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The poor old Beeb: they do try so hard! In any other week, they would surely have won headline of the week for the above, but how could anyone hope to compete with this?
Postscript: Bless them, they keep trying:
It's not at all funny, I know. But it is really.
I live in Hebden Bridge. I'm used to seeing what might euphemistically be referred to as eccentric individuals. There are quite a lot of them round here. I think it must be something in the water.
But, this morning, I spotted someone who looked incongruous even in Hebden Bridge: A RED INJUN!
He was sitting at a pavement café enjoying a cream tea. He looked very smart in his designer sunglasses and posh suit. I would never have taken him for a RED INJUN! at all, if it hadn't been for his two waist-length, plaited ponytails and his moccasins.
"Eh-up! Me Johnny Two-Wippets," I imagined him saying when he'd ordered his cream tea. "Me here for heap big quantity surveyor pow-wow in Mankinholes. Me trade-um five ferret pelts for strawberry cream scone with cappuccino. Thanks to draconian smoking ban, me sittum outside to smoke peace-pipe."
Yes, I know we're supposed to call them Native Americans these days. And yes, I'm sure he was perfectly harmless. But I was brought up on a diet of John Wayne films, so I thought I'd better play it safe. I decided to photograph him from a very long way away.
And then I started thinking. But for his ponytails and moccasins, I wouldn't have had a clue that this man was a RED INJUN! How many other RED INJUNS! are there round here, dressed as white-men? There might be whole tribes of them, and we would never know it!
Perhaps that explains why it's so hard being a cowboy in Rochdale.
Televisual highlight of week was a mystical Shambhala therapist explaining to Richard Dawkins (of all people) that "DNA is very interesting right now in our evolution of the human race". I almost felt sorry for her. Did she have any idea who she was talking to?
She went on to explain to Dawkins, author of numerous best-selling books on evolution and genetics and Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, that "every human being except a very small percentage has a double-helix in the cell". When a surprised Dawkins asked whether this meant that some people don't have a double-helix of DNA, the mystic explained that "a very small percentage do not—they have got more strands. We used to have, in Atlantis, twelve stands, and they're in the form of four triangles facing in in each cell. And we forgot who we were in the experiment after Atlantis and everything changed…"
When asked how she knew all this, the woman explained that "it comes from the Akashic record—the record of all vibration on this planet—but we also have […] The Deep Knowing, and the Deep Knowing, it really can't be argued".
No it can't. She made an utterly convincing case. In her own mind, at least.
The woman then went on top up Dawkins's quota of DNA strands. I don't know if she charged him the going rate of £58 for doing this, but we actually got to see her "put the last triangle in". She did this by closing her eyes and waving her hands about in a manoeuvre that will have been spookily familiar to any student of Rixology. Sadly, she did not explain whether Dawkins's missing triangle had been an isosceles triangle, a Bermuda triangle or a Dairylea triangle.
All of which made me wonder, do any of these alternative therapy adherents have any sceptical faculties whatsoever? Do Chakra healers ever get into heated arguments with homeopaths? Do acupuncturists ever accuse Reiki Masters of being charlatans? Do crystal healers ever point out that aromatherapists are spouting a load of old wank?
If people from different religious backgrounds can have violent disagreements about utter nonsense, then why not different snake oil merchants?
Or is someone out there trying to link all these specious disciplines together into a Grand Unified Theory of Mumbo-Jumbo?
Perhaps we could call it Gumbo for short.
Telegraph: Scientists puzzle over enormous void
It's called Birmingham, guys.
Jen and I are back from a family reunion in Ireland. Jen's family, that is, not mine.
Coming from a non-Catholic (or, in Irish parlance, atheist) family myself, I hadn't realised that this would involve 180 people, mostly first cousins, who all seemed to be named Mary, Joseph or Patrick. "A reunion of 180 people who've never met each other before," as one family wag put it. I think his name was Patrick.
I would be hard-pressed to name 180 people, let alone be related to them.
Still, we were made to feel very welcome after a near-disastrous start. When the bulk of the Yorkshire Contingent arrived en masse at the hotel, the receptionist informed us that we had been allocated rooms on the Turd Floor. "Oh good grief, grow up why don't you? Won't you people ever get over hundreds of years of British oppression?" I was about to shout at the poor woman. Just in time, I realised she was trying to say that our rooms were on the Third Floor. Simple misunderstandings like this are probably how The Troubles started. I still rue the day many years ago when I tried to chat up a beautiful, green-eyed, Irish colleen by asking her what made her tick. It did not have the effect I had hoped for easing Anglo-Irish relations.
Due to some mishap at the local water treatment plant, the water at the hotel was the colour of cloudy piss. For a moment, I thought our genial hosts had provided us with lager on tap. We were advised not to drink it, so I decided to see if I could survive the weekend on Guinness.
The reunion was scheduled for the Saturday night. On Friday, the Hebden Bridge Brigade went out for a Chinese meal, followed by a few pints in a local pub. It was the first time I'd been in an Irish pub since the smoking ban, and it was every bit as bad as I had feared. If this pub was anything to go by (and I have no reason to think it wouldn't be), the legendary atmosphere is pretty much gone. The neo-Puritan health Nazis have done to Ireland what the combined forces of Oliver Cromwell and the potato blight never could: they have destroyed the country's very soul. I hope the self-righteous vandals are pleased with themselves, as they sip their G&Ts in their lifeless, child-friendly, bio-degradable, vegetarian bistros.
Jen's brother and sister-in-law met us in the pub. They had travelled over separately and had spent Thursday evening in Dublin. They told us how, as in many other places in Europe, Dublin has recently had a huge influx of cheap labour from Poland. On the bus back to their hotel, everyone else was speaking in Polish. Jen's sister-in-law was delighted: "Listen! They're all speaking Irish!" she gasped. Jen's brother strung her along for a while, explaining how Irish is one of the easiest languages in the world to learn: "You just start with Bejaysus! and take it from there."
The reunion on Saturday went very well. At least, I'm pretty sure it must have gone very well. After about five hours, I discovered that I was in the zone with the Guinness, and the rest is a bit of a blur. I am reliably informed that I ended up on the dance floor at one point, which only ever happens when I am extremely in the zone.
Ireland will always hold a very special place in my affections. Jen's parents (Patrick and Patricia—you couldn't make it up) were both Irish, but I only have a minuscule amount of Irish blood, thanks to an errant great-great-grandmother named Bridget Kelly. My beard originated in Ireland, though, and that must surely count for something. But, in my heart of hearts, I will always remain a true Brit, and I had no real regrets returning to my homeland, where the beer is warm and the water is see-though.
See also: Photos from the Ireland trip
Off to see a man about a Guinness. Begorrah. To be sure.
Back Monday(ish).
I stayed at my parents' house last night and we all got pleasantly smashed on whisky. At about 10pm my mobile phone rang. It was Carolyn. I thought I'd better come clean: "I am extremely drunk," I admitted.
You have to be very careful being drunk around Carolyn when she is sober: she makes up stories about you afterwards.
Carolyn said she needed my advice on what to feed a poorly mouse. Approximately three times a year, Carolyn and her children find some wild animal somewhere and decide it needs help. This time it was a mouse.
I advised her to let it go. But Carolyn said the mouse was too small and ill. So I advised her to try milk, sugar, brandy, chocolate or nuts. Carolyn thanked me for my advice and explained her theory that an owl must have caught three mice but dropped one of them (presumably because it only had two sets of talons). She also explained that she had been practising trampolining in the garden after her children had gone to bed.
A short while later, Carolyn phoned back. It was a bad connection. "Can you hear me?" I asked. "No!" replied Carolyn. She went on to explain that the mouse appeared to be enjoying its sherry. She had decided against opening the Champagne-Cognac.
At least, I'm pretty sure that's what happened, but I might have dreamt the whole damn thing.
Postscript: It turns out it was a vole.
I made some of my homemade lemonade yesterday. I experimented with the recipe by increasing the unwaxed lemon count to 11 and decreasing the sugar count to 5 oz.
It was a tad tangy.
Which is how it should be.
BBC: In pictures: Isabella Blow's funeral [image 5]
You can tell it was Taupin what writ the lyrics.
Damn! The recently resurrected and relocated Lunartalks weblog has pipped me to the post with the latest nostril-venting quote. In this case, the nostrils were Jen's:
If it wasn't for the Enlightenment, you wouldn't be reading this right now. You'd be standing in a smock throwing turnips at a witch.
Not to be outpipped, here's another one which had Jen snotting herself this afternoon:
It's 1983, we are on the M25 and I'm sharing the back seat of Dad's Ford Sierra with my three sisters and their "my little ponies". Dad is shouting because I've got a McDonald's milkshake, which I am refusing to let my siblings drink, due to the Large Family Food and Drink Code of Conduct: under no circumstances do you share.
Exasperated, Dad demands I give him the shake, which I do. Driving at 60mph he winds down the window, holds the cup and chucks the milkshake out, the intention being for the shake to hit the road rather than his face, which it does in a hilarious custard-pie type way.
I cry with laughter. Ciara wees with laughter. Dad's pride and his car seat cover take weeks to recover.
