card rejected. Fuck! Much-Embarrassment-in-the-Marsh. Have to use meagre few pennies in pocket was saving for pub.
Back home, tap up STB EW for ten quid loan. Tell her it for present for her mother. Note handed over but don't think believed - STB EW knows polonium body spray costs more.
Load up washing machine then walk to pub in persistent rain - why Gene Kelly felt overwhelming urge to dance when so soaked dye coming off pants onto gonads beats me!
Meet mutant chums and pass two hours discussing topics of import such as who has longest nipple hair and what car you would drive if you were the Dalai Lama.
Back through heavier rain to Pither Towers - pants now completely bleached but knob blue. Interesting effect. Should break the ice at Christmas parties.
Unload washing machine. Discover all formerly white shirts now match gonads. Shit! Rogue blue, wooly sock among sodden mass is culprit. Mood quickly back to colour of newly dyed gonads and shirts.
Decided new-look knob not great social asset after all so third shower of day. Feel like Howard Hughes, only without bank balance. Memo to self: "Must cut nails".
Feed fish. Feed lobster (drunken investment through man in pub). Feed dogs, let them out to evacuate bowels in open air by way of change. Forget still tipping it down. Dogs piss-wet through again! Once more to the towels, dear friends, once more.
Cook dinner and nosh while listening to Leonard Cohen on CD - STB EW's choice. Fuck, I thought I was depressed!! Must invite Len round some time and compare notes.
One hour spent dozing on settee a la snake under rock after devouring calf.
Closed curtains and blinds - cruel, cruel world then definitively shut outside. Checked TV schedules in hope that Devil's Lantern would carry me away mentally to far better place. Some fucking hope! Two hours of Sports Personality of the Year!! This being screened in country where national football, cricket and rugby teams couldn't beat scratch Paralympics cub scouts sides.
Equally appalling shite on other channels. STB EW began enthralling and loud phone conversation with poisonous best friend. Decided to abandon lounge when "I know, they're all the same" conversation reared ugly head. Sought solace in company of best friend - booze fridge. Sanctuary! World much better viewed through bottom of glass.
Sneaked upstairs to study with haul of booze, like lion hauling gazelle carcass up tree to get peace.
Wine now going down well. As Tommy Cooper said, "Best diet I know - already lost three days!" Also forgotten where I am and name.
Play on computer while quoffing, chatting to cyber friends who may all be gay blokes, chimpanzees or homicidal maniacs for all I know. Wine fails to deaden overall atmosphere of gloom, however. Am reminded of Scott and pointless, fuckwitted attempt to race Norwegian to freezing place where no-one else wanted to go or was interested in. Penultimate diary entry was to effect: "It seems a pity but I do not think I can write more. God, this is an awful place." My sentiments exactly.
Henceforth, all days such as today shall only ever be experienced by one group of people. As Scott almost said at very end: "For God's sake, look after our people - except those in Grantham, obviously. Splitters!"
STOP PRESS: Just learnt evil, psycopathic, mass-murdering former Chilean (pronounced Chill-eyann by Moira Stuart) dictator Pinochet has died. Hurrah! Still cheated justice, though. Name one person in this country who entertained him to tea as a friend of the nation. You got it.They should have gone together - in my sights.

HAPPY DAYS.

Black, black, black!!! Believe it or not, this entire pictorial rant ran through my mind today as I was digging the garden, a supposedly relaxing way to spend the afternoon. I had to dig over the veg patch, compost it and then firmly tread it all in. "Tramp the earth down", I thought. Oh God! Cheers, Declan.

Bushblackers.

Only one of you is being truly upfront about this.


I'm a simple man with simple tastes so I may have got this all wrong.
I've just seen the vacuous Andie McDowell on TV advertising L'Oriel Something Or Other and gushing on and on about how it allegedly colours over grey hair.
The verbal vomiting ends with her saying that the product not only apparently gives better coverage of hair but also copes with "those wirey little ones".
She doesn't mean what I think she means, does she? Dear God! Lordy, lordy Christ's kittens!! If she does mean "those" hairs, why doesn't she just say it outright? "Go on girls, give your minge a makeover with L'Oriel's new Camel Toe Toner". Besides, to the best of my knowledge most women have gone bald or almost bald in the front bottom department over the last few years and so perhaps Andie could make more cash selling "Intimate French Polish", "Snatch Shine", "Buff-a-Chuff" or something similar.
No, it's all too ridiculous and vain to contemplate. I'm sorry, but pandering to pubic paranoia goes to Grantham.

"D" is for Dog, Domesticity, Dumping - and Dunce.

Heavy is the head that wears the canine crown. Well, someone had to pay.
I returned from a job yesterday to find yet another steaming pile of doo-doos in the house, this time in the hall. It wasn't me - a simple case of non-presence. It wasn't my soon-to-be ex-spouse either - same defence. A quick glance round my four dogs after they had greeted me and I was met, from each in turn, by the canine equivalent of looking away and whistling.
I now have a set routine for dealing with this increasing problem. Henry, the leader of the pack, is shown the error of someone's ways by five minutes in the Naughty Corner. Once his sin-binning is over and my back is turned I leave him to "sort things out" with the others - he is quite good at kicking ass when it is needed.
Quite how this has any bearing on Grantham I'm not sure. I was bored. I panicked. Sue me.

A Pearl in the Ocean of Piss-Poor Pubs.

What a Relief for Drinkers AND Dogs - a Lava-tree.

My pub - for even if I don't actually own it I have spent enough in there to buy the place five times over - is a brilliant pub! It is what a pub should be.
The secret of its brilliance lies just as much in what it doesn't have as in what it does. For instance, when you walk through the front door, no-one looking like an extra from Rainbow accosts you, grinning inanely, and asks "Have you been to a Harvester before?" There are no plastic plants, no pseudo-trendy, shite prints on the walls, no collections of jumble sale books no-one would ever want to read on the shelves and no rows of hideous ornaments or brass bedpans. No-one behind the bar wears a uniform, is unable to pull a pint properly or insists on asking at the end "Is there anything else I can get for you?" (Yeah, out of my face!)
My pub serves food but there are no 3ft-high boards plastered around the place telling you how to order and then listing exactly what will happen after you have done so - the customers have clambered sufficiently high enough up the evolutionary ladder to understand the complexities of "Can I have some food?", "Yeah, we'll bring it to you." Once you've ordered, you don't have to put a little, numbered model of Lord Mountbatten or the battle of Kursk on your table so the staff will remember what you are waiting for. No-one says "enjoy" or "have a nice day" once the comestibles have been dished out.
There is no 287-yard-long bar staffed by the other kind of barman prevalent in today's suppers - a lone, adenoidal youth who refuses to serve and who spends all his time trying to chat up some hideous, bloated, young, acne-riddled tart squeezed into an outfit too tight for Barbie.
There is also a complete absence of a "ballpool" full of screaming kids, all throwing up over each other and running around with rubber tomohawks.
Finally, it is not called "O'Flaherty's", "The Didgerydoo", "Pseudo Sam's Saloon" or any other such purile fucking name with the brainless theme carried on inside in an effort to make it stand out - from the 23.5 million other brainless "themed" pubs around the country.
What "my" pub does have, however, is great, fucking beer! Guest ales which are changed regularly, a gaffer (No Surrender Gav) who knows how to let the beer settle before serving it up, who knows how to clean the pipes out and then flush them through afterwards and who, together with his lovely missus, Jaki, cooks lovely grub on the premises, spurning the mass-produced, microwaveable, portion-controlled muck available everywhere else and given ridiculous menu write-ups involving words like "lovingly", "piquancy" and "hint".
There are lots of little rooms and snaking passages between them, there is live music at least once a week, a beer garden, a covered, benched area outside for us smokers when the ban comes in and one of the finest jukeboxes in the Western world - the music is piped into just two rooms so that if you are not in the mood you can enjoy a chat or some peace and quiet everywhere else.
You can take your dogs into the covered, smokers' den. Hell, there is even a tree growing out of the middle of the gents' to cater for them! There is certainly no notice on the bog wall proclaiming that "these facilities were last inspected at 12.08pm by Darren" (who did indeed look at them - but couldn't be arsed to clean up the sick, mop up that sea of urine or collect the used johnnies floating in it!)
What is the end result of all this? Loads of people use the pub, people of all ages. There are no scraps, no exhibitions of vomiting - just a great atmosphere provided by great people.
When the four-minute warning sounds you'll find me in there. Grantham can have all the chain boozers. If you find yourself in one of them on that final day though, be warned. It'll take more than three and a half minutes to get past either the "Have you been to a Harvester before?" bollocks or the "Fuck off, I'm talking to my bitch" routine. Not much time for a sup to bid farewell to Thatcher's Britain.

Potty Training - The Awful "Truth".

I have long been an opponent of not only the teachings of Sigmund Freud but also of the whole bollocks which is psychoanalysis. My views were strengthened last night by a documentary entitled "Inside the Mind of Hitler", or something of that ilk.
The core of the piece was that the CIA, in 1943, asked a group of leading Yank pyschologists to draw up a psychological profile of Hitler with a view to predicting what he might do in the years which followed.
The boffins (don't you just love that word) concluded that Herr Hitler's challenging views on the world and what he should do with it had been formed by two major events in his childhood, a la Freudian theory. Firstly, he and his siblings had been beaten black and blue by his alcoholic and sexually abusive father and so he had developed an Oedipus Complex with an unnatural fondness for his mother. All right, I can run with that one. Feelings of being emasculated leading him to, shall we say, over-compensate in the testosterone department. The second major early trauma, according to these "experts", was a failing in one of the five key developmental stages in childhood allegedly identified by Freud. Where did it go wrong? Yes, you've guessed it, potty training!
It's so easy once it's explained to you. Why did a fuckwit, nonentity corporal with northern Europe's silliest moustache develop into a monster who would annihilate 6 million Jews, gipsies, mentally and physically disadvantaged people and non-Aryans and attempt to conquer the world, spreading as he did a completely fucked up view of Darwinism? Of course, because he hadn't been potty trained!!!!!
Psychologists? Yeah, astrologists have more street cred - and they're all wankers, we can all see that.I'm Afreud you can all go to Grantham.

Don't Worry, Be Happy........and Join Exit.

I have been blue (emotionally, not colour-wise, although that can't be far off) over the last few days for one reason or another, but quite what I've got to be down about beats me. I'm approaching 40 from the wrong side, going bald, I'm overweight, smoking myself to death, drinking too much, heading for a divorce and I have an overdraft only £2.47p short of Bolivia's. On the plus side, however, I ..................
Anyway, I decided to take a trip into the village to take a look at all the Christmas decorations to lift my spirits. I'm a big fan of Christmas (not the religion bit, just the mindless commercialism and re-runs of The Great Escape) and so the twinkly wonderland did the trick and I soon started to push thoughts of my meaningless existence to the back of what is left of my mind. So cheered was I by the festive atmosphere that I decided to treat myself to a dinner out so I went for cash to the building society, the one financial institution which doesn't have a large poster of me on the wall.
I walked in, straight up to the counter, and the young lass at the till took one look at me and said: "Do you have life assurance or a pension?" Thanks. Thanks a fucking bunch! I expected her to follow that up with "I don't know why you bother getting up in the mornings?" or "Don't go out and buy any LPs, will you?". Jesus, it's now got to the stage where I not only scare myself, I scare other people!
Confused and aged as I am, I suddenly forgot what I had gone in for, turned dejectedly on my heel and headed out, back towards the personal grief-hole which is Pither Towers.
My mind being fuelled by sarcasm as it is, a tune entered my head as I trudged home and I couldn't stop humming it. It was that classic ode to people who haven't got a fucking clue about what's going on around them - "Don't Worry, Be Happy" by Bobby McFerrin.
Don't worry! Be happy!! Are you fucking real? The only way to achieve that is to have a full-frontal lobotomy and walk around doped off your tits, and I can't afford either. Mind you, a few people I have worked for seem to manage it.
No, Bobby, sorry mateypops, it's Grantham for you. Just walk around singing your little ditty and see how long it is before the townsfolk do a Mussolini on you.

The Hell He Is! (Staying Out of Grantham).

Just watched the Green Berets on earth telly and been reminded of one of the finest comedy performances ever by, its alleged star, "Big John" Wayne. What a twat!
I never knew "The Good Ol' U S of A" had actually fucked off the North Vietnamese and won the "Vietnam War", let alone done it entirely thanks to the efforts of Big John, alias The Duke. This 6ft+ lump of glycogen had apparently been deemed the man for the job, despite having been rejected as unfit for military service in the US Army - Jesus, that is one Hell of an achievement - and who was later branded a draft-dodger by some of his countrymen.
Wayne was a neo-Nazi arsehole - Discuss? Right, discussion over - with the acting ability of a lump of red, white and blue clay. In his later years he attempted, through the medium of film, to put right so much that his beloved, awful homeland had fucked up but his efforts were thwarted because, sadly for him, people with brains were left in those countries his colleagues tried to a infiltrate, overtake, destroy or brainwash. He was what people in the hushed circles of film criticism would refer to as "a complete and utter wanker".
I could write more but he's just not worth it. Get off your horse - and walk with it into Grantham, you git! P.S. You lost that one Duke, get over it.

The Road to Grantham Piers! (I'll Even Drive You There).

"Piers Morgan - Why?" That should be an A-Level question for the country's millions of soon-to-be A*-graded sixth-formers, along with those other toughies they have to face such as "spell your name in block capitals".
I have just read a feature written by the former Mirror editor. Ok, I'll get my confession out of the way first. The article was in the Daily Mail. I know, I know, but it was the only thing to read in the greasy spoon where I was wolfing down a cholesterol special. I satisfied my conscience by knowing I had not paid for the Nazi rag and that I shall, at a later date, scrub my eyeballs and cut off my hands to remove all trace of it. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, Piers Morgan's stunning article. It was all about his in-depth knowledge of youthful, popular music combo Take That and its rise, fall and rise again (it is apparently topping the gramophone charts, minus original member Robert Williams).
The banner headline was words to the effect of "Why Robbie Hates Me (and Why the Feeling's Mutual)" - despite saying specifically in the piece that he did NOT hate "Robbie". Morgan claimed to have made Take That famous by plugging the band in his then showbusiness column in The Sun. He then droned on and on about how Robbie Williams is basically a shit and the other members are angels. Now, don't get me wrong, I know little or nothing about Mr Williams and the other coves. They matter to me about as much as a badger's fart in the woods. I'm sure they're good to their mothers (by not going home), wash behind their ears and just want world peace. It's Morgan who makes me want to upchuck in my shorts!
This tit is former editor of the supposedly pro-Labour Mirror and he writes for an ultra-right-wing toilet tabloid. Under his editorship, the Mirror constantly sniped at and looked down its nose at The Sun (pots and kettles?) and yet that was where he used to work and where he got his name known. He was sacked from the Mirror for abject fuckwittedness and yet still has the nerve to tout himself around like a media whore.
He describes a Robbie Williams autobiography in the article as "unrelenting narcissism" - that's kinda what autobiographies are, isn't it? Besides, for Morgan to accuse anyone of narcissism is a bit rich. This git is totally obsessed with himself and insists that we all have to hear his views on anything and everything. How many times does he appear on telly spouting off about one thing or another? Who cares what he fucking thinks, if he even does?
Oh, the point of his bloody feature? Yes, the books he wrote about Take That in the early days are being reissued so he wants to plug them. Is there anything this bloke won't do? In short, no! I talk as one who knows - I bought his granny.
His morals are, to say the least, somewhat questionable, his ego is sickeningly gigantic, he has no grasp of irony and he has a poncey name. Urgh!
It's time for The End of The Piers Show, I think. The sooner he heads off, the better.

Home Loving Dogs.

Yes, You Know Who You Are!

I took my dogs for their customary walk today. There are four of them. It is a bit of a struggle doing this alone - like being in charge of a dog sledge only without the opportunity to hop on the back of the sledge when the pulling outpaces the man supposedly at the reins.
We walked from my house to the village green and spent an hour running madly (well, they did) off the lead, 75 per cent of them defacating at every available opportunity and then looking back in wry amusement as dad had to scoop up the evacuations in bags. We then trekked back to Pither Towers and crowded into the kitchen for the usual post-walkies de-brief, dog treats and gallons of water.
Tilly, the smallest and most obstinate of the crew, disappeared during the big handout. It was unlike her to spurn some meaty chewchunks so I went looking for her. Phew! Found her! In my bedroom - where she had emptied the contents of her bowels on the carpet!! Not such much as a fart while walking on the Green. The little mare had been saving it up until she got back. "Thank God for that", she must have been thinking, "I thought we'd never get home. I was dying for a crap."
I hereby order that all of Grantham's dogs shall never again foul in the great outdoors but shall, instead, show their lavatorial love for their owners by dumping indoors.