Enjoying yourself, Stense?
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It was cool.
We had tea and scones, went browsing in our favourite second-hand bookshop, drank beer, ate omelettes (without any stupid cress), took a ride on a steam train, and had a walk along the canal.
Actually, I stand corrected: it wasn’t so much cool as bloody freezing.
Actually, no, I stand corrected again: it wasn’t so much bloody freezing as five degrees below bloody freezing. Hence Stense’s rather fetching womble-fur jacket.
Jen and I bought each other iPods for Christmas. They are very cool. We bought them direct from Apple, which meant that we could have customised engravings added free of charge. Jen, rather too sensibly, if you ask me, had hers engraved with her name and an abbreviated version of our address. I, on the other hand, plumped for the opening couplet from my favourite Captain Beefheart song:
Very Rock ‘n’ Roll.
And, behold, that star that they had seen in the East went before them, until it came just above where the child was.
When they saw the star they were exceedingly overjoyed.
And they entered the house and saw the child with his mother Mary, and they fell down, worshipped him and opened their treasures and offered him gifts, gold and myrrh and…
If it’s Christmas Eve, it must be time for my annual ascent of Moel Famau. That makes it 18 years on the trot.
This year, I had six first-time companions: Carolyn, her partner Howard, their three sprogs, and their dog, Daisy. The weather was unseasonally clement, but extremely moist.
The last time I went up Moel Famau with Carolyn was in November 1991. We gabbed so much that we climbed over the wrong stile near the summit on our way down and got hopelessly lost in the woods. We were lost for hours, and didn’t manage to get back to the car until well after nightfall.
So, of course, we told Carolyn’s children the story of the time we got lost, and they thought it was really cool. So, of course, we then had to pretend that we had somehow got ourselves hopelessly lost again today. I think her son was quite taken with my suggestion that we might have to build a shelter and spend the night on the hill (although he wrinkled up his nose when I said we might have to eat Daisy).
But, when I pointed out that it was Christmas Eve, and Father Christmas wouldn’t know where to deliver his presents if he was camped out in the woods, he decided that maybe it would be a good idea if we found the cars after all. Which we eventually did.
And the winner of the December 2005 bizarrest headline of the month award goes to:
Although a special commendation for humorous effort goes to:
Regular email correspondent and fellow Charles Darwin groupie, the normally perceptive Peter McGrath, couldn’t be more wrong:
The best thing she did was die, and as she expired wetly (literally and dramatically) I found myself cheering and shouting at the screen for someone to bury her fast and cheap… [S]he was the only fly in an otherwise wonderful ointment. Her work permit should be revoked immediately and she sent back to make more trash TV for gullible American youth to quote in their essays.
The she in question is none other than Agent Dana Scully from out of the BBC’s magnificent new adaptation of Bleak House, which finished last week.
Peter and I are otherwise in total agreement as to the general wonderfulness of the series, and, in particular, the acting ability of Agent Scully’s bastard daughter (born out of Dedlock), the alliteratively named Anna Maxwell Martin. But in describing Agent Scully’s acting technique as running the whole range of emotions from A to… well… A minus, Peter misses the point: Agent Scully’s character is supposed to be a stiff-upper-lip, not-in-front-of-the-middle-classes, show-no-emotion, poker-up-her-backside (oo-er, missus!), Victorian aristo. She has no friends, nobody to confide in, and knows that she will be ruined when—as surely it must be—her dark secret is revealed. In an attempt to avoid scandal, she becomes detatched, and bottles up her emotions until A and A minus are all that are left for her to work with. A uniquely British solution, if I might say so, and one not entirely dissimilar to the scandal-avoiding tactics successfully employed for over 20 years by a certain Charles Robert Darwin, who was, quite frankly, terrified of the public reaction, were he ever to publish his (r)evolutionary theory on the secret of life.
But, when Agent Scully’s secret was eventually revealed in a slightly-too-pacey climax, her aloof, detatched persona immediately crumbled, and she finally got the chance to act her socks off by going TOTALLY MENTAL. I’m not kidding, she looked for all the world like one of those demented, paranormal creatures we are so used to seeing her chasing late at night through atmospherically lit, North American pine forests.
“Look at her eyes, she’s totally lost it now,” I observed to an equally spellbound Jen, as the distraught Agent Scully looked about to bite the working-class girl who was trying to help her. And then, the next thing we knew, she was dead—killed by some unspecified, melodramatic, Dickensian ailment. I suspect she had simply lost the will to live (whatever the hell that means), the poor, tragic creature. And in the rain as well: the indignity of it all.
Agent Scully, if you’re reading this, please ignore Peter so-called McGrath: you can do both totally repressed and TOTALLY MENTAL extremely well. In my book, that’s a full A to Z of emotions. I confidently predict a BAFTA nomination for you—although I expect the award will go to your talented daughter.
Postscript: See also Vindicated!
Hands up who remembers sweet cigarettes. For those of you who don’t, the name is a bit of a give-away: sweet cigarettes were sweets which resembled cigarettes. They tasted rather nice, but were a total bugger to light.
Anyway, it has only just occurred to me what sweet cigarettes actually tasted of: they tasted of over-ripe bananas. I made this discovery last week, while I was eating an over-ripe banana. It took me ages to retrieve the vaguely familiar taste from the dark recesses of my memory: sweet cigarettes, mmmm!
The Powers That Be banned sweet cigarettes decades ago—apparently, they might encourage children to smoke (in exactly the same way that toy guns and computer games might turn them into homicidal maniacs). Well, I have eaten quite a few sweet cigarettes in my time, and I never took up smoking.
Mind you, I am on twenty over-ripe bananas a day.
BBC: ‘Intelligent design’ teaching ban
A court in the US has ruled against the teaching of the theory of “intelligent design” alongside Darwinian evolution…
Judge Jones said he had determined that ID was not science and “cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents”.
A judicial and judicious judgement.
On Wednesday night, I dreamt that a female colleague of mine had become my dentist. As she tried to inject my gums with anaesthetic, I fought her off with words to the effect of, “Get Off! You don’t know anything about dentistry!”
Yesterday, I bumped into the same colleague and told her about my dream. It freaked her out a bit. Not, as you might suppose, because some weird bloke she hardly knows was having dreams about her, but because, for many years, it turns out, she was absolutely fascinated by dentistry and wanted to be a dentist.
Coincidence? I think so.
This is stupid in so many ways:
BBC: Ramp creates power as cars pass
A road ramp that uses passing cars to generate power has been developed.
Dorset inventor Peter Hughes’ Electro-Kinetic Road Ramp creates around 10kW of power each time a car drives over its metal plates.
More than 200 local authorities had expressed an interest in ordering the £25,000 ramps to power their traffic lights and road signs, Mr Hughes said.
In other words, these people want to steal your petrol:
These ramps work by converting some of your car’s kinetic energy into electrical energy. In other words, they slow down your car to make electricity. You will then have to put your foot down for a few seconds to restore your car to its former speed, wasting petrol in the process. And that’s not to mention the wear and tear on your car as it goes over these unnecessary humps.
This is an extremely inefficient and environmentally hostile way of powering traffic lights, but your local authority will love it, because it will cut down on its electricity bills, and because it is anti-car. It’s even more anti-bike.
The electro-kinetic road ramp website claims that it generates free electrical energy. Another way to achieve this is to bypass your electricity meter and power your house directly from the National Grid. This is known as abstracting electricity, which is a criminal offence under section 13 of the 1968 Theft Act, and is punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment and/or fines of up to £5,000. In what way are these stupid ramps any different? They are stealing somebody else’s energy.
Time to write to the Ladyman.
Seed Magazine: Girls Gone Wild… for Monkeys
Pornography studios might do well to take a tip from the Discovery Channel. According to a recent study, women are aroused by watching monkey sex.
The dirty bastards!
(But nowhere near as dirty as the so-called scientists who dream up these studies.)
Someone up there doesn’t like me (the feeling’s mutual): what are the odds, do you reckon, of both of a car’s headlamp bulbs blowing independently in the course of the same nine-mile journey? And no, it wasn’t due to an electrical fault: the lamps in question are on separate circuits, with separate fuses.
Thank goodness for fog-lights.
I solved a 152-year-old crime last night. And it wasn’t any old crime either; it was the famous murder of the infamous Mr Tulkinghorn.
Jen and I have been spellbound by the BBC’s excellent adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House over recent weeks. Last night’s repeated omnibus episode was the penultimate in the series, and it’s building up to quite a climax. In last night’s surprise ending, Agent Dana Scully narrowly escaped arrest, when the policeman from out of New Tricks nicked the dodgy maid with the even dodgier French accent instead. “Votre case, eet does not hold ze water, Monsieur Bucket!” she cried, as she was carted away by the rozzers.
And she was right: for, in a dream last night, I cracked the Tulkinghorn case wide open. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I can reveal that I know who the true murderer was. And you don’t have to take my word for it: Jen (who was practising wheelies on a mountain bike at the time) agreed with my brilliant deduction.
I won’t spoil it for those of you watching the series, but suffice to say that the identity of the murderer will come as a real eye-opener, involving, as it does, a representative of one of the great country families dressed in drag.
Remember, you heard it here first.
Hebden Bridge Base:
…the Aga has landed.
Overheard at the bookshop:
“Have you got anything on sheep?”
“Erm… No.”
Talking of lost, I spent a ridiculously long time lost in Cheshire yesterday—which is kind of embarrassing, bearing in mind I was born in the county.
It all started in Runcorn, where I somehow managed to leave the main expressway and head off into the hills. It was at this point that I realised I must have gone wrong somewhere, because I had never noticed any hills in Runcorn before. But rather than be all girly and retrace my steps, I decided to use my innate, masculine sense of direction. After about 20 minutes’ driving round in circles, I spotted a landmark which I recognised. This was quite an achievement, as this was the first time I had been off the main drag in Runcorn—but I never forget a pub. Then I realised I only recognised it from the telly: it was the pub from Two Pints of Lager (and a Packet of Crisps). Big help.
So I retraced my steps and eventually picked up the right road to Northwich, where I immediately got lost again. By now, I realised what my problem was: there are absolutely no road signs in Cheshire. It’s almost as if Cheshire towns see their neighbouring towns as rivals, and don’t want to advertise their existence. So I headed off towards Winsford on the wrong road, then spotted a little country lane with an actual signpost pointing to a village on the road I needed to be on, so I rather stupidly followed it. The little lane passed directly over the road I wanted to be on, and led to a T-junction, which, of course, was somewhat lacking in the signpost department. So I took an educated guess and took a left, in the general direction of Winsford. Which just happened to be totally the wrong thing to do.
Come on, Cheshire County Council, it really shouldn’t be that difficult. The Romans signposted the roads in your area. Isn’t it about time you updated them?
Carolyn has got a stinking cold and has lost her voice. She took the day off work yesterday, so she sent me a text message to cancel our weekly lunchtime coffee appointment. I gave her a call back, and we had a whispered telephone conversation. I don’t suppose there was any real need for me to whisper as well, but it was kind of fun, and it all sounded very clandestine.
Carolyn explained how, on returning home after dropping her youngest off at school that morning, she discovered that the family dog had gone missing. She searched the house high and low, but there was no sign of it. So she went out into the garden to call to the dog—but she had lost her voice, so she could only manage a pathetic croak. She tried beeping her car horn (which usually summons the dog, apparently), but to no avail. So, increasingly anxious, she went looking for the dog in the nearby roads and ended up traipsing across several adjacent fields: still no joy.
Then Carolyn, employing her own unique form of logic, came up with a brilliant solution to her not-being-able-to-call-the-dog problem: she phoned her parents to ask them to drive round to her house and call the dog for her. Carolyn’s bemused mum then explained that her dad had already called round that morning, as he does every Tuesday morning, to take the dog back to their house to look after while Carolyn was at work.
I reckon Carolyn must have been overdoing it with the Tixylix.
Postscript: Carolyn could probably do with one of these.
Oh good grief! I knew it had to happen one day, but surely my life can’t be passing by quite that quickly: ladies and gentlemen, it is my sad duty to announce that I am older than the leader of the Conservative Party. How the hell did that happen?
On a brighter note, I am still a quarter of a century younger than the average Conservative Party member. Not that I am a member of the Conservative Party, you understand.
Vaguely interesting fact: The new Tory leader, David Cameron’s, surname is an anagram of the word romance. Kind of makes you think.
The captured terrorists of the 21st Century do not fit easily into traditional systems of criminal or military justice, which were designed for different needs. We have to adapt.
The weasel words of a would-be future president of the most powerful nation on earth there.
I don’t know about you, but sophistry like this outrages the crap out of me.
Outraged too? Join Amnesty International.
