Nobody Cares, Darling, Nobody Cares!

All praise to both the book and the man - the best things to come out of Wales since Charlotte Church's breasts.


While I'm in a Bloggy mood and the soddin' system is actually working, I want to start a campaign to get employees of the BBC to speak fucking English!! (I gave up on the other channels years ago - they are way beyond redemption).
Ok, ok, ok, trying to get everyone at the Beeb to learn the language is probably a little over ambitious.....but you'd think its reporters and newsreaders would have learnt their native tongue by now.
Here are just a few examples of things so many of those pig ignorant fuckwits in the BBC newsrooms should know but don't (all taken from just one national lunchtime bulletin, would you believe?)

1. The word "schedule" is pronounced "shedule" and not "skedule" - we are not the 51st state.....well not yet, anyway.
2. People "meet" each other, they do not "meet with" each other - and tautology is not the study of education.
3. To see Gordon Brown shake hands with President Bush "outside" the White House is disgusting. To hear that Gordon Brown has shaken hands with President Bush "outside of" the White House is far more revolting and should, in fact, be a criminal offence.
4. On paper, both the British and the US Armies have lieutenants. The difference between the two (apart from the fact the American ones are all called something like Kuntzman and cannot walk and chew gum at the same time) is that in Britain the rank is pronounced "lefftenant" and not "loutennant".
5. An essay is when someone tries "to" do something. They never try "and" do something.
6. It is lazy and incorrect to say, for instance, "England's Tower of London". The building is "The Tower of London in England". Who else fucking has one?
7. The organisation is the "St John Ambulance", not the "St Johns Ambulance".
8. People wed in a "register" office, not a "registry" office.

I may appear pedantic, even arrogant and pompous, but IT IS FUCKING IMPORTANT. I'm going for a lie down now. My head is hurting again.
(P.S. Use of the word "fuck" and its derivatives is neither poor English nor a demonstration of a limited vocabulary. Just ask Stephen Fry. Then again, if neither he nor I can convince you.......................go fuck yourself!)

Greyhounds In The Slips......Mongrels On The Track

Bulgarian women's high jump champion Elena Notitswotsoever is sent home from the games in disgrace after it was discovered she was, in fact, lighter than air.


Always remember, it's not the winning that's important, it's the coming seventh.
So goes the motto of all British athletes and I'm delighted to report that our heroic boys and girls are living up to it at the World Athletics Championship in Osaka, Japan.
They are already heading in droves for the airport and a flight home, all without the worry of having to declare anything at customs remotely resembling a medal. No, the spaces set aside for hoped-for booty in their luggage have instead been filled by "learning curves", "valuable experiences" and "gallant efforts". It's just a pity that those mementos will not, as far as the sponsors are concerned and as my gran used to say, butter any parsnips (Who does sponsor British athletics?.....Fray Bentos? Sketchley's?)
To be fair, we never really stand at chance at these tournaments. You see, our athletes stupidly insist on being.....well......British. You know, they play by the rules and never take performance enhancing drugs - at least I fucking hope they don't!! If they do then God alone knows how piss poor they'd be if they were forced to go cold turkey!!
No, Johnny Foreigner just refuses to play fair and it simply amazes me that more drug addled athletes aren't found out. The problem, as I see it and to use a cliche, is that the boffins at the IAAF are failing to see the wood for the trees. They are placing far too much reliance on their test tubes and chemical reactions when less sophisticated and more tried and tested methods of detecting cheats would provide more satisfactory results.
Take for instance the women's discus competition which I have just watched. No doubt the lab boys will take urine or blood samples from a random selection of the competitors after the event and then subject them to analysis. The trouble with that is, not only does it take an age for the results to come through, the cheats have become ever more sophisticated and now pump themselves up with chemicals which do not show up under existing testing procedures. Why not instead just take a look at the athletes!!!
Of the eight or so women competing in the final of the discus (each of whom weighed about 25 stone but had absolutely no tits), four smoked a pipe, three had beards, two had Adam's apples and the overall winner insisted on continually scratching some obvious bulge in her Lycra shorts which resembled two cricket balls and a baby's arm holding an orange!
I fear some, if not all, of these "ladies" might just have been taking some kind of illicit substance and it is my theory that it is a testosterone derivative - all that without recourse to a laboratory, expensive chemicals and a time-wasting analytical procedure.
Come home all you brave British lads and lasses - leave the cheats to get the medals....and the bus to Grantham.

Hopping Mad

"Bet now, bet now, bet now!!!!"


I've just listened to a wireless programme which turned out to be the most pointless, nauseating, foot-gnawing pile of rectal evacuations I have heard since.....well......since the last steaming mound of aural botty droppings it was my misfortune to tune into.
Get this. Some fucking genius at the BBC (there's an oxymoron if ever I wrote one) came up with the idea of getting a panel of complete and utter no-mark fuckwits to consider two historical "things" and decide which of them was the most culturally worthy. Ain't that just Thatchair's (sic) Britain all over? Reducing all that is beautiful, uplifting, spiritual, artistic and socially significant to just commodities, like oil or cornflakes, which can be hogged, logged and flogged? Too much of a leap in logic for you? Well, consider this:
Imagine yourself one of Thatchair's children for a moment, if you will. That will give you a mindset which will enable you to Bastardise Darwinism (almost everybody incorrectly defines the word "fittest" in Chaz's theory) and insist that EVERYTHING HAS to compete against EVERYTHING else, and not just against local and immediate pressures. If everything competes then everything can be ranked in some kind of order. If you have some kind of order you can convert the seemingly ethereal concept of "value" into an empirical measure. Once you've got loads of "things" with different empirical measures what have you got? My child, you have a "market" and markets are where "things" can be bought or sold. This modus operandi allows EVERYTHING to be marketed, from art and nature to beauty and health.
Whereas those of us inoculated against Thatchairism would just marvel at the perfection of, say, a polar bear and a gorilla, both miracles of creation which just "are" and whose relative values it is impossible to judge, the "market" would have us believe that they each have an intrinsic, empirical measure and so, by the reverse of the argument above, are in competition with each other. The fact that one lives in the Arctic, freezes its butt off all year round and eats fish and seals while the other lives in Rwanda and other dwindling sites in Africa, gets piss wet through most months and is vegetarian is neither here nor there.
The uselessness of the market is just as evident when trying to compare and evaluate works of art. Is the Venus de Milo "better" than the Mona Lisa? Is St Paul's Cathedral "more valuable" than the Parthenon? More ridiculously, is The Night Watch by Rembrandt "superior" to Stone Henge?
Sorry, I went off on one there - the plate in my head just shifts from time to time. Where was I? Oh yes, that radio programme. Would you believe, it tried to pit (pardon the pun) Chatterley Whitfield Colliery near Stoke-on-Trent, the world's largest remaining although derelict Victorian coalmine, against Puossin's paintings of The Seven Sacraments (which actually only comprise five paintings, one having been destroyed and the other being in a separate collection). THEY got some dickhead supposed "expert" to give each one a score under various headings, such a local significance, historical importance etc. The pointlessness (this time excuse the irony) of the exercise was highlighted when said dickhead gave them equal marks overall. More waste-of-timery was exhibited by the "prize" on offer to the winner, namely £80 million to be spent either on the purchase of the Poussin works or on restoring the colliery. The only problem was.......there was NO money on offer. It was just an imaginary £80 million!! What's the fucking point in offering a prize which doesn't exist? It's like telling the winner of the men's 100m at the Olympics that there is, in fact, no gold medal for him, it was all just a joke and no-one was watching him run anyway!
Then we come to the panellists asked to give their views on the supposed merits of these competing works of man. One was that hideous, smug, vacuous excuse for a human being (I use the term loosely) Edwina Currie.

Question 2. Evaluate the usefullness to the universe of these two.

Bearing in mind it was "her" fucking Government which closed down all the pits in the first place, the more cynical could have argued that she was a little biased as a judge. Another on the panel was Simon Woodroffe, the millionaire founder of the sushi chain Yo! Sushi (come the Day of Judgement he's going to be able to really fucking impress St Peter, isn't he?). This tosser was invited along to give his views on the business merits of both competitors (see everything argued above). Fuck off!! Currie at one point, would you believe, even said she thought it would be a good idea to have a sushi bar at the colliery!!! I have long argued that if you are a complete fucking idiot (reference: thinking John Major was shaggable, telling the world that one of the industries you are responsible for is shite and could kill customers) then keep quiet - don't open your trap and thereby give the game away immediately!!
You can just envisage the sort of chinless, "daddy's-got-a-Porsche-mummy-won-the-National" young Sloan at the BBC (they're all they employ these days) who came up with this abortion of an idea for a programme. This may seem a little harsh but I am in favour of gassing the fucking lot of them.
National Treasures, the programme was called. Well, like all treasures it should be fucking buried! Failing that, the townsfolk of Grantham fully deserve it.

Guess Who Just Got Back Today..........?

I think I have been reborn.
Not only is Blogger working again (for the moment), the dark days of incapacity and indolence brought on my knackered leg look to be behind me at last. I have started work again and, although most of it is done from home, I do finally feel like a member of society again. Not only that, being self employed and in a situation where "sick day" = "no pay", the fiscal wolf has stopped hanging around my front door and has instead wandered off down the road in search of some other would-be bankrupt.
My leg may still be hurting and attempts to get around leave me worn out and in more pain but the upshot of all this disruption to my routine is that I have only drunk alcohol on three occasions in the last four weeks, I have lost weight and now that the "feeling sorry for yourself" episode appears to have passed I feel like taking on the world. My willingness to once again give a shit has prompted me to look at broadening my horizons even further and to that end, not only am I preparing to haul bottom over to Big Town East to spend a couple of days in the office of my current employer, I am considering investing in some trendy toe and tibia togs which will enable me to enjoy other activities previously closed off by injury. I will obviously need a complete new wardrobe for my new life and so I have been glancing through the unipedwear catalogue which came with my Zip 'n' Wash Leggydry 9000.
It seems that two options are open to me......................very, very, very slow hiking or gentle arse kicking.


Decisions, decisions.

Bloody Thing!

I find myself in the same boat as my chums Betty and Arabella and am having serious problems with the new, improved Blogger - you could say we are so in tune we are coremonstrating.
Anyway, it has taken me an hour to get these two paragraphs posted. Normal Pither service will be resumed as soon as normal Blogger service is resumed - dammit, dammit, dammit!

As Any Incontinent Will Tell You......Happiness Is A Dry Leg.

I'm dead excited!!! It arrived today!!!!! Yes, my order from Grattan Catalogue's Autumn Collection For Unipeds has turned up and so I'm ready to hit the town and turn a few heads.
Actually, I'm getting a bit carried away. My new gear is not really for limping along the catwalk, nor for hopping around places to be seen - unless it's raining heavily, that is. No, the polypropylene Zip 'n' Wash Leggydry 9000 is more for domestic use, notably to enable us dickheads with one leg plastered from ankle to hip to take a shower or, God forbid, even a bath without said casing dissolving into mush.
I ordered the 9000 through a "specialist" supplier who has always proved reliable in the past - the fire retardant Novelty Badgersuit and the X220 Unrottable Currypants having turned out to be excellent value for money and hard wearing garments.

I am looking forward to making extensive use of the ZnWL - I opted for the 9000 as, unlike the 8750, it includes detachable suspenders and a hook-on ashtray - because I have another four weeks in plaster to look forward to and cannot bear the thought of ever again having to shampoo the remnants of my hair over the sink or being reduced to giving my nether regions a wash and brush up with a damp flannel!!! (Oh how I laughed the day I spotted my very-soon-to-be ex-wife exfoliating her face with my "special" genital flannel!! I didn't let on, obviously.)
Anyway, I marked this glorious Saturday by having my first shower in three weeks, courtesy of the 9000. The hose down was all the more opportune because Pither is going out for a drink tonight with a bit of a girlie and so he wanted to smell nice and pack a nicely polished set of reproductive equipment - not that it'll get an airing but I always find my confidence and sense of inner well-being boosted when I've aquavacced the mould and cobwebs off my pant-fillers - don't you?
The ZnWL 9000 shall not go to Grantham, nor shall specialist garments for the larger disabled gentleman of any kind. Hurrah!

Candle In The Windpipe

Channel Five is threatening yet another "Diana weekend" featuring yet another "Diana - The True Story" documentary and so, by way of a spoiler, I'm going to tell this story one last time and then hopefully we can all be free from it for the rest of our days.
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. The fractured fairytale is as follows:

Episode 1. Spoilt, thick, soon-to-be neurotic little rich girl marries jug-eared adulterer and scared-to-death-of-daddy fellow inbreed.

Episode 2. Bulimic, attention-seeking, now supposedly adult clothes horse whinges to all and sundry about infidelity, drops two grubs, shags militaristic upper class twit of the year, gets divorced on grounds of marital overcrowding and develops love of landmines, gymns, cow-eyed expressions and being photographed.

Episode 3. While jug-eared ex hooks up with aristocratic fellow adulterer and well known horse impersonator, poor little rich girl begins search for most dodgy and unsuitable man in Christendom before finally settling on oily, lounge lizard son of well known foreign criminal.

Episode 4. Foreign criminal junior and by-now-mad-as-a-fish clothes horse go out on lash and take somewhat, in hindsight, unwise decision not to call Regal Cabs but get driven home instead by blind drunk, gassed out of his brains employee of foreign criminal senior.

Episode 5. Laa-laa-land chauffeur tries to take bend in tunnel at 4,567,983 mph, finds steering somewhat unresponsive and ploughs into concrete pillar, killing Ms C Horse and suspected drug addled boyfriend.
THE END.

Can we just fucking leave it be now......please?

The Precious Gift Of Shite

Spot the difference - see if you can spot the 234,679,453 differences between these two photos.


There is something fascinating about excellence. You are drawn to it, you marvel at it, you are soothed by it but at the same time it energises you. The only trouble with excellence is that it is very rare.
I, however, am very fortunate because I seem to live in a parallel universe where I have doubled my chances of experiencing such emotions because I find the appallingly awful equally stimulating.
True, unadulterated, unmitigated, bona fide shite is as rare as excellence but it is out there if you look hard enough and by way of proof may I recommend you to the American made-for-TV film "Florence Nightingale". I have just watched it on an obscure channel and can honestly say that it touched cinematographic and historical depths I never thought possible.
Pure shite, you see, like excellence requires a touch of genius and the genius of this production centred on its casting and plot. While admitting that my knowledge of the Lady of the Lamp is not extensive, I always believed that her primary claim to fame was her success in treating casualties of the Crimean War. Also, I have seen photos of this supposedly earthbound angel and, at the kindest, I can only say she had a face like a camel sucking a biscuit! Her success with members of the opposite sex was further hampered by the widely held belief that she was a rug muncher!!
Now, either the library was closed or the producers of "Flo - The Movie" just conveniently chose to ignore this basic information. No doubt they thought that the story of a pig ugly dyke with a penchant for first aid was not the stuff of great box office. Instead, they decided to, as New Labour would have done, "sex the tale up a bit". Hence, who is chosen to play the part of walking contraceptive and apparent road accident victim Florence? Why, none other than glamour puss and all round penis-stiffener Jaclyn Smith!!!! I think the step from Charlie's Angels to historical epic could best have been termed "ambitious" for our Jaclyn (why do fucking actors insist on spelling their fucking names in a stupid, pretentious fucking way?). Her attempt at an English accent was interesting, to say the least. She ended up sounding like an Australian on day release.
As to the plot, we did occasionally catch a glimpse of Flo sticking on the odd plaster but essentially it revolved around her love affairs with a catalogue of dashing, English country gents!! Bearing in mind her actual sexual proclivities, she was more likely to have wanted to get into Queen Victoria's voluminous knickers than theirs!!
The dialogue could have ruined the utter shitenosity of this film if it had been in the least bit period but, fortunately, the scriptwriters had resorted to their tried and tested formula for all films supposedly involving England and London in particular. There were, consequently, liberal smatterings of "Aam a gud gel, I am", "Gor blimey, Gawd bless ya guv" and "Strewth, scarper. It's a rum deal an' no mistake".
All in all, this film is festering crap at its very rarest. I know it has to go some way to compare with the unparalleled penile seepage of Holiday on the Buses, the big screen version of Are You Being Served? or Titanic but it was certainly extremely entertaining.
While sticking by my assertion that utter shite is as rare as excellence, American-made historical epics are, in fact, a rich vein for true excrement because the Yanks do history so well, don't you think? Facts are not things which have ever weighed heavily on the consciences of American film makers.
The standard was, of course, set by that odious, neo-Nazi, draft dodging cunt John Wayne in The Green Berets. So you thought the Americans LOST the Vietnam War did you?........WRONG!!!!

Dwarf, alleged racist, never-heard-of-fucking-contraception, drunk superstar Mel Gibson also got his historical knickers in a knot slightly in Braveheart. Bonnie and Clyde
spectacularly failed to tell the actual story of another dwarf (played, obviously, by Warren Beatty), his uniquely ugly sidekick (who else but Faye Dunaway) and their murderous, psychotic and totally merciless rampage across the States.
For historical shite in its most refined and purulent form, however, you should really just plump for ANYTHING involving the Irish.
You know, those brave little farmers with their twiddly-diddly-dee lifestyles who are continually oppressed and savaged by the cruel Brits (NOTE for would-be directors/scriptwriters: Just try not to mention the random slaughter of women, children, pensioners, horses, Catholics as well as Protestants, rabid drug dealing, knee-cappings, punishment beatings, torture or kangaroo courts and summary executions - kinda spoils the image those fucking wankers in Boston and New York need to keep up their funding of same).
On that note, having waved a cheery goodbye to all Irish readers, John Wayne's corpse can go to Grantham but his countrymen's attempts at historical epics shall stay here - they are excellently shite.

Eary?

I watched a documentary on the De Lorean fiasco the other night.
Obviously, I took in all the detail of the story.....about how John De Lorean was basically a crook, how his "revolutionary" new car was a disaster from the start, how Frank Chapman cleverly died to escape prosecution over the whole sad episode and how the British taxpayer stumped up millions to satisfy one man's ego.
It took about two minutes to ponder all that but I couldn't get one thought out of my mind at the end...........................I think De Lorean designed my dog Henry's ears!!! The fact that our Hen only has three legs only adds weight to the theory that De Lorean was involved in his design somewhere along the line.
(The Batman impersonator in the background, by the way, is the Devil Dog Caty).

Children of the Damned

Have you ever seen Children of the Damned? No, I don't mean Mark and Carol Thatcher. I mean that superb and chilling 1964 film? I've got it on tape if you want to borrow it.
It's a sort of Nietzscheresque tale about a gaggle of hyper-intelligent youngsters able to communicate merely by telepathy and with incredibly advanced powers of thought control capable of making all bow down before them and obey (it stars Jimmy Clitheroe, The Krankies and Charles Hawtrey as Flange The Merciless......no it doesn't, I made that bit up).
Anyway, it's time to pack up your possessions and flee to the hills because, if our educationalists are to be believed, it appears that THEY are back. This year's O and A-Level results would indicate that we are currently being buoyed up amid a sea of giant teenage intellects at the proverbial feet of which we, with our puny minds, are not worthy of grovelling (how's that for a mixture of metaphors?).
The Government was delighted to report that a healthy 236 per cent of all pupils who sat A and O-Levels passed this time around. Of those, an encouraging 2,347,941 per cent obtained A grades in everything they sat and 5.4 billion per cent of those got at least 18 hexadecimal star As.
The How Many Fingers Am I Holding Up Matriculation Board revealed that maths results were particularly pleasing at O-Level, with all pupils successfully answering the one question on its exam paper, namely "I go out to Wetherspoons with £50, buy 16 Diamond Whites, an Ecstasy tab and a flaming knob cocktail - with my change, how many johnnies can I buy from the machine in the bogs?" Of particular note were the results in Margate where 89 per cent of pupils who took maths at either O or A-Level were awarded Nobel Prizes.
The board's A-Level chemistry paper, which challenged candidates to "EITHER mix up as many things as you can in one of those dick-shaped, glass test tubey things until it goes brown OR point to one of your ears, was passed by all who sat it.
The Hartlepool Technical College Examination Board also revealed that its O-Level set text for English this year, namely Kafka's The Trial, proved no problem to students, all of whom were able to successfully colour it in inside the allotted three hours. In Harpenden alone, 2,356 new Pubescent Poet Laureates were created.
Yes, we have produced a veritable master race and the future looks safe in the hands of our youngsters but I think we have to give credit where it is due and pay thanks to those responsible for this massive evolutionary leap forward. None of this would have happened had it not been for the Thatcher and Blair governments. It was they who had the foresight to force schools to sell off playing fields to raise money to pay for repairs to their roofs. It was they who brought about the charming habit of parents staging raffles and school fetes to raise money to buy basic books and equipment. Thatcher was the one who introduced the magnificent Local Management of Schools which, at last, stopped teachers ruining kids by teaching them and instead turned them into accountants and finance directors.
The virtual abolition of exams and the introduction of continual assessment finally gave children the chance to get their parents and teachers or the internet to do their work for them and so freed them from the odious chore of ever having to commit a fact or process to memory.
It was, as well, a stroke of genius to make the questions easier or to offer multiple choice so that more kids would pass and get better grades. It's the educational equivalent of making murder, rape, robbery and drug dealing legal, thereby slashing the crime rate at a stroke. That's on its way, trust me.
Blair in particular deserves extra praise for making teachers concentrate on what they are in school for in the first place, namely to write up reports, tot up figures and respond to seemingly endless requests from the DfES for charts, tables and graphs.
To think, in my day talents such as becoming a father at the age of 14, doing fuck all work at school, not being able to spell or add up and having a vocabulary which amounted to a series of grunts were actually frowned upon.
Yes, we have come a long way. We have produced generations of hyper-intelligent children in whose hands our future is surely safe. A cursory glance out of your window might disabuse you of this notion but don't worry, it is a fact - the figures prove it. Statistics never lie.
Having said all that, the education of our children, the modern examination system and, in fact, anyone under the age of 25 can fuck off to Grantham!
P.S. There is a prize for the first wanker to point out a literal, spelling mistake or grammatical error in the above. The prize will be a personal visit from me and my alsatian.

Bush In A China Strop.

Give your chuckle muscles a rest and just ponder this for a moment. It's something else to file under "S" for "Shurely shome mishtake?"
I listened to two discussions today, one on the Devil's Lantern, the other on the wireless. The first featured some apologist for Saudi Arabia who kept banging on about how spiffing and friendly the country was, how it stood for all that was right in the world and how its near-perfection explained why the USA and Britain fell over themselves to buddy up to and protect this supposed island of sanity in a sea of Islamic lunacy.
The wireless chat featured some Yank who drawled on about how evil the Chinese were and how China posed a major threat to the West and so inter-continental missiles had to be aimed at it.
Now, maybe I've got this wrong, but isn't Saudi Arabia a focal point for Islamic fundamentalism and Moslem terrorists? Where is Osama bin Laden from? Whose vast wealth funds Al Quaida? Where are 50 per cent of all "insurgents" who have so far carried out violent attacks in Iraq from? Do you know a good Saudi Arabian take-away near you? Name one good Saudi Arabian pub.
On the other hand, how many attacks have the Chinese launched on the UK mainland of late? Name one violent, Buddhist fundamentalist. Which countries have the Chinese invaded of late. Who is the king of China?
Cast your minds back to when Bush first got elected/staged his coup.Do you remember, he started jumping up and down, claiming that the Chinese were intent on world domination and needed to be kept in check? He was just about to get the troops saddled up when deranged Islamists distracted his attention. Well, Bush has fucked up majorly in Iraq and desperately wants everyone to forget about it, the North Koreans won't have a fight and so it's back to the Chinese. Orwell wrote that the capitalist bosses have to have perpetual war to keep everyone occupied, afraid, subservient and making them money. There's a lot to be said for that argument but it has never really been put into practice before because the electorate has, until now, been too smart.
What then is the difference between Saudi Arabia and China? Why do the Bush/New Labour regimes hate the Chinese and want to start a Cold War with them but love the Saudis and fight to defend the king who is bleeding his populace dry at about the same rate as he is pocketing the billions from his country's main natural resource? Go on, take a wild guess!!
The future doesn't look good, does it? I mean, even if the boffins manage to make oil obsolete by developing effective alternative sources of power, what then? If wind power takes off then we'll all be toadying up to Eskimos. If solar power is the way forward then the Bedouins will be running the show. If hydropower is the answer then we'll all be going Dutch. There's no way out.
My head's hurting again so I'm going to have a lie down.

You'll Have Had Yerr Teeeeeea?

For those of you who have not yet finished dinner, here is a photo of my leg again, only this time revealing the results of the operation which have finally put paid to my chances of ever advertising for Pretty Polly.
On a plus note, the doc said all was healing well. Terry Tendon, it turns out, is still hanging in there and so, as a special reward, I have been given a brand new cast to last me for the next four weeks. Hurrah!
Now, get on with your meals.

What's For Dinner? I Don't Know, The Label's Fallen Off The Tin.

Anyone fancy roast beef and all the trimmings? It's not exactly in peak condition but it will certainly do in an emergency. Ok, the roasties are a bit soggy now, there's a skin on the gravy and the Yorky pud has kinda set solid. Still, if you've ever eaten in a Harvester then I'm sure you could get it down your gullet.
The whole meal, which took hours to prepare and cook, was waiting for me in the kitchen, Marie Celeste-like, when I came down this morning. I would have put it in the fridge last night but there just wasn't room. You see, there was already a cottage pie in there which I had made for dinner on Friday, as well as a Pither Special steak and kidney pudding which I had knocked up on Saturday. Both those meals were substituted in the end by southern European and central Asian dishes - namely a delivery pizza and a curry!
Cooking is supposed to be the hard, laborious part. Eating is supposed to be easy. Sadly, I love cooking but always seem to find that by the time I've spent ages painstakingly creating some tempting dish I have lost my appetite. It's a bit like spending a couple of hours on foreplay and then finding that you've gone off the idea of having full-on sex, let alone an orgasm, and would rather just watch the telly!
There is, however, another reason for my wasted efforts - my very-soon-to-be ex-wife is away at the moment. Cooking for one is just not the same. There's a sexual analogy there as well - you do the maths!
Mrs P packed her little kit bag on Friday night and headed off to Big Town for a reunion with old pals. Providing the Betty Ford Clinic discharges her, she is due to return this afternoon to take me to hospital for yet another check on my knackered knee.
In the interim, catering for just myself has taken me back to my college days. I
vowed at the end of that particular episode in my life that it would be a cold day in Hell before I ever ate a Pot Noodle or a Vesta Chow Mein-For-One again.
When I finally got married at the age of 39 I thought I had definitely kissed goodbye to Nobby No-Mates nourishment - goodbye to condensed milk or crisp sandwiches, no more Fray Bentos pies-in-a-tin, so long individual Kraft cheese slices, out with sucking Primula cheese out of the tube.
Well, it appears that Hades could be heading for a long, cold spell and this weekend has given me a taste of what to expect in the future. I better begin stocking up on Dairylea, tins of bangers 'n' beans and Jaffa Cakes.
Sorry, while I loved eating Weetabix straight from the box with jam on top I think that strange period of my life is over and I don't think I should go back to it. Cooking for one can go to Grantham.

Schools Out - For Ever!

Prize giving day, August 1979.


I received two invitations over t'internet today.
The first was from someone I used to go to school with (with whom I used to go to school? - oh, fuck it, I didn't want to be an English professor anyway!) who somehow got hold of my e-mail address and wrote to ask me to a class reunion. It turns out that it is a little over 28 years since we sheathed our catapults and walked out of the school gates for the last time to take on the world.
Now, only my school - perhaps only my year - could go to the trouble of marking the 28th-and-a-bit anniversary of something! It speaks volumes, I think. Rest assured I shall not be going.
I went to an "institution" which drew its inmates from across the country. The logic behind these dos, therefore, is that they offer you the chance to catch up with old comrades and hopefully stay in touch in the future. Why the fuck would I want to do that? Haven't they worked out that if I haven't been in contact with them since 1979 there is a reason? The reason is I DON'T EVER WANT TO SEE THEM AGAIN EVER!! It was bad enough having to sit next to some of them during my formative years. Putting myself through that in adulthood would be more than I could bear. I don't think it is insignificant that number one in the charts when I left school was We Don't Talk Anymore by Cliff Richard! I think the full title should have been We Don't Talk Anymore - Ok, Got It?
Why, on God's own earth, would I have a desperate urge to chat again to Greg Ducker - the lad who once, when we sang the symbolic masterpiece Jerusalem in assembly, turned to me and said "I thought Jerusalem was in Egypt"?
Why would I want to catch up on all the gossip with Steve "Brick" Sudlow who, when asked in biology to draw an annotated diagram of either the male or female reproductive system, crayoned an enormous dick and marked it "knob", "balls", "shaft" and "pubes"? (which earned him five marks from the biology teacher - work that fucker out!!)
What would be the attraction of teaming up again with Andrew Barnfather who, when asked in history who was involved in the Peninsula War, said in all seriousness "it wasn't me, I was off sick last week"?
The above is all true, believe me. With the exception of about four blokes, all of my classmates who weren't brain damaged (like those mentioned already) were just plain wankers. I remember bumping into one particularly odious little shit from the Class of '79 in town a few years ago. He gushed on about how well he was doing (obviously) and then thought it would be fascinating to tell me that he lived "in a barn conversion"! What the fuck was I supposed to glean from that scintillating piece of information? All I could think to say was "Oh, I am sorry. I'm sure a council house will come up for you soon".
That's the kind of thing which goes on at these bloody reunions. The only reason for them is for everyone to eye everyone else up and then bullshit about how successful they are. The conversations are all along the same fucking lines:

"What are you driving these days?"
"A car?"
"Yes, but what kind of car?"
"A red one?"
"I've got the GTi 720x. It gives the kind of torque I need and is pretty yummy at the top end."
"I'm sorry. Is there something wrong with you?"

"You lost your hair, then?"
"No, it's over there."
"You're carrying a little excess baggage as well, I see, fnaar, fnaar."
"And you'll be picking your teeth up with a broken arm in a minute."

As I said earlier, if I had wanted to keep in touch with any of them I would have done so.
I have yet to reply to the invitation and, when I do, I think I shall follow Peter Cook's lead. He said, when invited to dinner on a particular date by the odious reptile who is David Frost: "Having consulted my diary I see that I am watching television that evening."

The other invitation I received was to a reunion of people who, like me, worked on and survived a newspaper which is the journalistic equivalent of the Burma Railway. That do I SHALL be attending. I keep in contact with almost all of the escapees and am proud to know them. We shall get drunk, have japes and then go round to the editor's house and take it in turns to piss through his letterbox. Now that's my idea of a night out.
Anyway, in the meantime, school reunions can go to Grantham.

Drilling Me Softly With His Schlong

Roughly, he grabbed her heaving shoulders and as she felt his manly hardness he whispered tenderly in her ear "Drop your drawers quick, doll, the tide's coming in."


Oh God, is nothing sacred?
THEY have started screening "chick porn" regularly on normal box. I found it on my no-extras-five-standard-channels-plus-a-load-of-shite-you-never-asked-for-nor-wanted digital telly's Channel 424, alias Movies 24+ (pauses while reader fumbles for remote control and draws curtains).
It hits the airwaves in the early hours and masquerades as naughtiness under the billing of "erotica". Sadly, it is about as erotic as clipping your toenails. In fact, far from being saucy it is actually downright annoying. You never get to see A or B, you see. The sight of either A or B having things done to them in the open is right out and as for A taking a trip into the depths of B-land, you've got more chance of seeing a laugh-a-minute episode of EastEnders! All that happens is that at the moment it looks as if the camera might just stray down to the business end of the encounter the shot is cut and you get a view of a brass bed knob or a little cat.
No, being chick porn, there are two things which definitely cannot be shown. One is - please forgive the technical jargon - the gentleman's dangly bits (see A above) and the other is the lady's rude part (B, in the Janet and John Learn Rudies description earlier). That's the problem. It's my understanding that both bits are somewhat central to the, let's face it, comical process of fluid exchange. In the world of chick porn, however, it is judged that the appearance of either of these would shatter the romance and tenderness of the moment. It just wouldn't do for jetset playboy and Wimbledon champion Grant Dexter to pull media executive and feisty young woman-in-a-man's-world Dallas-Starshine down onto his black, satin-sheeted bed, just as his hairy bollocks swung into full view of Camera One and he started slapping lard onto her unwelcoming and unprepared nether regions (I think I may have a career writing this stuff!).
No, no shots of Mr Wobbly, not a hairy clam in sight. It's all about soft focus, you see. Everything has to suit the hazy and dreamy atmosphere evoked by soft focus. Heaving bosoms are definitely in, as are clenched and oiled buttocks. The steamier films even feature erect nipples and a very occasional blurred glimpse of bushtop. That's as far as it goes, though. Nipples aside (weren't they a punk rock band?), nothing which is in any way prone to changes in length or liquidity is allowed to feature. Back-arching is, however, de-rigeur, as are panting, sighing, moaning and pouting and, of course, the occasional whimper never goes amiss. Crying is something which also features regularly although I am too heavily into the mechanics of the performance to get my mind around the concept. I mean, plenty of women have cried with me during bedroom body battles but it has always been at the moment I take my pants off or turn the light on for the first time.
The language of love in these films is also very strictly limited. Intermittent cries of "yes!" are allowed and the occasional "please" can be uttered amid the groans but lines such as "fuck me 'til I fart" or "you could suck a golf ball up a vacuum cleaner hose" could lead to the immediate withdrawal of the actors' Equity cards.
Breaking wind at any point is frowned upon, reaching for the Kleenex is positively discouraged and, for those characters with Catholic leanings who are not interested in becoming parents, there cannot at any point be a post-coital row about who is going to sleep on "the wet patch". Also, either none of the participants is allowed to have a phone or they are forbidden from living anywhere near a decent pizza parlour which delivers in the small hours.
There are those who might say I don't have an ounce of romance or passion in my body - not true. I am, by nature, a hopeless romantic with a passion for lots of things - but I am also a realist. Either tell it how it is or don't tell it at all. Leaving things to the imagination is all well and good but if that is what the film makers want then why don't they just get the lad to say to the lass "fancy a round of Harry Hides His Helmet?", she could come back with "Ok, you talked me into it" and then we could cut immediately and return to the story. That would leave us viewers to picture the sweaty scene in our minds. It would also allow the more imaginative and disturbed among us to include a man in a badger suit, the Dagenham Girl Pipers and a performing donkey in the bedroom scene without any extra cost to the producers.
The constant soft porn interruptions literally make us lose the plot, and plot is so important in these films. I mean, will Tex ever find his feminine side? Will Angel-Rose be sated after ruining both the pool boy and the gardner for other women? Will she ever convince the sexist board of directors that she is the right person to take over the running of her daddy's investment bank? Will she ever run out of lingerie? Will Tex resort to wearing the old, comfortable pants he keeps at the back of his cupboard instead of those black, lycra thongs which chaffe his crack, don't soak up the drips and make him look like 50 per cent of Moshe Diane? These are all questions which need to be answered.
Sorry, soft porn can go to Grantham.

I Cans't Take N'More!

I am slowly but oh so surely going out of what's left of my mind, what with being laid up, hardly able to move and all-but housebound.
I have caught up on all the reading I can but day upon day of silence, interrupted only occasionally by the sound of a page turning, is soul destroying. That has led me to turn inexorably to the Devil's Lantern and it is sucking out the last vestiges of spirit in me. I no longer "watch" what's "on" the box. I have instead found myself staring, glassy eyed at whatever is flickering on the screen at that particular moment, all the time pondering some great televisual mystery posed by the subject matter. For instance:

1. Why do they put canned laughter on so-called comedy shows? The laughter is recorded, right? Well, why don't they screen the show which prompted the recorded audience to laugh instead of putting on something which just isn't fucking funny!

2. How many bastard episodes are there of The Bill? They must record up to 24 every fucking day! "In the beginning there was The Word - which will be followed by The Bill over on ITV."

3. Why the fuck does ITV feel the need to advertise its news coverage? How does that work? It's the fucking news, for God's sake! "Come and watch our reports on the the hurricane - it's a damn site better than the BBC's poxy earthquake!"

4. Why are programmes recorded at Volume Level A while the ads are recorded at Level Z? You can hardly hear a bloody word of what's on so you turn up the volume and then, just as you've got comfortable, the commercial break comes on and some twat starts screaming at you about bog cleaner!

5. Does anybody outside Millwall actually buy Diamonite jewellery off the shopping channel?

6. Is there something in the contracts dished out to presenters of the shopping channels or those bloody awful early hours quiz-call shows which stipulates that they have to be, or at least act as if they are, limp-wristed, lisping, chase-me-bet-you-can't gay bar-loiterers?

7. Who decided that the news is better if its read standing up?

8. Is someone seriously trying to kid us that the ridiculously vacuous and Barbie-esque Lara Lewington who does the weather on Channel 5 ever managed to finish a Janet and John book, let alone go on to get a degree in climatology?

There is more, much more, but as Scott said, I don't think I can write any more. All of the above can go.

The Cold Rush

"Take your flag and take a hike, big nose! I was here first!"
"Fuck off! It's mine."
"'Tis not too. It's mine!!"

I don't know about you but I'm on the edge of my seat here. It's dead exciting. You know? The race, I mean. It's almost as thrilling as watching the London Marathon on the box. Admittedly, you don't get the fun of watching dickheads dressed as badgers keel over with heart attacks in the heat or international track stars stop to piss up lamp posts, but it's gripping all the same.
I'm talking, obviously, about the new clamour to lay claim to the Arctic. Of course, it was those pesky Russkies who went and started it all. They only went and stuck their flag on the seabed under the North Pole while no-one was watching, didn't they? Sneaky bastards!
That woke up the Canadians. They stopped log rolling or whatever it is they do and started claiming that the Polar wilderness was theirs. The Danes then stopped filming each other screwing and piped up that it belonged to them and, predictably enough, the Yanks started jumping up and down saying that, thanks to their acquisition of Alaska for £2.50 and a couple of copies of Razzle, they owned the place.
Now, I wasn't bothered about Britain being left behind by not putting in a claim. I mean, did we really need 20 million square miles of fuck all? We've already got East Anglia. If the place was so fucking brill then surely old Bobby Peary or whoever actually got to the Pole first would have stayed and started a new nation. The reason everyone who has ever been there has come back at the first available opportunity is that it's a bit.......a bit.....a bit......well, have you ever been to Redditch?
The REAL reason for this second race to the Pole soon emerged, however. Some bright spark worked out that, because we're fucking up the climate by burning oil and gas like there's no tomorrow (which soon there won't be), global warming will melt the Poles. As the North Pole melts, so the argument goes, it will open up seaways and expose beds of coal, oil and gas hitherto made inaccessible by the ice. If you own the Pole you own the coal, the oil and the gas. It's a belter. Go north, young man!
Now, maybe it's just me but isn't there just the teensiest flaw in that reasoning? I see the exposure of fossil fuel resources bit. That I can get my mind round. The bit I have a problem with is the melting of the polar ice cap bit which goes with it. Won't we all be about 10ft underwater if the Arctic goes the way of an ice cube in your scotch? Also, as the north warms up, surely the south will warm up the same? That will mean the Antarctic will melt as well, won't it? That will mean we will all be about 40ft underwater.

Now, obviously, THEY have contingency plans to cope with this slight change in our future circumstances? Just supposing, however, that they haven't. Would someone please tell me how all these new stockpiles of fuel are going to help me? I mean, I may have access to loads more petrol but my car doesn't start on damp mornings as it is and, although gas supplies will be abundant, you try getting the pilot light to stay on if any moisture gets in the boiler.
I mean, at the moment I can get round these hiccups by calling out people to help but, should the polar ice caps melt, I think the responses from the AA and the gas board will be quite slow on account of all the staff having drowned!

There is also the superb irony underlying the cause of this race to the Pole. We are fucking up the planet by burning too many fossil fuels, which has led to global warming, which is making the ice caps melt, which will open up new coal, oil and gas fields, which will mean that we can burn more fossil fuels, which will lead to more global warming.
You know, I don't really think they've thought this one through. No, even if I could join the race north, which I can't, what with my knackered leg 'n' all, I don't think I would bother. It all seems a bit silly to me.
Nothing for Grantham, except Man's seemingly infinite capacity for stupidity.

Help! - And Get Postcards From The Reg.

I have made up my mind, I need a holiday and I'm going to have one.
I always put off planning a holiday - I put off, put off, put off and put off until, guess what? I don't end up going anywhere. I haven't been "away" for two years and, prior to that, I used to holiday about one year in four. Well, I've learnt my lesson and this time I'm going to get my knickers into gear and sort something out.
One drawback to a Pither holiday has always been that I had to shell out about double the amount other people did for the same get-away. I have four dogs and WILL NOT PUT THEM IN KENNELS (after one horrendous experience) and so have to pay people to stay at the Towers to look after them. My last holiday was in Crete and it did, indeed, cost more to have the dogs house-sat for a fortnight than it did for me to fly and stay on the island.
Well, this year, thanks to a slight hiccup in the marital department, I will have to holiday alone but the very-soon-to-be ex-Mrs Pither will be on hand at the Towers to look after the menagerie (she has already been to Rome and Bali this year so guilt is not an issue).
The trouble is, I haven't been on holiday alone since I was in my 20s - and I'm not sure how it will work. Part of me is relishing the prospect of going where I want, doing what I want, when I want and how I want. Another part is conscious of the fact that a man in his mid-40s, alone in a foreign land, will look, at best, sad, and at worst, a paedophile or sex tourist.
So, where does the man who has nothing go on holiday alone? Being a bloke, lying on a beach all day just doesn't appeal to me. I am more of a scenery and things to explore kind of a chap. However, after such a shit year, I do fancy somewhere hot this time, if only because the pace of life in places like that tends to be slower and more relaxed. Sardinia appeals, as does Sicily (best cooks in the world!!) but I'm not sure.
I don't want to see any Union Jack shorts. Ideally, I don't want to come across anyone from Britain at all - or Germany or the USA or Australia etc. I want to eat superb food, drink good wine, relax in the evening by chatting to local people or taking myself off to some beautiful spot to read a good book and watch the sun go down.
I want somewhere where with history, somewhere with its own, distinct culture, where the Stock Exchange hasn't been heard of, where newspapers don't exist, where radios and televisions are outlawed and where all the women have enormous gazongas.
This is an appeal to all my cultured chums out there. Where do I go?

The Price Of Thatcherism

I've just seen a programme advertised which, I think, perfectly encapsulates Thatcher's Britain and the depths to which we have sunk.
The show is called "Flog It!"
I would like to credit the vacuous, brain dead makers of this televisual excrement with irony in their choice of title but, sadly, I fear that is way beyond them and it merely reflects their attitude to anything of beauty - namely that it has a price but not a value.
Morons are encouraged to come up with/find items of beauty, historical interest, craftsmanship and aesthetic value and then see how much they can get for them - flog them, in other words. That is Thatcherism/Blairism to a tee! "I don't care if it was hand-made by Egyptian artists in the Year 5000 BC, how much can I get for it?" Nothing, to them, has any value other than a value in pounds and pence. "If an historical artifact with both beauty and a tale to tell can be turned into cash to pay for a month in Florida for me, my horrid wife and equally horrid brats then bring it on!!"
The sort of people who make these programmes, take part in them or delight in watching them are the sort of people who would walk past the Great Pyramid in Egypt and think to themselves "You could get 200 holiday apartments on that site, rented out at £800-a-week each, if only they would knock down that bloody awful pointy thing!"
The stupid, who with their gimme-gimme-gimme mentalities elected Thatcher in the first place, have not just crawled from under their rocks with the advent of wank shows like Flog It, however. The genteel Antiques Roadshow has been bringing them to the surface for years. How many times have you watched people on that programme feigning interest in what the expert was telling them about the provenance of their heirloom? You could almost hear them thinking "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Napoleonic Wars, yeah, master craftsman, yeah, intricate detail, yeah, lost for more than 300 years, yeah........but 'ow mooch can I fooking flog it fer?" The experts always left the monetary value until last, and then with the excuse that the owner needed to know that so as to ensure it was adequately insured, but we all knew what the fuckers were thinking. How I used to laugh when some twat showed up with something aged and dusty they had dragged down from the loft, only to be told that there were millions of them about and it was only worth about a tenner - not even your train fare home, you fuckwit!
The growth of this "knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing" cliche over the last 20 years has been shadowed, not surprisingly, by a decline in the

reverence paid to being educated and a rise in the celebration of the academically bankrupt. Inverse intellectual snobbery has become all the rage, with wankers like Alan Sugar and Kelvin McKenzie actually being proud to tell anyone who will listen that they left school with absolutely no qualifications. "It just shows how unimportant it is because I'm a miwwionaire now!!" These turds can ONLY judge success in terms of money. If you make a lot of money you are a success, someone to be admired. If money is not you primary goal then you are a failure. Yeah, like Van Gogh, Michelangelo and Mother Theresa.
Phew!! I'm glad I got that out of my system. In the meantime, the "proud-to-be-thick" brigade and those who look around themselves and constantly wonder how much everything can be sold for can bugger off to Grantham.

Sexism and The Search For Solutions

I am a man. Men are logical. They are rational, problem solvers. Unlike women, they cannot "multi-task". No, men are lumbered with the enormous social handicap of having to think things through before coming up with the most workable solution to any obstacle they may face, thus ensuring that the one job they are able to do at any one time is done well.
Girlies are, of course, far superior. When faced with the same obstacle they decide to do the first half-assed thing that comes into their head (thus saving time) and to keep half an eye on doing it (thus ensuring that, even though it was a useless idea in the first place, it is botched as much as is humanly possible). They are, at the same time, able to phone their best friend (to keep up to date on matters of import, such as who has had their hair done recently), make a cup of coffee (by putting gravy granules in the percolator), put the oven on (and then walk away and forget about it), run a bath (and then walk away and forget about it) and open and read red letters from public utilities (before putting them in the bin and saying later "I didn't think they were important").
In the specific instance of the very-soon-to-be ex-Mrs Pither, these amazing talents are, obviously, immeasurably improved by two bottles of Pinot Grigiot and hormone levels which are up and down like a whore's drawers.
These charming differences between the sexes have been brought to the fore since Pither was discharged from hospital, his left leg in a plaster cast stretching from the top of his thigh right down to his ankle. You see, I was faced with numerous problems to solve on arriving home. For instance:

1. How do you sit (and a word which sounds very much like sit) on the loo, with your bomb doors over the drop zone, when one of your legs is rigid from pelvis to tibia tip?
2. How do you have either a bath or a shower without dissolving the cast?
3. How do you heave your leg onto the bed or a stool when, because of the nature of your injury, you are unable to lift it by yourself?
4. How do you have a pee when the "woman friendly" loo seat has to be held up manually (in pre-injury days by my right knee) or else it will slam down and move you four rows forward in the choir?
5. How do you put on or take off your pants or sequinned action thong when you can't reach lower than just below your knee?
6. How do you explain to four dogs that the crutches which support you are not to be attacked and gnawed at every time you swing forward?


My initial solution to all of these obstacles was turned down flat by VSTB EW. It would, admittedly, have involved some cost in wages but it would have worked and, I thought, proved good value.
The rejection of the above led to the formulation of plans A-Z, all of which were arrived at following full and frank exchanges of views between myself and Mrs P. Her solutions almost always entailed her being on hand and assisting. I gave them the thumbs down as they would not only have been far too humiliating to bare they would have meant me waiting for her return from work each day before either I or my bowels could move.
Anyway, the upshot of my "man thinking" has led to the following solutions to the above problems. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Pither's Guide To Enforced Unipedalism, numbers 1-6:
1.


2.


3.


4.


5.


6.


Yes, I am man, in manner of problem solving, logic machine. I'd always been fond of my crutch but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine having two more would prove so invaluable.
Crutches shall not go to Grantham - but multi-tasking and the results it produces shall.

Great Mysteries of the Universe - Number 2,359.

When Foot and Mouth rears its ugly head (how's that for a ridiculous metaphor?), how come farmers who have to have their cattle destroyed blub on camera and tell anyone who will listen how heartbreaking it is?
Dairy farmers aside, what are these custodians of the countryside rearing their animals for in the first place? Maybe livestock farming is just part of some elaborate and yet so far fruitless plan to introduce ungulates into the wild? Perhaps farmers breed cattle purely for the company - you need all the friends you can get in East Anglia? Then again, is it that they are such committed "Greens" they have cows to keep down the grass and produce methane to power their Range Rovers?
The fact that I have yet to see a retirement home for cows and that Sainsbury's and the rest are always packed from floor to ceiling with bits of these animals tends to disabuse me of these theories.
I think the most commonly accepted idea is that farmers breed and rear cattle so that, just as the animals are getting to like life, they can be packed off, killed and then butchered for the rest of us to eat. Why then do farmers cry when someone other than their normal, psycho slaughterman puts a gun to the heads of their charges? Is it, do you think, that unlike in the abattoirs, they're not allowed to watch? Possibly. Is it that each dead cow represents a financial loss? Well, I think they get compensated, don't they? - you know, like in other industries where stocks turn out to be contaminated with something nasty?
I have no fucking time whatsoever for farmers! They have been outside planning laws which apply to the rest of us for years. They get paid to produce things when there is a glut on the market, they get paid for offering not to fuck up the countryside and turn it into a dustbowl, they pollute watercourses with their fertilisers, they fuck up the food chain with their pesticides - and they don't give a fuck about anyone else.
The squeeze is on them now, however. Big business and insurance companies currently own about 80 per cent of all farms in this country and the supermarkets are demanding more and more of the producers for less and less. Well, tough titty, fishface! Welcome to the fucking world. I don't remember those bastards taking to the streets to protest about what happened to the miners, the steel workers or the rest of us. "......and when they came for me there was no-one left to speak out."
Fuck 'em. Farmers can sod off to Grantham.

Name That Tune

Even though I don't have the same obsession with music that most of my peers appear to have, I was having a shufty through my wax disc collection last night and it really cheered me up. You see, I came across that Dead Kennedys classic "Too Drunk To Fuck". What a title! It raised a smile and then got me thinking of other greats, the top of the pile surely being the country and western anthem "You're The Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly".
C&W has always been a rich vein for such gems but I would be interested to hear of any brilliant numbers which deserve to be listed among the world's top ten titles.
In the meantime, how about these other little slices of genius which all helped to put the "cunt" in "country music"? (I have labelled my particular favourites with a *):

It's Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night that Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long

I Can't Get Over You, So Why Don't You Get Under Me?

All My Exes Live in Texas

Saddle Up the Stove, Ma, I'm Riding the Range Tonight *

If the Phone Don't Ring, It's Me Not Calling You Up

Get Your Tongue Outta My Mouth 'Cause I'm Kissing You Goodbye *

(Pardon Me) I've Got Someone To Kill *

Her teeth Were Stained, But Her Heart was Pure

Just Bought a Car From a Guy That Stole my Girl, but the Car Don't Run, So I Figure We Got an Even Deal

At the Gas Station of Love, I Got the Self-Service Pump

How Come Your Dog Don't Bite Nobody But Me? *

If I Can't Be Number One In Your Life, Then Number Two On You

If I Had Shot You When I Wanted To, I'd Be Out By Now *

I Wish I Were a Woman (So I Could Go Out With a Guy Like Me)

I Would Have Wrote You a Letter, But I Couldn't Spell Yuck!

If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead Yet?

Would Jesus Wear A Rolex On His Television Show?

Mama, Get The Hammer (There's A Fly On Papa's Head) *

Gave Her My Heart and a Diamond And She Clubbed Me With a Spade

I Don't Know Whether To Kill Myself Or Go Bowling *

If Whiskey Were A Woman I'd Be Married For Sure

Still Miss You Baby, But My Aim's Gettin' Better *

I Wouldn't Take Her To a Dog Fight, Cause I'm Afraid She'd Win

Velcro Arms, Teflon Heart

Your Negligee Has Turned To a Flannel Nightgown

I'll Marry You Tomorrow But Let's Honeymoon Tonight

How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away? **********

I'd Rather Pass a Kidney Stone than Another Night With You

Why Do You Believe Me When I Tell You That I Love You When You Know I've Been A Liar All My Life?

Come Out of the Wheatfield Nelly, You're Going Against the Grain

My Wife Ran Off With My Best Friend And I Sure Do Miss Him

She Got The Ring And I Got The Finger

She Offered Her Honor, He Honored Her Offer, and All Through the Night it Was Honor and Offer

Get Your Biscuits In The Oven And Your Buns In Bed

(For those who are interested, the winner of the "Who Goes Over The Side?" lifeboat poll was..............that cunt I used to work with..........Graham Barfoot! Hurrah! What a twat! If you're reading this, Graham, go fuck yourself!)

Board Meeting

I know I am watching too much television, what with being laid up 'n' all, but there is only so much reading a Pither can do and, more and more, I find myself escaping my incapacity by metaphorically crawling into that box in the corner, in much the same way as people used to escape their tenement existences through a bottle.
With that in mind, it's telly-selly time again, I'm afraid, and I'd like you to picture, if you would, the following scene:
That pillar of the corporate world JML has hit hard times. Competition has sent profits into freefall and so top executives from the elite product development team have gathered for an emergency meeting in a back room of the Duck and Gynaecologist.

Darren: "Fuck me! Sales am lower than Vanessa Feltz's gut. What's gooin' on?"
Wayne: "Dazza, it's the opposition - they keep comin'up with summat new every day. It's killin' us."
Lee: "Arr. Them bastards at K-Tel am raking it in. They've got them Velcro Pubic Post-It Notes, Gusset Glisten AND the Walk 'n' Wank."
Johno: "Dow forget Ronco, neither. 'Ow am we supposed ter compete with the Knoblight and them Easyshit Shorts?"
Darren: "We need a new product, summat as is gooin' to be a must-buy. An essential."
Johno: "Arr, it's gorra be revolutionary, summat as will change the way we think."
Lee: "Summat as pushes the boundaries of technology. Summat ingenious, summat sexy and with a hint of power, danger and adventure."
Darren: "Come on lads, we need some blue skoi thinkin'. Think, dammit, think!"
Wayne: "I've gorrit!"
Darren: "What?"
Wayne: "The JML Ironing Board Cover!!!"
Johno: "Fookin' brill!"
Lee: "'Ooze round is it?"




Jesus! To hear them plug it on the telly you'd think they'd discovered fucking penicillin!
One selling point is that it irons both sides of the garment at the same time! Funny, but I would have thought the only time that wouldn't happen anyway was when you chose to iron your shirts on a blancmange.
Another advertising hook is that it comes in different colours. Shit! What will they think of next?
I can't see it being a winner, really. Then again, if THEY can sell bottled water, supposed "anti-ageing" creams, "stool softener" and Leeds United I suppose they can sell anything.
As far as I'm concerned, however, the miracle JML Ironing Board Cover has to go to Grantham.