I must have been very drunk at my friend the farmer’s birthday dinner-party last Saturday evening. I’ve just found a scrap of paper in my pocket on which I appear to have noted down in almost undecipherable scrawl a snippet of conversation which I must have overheard:
I’ve written my biography on my computer: everything I’ve ever done since I was born…
It’s 38 pages!
(It’s for the grandchildren really.)
You see, even when I’m totally shit-faced, I’m still thinking of you chaps.
Sad news:
For those of you who have never consulted the FAQ and who wondered how the Gruts website came to be so called, it was named after a poem by Ivor Cutler. He was a very funny man. Nobody could shout the word Canada! in such a restrained manner.
Ivor Cutler.
(The Irish Republican Army was apparently less impressed with the performance: a week later, it blew up the theatre and a large chunk of Manchester City centre. Ivor was unharmed.)
Last month, by way of a (very) late birthday present, the ever-thoughtful Stense presented me with a DVD of Ivor’s final concert: Cutler’s Last Stand. I’m glad I haven’t played it yet. This weekend, I will watch it curled up in front of a roaring fire in my English sitting room, and toast the old genius with a glass or two of finest Scotch whisky. I hope he would have approved.
Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to announce that, after a 10-month hiatus, Jim Hodgson is back online. My nipples are indeed diamond-hard. Check out his archives. He’s a funny man. Trust me on this one.
OK, then, don’t trust me; read this.
From Nature Cure by Richard Mabey (p.135):
The tawny owl’s generic name is Sirix, Latin for witch, and there are stories of the Church burning owls for witchcraft in the Middle Ages…
The above quote is taken from the final paragraph I read over breakfast this morning before I put on my coat and went to get the car out of the garage. As I stepped out of the door, a tawny owl flew across my path and headed off down the hill. I have heard it hooting for the last week or so, but this was the very first time I have seen a tawny owl in my garden.
Coincidence?
I think you’ll find it was.
Just in case you were in any doubt that the Prime Minister has lost touch with reality:
BBC: Blair ‘prayed to God’ over Iraq
Prime Minister Tony Blair says he prayed to God when deciding whether or not to send UK troops to Iraq.
Seems to me this God chap has some explaining to do. How come He wasn’t called in front of the Hutton Enquiry?
BBC: Giant wind farm plan thrown out
Plans to create England’s largest wind farm in Cumbria have been rejected by the government.
The £55m development would have seen 27 turbines, each 377ft tall, erected at Whinash, near Kendal.
This one gave me five seconds of childish glee just now: go to the Boden clothing request a catalogue page and click the Title pull-down list.
BBC: Da Vinci Code ‘copied book ideas’
A claim that Dan Brown’s bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code copied the ideas of two other authors has gone before London’s High Court.
Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh say Mr Brown stole “the whole architecture” of research that went into their 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.
I have read both of the books in question, and didn’t particularly enjoy either. Actually, no, that’s not true: I never managed to finish The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail because it was a pile of specious bullshit masquarading as historical research, and it irritated the pants off me. Pseudohistory annoys me as much as pseudoscience, and that’s saying something.
I have to say, Baigent and Leigh’s book crossed my mind on numerous occasions as I read The Da Vinci Code last year. Dan Brown had clearly read their silly book, but at least he has the decency to admit that his derivative was a work of pure fiction. I hope he wins his case.
Postscript: He did.