Seriously overrated

What on Earth is the point of fried tomatoes?

Seriously. You take a perfectly nice fruit like a tomato, you cook it until it's a gooey mess, then you dump it on top of your breakfast so the juice and seeds flow all over the place and make your toast all soggy.

All you're left with is a tough, leathery skin with a few clumps of flesh hanging to the underside. And, if you are stupid enough to pop it into your mouth, you immediately scorch your tongue and end up speaking with a lisp for the rest of the day.

A cheese and tomato sandwich is a wonderful thing. A freshly plucked tomato still warm from the greenhouse is a one of life's great pleasures—especially if eaten. But fried tomatoes are seriously overrated.

Give me a baked bean any day of the week.

Disclaimer quotes

The Guardian should be ashamed of itself with its punctuation: that this person was pregnant cannot be doubted, whether they are a man most certainly can be. The headline should read:

Pregnant 'man' gives birth to baby girl

Or, more accurately:

Pregnant transsexual gives birth to baby girl

(No need for disclaimer quotes at all, you see.)

Gig

Off to see Radiohead in Manchester. If you need to find me, I'll be the one at the back shouting Devil Woman!

Trendsetter

Guardian: Top of the pots

Vibrant colours have featured in style magazines for a number of seasons but has this transferred to the nation's homes? Are (fingers crossed) our living rooms, kitchens and toilets really sporting zesty greens, brilliant reds and jewel-bright blues, or are we (heaven forbid) still living in a blur of beige? In an effort to create a colour picture of the nation's homes, we asked leading paint companies to reveal their top-selling shades for the past year…

Top sellers

Farrow & Ball Current bestselling greys are (in no particular order) Down Pipe, Shaded White, Parma Gray, Elephant's Breath, Light Gray, Pavilion Gray and Charleston Gray. Bold colours are also gaining ground, including Incarnadine (rich crimson red), Drawing Room Blue, Pelt (deep aubergine) and Churlish Green (yellow/green).

Incarnadine, eh? Remember, you heard it here first.

Positive spin

BBC: Harman pushes discrimination plan

Equality minister Harriet Harman has set out plans to allow firms to discriminate in favour of female and ethnic minority job candidates.

But it's not discrimination; it's positive action.

So I guess that's all right then.

We will fight them on the beaches

My grandad fought the Nazis, you know. In Africa. REME. He was injured out. Never fully recovered. Spent the next 50 years gradually deteriorating.

I don't think grandad was a great idealist. He fought the Germans because he had to: we were at war. He was probably totally unaware of all the evil stuff the Nazi Party was up to, but he probably thought he was fighting for king and country, to preserve our way of life. A way of life which, let's face it, is worth preserving.

But one thing's for certain: grandad didn't go to war against Rommel for us to have to put up with shit like this:

Is this why grandad fought the Nazis?

Have you ever seen a dog on a beach? It's just about the most joyous sight there is. Dogs are what beaches are for.

I'm thinking of hiring an elephant, painting a Union Jack on the side, and taking it for a walk on Bridlington beach, just to make some sort of point.

Yorkshire Post

Just so you know that the Hebden Bridge Times isn't the only Yorkshire newspaper to carry the occasional odd headline:

Newspaper headline

Very Alan Bennett

Class acts
Class acts.

Jen and I have just returned from a long weekend in Scarborough. We stayed at The Grand Hotel, which is currently undergoing a £7m refurbishment. That was our first mistake: we booked the hotel under the misapprehension that the refurbishments were complete. They aren't. That would explain the carpet-layers on the main (i.e. only) staircase, then.

What was particularly nice about staying at The Grand was how youthful it made us feel. Jen and I were the youngest guests there, to the tune of about 30 years. And the people at The Grand certainly knew their punters: there were shopmobility scooters for hire in the lobby, and the first evening's entertainment was a touring Norwegian children's brass band, followed by bingo hosted by a caller who had quite clearly lost the will to live, followed by (top of the bill!) Bernie Martyn and the Explosive Dancers. It was all very Alan Bennett.

Highlight of the trip was watching a young thrash-metal band performing at a room full of shell-shocked OAPs. A few of the male onlookers clearly thought they were back in the trenches. They had heavy metal in those days too, apparently, but it was called shrapnel.