Padfoot - The Fat Lady Ain't Singin' Yet.

Padfoot is alive. He withstood the operation and he is coming home to me in about an hour. I will write more when I can. Thanks to everybody (I will thank you all individually when I get past this) for all your lovely words and thoughts (and thanks to Fiwa for her post which prompted so many of her friends, previously unknown to me, to take the trouble to write) - it helped him pull through this at least.
Pad is still very ill..........but he's alive!!! X

P.S. The news is that they did not find any tumours in or around his gut - however, his organs were nearly all not where they were supposed to be (Christ knows how that happened) and his liver is enlarged. They did, however, find a large mass on/around his lungs. I am awaiting the results of a biopsy and we will then know how/if to proceed. We think it is a tumour and, if inoperable, we could try chemotherapy. He is virtually unconscious still - it has really taken it out of him - but he is comfortable. The other dogs are really down and worried about him (bless!!). I'm trying to get him to eat something. Well, it's now about 3am and he's asleep but I'm not. Sleep does not come easy these days.
P.P.S. I've found a month's work and so the wolf has been shooed away from the door for the time being at least. This is real Gloria Gaynor time for both of us!!!

Padfoot - The Last Chance Saloon.

Pictured in happier times - he used to like the smell of my shirt!!


My Padfoot is in hospital tonight - the first time he has been away from me since I had him.
He underwent X-Rays, blood tests and a scan in the hospital today and five vets examined the results. Between them, they "think" they have found two "masses" in/around his guts. There is also, apparently, a problem with his liver.
The only way forward is for them to open him up to see what is going on and so tomorrow he will undergo an exploratory operation.
The vets say that if tumours are found and they are inoperable then he should be put to sleep once and for all on the operating table. I have refused permission. I am going to the hospital at 8am tomorrow to be with him and make sure everything goes as I want it to go.
The first problem is Pad is 10 years old - relatively old for a pedigree - and so there is a big risk he will not survive the operation. If he does and there is something which can be done, it will be. If there is no hope I will be bringing him home to spend his last days at home with me.
I am sorry to bore regulars who tend to expect comedy on this Blog. It is appallingly self-indulgent, I know, but it helps to put this down in writing.
Many thanks to all of you for your kindness and supportive words. If everyone, here, in the States, in Australia, in Croatia - wherever - could just say a little prayer for him tomorrow - or, for us non-believers, a few words of hope - it would certainly do no harm.
Thank you all again. Fingers crossed for my beautiful boy.

Padwatch 3.

For those of you kind enough to ask after my beautiful boy, Padfoot, the news is not good, I'm afraid.
I am taking him to the vet's tomorrow when I will ask for a biopsy - but I am almost certain I know what the result will be.
Pad is continuing to lose weight alarmingly and he is getting weaker by the day. He has that dry, rasping cough which, in my experience, always accompanies cancer when it's grip begins to turn into a stranglehold. He also shivers at the slightest hint of a draft when all he ever used to do was pant at the slightest hint of sunshine. Finally, he has a raging thirst.
You don't need seven years' training at veterinary college to work out what is wrong - just look at his eyes!!!!! It is an awful, awful, awful disease. I had to watch my father-in-law die from it and it claimed the lives of all three dogs in my previous pack. The dogs were lucky - they were put to sleep when the pain became too much.
Pad, I am sure, is not in much pain at the moment. He still has his appetite and he is still able to move about by himself, in fact I took him for a little walk yesterday and while we could not go far I think he enjoyed being able to smell the grass, the trees and the calling cards of his pals. He is warm, I ferry the water bowl to him whenever he looks up at me to ask and I have taken to sleeping downstairs on the sofa with him so he is not lonely and I am there for him when he yelps out or wants a drink.
I am going to make sure he has the best it is possible to have until the time comes when he hurts too much. Then, the vet will come out to him and, like my other dogs, I will be there to hold him while he goes to sleep. I will then bury him alongside the other boys and girls in my garden and flowers will grow where he lies.
The first five years of his life must have been Hell on earth but, when he fell through the ice of a frozen canal and was on the verge of drowning, little did he know how special life was going to be from the moment he was dragged exhausted from the water by firemen.
He has had five fantastic years with me and I will miss him more than I can possibly put into words. God bless him.

In Which Pither Goes Ever So Slightly Poncey

"...a one...a two...a one, two, three, four!"


I went to the ballet last night. Yup, that's right, your read it correctly. Pither, the man who thinks culture is a posh name for yoghurt, went to the ballet!
The venue was once again Small Town Theatre, the freebie tickets once again came courtesy of the lovely Janey who works there and the production was The Sleeping Beauty by Tchaikovsky.
All the local actors and actresses were apparently busy with panto season and so the performance was by some out-of-towners - namely the St Petersburg Ballet which, I am reliably informed, is probably second only to the Bolshoi.
Ballet has never really appealed to me - or so I thought - but, like Dickens, you can't really have an informed opinion unless you've been to one and so that's why I went.
I was all prepared beforehand for a dreary night which I was sure would see me in the pub over the road while the star of the show was still pushing out the Zs but, guess what?...............it was absolutely fabulous!!
The word "beautiful" kept coming to mind throughout the performance....(I know, I know, "Oh God, Pither's lost it. He's now a luvvie")....but that is the only word to describe the whole experience.
I could comment on the music - Jesus, but that boy can knock out a good waltz! - I could attempt to describe just how lavish the costumes were and I could even have a stab at telling you how hypnotic the dancing was.....but I won't. It will all sound as though I am taking the piss so I will stop here.
All I will say is that if you haven't been to the ballet before you should go. There, I've said it. Grantham shall not have ballet.

P.S. For anyone who suspects that I have "turned" completely and will take to wearing a cravat and using a cigarette holder there is nothing to fear - I stopped off on the way home for fish and chips!! Hurrah!!!

P.P.S. For those kind enough to have been enquiring about my beautiful Pad, his appointment at the vet's was put off from yesterday until Saturday morning. He is, in the meantime, soldiering on.

Shorts Don't Matter! 2.

The England team in confident mood before the big kick-off.


England lost at football tonight. That, in itself, was not startling but this particular defeat assumed some gravitas as it meant that the national side failed to qualify for the European Football Championship in Austria and Switzerland next summer.
Football supporters in England are very sad about this because, instead of travelling abroad next summer to watch their team play, bare their beer bellies and tattoos in the street, get drunk, throw chairs at police and fight foreign people, they will have to stay in England, watch other teams play on the telly, bare their beer bellies and tattoos in the street, get drunk, throw chairs at police and fight each other.
The whole thing, of course, was a fix. England is bestest at everything, as everyone knows, but it is incredibly bestest at football. England invented football - like concentration camps, the slave trade and Big Brother - and so should win all the time because only the English know all the rules. Everyone knows we have the finest league in the world, although very few English people play in it, and the rules are quite clear - games are decided by a panel of fashion designers and lifestyle gurus who sit down after each game and decide which team's players earn most, have the best haircuts, the most expensive clothes, the fastest cars, the most appalling, ostentatious houses, the most roasting/gang-rape convictions to their names, the most drunken attendances at China White's and the thickest, yet ironically thinnest, blonde girlfriends.

Well, Johnny Euro only went and changed the rules tonight, didn't he? For some ridiculous reason it was ruled beforehand that the winner of the game would be the team which got the footbally whatsit into the other team's goal-thing most!!! Talk about loading the odds against England. How the Hell are you supposed to get the ball into the net without touching it? I mean, were they seriously suggesting that our brave lads should mess up £500-a-throw pedicures by kicking it? Besides, kicking it would have dirtied their boots and bits of mud could easily have masked at least part of the name of the sponsors. Also, have you any idea what contact with anything other than hair gel could do to a Nicky Clarke hairdo? I suppose there could have been a way around that but Uefa only went and ruled that personal stylists and agents were not allowed on the pitch during the game. That was just madness.
Anyway, the ball is round, is it not? That means that it rolls along the ground, yes? So, how are you supposed to get near enough to it to blow it? The only way I can think it can be done is to run after the ball. Yeah, right!! How in the name of all that's holy can you pose for photographs, plug your latest line in sports casualwear or sign autographs if you're moving, let alone running?

England tonight played a team from somewhere foreign - I think it was called Croatia - and, while the players got the ball thing into the right goal twice, the Croatians went and put the ball in between England's goalsticks three times. Consequently, the Euro judges only went and decided at the end that Croatia had won because it had potted one more "goal point" than England. Big deal! So bloody what!! Croatia's haircuts were truly awful while the best car any of the players had was a mid-range Mercedes, and even that didn't have fuel-injection! As for their girlfriends, you wouldn't believe it! I spotted at least two in the crowd who weren't even orange!! There was also a rumour going around that the manager's wife didn't have plastic tits!! Not only that, ten of the eleven players they fielded hadn't written an autobiography!! Jesus Christ!!! Some of them were as old as 20 or 21!!!! What the Hell were they doing?
When the referee blew the whistle at the end of the game there was still a chance that England could qualify, however. That would have happened if Andorra (population 18 - number of people required for a football team 11) had beaten or drawn against Russia. Well, as you might expect, the foreigners ganged up against England and fixed the game so that the Russians won by one goal-thing to no goal-things. Typical!!
I know I am upset at the moment but think of the poor England team. Their agonies are not yet over. Radio Five Live said that two of manager Steve McLaren's hair extensions had worked loose during the match and so they will have to be replaced, Steven Gerrard was left with a bruise on his knee and he's supposed to be doing a fashion shoot for Pretty Polly tomorrow and the traffic was so bad that Sol Campbell's private helicopter couldn't land outside Stringfellow's until after 11pm, by which time all the members of the Football Association had drunk all the Krystal champagne! What a nightmare!!
I am really down about the game and how everyone is awful and we're brilliant and it's so unfair and we really deserve to go to Euro 2008 and how our poor players must feel.
Yeah - the England football team, and its alleged manager, can go to Grantham.

Padwatch 2.

I was going to post today about the lunacy which is the Common Agricultural Policy and the Thatcherite moves by our beloved, so-called Labour Government to block attempts by the EU to stop the current practice of giving the richest landowners in the country, including that parasitic bint at Buck House, annual, six-figure handouts from Brussels for doing fuck all with their acres!
I also toyed with the idea of ranting about those fucking Nazis at Coca Cola, following Mark Thomas's excellent documentary on the company last night.
Then I got deeply annoyed for a moment about the money-grabbing bastards who manage Amy Winehouse and are still shoving her on stage like some form of performing fucking monkey (or gilt-egg-laying goose) when the poor lass is an emotional, drug and booze-addled wreck with enough on her plate, including the plight of her husband, without having to dance to the tune of her puppeteer masters.
Finally, I thought I would try to be funny - there's always a first time - about something bizarre or offbeat in the news or my life...............but you really do have to be in the mood. The truth is, despite still drawing a blank in the job market and now being almost bankrupt, only one thing matters to me in life at this moment.

I am still nursing my beautiful dog Pad round the clock because he is in a bad way and his condition is beginning to really get me down.
I decided to try to do something positive and so today we actually left the house and went for a walk - well, a sort of stagger, really, but at least it was out!
We left the rest of the pack behind to spend some quality time together, just us two, and I think it bucked up Pad's spirits a bit.
We trundled around, we played hide and seek, we played football - a bit one-sided, it has to be said - and we said hello to all the birds. Then, when we came home, Pad had an orange (his second favourite thing in the world) and a carrot (his favourite thing in the world) and settled down for a nap before his tea.
It's back to the vet's on Thursday for a few more tests. He is losing weight dreadfully, in addition to his leg problems, and I have witnessed that decline before. I am pinning all my hopes on it not being cancer. I lost three dogs to that fucking illness 10 years ago!








Still, he's eating as normal and his conjunctivitis is clearing up and so it's not the end....it just feels like it.
Nothing for Grantham.

We're All Going To Die!

I'm worried about the would-be martyrs of the True Russian Orthodox Church - I just don't think they've thought things through.
You may well have heard that members of this breakaway church have barricaded themselves inside a cave in Russia and are threatening to blow themselves up if the authorities don't let them wait there until next May when they claim the world is going to end.
What sort of a bargaining position is that for budding activists?

Troglodyte: "Back off, pigski!! Don't come any closer! We're all going to die in May and if you don't go away we'll kill ourselves."
Fuzzski: "Sorry? Run that by me again."
Troglodyte: "Uurm, yeah, ok. Uurm, right, right, I've got it now. If you, right, come in here, right, we'll all kill ourselves. Yeah, yeah, I think that's it."
Fuzzski: "...and if we don't come in?"
Troglodyte: "Uuuuurrmm, uuuurrmmm......hang on a bit.....uurrmmm....if you, right, don't come in, right....ok, ok, just supposing you don't come in, right.....let's just suppose, right....like, that you don't come in, right....we're....uuurrmm.....we're......we're all going to die."
Fuzzski: "See you in June."
Troglodyte: "Ok, bye for now. Take care."

Pity the recruitment manager for this dickhead sect. How on earth do you persuade people to sign on the dotted line when all you can offer them is death, either now or in May? Opportunities for promotion must surely be limited?
Also, not content with failing to see the idiocy of their position, the members seem completely unperturbed by the fact that the bloke who started the cult, Pyotr Kuznetsov, is not with them. That hardly inspires confidence, does it? Not only that, old Pyotr is currently undergoing psychiatric tests!! You would have thought that might have given his followers the slightest inkling that all was not well with the cause.

Sorry, the True Russian Orthodox Church can go to Grantham.

Padfoot

My beautiful boy is in a bad way.
Padfoot has some sort of cold/bug and so is on antibiotics. On top of that, he has conjunctivitis and so has to have drops in his eyes twice-a-day. Both ailments are enough to get anybody down but something else has really knocked him off his feet - literally. He has degenerative myelopathy.
This cruddy condition is common to many alsatians and makes them gradually lose control of and feeling in their back legs. The condition is chronic and ends with the dog being unable to stand unaided and certainly unable to walk.
Well, Pad collapsed yesterday and I had to carry him up to bed - he weighs seven stone!! Today I carried him back down again and, although he was able to drag himself outside, he barely has use of his legs.
Isn't life shit? Of all the people who SHOULD be crippled - Jim Davidson, Thatcher, Chubby Brown, Bush etc - why should it be Pad?
The very-soon-to-be ex-Mrs Pither is heading north today to see her mother for a few days and so we have Pither Towers to ourselves. I have already got the fire going in the lounge and I have a cupboard full of treats for the boy. A weekend of quality time spent together is on the cards.
Being disabled can go to Grantham.

PADWATCH UPDATE: 8.30pm.

Tilly, bless her, realises that all is not well with her biggest brother.

Titter Ye Not.

I went to the theatre last night.
I love the theatre, especially Small Town's theatre! It's a proper theatre - you know, cosy, lots of red velvet, gilt and good muppet boxes? It's recently undergone yet another makeover and although they've managed turn the foyer into some sort of glass and tubular steel airport departure lounge they have lovingly restored the original Victorian splendour of the auditorium.

I don't go to the theatre as much as I would like, primarily because there is seldom anything on I want to see! Small Town's current theatre director has a passion for musicals, which I loathe, there are the ubiquitous Postman Pat "extravaganzas" for the pint-sized punters and paedophiles, there is ballet, which the very-soon-to-be ex-Mrs Pither adores but I have never been able to take to, and then the rest of the year seems to be taken up by pantomime.
This week, however, there was something on I wanted to see - Shakespeare.

I have, for several years now, been trying to get into Shakespeare. I only did Henry V at school, you see, and although I found it a ripping tale of derring do I neither read nor saw any Shakespeare after that. Millions worldwide have, however, raved for centuries about Bill the Quill and it did not occur to me until I was in my early 40s that there consequently had to be some worth in the boy's work. I wanted to enjoy whatever it was I had been missing out on - either that or be able to hold my head up high and proclaim that I found Shakespeare shite, without talking from a position of ignorance.

Unfortunately, my attempts to educate myself with Bard for Beginners have not, in truth, been a roaring success to date. The principle problem has been that, unlike me, everyone else seems to have seen each of his plays a thousand times. As a result, there seems to be a widespread belief that Shakespeare has to be "freshened up" and given a new twist. That invariably means that "contemporary" versions of the works are staged. I have lost count of the number of times I have been to see a Shakespearean play and been deafened by the sound of motorbikes and armoured cars on stage or been bemused by the sight of hoodies, shell-suited rappers or footballers prancing about and talking in Olde English prose.
I want tights!! Men in tights!!! Not because I'm homosexual - I'm not. I'm more solosexual these days. No, it's because I want to see it as it was probably originally performed before graduating to more inventive and adapted performances.

Well, I had another chance to see what all the fuss was about when Janey, who works at Small Town Theatre, very kindly gave me two complimentary tickets to see an RSC production which is touring the provinces after rave reviews in the West End. She knew about my love of the theatre, of my efforts to understand Shakespeare and so bore me in mind, bless her. She and her other half, The Pirate, are indeed two of my favourite people.
So, I went last night, with the VSTB EW, and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the evening out. The costumes, although not exactly 16th Century, were of no particular age and were excellent. The set designs were minimalist and yet elegantly creative. The lighting was largely simple and yet wholly mood inducing when needed. There was even music, subtlely, appropriately and entertainingly performed. Finally, there were the performances, all of which were first rate - passionately and expertly given, with total credibility, clarity and sympathy. There was only one thing wrong.........the play itself!!!
You see, the production was The Comedy of Errors, the Shakespearean "comedy".

First of all, I don't do "farce". With the sole exception of Fawlty Towers, which I suppose is farce, I find the sight of people scurrying around, hiding in wardrobes and dropping their trousers tedious. Secondly, and you can argue this with me 'til you're blue in the face, Shakespeare don't do comedy!!! I'm sorry, but Doddy he ain't! Doubtless, people farting, raising their eyebrows in a silly way or running about chasing each other was regarded as pant-wettingly hilarious in the 16th Century - but time moves on. When your principle gag centres around two people looking alike - twice! - you're not really starting from the rooftop apartment of Comedy Towers. To drag that out for two hours is stretching it beyond the bounds of bearability! I was praying that the two sets of brothers would bump into each other on stage after about 30 minutes and so all would become clear and we could get into the pub. My frustration brought to mind the greatest heckle of all time which supposedly came during an appalling performance of the Diary of Anne Frank. So tedious and mind-numbing was the production that when the Nazi stormtroopers burst into the factory where Anne and her family were hiding, some wag at the back of the stalls, in a desperate attempt to curtail the play, shouted "She's in the attic!!!"

There was something else which got on my mammaries last night, something which neither Shakespeare nor the cast could do anything about - the bulk of the audience!! God, they were pretentious and middle class! There were people roaring with laughter when one character chased another. They roared if someone fell over. They roared if someone gurned. Pither, meanwhile, failed to trouble his chuckle muscle all night. Perhaps saddest of all was the trainee, 12-year-old pseud who sat right in front of me and laughed ALL the way through - even when the father of the Antipholus twins was sentenced to death! - but kept looking to his dad for approval.

Many of those in the audience were like those wankers who politely applaud sporadically during jazz recitals and then look around, as if to say "Only I appreciate jazz and only I know which are the clever bits and you don't and I do 'cos I'm cultured and you're not". Fuck off!! I have to say I feared for the well being of many of the people there last night. I mean, once they got out of the theatre they were likely to rupture themselves or have heart attacks if they so much as caught an episode of Are You Being Served, let alone anything vaguely amusing!

Anyway, at least I finally saw a "proper" production of Shakespeare, and jolly well it was staged to boot. Sadly, it was a great production spoilt by the play!

What to send then? Well, Bill can stay out. I know the boy's got talent and I am looking forward to seeing "proper" productions of his meatier works. I think it has to be last night's audience. Pseuds and suburbanite, middle class wankers who laugh for show can go to Grantham.

According To Our Records..........

It's an old and familiar refrain over here in Pitherworld but......the banks are out of control!!!!
I'm going to keep on saying this until someone - preferably someone with heavy artillery - starts to listen and decides to do something about it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting for one minute that we should take it upon ourselves to burst into our local branch of Lloyds, Barclays, Nat West or whatever, shoot all the staff and then crucify the manager on the outside of the building beneath a large sign saying "greedy, incompetent, capitalist bastard!". No, I think the Army should be doing that!
I just think we have to start fighting back in more subtle ways, such as by writing to our banks each time their cashpoint machines are empty, thereby not allowing us to get access to OUR money - and then charging the banks £30 for each letter (where the Hell do banks buy their stationery??!!?), with daily £10 penalty fees for each day which passes with the cashpoints still being out of service.
The absolute inability of all of the banks to do anything efficiently or with any regard at all for its customers has been covered on this blog before and is currently being illustrated beautifully by the lovely Ziggi.
The other unacceptable face of banking came under the spotlight today when one of the cartel - Barclays - announced that it had LOST £1.3 BILLION on the sub-prime housing market in the USA. "Never fear", Barclays reassured those parasitic, chinless twats in The City, "We have made £1.9 billion in profits already so far this year!" Fucking Hell!!!!
First of all, exactly WHOSE money have they lost? Not bleedin's theirs, that's for sure. They don't, in theory, have any money of their own. They exist by borrowing some from Peter at 5 per cent and by then lending it to Paul at 12 per cent. They make money from everyone else's money. It's called capitalism. In the wild, its called parasitism.
Secondly, I wonder what would happen if I wrote to them tomorrow and said: "Look, you remember that £300 I borrowed off you? Well, truth is, I've gone and lost it. Soz about that. Never mind, eh?" Do you think they would shrug their corporate shoulders and say: "Hell, knock yourself out. Have a ball. Easy come, easy go." Je ne pense pas!!! They'd be round with the fuzz faster than you could say "debtors prison"!
Finally, these gits have the arrogance to actually admit that they rip us poor saps off so much on a daily basis that they can afford to lob away £1.3 thousand million and still be almost £2 thousand million in profit!!
"Rip us off, Reg?" I hear you ask. "Surely not?" Well, take Pither's hapless contribution to these obscene profits, for example. A few days ago I got a letter from Lloyds telling me that I was £30 over my overdraft limit. I promptly went online, did some financial juggling, and transferred £35 into the account. A few days later I got another letter saying that I was £35 over my overdraft limit. When I rang to query this and point out that I had paid money in to cover the excess I was told......wait for this......that yes, they had received my £35. However, I had been charged a £10 penalty fee for going over my limit without permission, which put me over my limit again, and there was also a £30 charge for the original letter.
This time I paid in £40 but, low and behold, a few days later I received yet another letter which said I was over my limit again. The explanation this time was that there had been a £30 charge for the second letter and as that again put my over my limit there was another £10 penalty fee!!
This would have gone on until Hell froze over had I not ranted at them and pointed out that it was their bloody letters which were causing the problem and if they just switched their sodding computer off for half an hour the problem would be rectified!!
I have previously sent Lloyds TSB to Grantham but I think it is time for them to be joined by their incompetent, money-grabbing, greedy High Street cousins.

Experts

"Go away!! Just leave me alone, will you!!"


I found a kindred spirit today - and he's a seal. He's Sahara the hooded seal.
Please spare a thought for Sahara as you attempt to wade through the metaphorical treacle of another day in the 21st Century because he, like me, and I suspect you, is suffering at the hands of people who insist they know what's best - the ubiquitous "experts".
I am told on a daily basis that I am doing everything wrong. I eat the wrong food, apparently. I wear the wrong clothes, allegedly. I drink the wrong things, supposedly. I have eaten bacon and so I will get cancer. I have been out in the sun so I will get cancer. I have used a mobile phone so I will get cancer. My bottom will fall off because I don't eat five pieces of fruit-a-day. My penis will fall off because I smoke. My feet will fall off because I've been on a plane. My pension is too small so I will die in poverty. My debts are too large so I will die in poverty. I will drown because I'm melting the ice caps. I will be burned alive because I've used aerosol deodorants. I will have a heart attack because I'm overweight. I will have a heart attack because I'm middle-aged. I will have a heart attack because I'm a man. I will have a heart attack because I worry...............No wonder I bloody worry!! JUST LEAVE ME ALONE, WILL YOU!!!!!
If seals could talk, I am certain that you would find poor Sahara yelping that line repeatedly to the gaggle of "experts" who have decided that he is not living his life the way they think he should. What did Sahara do to warrant this unwanted attention? He decided to take himself off to Tenerife for the winter!
I awoke this morning to find a heavy frost on the ground and the air as cold as a witch's mammary gland. Would that I were on some sun-kissed isle, I thought. Sadly, I can't afford the air fare and I'm not that strong a swimmer. Sahara, on the other hand, is quite good at swimming. So, off he goes. It's a fair few hundred miles but the thought of putting his flippers up in the sun obviously kept him going.
He gets to his destination and no sooner has he unpacked his little bag and put his towel out on the rocks than the "experts" appear over the horizon and tell him that he should be in the waters off Iceland. Before our little hero can object he is crated up and flown to the African mainland. From there he is jetted back to the south coast of Britain and then he is loaded onto a lorry and driven from Land's End to John O'Groats. Then he is packed off to the Orkney Islands where a radio transmitter is stuck on his back and he is dumped in the freezing Arctic waters!
More than a thousand miles the poor little lad had been hauled, and why? Because "they" know best. Sahara, however, vowed not to be beaten. What did he do? He promptly headed south again and made it as far as Spain before the "experts" caught up with him again. I mean, weren't they getting the bloody message by then? Had they even bothered to consider the remote possibility that perhaps Sahara WANTED to be where he was? Nope, of course they hadn't. So, what did they do? Yup, they crated him up and packed him back off to the Orkneys! Poor sod!
Why don't they just leave him alone?
Let's hope that Sahara is battling his way back down south again as we speak, muttering "fuck 'em!" as he goes. In the meantime, for his sake and mine, the "experts" can take a trip to Grantham.

Co. Down Nut.

One of my memories of college days was sitting in my grubby little room watching the launch of a new television channel - Channel 4.
Cable and Murdoch had yet to rise from Hades and provide wall to wall sod all for the mindless and so the advent of a fourth channel was quite an event. We had been promised intelligent, ground breaking content and a new and stimulating television experience. So what was the first programme? Bloody Countdown!

I heard Stephen Fry waxing lyrical about Countdown not so long back but I'm afraid I have to differ with him on this one. It's not so much the actual show itself you understand, although I must confess I do tend to find crosswordy-type things a bit nerdy and a haven for pseudo intellectuals. No, it's the people on it, the contestants. Where the Hell do they find them?

They're all abject social losers with the inter-personal skills of a limpet. The blokes are all either latent serial killers or techno geeks who spend their spare time in their dimly lit, bed-sit, attic hovels fisting off to re-runs of Star Trek while the women are enforced virgins with a deep and abiding love of plaid and forming committees.
They are the sort of people who, as kids, used to come up to you after an exam and say "What did you get for number 3?" or "That was really easy, wasn't it?". They were the sort of kids who used to write at their desks with their free arm curled around their paper so you couldn't see their answers. They were the sort of kids who always produced notes from their mums saying that they were sensitive and opposed to competitive sport so couldn't do games or PE.......and they all had ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE OF HUMOUR WHATSOEVER.

The producers of Countdown obviously sensed that these were the sort of personality vacuums which were going to queue up to take part and so they recruited first Richard Whiteley and latterly Des O'Connor to host the show - perfect compliments.
Still, I occasionally watch Countdown. It's not that I am a masochist, nor is it that I am a secret saddo. No, I watch it for exactly the same reason that like-minded juveniles across the country watch it - for those rare and special moments when all the pomposity and nerdiness is blown to Hades by the intervention of a higher being:

"Uurrm, a consonant please Carol."
"Certainly Reg..................a................W."
"And a vowel please Carol."
"Yes...........................an................A."
"And another consonant, please."
"................................................N."
"And another consonant, Carol."
"Ok, Reg. It's...oh dear....a....................K."
"And a consonant, please."
"Ok..............................................M."
"A vowel please Carol."
"Yes, certainly Reg............an................E."
"Another vowel please."
"................................................O."
"And a consonant.
"Oh dear. Yes, ok Reg. No, I mean no Reg.........F."
"And finally a consonant, Carol."
"Here goes.......................................F."

Dum-dee-dum, deediddle, dum-dee-dum, deediddle, dum-dee-dum, deediddle, da-da, da-da, dadderly-dum - bow!!

"Ooh, ooh, pick me, pick me!! I've got a 9, Des!"
"Well done Reg. And Bernard, what have you got?"
"I've got FAME Des but I really can't see anything else.


It's just little moments like that, rare though they are, which make Countdown almost bearable.

Bloody Bill Bleedin' Oddie

So there I am, cooking dinner in the kitchen, the very-soon-to-be ex-Mrs Pither offering support by sitting at the breakfast table and quaffing a bottle of white wine, when bloody Bill bleedin' Oddie comes on the mini-Devil's Lantern above the fridge to introduce Autumn Watch or some such televisual fodder.
"Tonight, we're having a beaver watch," he said excitedly.
The pornosensor in my brain began sounding loud and clear - DING, DING, DING! SMUT-ON-THE-BOX, SMUT-ON-THE-BOX!!! Pither immediately downed culinary tools, pulled up a chair and joined VSTB EW in Wine Corner. "This is what I pay my bloody licence fee for," I said, as Mr P tutted into her glass.
What happened?. Bloody nothing, that's what happened!! A bloody hour of footage of some bloke down a cave looking at bats, two stags having a scrap and some fat rats with ping-pong bat tails farting around in the water!!!
I wanna complain. Whatever happened to Points of View?

Discuss.....

REMEMBER

The lions and the lambs.





The donkeys and the despots.

Ah, ah, ah, aaaaaah, Stayin' a Moslem, Stayin' a Moslem

Well, I've got the Christians afer me so, in for a penny..........
At the risk of sounding like Cyril Fletcher, I am indebted to a Mr Farmer of Much Drinking in the Marsh for this little item.
The leader of the Moslem Council of Britain, Muhammad Abdul Bari, is in the news today for claiming that the country is in danger of becoming like Nazi Germany in the '30s. Yeah, yeah, yeah, boring, boring, boring!
What is shocking and newsworthy, however, is the following:


Mr M A Bari.

Mr B Gibb (Reports of his death seemingly greatly exaggerated).





Admit it, you never see them together in the same room?

Aren't You Whatsisname's Brother?

Ernie Jackson, the LEAST famous of the Jackson brothers.


I am, I confess, somewhat of a valetudinarian but for the last few days I have had good reason to be concerned about my health......because I've been ill!
My spirits have, consequently, been pretty low but they always say there is someone worse off than yourself and evidence of that fact came to light today which has cheered me slightly.
I was listening to a Parkinson interview with Sir Dicky Attenborough, which I had taped, when the beardy little luvvie (a genuinely nice chap, by the way) made mention of his "brothers". First of all, there was "Dave", he said. I had to smile at the older brother's use of the diminutive which just didn't seem to fit the god-like being behind Life on Earth, The Blue Planet and Pither's love of the natural world. Then Dicky said he had another brother - John.
My mind immediately wandered off the interview and I began imagining what it must be like to be John Attenborough - the LEAST famous of the Attenborough brothers. Poor sod! A documentary on the wireless this evening then turned my attentions to surely the most unfortunate sibling in the history of humankind........James!
While waving a cheery goodbye to my devoutly Christian readers (see ya' Frank!), I will point out to anyone who doesn't already know that James is widely believed to have been Jesus's brother. How bad is that? What a bummer!!!
What must life have been like for a man who grew up having Jesus as a brother? Parties must have been a nightmare!

"Greetings. I am Jacob, begat of Jonathan, begat of Esaw, begat of Bathbellbetumin, he who purveyeth mysticals balms, ointments and developeth films in 24 hours."
"All right, mate. I'm Jim."
"Hail Jim! May your grapes grow juicy and round, although not those up your bottom."
"Cheers. Wanna drink?"
"A little wine for my soul's sake. So, Jim, how do you manage to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's?"
"Yer what?"
"What do you do for a living?"
"Oh! I'm accountant for a small carpentry business."
"Truly an honest calling. Tell me, have you come to this place of wine and plenty alone?"
"Nah! I'm with our kid."
"Pray tell, where is this 'kid' of whom you speak?"
"He's over there, turning the contents of the swimming pool into Chateau Lafitte."
"A miracle!!"
"Yeah! Flash get! He does a lot of that."
"I notice that thy 'kid' doth stand on the waters of the pool and not on the side."
"Oh arr. That's another of his party pieces. If you hang around he'll 'ave a go at the buffet later - there'll be bleedin' loads by the time 'e's finished with it.
"And what doseth thy kid do, for to bring bounty unto thy house?"
"He's the Blessed One. You know? The son of God. He is the saviour of mankind. He has come to purge us all of our sins."
"And that's his job, is it?"
"Yup. Course, If I'd passed me 11-Plus I........."
"....and you say you're an accountant?"
"Yup."
"Do you mind if I go and talk to that other man over there?"

Being an atheist I am tempted to go on but, being also a bet hedger, I think I better stop there......and before I am smoteth from above and cast down into the eternal fires of Hell, there's nothing for Grantham - apart from illness.

In Which Max Schmeling Becomes The New World Chess Champion

Looking back, I think four things got me through the rigours of childhood and puberty. There was football, there was my older brother's record collection, there were girls...........and there was comedy.
Probably chief among these, and certainly the one which did most to shape the Pither of today, was comedy. Whether it was Round the Horn on the radio while we ate Sunday lunch or the likes of Morcambe and Wise, Tommy Cooper and Doddy on the TV on Saturday nights, I lapped it all up.
There were two acts, however, which were so special, so brilliant and such an acquired taste that, not only was I TOLD to go and listen to them alone in my bedroom, I felt as though they were mine, I had discovered them, only I appreciated them and so I didn't want to share them.






The first was The Marx Brothers, all of whose films I had recorded on video (or vye-dee-oh as my mother called it).








The second was Monty Python's Flying Circus.
There is not enough space here for a full tribute to the genius which is Python but one thing struck me about them early on - they were way ahead of their time. After all, they went on to become the first people in 2,000 years of Christianity to use as the basis for an on-running gag the fact, for it surely must have been a fact, that people at the back of the 5,000 listening to the Surmon on the Mount couldn't hear properly what Christ was saying!
I was reminded today of another bizarre scenario they came up with, the basic premise for which has now been used to stage a real event. Python's fantastic idea was to have Jack Bodell, then British, Commonwealth and Empire heavyweight boxing champion, fight Sir Kenneth Clark, the foremost art historian of his generation and presenter of the TV epic Civilisation, to decide who should be the new Oxford Professor of Fine Art!
Cut to today and there was an item on the news about "Chess Boxing"! Yes, you've got it. Two burly blokes climbed into a ring in Germany and spent one round punching the Hell out of each other and then the next sitting down at a table in the middle playing chess. The gloves were back on for the next round and then it was back to the chessboard for the next, and so on. The German contender eventually came out on top after "knocking out" his American opponent by checkmating him in round six!
What a great, truly Pythonesque sport!....and it's real!! It opens up so many possibilities. We could have Javelin Darts, Shotput Billiards, Table Cricket, High-Dive Oil Painting....the list goes on.
Sadly, for those thinking of making a name for themselves by creating one of these anarchic new past-times, Python has already dreamed up the best. The Silly Olympiad in Munich featured such classics as The Marathon for Incontinents, The 100m Freestyle for Non-Swimmers (in the Bundesabsurd Pool) and the truly inspired an dangerously hilarious 100m For People With No Sense of Direction.
Python's best on the theme to my mind, however, was Novel Writing from Dorchester, featuring "a very good natured Bank Holiday crowd" which turned out to watch "local boy Thomas Hardy write his new novel, 'The Return of the Native'". Bloody superb!!
Grantham shall never, ever, ever have Monty Python.

Mindless Occupations - Volume 1. No. 1....... Marketing

The almost edible I Like The View - may I recommend her entertaining web log for some musical and often existential escapism - chose to enlighten me with details of this simply marvellous contraption and I would like to share it with you.

It may, at first, appear like the poorest of schoolboy humour to titter behind ones hand at such an invention when bladder weakness is an all too common complaint in late middle age and pregnancy tends to render all valves "down there" untrustworthy.
No, it is neither the contraption itself nor its purpose which I find amusing - it is thoughts of that meeting of marketing executives at which the name of the product was decided - consider their brief.

Bearing in mind the ultimate goal of these morons is supposedly to maximise sales, what in God's name made them think that women would be enticed by the thought that one day they could be in Boots and when they finally got to the front of the queue for the till and handed over this product the burk behind it could stand up and yell across the store: "Madge! Madge!!! How much are the Shewees??!! This lady here wants one. Yes, the lady in the brown coat and the scarf. Yes her. Yes, the one running towards the door now"?
God knows what names they dismissed on the grounds of taste and decency before coming up with this gem? "The Misspiss"? "The Caughtshortport"? Why didn't they go the whole hog and call it "The 'So You Wet Yourself In Public, Do You?' 9000 ZXL"?

I have come into increasingly close contact of late with marketing types in my new and expanded profession and the "Let's run this baby up the flagpole and see who salutes it?" approach to decision making never fails to loosen my sphincter.
So, after mulling over the "discipline" which also brought us "Let's put it on the 4.30pm to Westchester and see where it gets off?" and "If we put it out on the backstep, do you think the cat will lick it up?", let's all send marketing and marketeers to Grantham, shall we?

P.S. Do you notice that "they", like their advertising counterparts, are almost all called or call themselves "executives"? "They", and the equally moronic people who appoint them, think the title makes them sound important and professional and that will be enough (and it is) to take their minds off their sad, pathetic, meaningless existences which they spend buying hair gel and cheap cologne and flogging stuff in one way or another while wearing sunglasses and driving endlessly round ring-roads in Ford Escorts in which their nasty, cheap, shiny suit jackets are hung up on those little hooks behind the drivers' seats. In fact, an executive is, ostensibly, just somone who carries out orders. The Waffen SS was very keen on executives.

Liar-Liar Pants Are Dire

My mind has been in a whirl all day. You see, I watched a "gripping" feature on Breakfast TV which has completely changed my outlook on life - it was all about "control pants".
There I was, chomping on my High Fibre Bumblockerflakes, when Dermot O'Smileyman said that some sort of nationwide pants survey had been conducted and, apparently, 237 per cent of women owned up to regularly wearing these revolutionary new front and back bottom awnings.
Before the BBC's top news reporters got into the meat of the piece, however, my mind began to race. You see, Pither is a bit of an expert on the subject of ladies' pants.
I am no stranger to the two-bits-of-string-and-a-tiny-Coronation-Day-flag style of flossing undergarment favoured by many girlies these days, the very-soon-to-be ex-Mrs Pither being among them. The other end of the Knickter Scale, meanwhile, is exemplified by a lass with whom I was once well acquainted who wore pants which, once she had hacksawed them off at the end of the day, I used to drape over my estate car to keep the frost off it in winter.
In between there is a mind bogling array of muff masks, almost all of which Pither has tangled with. There are bikinis, boy shorts and briefs, there are Tangas and thongboys, there are high-cuts and hipsters, there are low-risers and there are moderately lows, really lows and even daringly lows......but "control pants"? They were new to me.
Were they, I thought, some sort of state-of-the-art, hi-tech pants which, much like a superhero's cozzie, endowed the pantee with paranormal powers to subdue the will of others and conquer the world? There was also the possibility that they carried a kind of on-board mini-computer which spoke to the wearer in a very sultry lady's voice, much like a sat nav in a car, saying things like "Warning! Bladder at bursting point" or "Haemalert! Haemalert! Insert Lillet!" or "Juices flowing - these pants will automatically lower in one minute!"
It turned out they were none of these - but control pants none the less came as a shock to me. You see, they should more accurately be called "lying pants".
There are various different styles but ostensibly they are about the size of a ten-year-old boy's school shorts and are made out of some sort of highly elasticated, fire retardant, rubber-infused, heavy canvas-like material. They are about as sexy as a photo of Ann Widdecombe sitting on the bog but it is their elastication which has proved a big hit with the girls. You see, as the adverts say, they "flatten out those little lumps and bumps". In truth, dam-like, they hold back the torrents of glycogen which make the poor, unfortunate uncontrolled pant wearer who dares to wear a close-fitting dress resemble a relief map of the Malverns.

There are several downsides to these 21st Century pants, as I see it. From a girly's point of view, you had better hope that the super-elasticated material from which they are hewn is also highly absorbant and deodorised as, when nature calls, your chances of getting them off in the ladies in under three hours without an adjustable spanner and an oxyacetylene torch are almost nil. There is also the drawback posed by the laws of physics. Matter/energy can neither be created nor destroyed and so all that flab pulled in around a voluminous arse or Bernard Manning-style gut has to go somewhere! You may end up with the torso of a fashion model but how attractive is it to have a 47ins neck!!

From a boy's point of view - what a swizz! Picture the scene. You get this vision of loveliness back to your grief hole, you uncork the wine and you dim the lights. Then, as Barry White takes the sexual tension to fever pitch on the stereo, she slides out of her figure-hugging dress and.........pulls a ripcord after shouting "Let 'em go!!!" All of a sudden her arse is where her knees are and her gut is brushing her stilettos. Christ alone knows what will happen when she takes her bra off! I suppose, looking on the bright side, it will pull the wrinkles out of her face!
The ripcord mentioned above is just in my imagination, you understand. In fact, control pants come with no such quick release device. Once she has slipped out of that dress, would it really be possible to maintain an erection after you've said "Ok, just lie on my Workbench and I'll go and get the socket set and pliers"?
No, control pants are just the female equivalent of stuffing a sock down your hipsters to catch the eyes of the ladies. They can go to Grantham.

I Blame the Chinese.

"Wheeee, fizzzzz, BANG - aaaaahhh!" "Wheeee, fizzzzz, BANG - wooooah!" So it goes, every bloody year.
God, I HATE fireworks. I LOATHE, DESPISE and DETEST fireworks but, as with so many other things in life these days, society just says to me "Tough titty, fishface! Live with them because kiddies like them and they're all that count in the world so there!"
I have four dogs, all of which are rescue dogs. Each came to me having endured their own Hell on earth at the hands of bloody people. The eldest of the pack, Henry, he with the 25 per cent deficit in the leg department, is and always has been terrified of fireworks. Every year I have to take him to the vet's to get a supply of diazepam to knock him out when the season starts. Drugging anyone to help them get through life is appalling and I deeply resent having to do it but if he isn't knocked out he is so scared he trembles uncontrollably, wets himself and pants so much that the strain on his little heart would, as he gets older, prove fatal.
Henry is the leader of the pack and so the others look to him for inspiration, education and guidance. Henry is terrified of fireworks.......therefore the others are now as well. They weren't when I first had them but they have learned from their teacher. I haven't yet got to the stage where I also have to dope them up - but it's not far away.
THIS is why I hate fireworks. Not for my own sake, you notice. Personally, I can take them or leave them. It is what they do to those nearest and dearest to me and when someone or some people harm those whom I love I get very, very, very angry!
I am a man - and every day the media tells me and my kind that almost everything we do is wrong because we are not like women and everyone of us is a potential danger to children. I am a smoker - and I am treated like a piece of detritus which is poisoning children whereas if I drove a gas-guzzling, super-polluting 4x4 to ferry around Jacasta and Leopold I would be the toast of the gulf (sic) club and the local Rotarians. I am childless - so I pay for others to drop grubs all over the place, grubs which then dump litter, run around causing a riot, continually bellow "I want, I want!" and have no idea what a dictionary is, let alone whereabouts in one to find the words "please", "thank you" and "excuse me".
I am also a dog owner - and dogs are supposedly all lethal, killing machines. Not only that, but they shit everywhere. Well, I would fucking bite if some little shit of a kid jabbed its fingers in my eyes, tweaked my "tail" or squeezed my bollocks. It's a tough life, kid. Learn the hard way! Also, I clean up after my dogs - do you clean up after your kids? Fucking liars!! I don't see you with a fucking mop and bucket when they "get caught short" and so you disrobe them so they can shit or piss up against a wall in town.
Most dogs don't like fireworks. "Well, fuck you! Our kids love them so fuck you! It's our kids that count. You don't, your dogs don't, no-one does, except our kids. Consider yourself thrice fucked."
Ask the average supposedly Christian kid today (ha, ha, ha, ha!!) why fireworks are set off at this time of year and he or she will probably say "because it's cool" or "because it scares the shit out of dogs and pensioners which is also cool". Mention a Catholic plot to blow up a Protestant king and the Houses of Parliament and they will look even blanker than they normally do.
Why, in the name of all that is holy, would I want to commemorate a failed attempt to get rid of the monarchy or dispatch our MPs to the other, other place? Sounded like a pretty damn good idea to me. So what that left-footers were behind it. I'm not bothered whether or not they believed a piece of bread and a cup of wine were actual bits of a bloke who lived 2,000 years ago. It's their criminal intent I applaud.
Then there's the Hindus. They have Diwhali which has also become an excuse for a fireworks bonanza. Fuck that the celebration is supposed to just involve candles! That goes on for ever, seemingly.
God, I am really angry. I HATE fireworks. They can go to Grantham - NOW and forever!!!!

In Which Pither Buys Another Turtle

They don't call me Two Turtles Pither for nothing! Not much more to say, really. Bit of a boring day.



They seem to be getting on quite well!!!! A global search for names culminated in them being called Bob and Dave. They appear to be entirely comfortable with their sexuality. Only the Fish Doc could flog homosexual turtles and only Pither could buy them!

Pither and the Discounted Turtle

I've bought a turtle. I panicked!
I went into the Fish Doctor's shop yesterday to buy some bloodworms and.......there she was. In a tank on the counter, whooping it up with a few mates. I tried to play it cool at first, glancing down coyly each time our eyes met. I'm not that easy. Sadly, the Fish Doc was on fine form.

"Uurm, two packets of frozen bloodworms please."
"That'll be £5. Wanna turtle?"
"Just the worms, please."
"They're cute, ain't they?"
"Worms all look alike to me - especially when they're frozen."
"No, the turtles I mean."
"They do indeed have a certain allure."
"So, you avin' one or what?"
"What's wrong with them?"
"Nothin', honest!"
"You just seem a little determined to get shot."
"Nah, nah, nah. Selling like hot cakes they am."
"An ugly comparison."
"So, you gunna 'ave one?"
"I can't afford it."
"They're only £25 each."
"EACH!! Do they talk or something?"
"Nah, but they swim around a bit."
"Sounds exciting."
"Tell yer what, I'll do you one for £20, seeing as it's you."
"A discounted turtle, eh? An interesting concept. Go on then, you've won me round."
"What kinda platform yer got?"
"Beg pardon?"
"Platform, for 'er to sit on when 'er's not swimming. They'm amphibians yer know?"
"Can't she just stick her head out of the water when she fancies a breather?"
"Nah, gotta 'ave a platform."
"Go on then, how much?"
"Small, medium or large?"
"You are winding me up now, admit it?"
"Nah, we got three different sized platforms. You look like a medium to me."
"Thanks very much. How much is that."
"£13......without the supports."
"I know I'm going to regret this but....well....you made mention of supports. What supports?"
"You gotta attach the platform to the side of the tank or it'll float round."
"Of course you do. How stupid of me. How much?"
"Another tenner."
"Forget it. I've gone off the whole idea now."
".....but seein' as it's you, £7.50 ."

Quite why a £2.50 discount should have won me over I can't explain. Anyway, having gone in to spend £5, I had ended up with a bill for £32.50 - but the Doc wasn't finished yet!!

"What yer gunna feed 'er?"
"Bloodworms?"
"You don't wanna do that. 'Er'll get bloat."
"Heaven forfend. Go on then, I'll buy it - literally. What does she eat?"
"These," he said, plonking a tub of pellets on the counter.
"How much?"
"£2.50."
"Just the same amount as my discount on the supports. What a coincidence. Still, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away."
"I certainly do. See ya."

So there you have it. I'm £30 lighter than I should be..........and I've got a turtle - a turtle which keeps getting attacked by my albino African toad. I hadn't really thought the purchase through.
You've got to admire the Fish Doc, though. Sand to Arabs, leeks to the Welsh and coals to Newcastle - he could sell the lot. Grantham shall not have him.
All suggestions for a name greatly appreciated, by the way - for the turtle, that is, not the Fish Doctor. I've got several names for him already.

The Ditch Blair Project

I'm going to make a prediction. In about 50 years you won't find anyone around with the surname Blair.
It's not that I foresee a cull of all people with that name, you understand. That would be too much to hope for (Ok, you might lose thousands of innocents but you would get the two bastards you were after in the first place). No, I just think that there will be a lot of people availing themselves of the services of register offices or wherever it is you go to get your name changed these days.
Why? Well, by way of evidence, let me ask you when was the last time you bumped into someone called Hitler? Ok, ok, ok. There are doubtless some out there, notably German readers, who can claim to have turned out to hear a speech by a Mr A Hitler of 27a The Bunker, Berlin, prior to 1945. What I mean is, how many people have you come across recently called, let's say, Barry or Trevor Hitler? Not bleedin' many, that's what I think. It's like a few other names I could mention. Be honest, did you go to school with anyone called Kevin Crippen for instance? Was or is there a guy working at your local garage called Adrian Stalin? How about Dennis Mussolini? Is he your local Man from the Pru? Is your next door neighbour called Stewart Frankenstein or Brian The Ripper? Are you served in Tesco's by Edna de Sade? I doubt it. It's like the Christian names Adolph, Myra, Vlad and Lucretia. They're just not as popular as they used to be........and I think there's a reason for that.
Which brings me to Britain in the 21st Century and what I think could be the beginning of the end for the surname Blair. You see, we have not one lunatic called Blair - but two!!! That surely has to be some sort of record. I have posted enough about the grinning, right-wing Tory twat who is Anthony Whichway Blair - the man who, more than any other, has mastered the art of faking sincerity - so I shall not waste any more bile on him here.
Let's just leave him for now to sort out all the problems in the Middle East (which problems? Oh! Those problems!! Like Iraq, you mean? Yeah. Hang on a bit....). No, today's lesson concerns the marvellously shite Sir Ian Blair, The Grand Wizard of the equally marvellously shite Metropolitan Police.

At the very, very, very least, this Blair is head of an organisation which has been heavily fined for putting the lives of the public at risk during the botched operation which saw innocent Jean Charles de Menezes brutally killed. Bosses of other firms which have been stung by the courts for far less serious breaches of Health and Safety legislation have walked. Not this arsehole.
Not content with fucking pleading not guilty - AGAINST the advice of senior Met bods - Blair/The Met's case sought to lay part of the blame for the shooting on Jean Charles himself!!!! Well, I mean, he was asking for it, wasn't he? Fancy leaving your flat and getting on a bus. If that doesn't smack of illegality I don't know what does. As for getting off the bus but then getting back on it because the Tube station at which you had alighted was closed, that's just the act of a madman. Then to just sit there and do nothing in a Tube carriage - well, he was a fool to himself.
The facts as revealed in court did not really support Sir Ian's challenging view, however. Notably, the jury heard that a) The fucking dimwit copper who was supposed to be monitoring the suspect flat was straining the greens at the time Jean Charles left and so could not positively identify him, b) The fucking coppers on the ground claimed in court, to a man, that they had NOT subsequently positively identified Jean Charles as the wanted terrorist to their boss in the ops room - the boss whom the court heard had a contemporaneous note of a shedload of them doing just that. That means SOMEONE is lying. No, not mistaken, BLOODY LYING! c) They could have "arrested" (well, it's a sort of arrest) Jean Charles at several places less populated than Stockewell Tube station, d) The armed response team turned up later than the Americans for World War II and e) They allowed a person they thought was a bomber to board a packed Tube train, f) They raced into the carriage and pumped seven bullets into his head - sod who was near him - when the officers involved claimed none of them had identified him as the wanted man. God forbid I should ever defend the man, but when Kenneth Noye stabbed a copper to death whom he found creeping around the undergrowth of his mansion in the middle of the night dressed from head to foot in black, with a black balaclava on and absolutely no gear to indicate he was the fuzz, did the CPS say no charges would be brought? Did it buggery. "Sod Health and Safety legislation, it's up to Big House for you, matey." It happened that Noye was later cleared of murder but was eventually potted for same following a slight motoring fracas down south and he is now where he belongs - but surely the law is the law? "Oh, but Reg, the police will now be scared to pull the trigger when confronted by a bomber and we will all be blown up as a result." Bollocks!! There is a world of difference between a copper coming face to face with a suspected terrorist and having a split second to decide whether to shoot or shit out and a fucking operation which was planned over God knows how many weeks, involved constant surveillance and offered a shedload of officers a shedload of opportunities to "deal with" a man about whom they just happened to believe there was a possibility that he might look quite like someone they thought could, per chance, be a terrorist!! Go and shoot a police officer you suspect of being naughty by accident today and see if they let you keep your testicles/labia, let alone your job.
Following the Met's case, Blair then had the fucking audacity to come out of court not with his head bowed low to issue a grovelling apology but to say that there was absolutely no evidence of a fuck-up culture at The Met and so he would not resign. The fucking arrogance of the man!!
I've got news for you, fuckface. It's the poor, bloody taxpayers out there who pay your fucking wages and as far as I'm concerned you should not only be on yer bike but you should be facing a criminal negligence charge as well!!....and we'll have your soddin' pension back off you while we're about it!!
Fuck off!!!....either to Grantham or, failing that, why not go out to join your equally culpable namesake in the Middle East? Might I suggest you just spend your days walking round the West Bank with a T-shirt saying "I love Zionism" so you can, for the first time in truth, say you sympathise with Jean Charles and his family.

What's Big, Red and Does Sod All?

I have been a relatively happy little bunny lately and that is a very dangerous state in which to be. You see, when the urge takes you to skip along while singing "hello flowers, hello birds, hello world" all the time you tend to lose sight of the fact that life is abso-fucking-lutely shite and almost every-bastard-one in it is a complete and utter TOSSER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

These truths I hold to be self evident and I was reminded of them when I toyed with the idea of towing the legal line by taxing The Wardrobe. I should have known better because this involved, as it turned out, reliance on those princes among pricks and kings among cunts.......the Post Office!!
The avenue leading to complete car conformity was closed off to me yesterday as I was unable to lay my hands on the required moolah (47 years fucking old and I couldn't even scrape together £99 soddin' quid!!). Undeterred, and still in a mellow frame of mind, I did some fiscal juggling and by the time the sun set I had managed to unearth the necessary from various corners of Pitherworld - too late for the Post Office, yes. Too late for the law, indeed, but probably in enough time to keep the filth from my door, stick two fingers up to the neigbours and do my duty as a good citizen.
The sun duly came up today (something which never fails to at once surprise and depress me) and so I steeled myself for a trip into the village to pay my belated dues. MoT certificate - check! Vehicle registration document - check! Insurance certificate - oops! Where the fuck was it? I renewed my policy in August and the money had been coming out of the Bank of Pither since so.......where the fuck was my certificate? A quick call to the insurance company certainly put my mind at ease:

"I haven't received my insurance certificate."
"Yes you have."
"What!! All right then, what did I have for breakfast this morning?"
"How am I supposed to know that?"
"Well, you seem to be pretty well acquainted with other things that go on round here. How can YOU possibly KNOW I received it?"
"Because we sent it out."
"My dear woman, sending something out and it having been received are two entirely different things. I assure you I have NOT received a certificate."
"Computer says it was sent out last month."
"During the postal strike?"
"Yes."
"Define for me the word 'idiocy'"
"So. S'not my fault."
"Pray explain how it might be mine?"
"Do you want another one?"
"That would be simply lovely!"
"It's £26 for a copy."
"Pardon my exasperation at that news but.....you are having a bleedin' giraffe, are you not?"
"We never joke here at Nobbit, Bodgit and Leggit."
"Have you thought of charging the Post Office £26 and just sending me a replacement certificate?"
"Nope."
"Thank you for all your assistance."
"Happy to help."

I now have to wait for a cover note to arrive.....yes, you guessed it......through the post. I can't do it online or over the phone because...well...well just because. The result is I am now officially a desperado, a ruthless bandit, a criminal, a callous villain on the run from justice. Publicising this fact on the internet is probably not the wisest thing I've ever done, particularly as my nephew is a copper, but there you go.

My final steps back into the real world were taken when I later phoned an assurance company to which I had written a week ago.

"Hello. I wrote to you last week about my policy and I wondered if there was any news?"
"You haven't written to us!"
"You're not related to the woman at the insurance company are you?"
"What?"
"Sorry, I just seem to recall a similar conversation I had earlier today. I did write to you, I can assure you - get it? Assure you!!! Never mind."
"When did you write?"
"Last Thursday."
"Oh, that'll be the Post Office. They're useless, aren't they?"

So it's good to be back in Crapworld again. I shall try not to stray into Happyland again. In the meantime, the Post Office can send itself to Grantham. Second thoughts, I will take it personally or else it will never get there!

Editor's Note: (This is also true) An hour after finishing writing the above there was a postal delivery at the Towers. The drop contained notification from my local hospital of an appointment for physiotherapy......last Thursday!!!