Narcolepsy

I always thought narcolepsy was a skin disease contracted by people who continually got angry at things - like me. I therefore always thought I had it! Well, it turns out, I really do have it!
I returned to the wordface today after a year bumming around and am more tired than a tired thing which has just won an international snooziness competition in Zzzland. I shall, therefore, be taking yet another break from blogging until my body-clock adjusts and I get used to the 3-hour round trip which I face with work each day and the relatively long hours involved.
I wanted to write more and send things to Grantham but I Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

An Infinite Number of Monkeys But Just One Dog

I have a habit of shortening everyone's name. It is lazy and sometimes annoying but nicknames and minimised monikers make ME feel more comfortable and, I think, put other people at ease through perceived warmth. My favourite nickname of all time was bestowed on a great pal of mine. We call him "Fatal". He instantly took to it. He said it gave him an air of danger, of strength and hidden menace. One fateful day he asked in the pub: "Which incident was it exactly which prompted you all to call me Fatal?" He was less than pleased with the reply. "It wasn't an incident, Fatal. It is because your name is Alan and you are fat!"
My mutant chums have numerous nicknames for me. My male pattern baldness prompted the classic tag "Cadfael" (still one of my favourites). My tendency towards corpulence landed me with "Big Boy" - a name which brings admiring glances from females who instantly put two and two together and make five. The third nickname which comes to mind is "Doolittle". That is not because I am less than hyperactive but because of my obsession with rescuing, patting and seeking out animals. Well, this morning I truly lived up to the title.................I communicated with, if not actually spoke to, an animal!!!!
I know no-one is going to believe this but I swear on all that is important to me that what follows is entirely true.
Being still tired and emotional after the excesses of the last few days, I decided to treat myself to a lie-in while catching up on the news and doing a bit of blogging. Henry, the three-legged leader of the pack round at Pither Towers, had obviously missed his old dad while he was away getting a job and getting drunk and so he was desperate for a cuddle while I was getting ready to post. He clambered INTO bed alongside me and, as I was mulling over things to write about, he reached across me and hit the keyboard with his front paw. He then looked at me knowingly, gave me a kiss and hit the keyboard again. The results were six lines of seeming gibberish, including things such as "AAAAAAAAAABTA" and "/GT3GoIg3GcnY/". You get the general idea?
I decided it was worthy of a post and so originally wrote this piece, including the gibberish, asking if anyone had any ideas what Hen was on about. Well, I wrote the piece and duly hit "publish" and the gobbledigook was transformed on the blog into the following:

o}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

I swear the above is exactly what Hen's writing turned into when decoded! Now, I don't know about anyone else, but I find that scary - very, very scary. Purely a coincidence? Well, why then has an image of something a dog no doubt thinks and dreams about all the time appeared? "Imagine a land beyond space and time......doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo." Grantham shall not have Henry - it is the Twilight Zone for him.
P.S. Admittedly, the bit with the "O" and the "}s" at the top doesn't make any sense to me. It might just be the most poignant and informative message of all. If anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them.

Goodbye, And Thanks For All The Fish

The other, other legacy.

Is it is just me or can anyone else detect the faintest whiff of desperation in the air around Downing Street as our perma-grinned leader prepares to finally name the day and ride off into the political sunset?
Blair, that offspring of Thatcher and the cloven hoofed one, has only gone and had a 24-page dossier drawn up detailing what he claims are the triumphs of his administration - in other words, his legacy (it's Iraq, Tone). It's a right-riveting-read, it has to be said, although it does make Alice in Wonderland seem like a wholly factual travelogue.
Apparently, no-one now waits more than six months for treatment on the National Health Service. Could that be, I wonder, because legions of would-be patients die in the queues having contracted MRSA, a bug which is rampant in our hospitals since Blair's mentor decided to flog off cleaning services to private outfits which came in with astonishingly low tenders as each one only had total overheads amounting to two illegal immigrant workers, a bottle of Dettol and a Jaycloth? (No, the legacy is Iraq, Tone).
He also claims 2.5 million more people are in work since he came to power. No, what he should have said was that 2.5 million fewer people now show up on the unemployment statistics because, for instance, to qualify for disabled living allowance or incapacity benefit these days you have show that your head is missing. (It's Iraq, Tone).
He further alleges that crime is down 35 per cent. Jesus Christ! Don't these people have windows? If they do I suggest they open them one fucking day and take a look outside. We've turned into a lawless nation which makes Columbia look like The Maldives. (Sorry, Tone, but it IS Iraq).
As for having to hand round a report to fellow Labour (sorry, New Labour) MPs which sets out what you would like everyone to think about you, isn't that just a touch desperate, not to mention narcissistic? I mean, imagine you are at a party and it comes time to go. Your taxi is waiting outside. Would you, in all honesty, hand round a report to fellow revellers on your way out which said that you had been witty all evening, charming, entertaining and the life and soul? Aren't you just supposed to DO things, not CLAIM YOU HAVE DONE THEM?
Soz, Tony Baby, it IS Iraq. Your biggest achievement as you head off to coin it in on the lecture circuit in America will be to have helped further destabilise the Middle East, something none of the rest of thought was humanly possible. Saddam Hussain murdered thousands of innocent Iraqis and Kurds so you and Dubbya said he had to go. You came up with the interesting solution of creating a situation which has seen countless thousands more slaughtered - and it ain't over yet! God knows if it ever WILL end. You and your fuckwit buddy also managed to completely emasculate the United Nations by choosing to ignore some of its decisions while twisting others to justify YOUR war. You just wouldn't bloody listen to what the rest of us were telling you, then you lied, then you blamed others, then you tried to change the subject while innocents were (and still are) massacred for your arrogance. As for handing round a dossier to party-goers telling them how fab you have been, you have in fact smashed up the record player, buggered the family dog, urinated in the drinks cabinet and broken the toilet!
Once again, sorry Tone, it's Iraq. Live with it - God knows, the rest of us have got to. Now off you go to Grantham, there's a good pillock.

Making (Friends With) a Buck

It is 1.15am and if it wasn't for the fact that I registered excruciating pain stubbing my toe as I got out of bed I would assume I was dead! I ought to be, God knows.
A mere eight hours ago I came to the end of a two-day bender to mark my return to a payroll after a year spent freelancing and frittering away my redundancy payout. The end of this marathon session was marked when I fell into bed and drifted off into to some sort of coma at teatime and, having regained consciousness now, I feel as though I have been run over by a truck! Still, it had to be done.
My new job is in Big Town-East, 35 miles and a gruelling 90-minute motorway drive away from Pither Towers and it was in the leafy outskirts of that place where I toasted my return to gainful employment.
I have been out playing, and staying, with two very special chums and their fantastic kids who invite me over from time to time, in between spending time in rehab.
I left them lying in the rubble of what was once their beautiful home, having drunk every drop of wine they had. I imagine they are only just coming to terms with the full horror of the fact that, now I am working about two miles away from them, I shall be calling round more often.
Anyway, I am posting for two reasons. Firstly, I might, possibly, owe the woman who interviewed me for, and gave me, the job (i.e. Jakasta/Angel Moonchild/Felicity/Dawnblossomhoneybunkins/Shiona) a teeny-weeny bit of an apology. She was not, as I had predicted, a fuckwit-dumbass but, clearly, a woman of incredible good taste and perception.
Secondly, I want the world to know that I have a new friend and confidante. His name is Ollie and over the last two days I have chatted in depth to him in the early hours after my chums waved the white flag and went to bed. I owe him a great deal.


Meet Ollie.

Wankers, Wankers Everywhere and Not a Sop Who Thinks!

I am going for yet another interview tomorrow and I am already riled, before I even walk through the door.
I am a reporter with 22 years' experience working on daily newspapers and I am going for a journalisty-type job - so who is interviewing me? Some advertising-type bint!! You know the sort? This one is called Shiona and she has, as they invariably do, landed the job of "Communications Manager". That fits the pattern. Others of that ilk are called Jakasta, Fiona-Louise, Moonchild-Grace, Sunny-Flower-Pants or Heather-Morningsunshine-Daddy-Won-The-Derby. Recognise them?
There are two things which nark me about this interview. Firstly, as I said, they want a journo sort. How the fuck, then, can the best journo be judged by some half-brained, advertising fluffy who knits her own yogurt, grows her own denim and continually chirrups out lines like "Miss you already", "Ciao", "Let's do lunch" and "Ok sweetie"? Fuck off and die, NOW!!! I want to be quizzed by some grizzled thing who reeks of stale tobacco and alcohol and who has betting slips sticking out of his or her jacket pocket. Someone who slyly slurps at a half-bottle of vodka in a brown paper bag during our chat. Someone who says "Fancy a livener? The Duck and Gynaecologist is just round the corner."
The soon-to-be ex-Mrs Pither has berated me for my attitude. She says "It is life", "That is the way things are" and, most annoyingly, "You have to learn to jump through hoops for these people". Bollocks, I say! I never did "hoop-jumping" when I was alive and I'm buggered if I'm going to start now. Besides, my proverbial cranial legs won't take it at my age.
My argument is, imagine you are running a specialist, cardiac hospital and you want to recruit a heart surgeon - would come in handy, don't you reckon? Dr Christian Barnard duly turns up to be quizzed for the post. Do you send one of the plumbers and electricians knocking about the joint or that woman from the canteen to interview him? I don't fucking think so!! What the Billy Bollocks would they know about what constitutes excellent open-heart surgery? Why, then, send some money-obsessed, vacuous, shoe-buying devotee who thinks The Apprentice is a really good programme and to whom breaking a nail is a catastrophe to rival Krakatoa to interview someone whose lifeblood is finding stories and writing them?
I know, I know, I know. I am not alone. This has happened to greater men than me. I imgagine Mr M Buonarroti was a tadd miffed when he put himself forward for the job of giving the Cistine Chapel a lick of paint, only to find Pope Julius II was doing the interview! "What was the last fucking thing you painted, you God-bothering sonofabitch?", I can imagine he asked.
Secondly (yes, I am keeping count), they apparently want me to write a press release as part of the interview so that they can see if they approve of my style. Double fuck off!!! I have been in the business for a long time - do they honestly think I don't know how to do it? Also, who is going to judge whether it is "good" enough? Jakasta? Shioana? What the fuck do they know about it? Also, who fucking cares if they approve - the releases are not for them! They are for newspapers and the broadcast media. They, in turn, want something their readers/viewers/listeners can understand. If Shiona and her mob like the releases and the media do not they it is pointless writing them. God, this shite makes me so angry!!
Would you ask interviewee Dr Barnard to perform open-heart surgery in the interview room on some hapless passer-by? Would you not assume that he knew how to do it? Would you even criticise him afterward saying "I don't like your style. You could have put prettier stitches in and I would have worn a trendier surgical gown?"

My eyes are bleeding again. I need to lie down. I have a feeling this interview might not go very well - I just have a habit of telling people what I think. Never mind. In the meantime, fuckwit, waste-of-time interviews with no-mark, talentless, arse-licking fluffies can go to Grantham.

In Which Pither Returns

I am back off my jollies - what a week! Too much to drone on about here but the highlight was undoubtedly two purchases I made - sturgeons! Life in the fast lane, no net!
Yes, the caviar factory is about to swing into production. Hurrah! I have also topped up my bile ducts and am ready to spew forth - but later.
In the meantime, for those even remotely interested, it was Jim Davidson who readers voted should be tossed out of the lifeboat (see "In Which Pither Has a Bloggiday" at the foot of this page). A fine choice, I have to say. Comforting as well to know that the Thatcher-loving, ultra-right-wing, pigshit-thick, sexist, racist cockney git only beat Steve Cornell, a tosser I used to work with, by two votes. Maybe next time - the sea SHALL have him eventually.

I have named him Doug. His oppo is, of course, Dinsdale.

Cometh The Hour, Cometh The Flan Recipe

This is not, repeat NOT, a sexist rant (again) nor, I'm afraid, very amusing. It is just an honest, in-depth critique of something which is as British as toasted teacakes and mugging old ladies in the street......bloody Woman's Hour!
Woman's Hour is a Radio 4 institution (remember what Groucho Marx said about marriage as an institution?) which trumpets its raison d'etre as to "celebrate, inform and entertain women". What it in truth does, in my warped opinion, is to make Alan Partridge's "Fact of The Day" slot on Radio Norwich seem enthralling by comparison.
Are there seriously more than a handful of women out there who either listen to this bollocks or find it remotely relevant, let alone entertaining? No girlies of my acquaintance are hungry to learn "100 Things To Do With tapioca" (when there is, in fact, only ONE thing to do with tapioca - refuse to eat it!). I never hear them say "there was a fascinating item on Woman's Hour today about how vaginal yeast can be used to cultivate your own yogurt". Not once has my soon-to-be ex-wife regaled me over dinner with "the experiences of a woman's life as Ted Rogers' former school dinner lady". No, my STB would no doubt tune in to items on "things you have to tell your partner at 2 in the morning when you're bladdered" and "how to remove vomit stains from a pair of Evans Outsize dungarees" but the vagaries of "using trimmed pubic hair to knit a fashionable sweater" are just not her cup of ethanol.
My point is......isn't Woman's Hour just a tad anachronistic, not to mention sexist? Doesn't it belong to an age where all women were supposed to be, and invariably were, pinafored and at home, cooking, ironing and washing for their brood while hubby went out to be the bread-winner, a la Katy Boyle in those God-awful Bisto adverts of my youth? Women were supposed to be always on the lookout for new recipes to delight their families and as they were confined to the house all day they wanted to listen to trivia about other people's lives so as to be transported elsewhere via the radio. Men were too busy "bringing a living wage into the family" to listen to the wireless and so the programme was deliberately uni-gendered.

To that end, every episode is STILL punctuated with an appalling "short story" which is invariably some romantic fiction drivel or a tale about "a woman being a woman as opposed to a man in a man's world which is run by men and not by women". Oh perleeaase!
I'm sure there are women around who still live like Katy Boyle, but not bloody many and hardly enough to justify their own hour-long slot on a national radio channel every day.
No, for the rest of us, times have changed a bit. Everyone lucky enough to find a job is out working themselves into the ground. They come home in dribs and drabs, all knackered, they often eat at different times and then something quick so that they can then quaff some booze to blot out the tiredness while collapsing in front of the Devil's Lantern for a few hours before crawling up to bed to do it all again the next day. A bleak view, I know, but not that far off the mark for many.
As to Woman's Hour being sexist, well, IT IS!! There is no Man's Hour (thank fuck!). If there was, no doubt the boys and girls at Radio 4 would cram it with items on "how to tie trout flies", "pipe cleaning" and "choosing slippers with care".
The only value I can see in Woman's Hour is the unintentionally comedic. Take, for instance, the lead item on the programme's website today. It is an item about some bird musician and continues.......

"One of the world's most distinguished organists, Jennifer has been called an 'esteemed wizard of the organ'..."

Even I would have tuned in to hear that but, I fear, I would have been somewhat disappointed.
No, with apologies to the blue-rinse brigade in the Home Counties and the like, Woman's Hour can go to Grantham.

Tarzan - The Awful Truth

The world's most typecast actor is celebrating his 75th birthday today - Cheetah, the chimp.
Let's face it, you could hardly say the boy ever stretched himself professionally! He played himself in all those Tarzan films and then, when no doubt his agent advised him to break out in search of a meatier role, he took the part of another chimpanzee in Doctor Doolittle. No Lear at The National for the hairy guy.
Still, people of my age grew up with Cheetah - well, not literally. I mean, in my case, my brother has some strange habits but he can just about walk upright and he doesn't like bananas. No, I mean Cheetah and his chum Tarzan were an intrinsic part
of my youth. I was of the "Ron Ely as Tarzan" generation which no doubt spoiled things for me a little as Ronald and his thick American accent were, without doubt, T W...........THE WORST!!
Him aside, I remember I still had misgivings about Tarzan when I was a kid. I have always had an inquiring mind and there were several things about the ape man which just didn't add up to me. Admittedly, I never read Edgar Rice Burroughs so I could only go by what I saw on screen, but how come he didn't have a beard? In fact, in Ron Ely's case, how come he appeared to have no bodily hair whatsoever? Are you telling me that the chimps he grew up with taught him to shave? If so, who taught them and why didn't they shave themselves?
Secondly, how come he wore a loincloth? Again, he grew up with a load of hairy-arsed, simian siblings and I don't recall ever seeing any of them, Cheetah included, walking around in pants. If they permanently had their knobs out then surely he would have followed suit? Were we meant to think that at some stage in their youth the other apes had turned to Tarzan and said: "Put it away lad. You'll have somebody's eye out with that. Look, I found this C&A catalogue in the bushes. Be a mate and run yourself up a pair of those undies"?
Thirdly, what exactly had he got against lions? Every time some passive looking lion
strolled by nonchalantly in the distance, minding its own business, he had to run over, grab its mane and start wrestling it. The lion always looked really reluctant to get involved and I always imagined it thinking to itself: "Of fuck! Here we go again. Go on, then. Get it over with."
He was equally anti-social with crocodiles. He always had to swim over to
them, wrap his arms and legs around their suspiciously rubbery bodies, and then roll over and over, stabbing them intermittently.
The elephants worried me as well. They were Tarzan's biggest mates and if ever
things were looking a bit dodgy he'd give out that gut-wrenching yodel and they would arrive on the scene in seconds. Where the fuck from? They live on the plains in Africa! Was there some sort of elephant shuttle service which bussed them into the jungle at the drop of a hat? It then got more confusing. When they got to Tarzan's side, guess what? They were fucking Indian elephants!! Assuming they hadn't taken the considerably longer land route between the two continents, we were supposed to believe that they had made it to their nearest port, queued up to get on a ferry, crossed the Indian Ocean and then made their way across Africa to hook up with the Big T. They would have had to go like fucking rockets!
Talking of that trademark, jungle yodel, what was that all about anyway? He would invariably climb half-way up a tree and let out that distinctive "YAAAAR, DLARDLE, AAH, ALAARDLE, AAAAH!" and then what would happen? In one episode the elephants would start packing up and heading off to the ferry port, in another a lion would come running and in another the monkeys would start building him a box girder bridge or something. Same fucking yell each time, mind. How could one guttural bellow constitute entirely different fucking languages to 30 different animals?
Still on the subject of that yodel, we were also supposed to believe that in the 30 years he spent with just the chimps in the jungle that was all he had managed to come up with yet the moment Jane showed up and gave him a couple of basic English lessons he was talking like an Oxford professor of fine art after about a week!
Then we get onto the tricky subject of sex. This bloke had spent his entire life without a woman and then Jane wanders into the woods in just a micro-bikini affair. I'm amazed we ever saw her in any of the episodes! Human nature being what it is, when we did see her she should been teetering about, bandy-legged, or flat on her back, exhausted, in that 15-bedroom, luxury treehouse Tarzan had knocked up.
No, it all confused me as a kid. Cheetah didn't do me any harm and so I wish him a very chimpy birthday but Tarzan can go to Grantham.

You Gotta Be Fast and You Gotta Be Good!

My self-assessment tax return arrived this morning - sadly, I was a little slow off the mark getting to it.
No sooner had the postman started pushing it through the letter box than Padfoot, my alsatian, leapt up to grab hold of the said form and then "process" it in his unique way. He's not quite as thick as I thought, after all.
The upshot is that I am really looking forward to walking into my local tax office with the remnants of the form I will have been able to complete and then watching the staff scatter when I tell them that, for the remaining pieces of information requested, they will have to consult my advisor.....................

A Propo Nothing

"Oh yes, Mrs Thugbearer, young Wayne's chemistry practicals always attract lots of attention,"

Two reports were published today, each of which made me laugh and cry in turns. They have no link, other than they both reaffirm my belief that the world has gone mad, this country and its leaders in particular.
The first was produced by those hilarious boys and girls at the Department for Education (aka The Department For A Mad Max Society. Postal address: Loonytown, Away-With-The-Fairieshire, La La Land). It says that disruptive kids in schools should be rewarded five times more than they are punished and recommends a system of prizes (including iPods, would you believe?) and special privileges which it is claimed will help improve behaviour in class. The authors tell us that parents are "tired" of receiving letters about their offspring's disruptive antics and so one of the rewards should, instead, be "good news postcards" from the school.
How will they read, exactly?
"Dear Mrs Thugbearer,
"I am delighted to report that Wayne's aim is improving day by day.
"During double English he managed to hit Mr Cruickshank in the testicles from 100 yards across the playground with a bolt from the crossbow you helpfully bought him for Christmas and his morning spent sniping on top of the science block during biology practical was a real triumph.
"He is really mastering his birthday present rifle and only two members of staff escaped alive or uninjured during his four-hour target practice, up until the police armed response unit arrived. He even managed to get arts and crafts mistress Miss Blackshaw with a pearler, right between the eyes - that from 75 yards and a strong crosswind. Well done.
"His performance was all the more remarkable because the sights were later found to be defective but I am pleased to inform you that the problem is soon to be resolved as Wayne has promised to release metalwork teacher Mr Arbuthnot unharmed once he has adjusted the settings and so the hostage negotiators will be able to pack up early for the day. This is typical of Wayne - he is always thinking of other people, particularly the lads from the SAS whom he has got to know quite well this term.
"Yours Currently-Manacled-To-A-Device-Wayne-Made-In-Chemistry,
"The Headmaster. XXXX
"P.S. I enclose the keys to Wayne's new beachfront home in Malibu, as promised, following his plucky and well executed napalm attack on the school herb garden."

So, you reward bad behaviour, do you? All that stuff about operant conditioning was bollocks, was it? If old bloody Burrhus Skinner had rewarded his rats for pressing the wrong button he would still be sitting in his fucking lab now, 70 years on, waiting for them to hit the one which played The Star Spangled Banner! As for parents being "tired" of receiving letters about their spawn's bad behaviour, here's a suggestion - either teach them to behave at home, you degenerate wankers, or fucking live with it!

The second report was somewhat more serious but it was so black I just had to laugh, in despair if nothing else.
It detailed the findings of a survey carried out among women in Iraq by the charity Oxfam. One of the questions asked was what women most wanted help with to improve their lives and, having a seriously twisted mind, I just couldn't help picturing the whole thing as a Les Dennis-hosted, Family Fortunes-style quiz.

LD: "So, Mrs Mujahadine, we asked 100 Iraqi women what they most wanted help with to improve their lives and you said......"make-up". Is it up there?....Uh uuuurgh!
"Mrs Peace-Be-Upon-Him, your guess was....."house rebuilding and bullet hole repairs". Our survey said....Uh uuuurgh!
"Mrs Lost-Seven-Relatives-This-Week-Alone, you thought it might be....."the restoration of gas and electricity supplies". Our survey said.....Uh uuuurgh!
"Finally, Mrs Haven't-Been-Out-Of-My-Bullet-Riddled-Home-In-A-Month, you plumped for....."the establishment of an adequate security service and the restoration of law and order". Is it up there? This could be your chance to go on for Big Money........Uh uuuuurgh!
"Hard luck, girls. No, I'm sorry, our top answer among the 100 women surveyed was.............."help removing the dead bodies from the streets!"
Seriously! That was what the women wanted most!! You couldn't make it up. To say that things are a little bad over in Iraq is like saying black is the in-colour for devout Moslem women this year. Jesus, Bush and Blair wanted to overthrow a tyrant and let the Iraqis walk free in the sunlit uplands of prosperity and democracy and after all this time they haven't even been able to clear away the fucking corpses piled up in the streets!
I'm sorry, but trendy educationalists can go to Grantham and, even though the fuckwit brothers have already been sent there, I shall free Bush and Blair, only to return them immediately.

In Which Pither Astounds the Scientific World

I am dead excited - excited and proud. I firmly believe that the, until now, washed up HMS Pither is about to refloat and set sail for the Ocean of Wealth, Fame and Intellectual Respectability. You see, I think I have discovered a new sub-species.
I am jotting all this down in a letter to the Royal Society, obviously, but in brief I stumbled across my discovery quite by accident today in my local newsagent's. I had just bought a paper and a pack of fags and, as I turned to head out, there it was, craning its head up to stare at the international art magazines on the top shelf. I say "it" for the sake of scientific accuracy as the actual sex will only be revealed under laboratory conditions (a job for which I shall NOT be putting myself forward ).
I immediately recognised the basic distinguishing features which put this creature somewhat loosely in the infraorder "simian" and I would even go so far as to say I believe it to be closely related to the sub-species "Yoof". It did, however, have enough hitherto unseen characteristics to, I am sure, make it unique.



Lucy
This strange animal stood upright, apart from a slight stoop and roundness of the shoulders, and so is obviously post-Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis). It had also made rudimentary attempts to wear clothing, although I firmly believe it to be a largely nocturnal creature as it had obviously got dressed in the dark.

It wore a large pair of boots but, unlike higher apes, it had left all the laces undone, trailing along behind it, and the tongue of each boot, instead of being tucked inside, was pulled out and projecting forward. This would indicate that it has prehensile toes as there is no other way it could keep its boots on.

It also sported what I can only describe as "a pair of jeans" but they had obviously previously belonged to someone or something about three feet taller than this animal and about 140 lbs heavier. The legs were wrinkled with numerous folds leading down to the boot appendage and - here is one of the most striking features of this creature - its arse appeared to consist of about 28 buttocks and be somewhere behind its knees. The complete shift in this normal positioning of the crotch and backside led to the waistband being perched somewhat loosely less than one centimetre above the pubis. This gave a view from behind of about three inches of the crack of what I can only assume was yet another arse, only this time in the usual simian position.
There was an instantly recogniseable T-shirt affair covering the chest, pointing to obvious "Yoof" links, and this black material carried a legend in which the only words I could make out were "Metal" and "Death".

The head of this animal was the most fascinating part of the whole. There was perfectly straight, incredibly greasy, brown hair hanging down to shoulder length where it had been cut off in a perfectly straight line. This "mop-like" display even covered the facial area but occasionally parted, curtain-like, when the animal moved - which was seldom.
The brief glimpse of the face which I did catch revealed emotionless eyes, some kind of sparse, pubic hair growth around the chin and on the top lip, and skin covered in red pustules.
The precise origins of speech in homo sapiens are unclear but my discovery obviously pre-dated that landmark in our evolution because when I greeted it with a cheery "Morning!" it looked totally startled and then uttered a guttural "Gnaaah!"
I left the shop, my mind racing, just as the animal exchanged some coins for two Mars bars, a Cadbury's Dairy Milk, some Cadbury's Chocolate Buttons and some crisps. I'm not sure what it had been doing during the night but it certainly appeared to have had "the munchies" when I came across it.

"So that's the chocolate and the crisps, is it Sir?"
"Gnaah!"
I am, as I said, busy writing a paper about my find for the Royal Society and, as the glory of the naming belongs to the discoverer, I have decided to call it Shambolicus Grunt Anglopithercus.
Grantham shall not have him/her/it - far too precious - but future similar finds can go so as to keep my creature unique.

Bangers Sans Le Bang!

Linda, love, didn't you ever think he was trying to tell you something?

And on the third day he rose again from his bed and.......went to a barbecue.
Doesn't quite have the same impact or ring about it, I know, but that IS what I did yesterday. We chewed the fat - literally! - until the sun went down and I drank an awful lot of wine!
I had gone armed with food and booze having trawled the town to find a decent shop but ending up at the place I had feared all along would be the only one open on Easter Sunday. It was an Indian corner shop near where the party was being hosted. I say Indian, and not Asian, because the owner once nailed his colours firmly to the mast when a friend went in and got chatting about the length of time it was taking to build some flats opposite and the mess that was being made. "That's fucking Pakis for you," said the genial Indian proprietor.
His wine cellar is not expansive, to say the least, and so I ended up with two, two-litre bottles of Valpolicella! Hell, if you can't drink it you can always put it on your chips - class! His barbecue food selection was equally paltry. Cow-related products were not much in evidence, as I had anticipated, but he didn't seem to be overly keen on things porcine either. Consequently, I ended up with two packs of Linda McCartney vegetarian sausages!
I have made grander entrances to parties, I have to admit. I put my Valpolicella on the worktop in the kitchen - so everyone could share, you understand - and people immediately began reaching for the booze they had brought and clinging onto it tightly. Outside the chat flowed as freely as the wine and I actually started to get a taste for the red de-icer I had bought.
I was too much of a gentleman to start trying to help myself to the salmon, burgers, kebabs, steaks, chops and sausages everyone else had brought so I finally summoned up the courage to whip out my Linda's and toss them on the griddle. Bloody Nora! Have you ever tried to cook one of those things? They were over the sodding flames for about an hour but still looked dodgy. Christ knows what is in them? I'm sure that saving the lives of pigs is worthy and all that but packing your product with asbestos and fire-retardant mattresses is hardly an acceptable alternative. I name those products with care because, when the barbecue had eventually burnt itself out and my Linda's were still on there, I decided enough was enough and I would eat them. They taste absolutely awful! How the fuck Paul ever managed to survive, let alone pen anything of note, while she was feeding him and the kids that muck is beyond me.
Anyway, I was medivacced out of the party at about 11pm and am still recovering today. My head feels a tad thick and my stomach keeps wanting to auto-eject its contents. Henceforth, the delights of Valpolicella and Linda McCartney's food shall only be enjoyed by the people of Grantham.

Thatcher's Children?

"Will Sir be requiring another schooner of lager?"

I am chavved out! If I encounter one of these handfuls of pond sediment today I'm gunna get me a gun!
I went for what I had hoped would be a quiet beer yesterday lunchtime, when I could sit in the sunshine, read my book and enjoy a couple of pints. Just me, you understand - no-one else, not even my imaginary friend. Me and me alone.
I had not been there 10 minutes when there was the sound of roaring engines and gravel being shot-blasted around. Onto the car park screeched an array of appallingly "pimped-up" cars and out them poured the end of my hopes of a little relaxation and deep thought - a bloody chav wedding party!
On being excreted from their wankermobiles, they proceeded to shout and scream and laugh uproariously at things as comedic as a crisp bag on the ground and a sign on the pub door detailing the opening hours before disappearing inside. Peace, I thought? Some hope! They then came back outside, replete with their order of 15 pints of Stella Artois - Wife Beater, as it is known colloquially - and proceeded to drape themselves across tables near me. What is it with these tossers? I realise the acts of walking upright and chewing gum simultaneously are difficult for them but you thought they would have been able to master the design complexities of chairs and what they are for!


"Bride or groom, Sir?"

I don't know whether or not you know this but chavs abandon their normal Burberry bollocks for a completely new look when they attempt to dress up for a wedding. All the blokes were dressed the same - as gangsters. Not hip-hop, in-the-hood, smack-my-bitch-up gangsters, no, but real, 1930s, Chicago-style gangsters, with black suits, black shirts, luminescent, wide, white silk ties and white-flashed brogues. Each one, of course, proudly displayed his badge of office - a bling neckchain worn outside the shirt.
The girlies with them were, let's just say, a big disappointment. I find women at weddings (and, somewhat perversely, at funerals!) absolutely filthy! Sexy hats (just a kink of mine), billowy dresses or tight, naughty-secretary suits, high heels and just a hint of classy jewellery. Mmmmm. This lot were like extras from Tenko! To say they hadn't made much of an effort would be a slight understatement. It was all jeans, T-shirts, belt-skirts, bomber jackets and, again, bling.
This used condom of chavs (not sure of the correct collective noun) then proceeded to shout, swear, belch and chase each other for about an hour until I could stand it no more, waved the white flag and retreated to the solitude of my back garden to seek solace.
I bucked up as the afternoon wore on and then in the evening went out for dinner with my soon-to-be ex-wife. We went to what was, the last time I dined there, a decent gastro pub within walking distance of Pither Towers. The place had, however, changed since my last visit. It was chips with everything! Oh dear. Still, the current Mrs P and I managed to find something we liked and, with a nice bottle of red, began to enjoy our meal. Then it started. Football chanting from the bar area of the pub around the corner from the restaurant. I went to check out the racket on the pretext of going to the loo and there they were again - chavs on Stella! Jesus H Christ, these bastards are everywhere these days! The chanting, beer spilling and chasing continued throughout our meal and no-one even attempted to tell these bacilli to shut up, let alone fuck off out of the bar.
We trudged home eventually, with slight indigestion having eaten up as quickly as we could, and retired to Pither Towers, locking, bolting, chaining and steel-bracing the front door behind us. Who will rid us of these turbulent beasts?
Chavs can most definitely go to Grantham.
NOTE: On a point of minor interest, if anyone knows the derivation of the word "chav" would they pop themselves on a postcard and let me know? I'm told it's from the Romany word "chavi", meaning "a child" but that doesn't sound right.

The Boat Race? - You're Having a Giraffe!

Sorry, but there's more to come........ This afternoon I witnessed one of the most farcical sporting and televisual events it has ever been my misfortune to endure. The annual University Boat Race!
I am the most conservative - with a SMALL "c" - person you will ever come across and so tradition and heritage are very important to me but this has become the biggest boatload of bollocks afloat - or on dry land!
Where do I start? How about a rundown of the teams? Well, when I was alive the boats used to be packed with stripey-blazored, classic, English, chinless wonders who sipped champagne en-route and couldn't really give a shit who won as long as it was all done in the jolly best of sporting traditions. What have we got now? Both boats were virtually crammed full of steroid-fuelled Yanks and Krauts who you just knew would kick off and start invading places again if they didn't win!! Even the co-commentator was one of our colonial cousins!!
The crews then introduced themselves on screen and that's when we really started to veer off into the world of Python. The woman cox of Cambridge told us she was studying "Anglo Saxon Economics"! Seriously!! How fucking useful is that? I mean, should the Angles and the Saxons ever decide to team up again, invade and then form a limited company over here then I imagine she will be much in demand but, be honest, what are the chances?
Then there was the television coverage. The advent of Sky TV and Murdoch's stranglehold on the world of mass communication have left the BBC and ITV grovelling around in the broadcast dirt for something to screen. The BBC is pretty fucking bad these days when it comes to hyping up things like the European Leaning On Things Championships but give the Boat Race to ITV and you are really asking for trouble. It's the verbal equivalent of handing a three-year-old a loaded Kalashnikov in McDonalds. You would have thought the commentator was talking about a video screening of the actual birth of Christ or the battle of Rorke's Drift. Hyperbole just doesn't even come close to covering it. "Frictionless as an Augusta green" - what the fuck is that all about?
The light blues of Cambridge won this 153rd race, for those who are interested. They somehow managed to beat off the challenge of the dark blues of Oxford and the pair of them were seemingly out of sight of Teeside Polytechnic, East Anglia School for the Interbred, the Wolverhampton College of Street Shooting and all the other establishments which are not allowed to enter this "race".
"The Cambridge president can choose to frame this moment and stick it on the mantelpiece of his life - 2007 is the year Cambridge bit back!" said the commentator. "Elation is nowhere grander served than here." He later followed those gems with the immortal (check re-runs if you don't believe me): "They now have the traditional act to do which is to toss their cox into the River Thames." Seriously!! Please believe me! I stayed tuned, thinking I was going to see some sort of intellectual, watery wankfest but all that happened was a bunch of Americo-Germanic Arian types chucked some hapless bird in the river!
Maybe it's just me but...............this isn't Hitler versus the Allies. It's not the Spartans versus the Persians at Thermopylae. It's not the 100 metres at the Olympics. Come to think of it, it's not even Accrington Stanley versus Walsall!!
Part of me wants to keep this aquatic farce, because of my love of tradition, the absurd and the laughable, but I'm afraid it is just too stupid for the 21st Century. What next? "And now we go over live to the Snoozstadio, Dortmund, for the International Sleeping Cup"? Maybe: "Hello, and welcome to Ludicrousberg, Norway, where we bring you exclusive coverage of day one of the Anglo-Scandinavian Herring Frightening Tournament"? Sorry, but the Boat Race can go to Grantham.

The End is Nigh.

I've just listened to The Now Show on Radio 2. I listen to it regularly but this thought has only just occurred to me - they do exactly what I do on this blog (or is it I do exactly what they do?), only much, much, much better!!
It's a bit of a blow, to say the least. My heroes, The Marx Brothers, were geniuses, but theirs was the territory of the wisecrack and they were lords of that land. Monty Python I also worshipped, but it was unique. Punt and Dennis, on the other hand, seem to have a similar sense of humour to me and, time after time, they say things which I can only ever dream of having said!
This is not a pathetic expression of self-pity, nor is it false modesty, nor a fishing trip to the Lake of Compliments. I don't do any of those three. It is a genuine expression of deflation and of a desire to do something different. There doesn't seem much point in doing what someone else is already doing, and doing in an immeasurably superior fashion, so, as a big-nosed, shabby, Zionist thief once said, "I think I better think it out again".
In the meantime, I shall send Punt and Dennis to Grantham in a spirit of pure spite and jealousy. They will still be able to broadcast, however, and so I would recommend the Now Show to anyone in touch with life and in need of a laugh.

Pither and the Theological Dilemma

I recently made the slight mistake of being the teeniest bit sarcastic about women so, having ridden the tidal wave of oestrogen-fuelled venom which followed, I now have no fears about retribution from the second most ferocious force in the universe - God.
You see, I'm toying with the idea of getting into this Catholicism thingy. I'm not altogether sure that HE would want me for a sunbeam but it is dawning on me that being on HIS team has definite advantages.
I am an atheist and the way I see it is the only return us non-believers ever get is being able to sit around with smug grins while others talk about their religion, all the time thinking how intellectually superior we are for having worked out that if there is a God then why is there a Piers Morgan?
Let's face it, the holidays are crap! No Bank Holiday Friday for the "Feast of When You're Dead, You're Dead" and no one Monday off in the year to mark the "Eve Of When-Fossils-Fucked-Off-The-Noah-Idea-A-Bit".
We USED to have our own holidays. Christmas used to be a pagan festival but the Christians went and snaffled it for themselves. Gone are the days when it was an honest to goodness celebration of hedonism, gluttony, drinking to excess and debauchery. Now it's just.............Ok, bad example.
Us atheists also have to carry on learning and keeping up to date with the latest advancements in science. Not for us the get-out-of-jail-free card of blurting out "Well, I believe" when the debate gets too taxing and logic has been stretched beyond its limits. Don't forget, we suffer all this while all the time nursing that microscopic doubt that we could be wrong and so will be awfully embarrassed on the Day of Judgement.
Now my soon-to-be ex-wife is a Catholic and I can see the attraction of swallowing your intellectual pride by claiming to believe that a wafer bought from Tesco's and some cheap wine from the nearest off-licence are the ACTUAL body and blood of a man who lived 2,000 years ago.
You see, the current Mrs Pither went out and about for most of the day yesterday, calling into see God as frequently as she could at one of his branch offices near our home. What happened come 7pm? She went out on the lash with her friends! She would no doubt have been smoking all evening and using language which would have made a Scouse docker blush, as is her want in social circles. She certainly appeared to have quaffed 2,987 Holy Communions' worth of wine because I was on hand to witness the results when she woke me up after finally stumbling through the front door at 1 this morning.
All of this would put her in the It's-Brimstone-Boulevard-For-You-Young-Lady club, you would have thought? No, wrong! You see Left-Footers have thought of this and so have two tricks to keep on the right side of the tracks to salvation. Firstly, all they have to do is say to God - or more accurately one of his earthbound sales representatives - something like "Dead sorry about last night. I'll say a load of those prayers and fiddle with my beads a bit". What happens then? They're all quits again and can go back on the lash!

There is one other thing they have to do, however. They have to feel GUILTY. That is absolutely key! Well, I do guilt. I do it really well. I would be hopeless at committing adultery, let alone going around killing people, because guilt would always get the better of me. Hell, I feel guilty for eating because people in the world are starving, I feel guilty for having a house when so many are homeless and I feel guilty for not having shot Thatcher when she came to our town and all I could do was turn out to heckle!
Catholics even get a free snack and a livener at every meeting before the pubs open! They get trendy jewellery (some of the hipper crosses even have little men on them), they get holidays in Rome and they also have the best funerals (ever been to an Irish Catholic wake?). To an atheist a burial is just watching someone do some heavy duty gardening. To a Catholic it is an excuse to go on somewhere and get rammed!
No, not only do you get all of the above, you get eternal salvation should us atheists turn out to have been a bit wide of the mark. Let's face it, if we ARE right and they are wrong, what do they lose?
Right, now we come to the thorny subject of Grantham. What to do? I can hardly send The Big Man there. If he doesn't exist it is a pointless exercise and if he does he is there already, omnipresence being what it is. I know. I'll send the Welsh to Grantham. I'm all in favour of it, the Catholics won't complain and I'm sure HE would approve. HE's no doubt got them down for something worse anyway, come the end of time.

Hot, Cross Pither

It's Easter so it must be..........

Bloody Thatcher!! I didn't think there was much more she could do to us but I am convinced it is her legacy which is responsible for making the anniversary of the death of Christ a tad depressing!
It's Good Friday, for God's sake (no pun intended)! What's going on? Fifteen fucking hours I've been lying on the settee now, watching the box, and have they screened Jason and the Argonauts yet? Have they bollocks.
No Greatest Story Ever Told ("Truly this man was the son of Gaaaaaaaaaarrd!"), no Murder on the Orient Express, not even a sniff of an Escape to Athena (second worst film ever made, behind the inseparably appalling On the Buses and Holiday on the Buses)!
Instead, what is on? - wall-to-wall fucking Poirot! If I have to watch one more episode featuring that smug, smartarsed asylum seeker I think I will have to invade
Belgium! Pompous, little git. Don't get me wrong, I love whodunits, Agatha Christie in general and Art Deco but Poirot is really beginning to get on my tits. I am longing for an episode in which he gathers all together in the drawing room and announces the name of the murderer, just for some other cove to put up his or her hand and say "No actually, it was me. Na, na, na, naaah, na" and everyone then bursts out in fits of laughter, pointing at Poirot and saying things like "What a cunt". That would wipe the smirk off his fucking face!
I need the comfort of the Devil's Lantern on days like today. You see, the soon-to-be ex-Mrs Pither has been out and about since early morning. She's a Catholic and as this weekend is, for her, The Biggie (what with a religious deathday and a told-you-so anniversary in one weekend) she and The Big Man have been busy cramming in as much communing as they can. Being a man with no invisible means of support whose own place of worship closes early on Good Friday, what am I supposed to do in the meantime? I rely on my posture-sprung Comfycushion 9000 and televisual shite to get me through - well, those and the drink.
If they haven't screened Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Herbie Rides Again, Digby - The Biggest Dog in the World and/or The Robe by 10pm I shall be writing a stiff letter of complaint to the programmers. After all, it is what HE would have wanted.
(Sexism AND blasphemy in two days! I think I am regaining my touch!)

Hostage to Fortune

I have blogarrhoea today, I know, but............Oh no! Bad news. The price of oil futures has plummeted on international markets since the Iranians released the captive British sailors. They're already calling it Fucked Up Thursday!
Now, I am no fan of the glorified game of roulette which is the Stock Market, nor of the supposed "fact" that the market in general has to govern every aspect of life on earth, but I have a money-spinning idea for all those lizards who gamble with people's lives through stocks, shares and futures.
Here's how it works. The way I understand it is that if the market is "high" the £1 in your pocket is actually worth, say, £1.10, and if it is low that poor old coin is only really worth about 90p (see why I fucking hate capitalism?). Now, if the market drops because captured sailors and the like are released then, surely, the market will rise when some replacements are offered up for recapture?
If the market rises then the fat cats' pockets begin to bulge. So, all you have to do if you run some global corporation or something is arrange for some of your staff to get kidnapped! Instead of those namby-pamby, nimby-wimby profit sharing plans, you could introduce Kidnap Incentive Share Schemes for employees - "KISS Goodbye To Your Freedom With Nazi Inc's New Plan"? All the workers would have to do to enjoy a very small percentage of the Stock Market rise would be to get through a paltry four or five years chained to a radiator while eating horse shit and having their genitals wired up to a Trabant car battery every other day.
It's a belter. I think I shall give Alan Sugar a bell and put forward my idea, which I have, and which is mine, in between telling him what a fat waste of space he is and how he would be first out of the fucking lifeboat because he contributes nothing but absorbs all. Hurrah!

Mahatma Eye!!

"We woz just teachin' 'im ter dance, honest! Yer put yer right boot in, yer right boot out....."

Mahatma would be so proud.
That little man in an oversized nappy who helped topple the might of the British Empire and gain independence for India has found an army of spiritual followers back here in England.
Yes, Ghandi's tactic of "passive resistance" has seemingly been warmly embraced by one of this country's biggest exports - football hooligans.
I have just watched Manchester United fans, caught up in violence in Italy during their team's match against Roma, tell reporters how they were all innocent and had been set upon by savage, baton-wielding Carabinieri. Now, I have to admit from the pictures I have seen, they do seem to have a bit of a point this time but how many times does violence flare at games involving England supporters and the newsmen, amazingly, only seem to interview those who were totally innocent and had been set upon?
You know the scenario? A reporter is interviewing two 24-stone, shirtless, heavily tattooed England fans, both of whom, ironically, have Swastikas on their foreheads. One is carrying a burning cross while the other has the severed arm of a German supporter hanging out of his mouth:
Hack: "Were you one of the fans who burnt down the Olympiastadion here in Munich and stabbed German Chancellor Angela Merkel?"
Thug: "Weren't me. I day d'nothin'. It's them fuckin' square 'eads wot started it. Them an' the pigs."
Hack: "Are you saying you were nowhere near the trouble?"
Thug: "Listen, aresewipe, I woz at the library wiv me mate.
2nd Thug: "Yeah. We woz doin' book learnin' 'n' stuff.
Hack: "The police actually have you on film hacksawing off an officer's head and eating eine kleine kind."
Thug: "Well, yeah, we woz there a bit but we day kill no-one nor nuffink."
2nd Thug: "No. We ay allowed t'no more. It's one o' them conditions of us probation, and the ASBOs. Besides, we couldna'bin there. The court 'ad us passports off of us. We'm still in England."
Thug: "Shut up Vince!"
2nd Thug: "Oh, yeah, soz. We woz just pickin' flowers when some German bastards from a home for disabled pensioners attacked us. We'm innocent."
This is usually followed by an interview back home with the thugs' doting mothers. They have fags hanging out of their mouths and are usually on their worn out sofas, surrounded by empty beer cans and scores of near naked toddlers, while their fat husbands sit alongside, in pizza-stained vests, trying to watch hardcore porn on the telly.
Mrs Scum: "'E's a lovely fella, our Bozza, ay 'e Sid?"
Mr Scum: "Shut the fuck up, Gladys. I'm tryin'a watch the piggin' telly. 'Er's about to tek it up the wrongun."
Mrs Scum: "It's them bastard coppers and foreigners. They keep pickin' on 'im. This is the 237th time as e's bin attacked at a match. 'E's really kind. E's bin painting thar'old dear's 'ouse over t'road, bless 'im."
Mr Scum: "That's 'is community service you dozy mare! He shouldna hit the old bag over th'ead with a bottle in the first bloody place."
Same old, same old. None of these buggers apparently does anything wrong. No, they always tell us that someone else started "it" and they just sat there quietly on the ground, in the lotus position, while someone beat the living crap out of them. Dedicated exponents of passive resistence, see? I can hear them now: "Yeah, I luv Ghandi, me. Pity that woz the only film 'e made though."
No, sorry. My reaction to the stories of innocence they trot out each time England fans are "accidentally caught up" in a re-enactment of The Battle of The Little Bighorn? - "That dawg don't hunt!!"
Football thugs and their excuse-laden parents can crawl away, ape-like, to Grantham.

Show Me the Way to Amarillo - Please! Now!!

"Bollocks, Faye! Let's not start that again. Keep smiling and waving but I'm telling you, the bloody airport's THAT way!"

First of all, may I bid a fond farewell to all XX-chromosomed readers of these pathetic offerings - I fear you will not be stopping by in future. Why? Because it's Pither-The-Chauvinist-Pig Time!!
So, the 15 British members of the Iranian Tourist Board - sorry, sailors - held by the Iranians for just under a fortnight arrived back in London today (complete with goody bags, would you believe!). Hurrah! Welcome home, our brave lads and lasses (well, just lass, actually). That's one in the eye for Johnny Arab. God Save the Queen!

"Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame,
All their attempts to bend thee down
Will but arouse thy generous flame;
But work their woe, and thy renown.
Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves:
Britons never shall be slaves."

Now it's time to put away the little Union Jacks, break up the street parties and calmly reflect on the last few days.
So, those nasty Shiites were lying, weren't they? They had kidnapped our gaggle of expert seafarers for absolutely no reason other than sheer Iranian naughtiness. Royal Navy spokesmen had, after all, appeared on our TV screens with "proof" that the sailors had been in Iraqi and not Iranian waters. They showed photos of scans and radar screens and the like which they claimed clearly indicated that the HMS Fuckwit had not strayed.
Wrong!!! It now appears that the Navy Larkers HAD INDEED trespassed into Iranian territorial waters. Does this come as a surprise to anyone out there? Well, it doesn't to Pither. Why? Try this one on and see if it's tight around the hips? There were fifteen people in the boat and one of them was a woman. The woman was a qualified boatswain and so would, in all probability, have been the navigator. You do the maths! What the fuck do you expect? I'm amazed they didn't actually end up sailing up the Thames!! I can almost hear the frenetic chat on board as the Iranian gunboats loomed up over the horizon. "Give me the fucking map, Faye! Jesus, woman, it's upside down!! Not only that, it's the wrong page! No, I'm not going to stop and ask someone. Oh great! Crying! That'll help."
I know you should avoid cliches like the plague but women and navigating go together like bacon and custard. The soon-to-be ex-Mrs Pither's complete lack of spatial awareness and map reading skills are almost legendary. Many's the holiday I have spent in Inverness, having booked a cottage for the week near Plymouth. Even when I think I have covered all the bases by pulling over to patiently point out on the map the route we need to take she then brings her other navigational no-no into play - dithering!
"Right, we're coming up to an island. Which exit do I take?"
"....so Brenda said that was just the way she parted her hair."
"Exit, woman, exit! Which exit?"
"Oh, yes, the map. Which page is it again?"
"Page 43! Quick! The island's getting very, VERY near!
"38..39..40..."
"QUICK!! WHICH BLEEDIN' EXIT. HURRY UP!!"
"41..42...ah, here we are, 43. Now, which road are we on again?"
"THE BLOODY A449. HURRY UP, HURRY UP! WE'RE ON THE SODDIN' ISLAND!!"
"There isn't an A449. Oh no, hang on a bit, here it is."
"I'M TAKING THIS DAMN EXIT, I'VE GOT NO CHOICE NOW!!"
"Oh dear, you've gone the wrong way you know."
"AAaaaaarrrrrgggghhh!!!!!!"

No, I'm sorry. It just does my head in. I shall, however, in a pathetic attempt not to be more of a sexist, send PEOPLE who cannot read maps to Grantham.

I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing.......

I usually blog every day but, you know what, I can't think of anything today which has made me want to invade another country.
Everything has gone so spiffingly that I am bracing myself for the Hell which will no doubt follow tomorrow but, in the meantime, I have enjoyed a lovely sunny day, the company of good friends and a fine meal.
Things were topped off when a bit of a girly appeared on the Devil's Lantern whom I have fallen in love with and want to ruin for all other men. She is English and co-starred in The Mummy which was screened this evening on one of the more obscure channels.
If anyone knows her name could they please tell me and, if possible, whip her, strip her and have her sent to my tent.
In the meantime, I am going to bed before my chips are metaphorically urinated upon. Good night, and I love you all.

The (Young) Goat's Gone Poohs!

I shouldn't watch it, I know. I should read a book, make a model aeroplane or, God forbid, go out of the house, but the telly has got me reaching for a sick bag yet again.
Advertisers are apparently prepared to stoop to any level to appeal to their target audience but I get particularly revolted by one area in which they insist on throwing the rules of taste and decency further out of the window than usual - the use of babies and kids.

I have just seen two ads featuring these younger members of our society and both have forced me to put my plans for dinner on hold. The first was for an air freshener. Now I know what an air freshener is for, I'm sure most people do - it is pretty much supposed to do what is says on the can! Why, then, do the admen insist on featuring a toddler sitting on the bog, post crap, shouting "Pooh! It stinks!" before mummy arrives to aerosol the arsehole and mask the offending odour? Yes, that is indeed one use for an air freshener but I am capable of grasping the concept without having to watch a toddler, in the lav with his pants round his ankles, screaming that shit stinks!

The second ad was for a nappy. A baby was lying on his/her back (don't ask me, they all look like sexless bulldogs at that age) and mummy was changing the nappy. So far so good. The voice-over then announced that this product absorbed "more pooh" than ever before. Look, dickshit, I may not have children of my own but in my 46 years I have just about managed to garner enough information as to the use of a nappy to render your description surplus to requirements! I think the words "more absorbant" would suffice, thanks very much.
It is all because it is ickle kiddies and teensy-weensy, gah-gah, goo-goo, wittle babies involved. The mothers of these things spend their lives up to their elbows in their shit and piss and so become immune to them, in much the same way as a cockroach would become immune to radiation following a nuclear attack. The destruction of their olfactory and visual senses leads them to regard the excreta of their spawn as actually rather cute and something to talk about. We've all experienced it. You're out at a restaurant and one of these earth mothers pipes up "Oh yes, little Johnny did a really firm pooh yesterday, didn't you darling?" Do me a favour love, keep it to yourself. The advertisers, of course, seize on this and so we are all supposed to regard foecal and urinary outpourings as "cute", so long as they are from little ones. Well, that is ageist, as I see it.
How about they start advertising Andrex by featuring a fat, sweaty bloke crouched on the bog on a Sunday morning after he quaffed 15 pints and a curry the night before? The sound of something like a flock of sparrows taking wing is heard, along with a passable impression of the Glenn Miller Orchestra and the bloke groans "Ooohh Jeeeessuus, fuck!!" Then the slogan: "Andrex!!! - For Those Big Jobs!!!"
No? Well how about Kleenex recruiting a teenager who is filmed, trousers round his ankles, frantically beating his meat in his bedroom while flicking through the underwear section of a Gratton's Catalogue? His whimpering, moaning climax could be accompanied by the voice-over: "Kleenex - Copes With The Biggest Wankers".
Adverts for Lillets and the like would be a little different, wouldn't they? A woman leaving behind the blood-stained sheets in her bedroom as she races to the bathroom, blood streaming down her legs, while trying to ram a tampon up her chuff? "Bloody Hell?? Thank Fuck For Lillets"? Come to think of it, that would be slightly preferable to the current tampon adverts which seem to imply that if you use the product you will miraculously learn to hang-glide, parascend and play tennis!
Sorry, but shit is shit to me. I'm not particularly bothered who it has come from. I shall, therefore, banish ads featuring the bodily functions of babies and toddlers to Grantham.

The Market For Manacles?

What have he and the love of money got in common?

This is one of my more serious posts, I have to say, so if you are looking to twang your chuckle muscle I wouldn't bother reading on. Also, it is going to go down like Bonnie Langford at Knebworth, I know, but only to those who fail to see who or what is the target of my bile. Anyway, here goes.
The 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery has been marked and so the subject is much on my mind, not least because the television schedules are crammed with associated documentaries and dramas. Meanwhile, the film industry is, with its customary capitalist morality, hoping to cash in with the release of Amazing Grace, about Billy Wilberforce and his campaign to smash the Triangle of Death once and for all.
Right, now call me cynical if you like (YOU'RE CYNICAL!!), but I have a theory that this is an unsettling time for our capitalist overlords - whoever is responsible for the post-Thatcher, everything-has-a-price world in which we live.
Chief among those is Adam Smith but, as he is dead, I suppose the blame has to lie with his Wealth of Nations disciples. You see, old Smithy would no doubt argue that there is nothing wrong with slavery, so long as there is a market for it. The market is king! Well, apart from the sub-human, loathesome scum who are official slave traffikers, kidnapping and shunting poor children and women around the globe, there are other people who would have no qualms at all about the return of slavery. No? Well, what about the creme fresche/Chelsea Tractor brigade in London? You know, the ones who demand a constant supply of people they can treat like shite because they regard them as inferior, to flog their guts out for them while living in slave-like conditions? I say "constant" because they work their poor "staff" into the ground so quickly that replacements are always needed. The victims of these tossers are invariably Filipino or Taiwanese or some such and are recruited under titles such as "nanny" or "domestic help" - but only because "Slave Wanted" doesn't look too good on their small ad in The Daily Telegraph or the Esher Gazette! These people deeply resent paying their "property" the £5-a-week they do ("You are an alien so the minimum wage doesn't apply to you") and so a supply of free, forced labour would be "an absolute Godsend darling!"
Naomi Campbell is only doing five days' community service because she was CAUGHT behaving like a plantation owner to her maid. The cockle pickers of today are 21st Century slaves. So too are those armies of young girls who walk the streets at night to drum up cash for their drug addiction and their violent pimps who got them hooked in the first place.
Ok, ok, ok, I am somewhat downgrading the almost unbearable suffering endured by black Africans and their plight on the death ships - those who survived - which ferried them to their lives of back-breaking labour in Virginia and the like - and I know they weren't paid so much as a penny. My point is merely that there are those in society who would secretly like to see slavery reintroduced.
Now, this is where today's capitalists and money-is-God corporate overlords come in. You see, they would say that so long as there is a market for slavery then it MUST be brought back because it is an opportunity to make moolah. If an opportunity to make money exists it HAS to be exploited. All that is needed is a little "rebranding" and a good advertising campaign.
I can hear the marketing wankers now. "The word 'slavery' is just so yesterday, Justin. We need to step up to the plate, get on the rocket of advancement and blast off into the sales of the future. Any ideas?"
"Just let me run this baby up the flagpole and see who salutes, Mariella. How about 'Organic Personal Time Liberation Services'?"
"I like your thinking, Justin. Definitely blue sky. What about 'Human Resources'?"
"Sozz, Mazza. That's already been had."
"Ok, 'Chains R Us?' Maybe 'Slaverie? No, no. Oil of Olay and Ciff have done that one. I know, 'The Black and White Work Exchange Partnership'"
"Yes, super! We'll need a catchy slogan. "Forget Wilberforce, Just Force Wilbur"? No, I know, "Why Put Your Back Into It? - Put a Black Into It!"
"Spiffing. Get Samuel L Jackson and the Harlem Globetrotters on the blower. See if they're free to shoot the ad next week? Ok, honeys, that's a wrap. Ciaou."
You think I am wandering off into the land of the far-fetched? Listen, if Blair can turn Labour into a party of rabid public service privatisation freaks, television programmers can get a nation hooked on watching a bunch of weirdos sitting around in a house and the Americans can twice elect a drunken Nazi cowboy with an IQ slightly lower than that of a plant then anything is possible!
No, if you work on "a" market, good for you. If you think life has to be run by "the" market then you can sod off to Grantham.

The Gin and Tonic Brigade

Go into a non-scuzzy pub almost anywhere in Britain this lunchtime and you will find them. Their name should be Legion, for they are many, but they are, in fact, The Gin and Tonic Brigade.
How do you spot them? Well, it's almost impossible NOT to spot them! They are those corpulent, greasy, shabby-suited, middle-aged twats, with their guts hanging over their rolled over waistbands, who hog the bar, usually stuck on top of bar stools like giant, sweaty, glycogenic toffee apples.
They are usually "directors" or "MDs" of small businesses, they insist on talking very loudly and laughing uproariously/belching/farting every few minutes while all the time holding onto their symbols of office - goldfish bowls on stems filled with G and a bit of T.
These wankers were at the height of their powers during the Thatcher years but, like the Bitch Queen herself, have just refused to crawl back into their caves, let alone die!
Almost every sentence they belch out begins "And I'll tell you another thing....." The principal topic of conversation is always the state of "the bloody country" and how "sodding pinko, Commie, lesbian/poofda, namby-pamby, do-gooders" are ruining things. They long for the return of "Maggie", quote the fucking Daily bastard fucking Mail intermittently (those of them who can read) and preface at least one sentence with "I'm no bloody racist but ....." or "They come over here and....."
"All that crap spouted about Pinochet," they bellow. "So a few people disappeared! Our labrador Adolph went missing for two days once! You fucking tellin' me I should be executed for that?"
They also bemoan the idleness in the country, all this during a boozing session which begins at about 12 noon and, with the odd break to "nip up the fucking golf club", goes on until nearly closing time. Irony is, to say the least, lost on them. Who the fuck, then, is running their businesses and sweating their guts out to keep these lardarses in gaudy gold watches and neckchains of only a slightly lower gauge than the one which held the anchor on the Titanic while they are doing fuck all apart from gaining even more weight?
You never, EVER see the wives of these reptiles. I imagine them all to be equally gin-soaked, all with heads which have outworn four bodies and bedecked in designer gear and appallingly loud jewellery, who lounge around their "barn conversions" all day leching at the young gardener and using alcohol to blot out of the sad, meaninglessness which is their existence.
No, members of the Gin and Tonic Brigade ALWAYS turn their attentions to the young
barmaid at some stage and start making lewd remarks to her in the hope that she will find them irresistible - in the same way the programme makers seriously thought we could ever believe that Reg Varney and Bob Grant were the fanny magnets they were made out to be in On The Buses!
When the barmaid has broken down in tears or just fled in disgust there is usually a brief lull until "The Harpies" arrive. The Harpies are a gaggle of about three or four late middle-aged, former glamour gals who are now so haggard they always turn up late because the first coat of their makeup never takes! They are gold diggers who can no longer prey on rich, young men so are desperate to drop their voluminous drawers for these bloated drunkards in the hope of getting some jewellery or a free holiday. The price they pay, apart from having to endure the sight of the brigade members' ginger-pubed, teapot dicks at the end of the night, is to have their backsides pinched and their breasts cupped in the pub!
Well, I am off to the pub now! No, I'm most definitely NOT one of the brigade. I just like to taunt them with lines like "Oi, mate, is that your Jag that kid is scratching with a stick?" or "'Scuse me. Have you heard anything about the golf club fire this afternoon?"
Sod 'em. The Gin and Tonic Brigade can go to Grantham.