KrenzTV

X Factor Bingo!

2010-10-30T06:48:00.000-07:00

1. Take a piece of paper or card and divide it up into 9 squares (3 x 3. Like noughts and crosses.)

2. Choose nine of the following Judges' Comments:

"You could have a hit single with that."

"I just love you."

"You rocked it out."

"You are the heart and soul of the X Factor"

"Everybody loves you."

"You're so great to work with."

"Vote for Katie."

"You made it your own."

"This is where the competition gets interesting."

"You just became a popstar."

"You are the perfect package."

"I don't know what to say."

"That blew me away."

"You are what this competition is about."

"...to all those people who say competitions like this don't produce stars..."

"You are what the public want."

"... a little bit pitchy..."

"...you've had some bad press..."

"... you look uncomfortable..."

"... that was a risk..."

"... there were some tuning issues ..."

"... you've had some bad mentoring ..."

"... that was the wrong song for you ..."

"I think you've captured the theme really well."

"You are back in the competition."

"You need something a bit more contemporary."

"Don't listen to Simon."

3. Write each of your choices into each of your nine squares.

4. Watch, agog, to see which of your choices comes up, then cross it off.

5. First one to a line gets the Inside Soap magazine - first one to a full house gets the entire Quality Street Supply and control of the remote for the night.

Another two hours well spent. XOXO

GUILTY

2010-10-21T08:55:00.000-07:00

Katie Waissel stands accused.

She is accused of being egotistical and self-promoting. Yes, yes, she is guilty, cries the chorus of self-righteousness from the Mail.

She is accused of lying about sleeping with Matt Cardle. She has not been quoted, but she is undoubtedly guilty because she has been accused by no less an authority than the News of the World, commonly known on Fleet Street of the Scourge of the Evil-Breasted-Womankind. (All women are evil, and the fact that they have STOLEN THE WORLD'S SUPPLY OF BREASTS can only confirm this in the mind of any right-minded person) and the Flame of Righteousness. When the News of the World says something, you can be sure in your own mind it is Incontrovertibly True.

She has been accused of being a drama queen, of having pictures of herself naked on her phone, of being "unpopular in the X Factor House" and is probably the Untidy One there, too.

Well, this is ALL TRUE. And here is the proof: she has worn feathery eyelashes. She has shown frequently that she idolises Etta James. And most damning of all, she did not sit on her bumcakes at a till, or in a callcentre, or at home, waiting for Simon Cowell to elevate her to stardom. She has worked her bony arse off trying to be a popstar. She has auditioned, and sung, and learnt the piano and the guitar, and written songs and sung them. She has gone to America to make a dodgy online series. She has written and recorded an anti-bullying "anthem". She has worked at making her dotty drama queen dream come true. For this, she is guilty, Guilty, GUILTY. And may never be forgiven.

Who Knew?

2010-10-14T05:19:00.000-07:00

A week of revelation on the gogglebox.

Lady Mary, whom I hugely enjoy hating, has finally got some comeuppance. This youngest and prettiest of all the Evil Cows on Downton Abbey permitted a Foreigner first into her bedroom and then into her back bottom, and was hideously punished for this crime against her class - and her arse - by his prompt and irreversible death.

On the one hand, this is most pleasing. Lady Mary was thoroughly taken down a peg or two. On the other, it points to buttocks of amazing, not to say supernatural, power. Who may attempt to make Lady Mary next his sex toy and yet " a virgin for her husband" and what will become of them? Does her fatal bottom employ its mighty power only against foreigners, as her family's perky xenophobia might lead one to suspect? Or is it against all comers? And is it only her back bottom, or must Lady Mary's husband take on a virginity which must surely end his bridal night in Death? It is all a very jolly speculation. Matthew, the drippy heir apparent, looks like the likely next suitor, but he is too wringing a wet blanket to attempt either extra marital or anal activities with anybody, and may thus bury them all...

And then, in the Apprentice, somebody with a proper London accent survived the Boardroom. Lord Sugar picked on somebody a bit quiet for the boot, and over on "You're Fired" the delightful Dara O'Brain more than made up for Adrian Chiles, and Jack Whitehall restrained himself from being a complete nobdollop and was really quite amusing. A week of wonders, indeed.

Excluded

2010-09-22T03:13:00.000-07:00

... was the title of the BBC's drama offering for the "Education" season last night. It was called this because, obviously, it was not what it was about. Why, you gasp, what was it about? Having sat through the whole everlasting hour, I can proudly report that I know the answer. It was about NOTHING.

It was a confused and confused piece of failed agit-prop where a group of cardboard cut-outs mouthed unlikely dialogue to communicate dated, ideologically charged, ill-thought out claptrap. It was about the BBC having no earthly idea what might be going on in their chosen "topic", and refusing to use its considerable clout to find out. It was about throwing together a ragbag of ridiculous, outmoded cliches equally lacking in drama and information. It was a grimly tedious hour of shit tv.

There are obvious and immediate conflicts in a piece like this: on the one hand it is intended as a state-of-education piece; its aim to communicate a recognisable portrait of secondary school is a challenging one in itself, and it's also in conflict with the basic demands of drama, which require focus on characters, rather than types, and change, in both situation and character. A portrait must be very skilfully drawn to incorporate dynamism.

But it seemed to me - and as a teacher for seven years and a screenwriting graduate of the NFTS before that, I feel qualified to judge - that it failed on both counts.

I found it a hideously inaccurate portrayal of school. It's inconceivable that a newly trained teacher would set up his very first lesson as badly as did the lead character. Lesson planning over the last ten years has become fiercely structured; few teachers set up a first lesson without a planned starter activity, a seating plan, greeting the kids, taking a register or sorting out books. If you want an accurate picture, the devil is in the details. If you don't want to deal with all that palaver - don't set your scene at the start of a lesson.

Nearly all teaching nowadays involves a storm of photocopies that kids can cut up or colour in or stick together; it is vastly unlikely that an NQT - who would have spent a term and a half teaching by then - would go in to a GCSE class so unprepared that he would still be muttering "I have a background in electronic engineering", unless he were absolutely hopeless.

I have experienced plenty of unprofessional behaviour in schools, but it's stopped short at making faces behind a colleague's back - apart from anything else, it would destroy that member of staff with the kids, because he'd be behaving like one of them, which they consistently despise.

To address the question of drama; drama requires conflict, characters, a story. What was the story here? Everybody was a bit annoyed. That was about it. It was supposed to focus on exclusion, from the naive point of view that exclusion is a hideous experience which is rare and terrifying, traumatising for the child and onerous for the school, a product of poor teaching and school indifference or active persecution of the poor misunderstood child.

It takes a lot more than refusing to leave a classroom to get excluded. Throwing a chair? One of my Year Tens greeted me by throwing a chair in my first week; recorded, reproached, apologised, over. Throwing a brick at my class through a window? No consequence at all. Admittedly the time one of my year sevens went mentaltastic and danced over the desks hurling flour at his classmates and resisting deportation to the point of lying on the floor and holding onto the doorjamb, he did get excluded. For a Whole Day. But it was not the heinous behaviour heretofore described that did it; it was swearing at the deputy head who was finally called to take him out. A combination of vandalism, uncontrollably dangerous behaviour, and extensive disruption to other pupils is required to get a child put onto the "Stages" of exclusion, let alone actually sent home. If the child has a good excuse - being ADHD and refusing medication counts - you can try a lunchtime detention.

So poor misunderstood children are not really the ones who are excluded. This would be pointless in an era when a lot of kids carry weapons. This programme's worldview would appear anachronistic to a jaw-slackening degree.

I struggled to find a story. If it had been a story about a child terrorising other kids and not being excluded, it would have resonated with me. If it had been about a child who was excluded for being a victim of bullying, that, too would have resonated with me. If it had been a child who self-excluded as a consequence of bullying, I would have bought it. But excluded for throwing a chair? Grow up.

The Truth About Twilight

2009-08-03T10:51:00.000-07:00

Sylvia Plath wrote that every woman loves a fascist. Maybe an exaggeration, but there's a lot of evidence that every teenage girl fantasises about a stalker. Sorry, romantic lover. There is no difference. Look at Edward Collin. Indeed, look at him for some time, for he is quite beautiful, having the look of a young Brando at times, and the most sympathetic of Gothick lighting - at least in Twiglet sorry Twilight - all the time. Feast your mincers. Then worry about the character he is playing.

Judging by the teen scream queen team reaction, Edward Collin is every girl's dream. As beautiful as he is repellent, he wanders about, chalky complexioned and designer clad, sporting reddened lips and so much hairspray his scalp must snow flakes of fixative. He pouts and sulks and is stupefyingly rude for the first part of their acquaintance. When I was a teenage girl I found it is hard to like somebody who is apparently going to upchuck on me, but I am out of date. Perhaps this is why so many girls fare so much better in the pursuit of boys than I did. It doesn't seem a recommendation.

Things really don't improve when he declares his Undying Love for her as of course he must. He comes out to her as a vampire, and she skips after him hooting "I'm not afraid". Well of course not, he is a voluntary vegetarian vampire. He doesn't drink human blood. How crap is this? If blood-sucking is a metaphor for sex, this makes the Collins a celibate community. How disappointing to find yourself involved with the only undead anti-necrophilia society possibly ever to exist. Edward is so right; liking disappointment for this heroine is key. Worse is yet to come. Because it would also seem that, if bloodsucking stands for sex, the monkish Collins clan are no better than fawn fuckers. Surely there are places no girl wants to go - possibly where Bambi has been before her. Whether being eaten by the Collins was a let-down for Bambi history does not record.

It isn't just the milk-and-water vampires who don't drink human blood (who are therefore NOT VAMPIRES, but just weirdos), though. Edward - even while being stunningly rude to her - follows her about in his car and lurks about in her room when she is asleep, watching her. The word for this in modern times is stalking. Or being Father Christmas, but since he is an employee of the Coca Cola Corporation one hardly expects a high standard of behaviour from him. Edward Cullen has no such excuse. He is an idle slackademic, retaking his High School Cert for the umpteenth time, so without any need to be the puppet of a evil corporation. Particularly after he has passed up the chance to be a handmaidenboy of the Ultimate Evil.

Edward is unable to control his fascination with Our Heroine, partly because he cannot read her mind, thus reducing him to the horrors of conversation. He proves a bit of a blunderer at this, soon running out of things to say and falling back on telling her of his mind-reading abilities. Which she buys, in spite of the fact that his line is "I can read every mind in this room except yours." Does she respond like a normal person, "How suspiciously convenient"? No, she swallows it whole - even when he gives a brilliant demo of his Mind-Reading Talent, by telling her that everyone in the restaurant is thinking about sex and money. Not only unable to read minds, a normal sentient life-form would conclude, but REALLY UNIMAGINATIVE. Does she think this? No, for she is too besotted. Or, indeed, stupid, which suggests an alternative reason for his inability to read her - there is nothing in her cranium to read. He wouldn't be the first man to fall for the illusion of depth created by mental vacuity.

It is a great puzzle. Clearly they are both hopelessly daft, but in terms of Uselessness the Vegetarian Vampire or the Wannabe Undead? Go figure. It's what every girl longs to be.

INTOLERABLE

2009-07-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

Amy Winehouse's husband has been granted a divorce on the grounds that she is intolerable to live with.

This points to lots of stuff rotten in the state of Everything. In the first place, I take strong exception to the implication that anybody is less of a picnic to live with than a drug-soupified psycho-thugster such as his imprisonments indicate Mr Fielder-Civil to be. And anyway, how does he even know? Can he even remember that far back, given that he has spent the last year banged up? And even if he can, is it possible that she is more intolerable to live with than the kind of people he must have had to share a cell with in Wormwood Scrubs? People he didn't even choose. The idea that you choose somebody less congenial than cellmates for a soulmate indicates that you are probably too much of an idiot to make a big decision like getting married. Perhaps you need to be stuck in an Institution for your own safety. I doubt anyone would miss ex-Mr-Winehouse.

Another thing that is rather ridiculous is that you can get a divorce just because somebody is intolerable to live with. All people are intolerable to live with in smaller or larger doses, and married people just learn to carve out a niche of insanity so repellent that it serves to throw a cordon sanitaire around their own sanity by keeping out their Significant Other for Significant Tranches of Time. If you can get divorced just because your partner is intolerable a) what is the point in marriage even existing? and b) you shouldn't have done it to yourself or them; clearly you don't understand the rules.

Older married people are saved the necessity of divorce by increasing deafness and absence of mind alone. Until that happy day, surely you are just supposed to put up with the intolerability for the sake of the society?

Now I have to return to "The Woman in White". Laura has been horribly done away with and her former lover has found her ghost at the graveyard. My curiosity must be satisfied. Wilkie Collins would say this is because I am a woman. Because he is a sexist. XXX

Tracy Update Stardate Sunday 14th June 2009

2009-06-14T12:30:00.000-07:00

There are many, many times when waving one's legs in the air is a jolly good idea. But none of these situations are when you are standing up. Until Tracy learns this - or I unlearn it - I fear our relationship will not be one of Mutual Respect.

Teeny Weeny Tracy and the Pins of Pain

2009-06-01T11:34:00.001-07:00

Since Ben Ben's birthday (nearly 4 weeks ago), the Good Auntie of Windmill Hill has been in the thrall of Madonna-and -Gwynnie's personal trainer. She is an American who is obsessed with the idea that anybody can have a "teeny weeny New York City Ball-ay type body", which is obviously what Tracy herself has. Tracy is five foot nothing and works out several hours a day, it should be noted, and probably has no idea what a normal run-of-the-mill chubster like me looks like - partly because I think people who look like me and venture into Kensington are probably Removed by the Police. The other feature of Tracy is that if you freeze the DVD at any point she is in mid air, making me suspect that she can fly; an unfair advantage any way you look at it.

I have had many DVDs before - some featuring skinny people acting, and some featuring Rosemary Conley and her incredible Real People Chorus. Rosemary Conley's Chorus consists of women all slightly taller and chubbier than her sylph-likeness, each one GUARANTEED to have lost TWO AND A HALF STONE. I don't know why this is the amount, but it invariably is , apart from Shimay on the "Ultimate Workout" "who has lost four and a half stone and can't believe how much energy she has". Shimay is like Tracy, in that she always seems to be in danger of taking off and floating away, whereas the dominant ethos of Rosemary's DVDs is always that of sturdy determination, like plugging up the Brecon Beacons with a map in a plastic filing wallet on a neck-string. Shimay is too enthusiastic to exactly fit in. She might do better with Tracy - whose DVD is not at all like the Brecon Beacons.

Tracy's DVD is like being on Bootcamp with Tinkerbell. She has a dulcet American accent - crooning her "ow"s into "oh"s like a proper porn princess - and looks like - well, you know how men look at women they want to shag, as if the woman at issue is a Belgian bun? She looks like a Belgian bun. But when it comes to the Workout, she is professional in every inch of her teeny weeny body right the way down to her tippy toes (yes, both those phrases are True Tracy.) She hurls proper ballet moves at you until you feel like the target in a beanbag throw. I can do none of them, and fall over my feet shrieking with hysterical laughter (for after 20 mins with Tracy, the endorphins kick in and I giggle until I stop.) Tracy skips and springs through them like a teeny tiny elf with wings full of caffeine.

Even the warm-up is brutal. It takes four and a half minutes and at the end of it your thighs hum with pain - well, okay, what really happened was I did it twice by accident, and then couldn't walk properly for 3 days. Seriously - I was Too Hurt to Tracy for Three Days following the re-moulding of my thighs. I looked it up on the internet, and found out that the pain was because I was improving my muscle tone. Hm. When shown my knees and asked what she thought of them, my sister said "Same as usual," - a bit of a let-down considering I'd been hoping for the Gwynnie encomium about "the results you never believed possible". Still better than Ben-Ben's contribution, shrieked from round the playroom corner - "Rubbish!" Little toad.

Devils and Demons

2009-01-04T11:52:00.000-08:00

After a holiday season made scary by the conviction that I have become allergic to my own teeth, I am relieved to see Saturday night bobbing back up in the harbour of television, lifting its head above the jetsam and flotsam of Christmas programming. Look, there is a weird new show called Demons. And there is Graham Norton, hobnobbing with Andrew Lloyd Webber, who is hobnobbing with Vladimir Putin; a show just as weird without the CGI.

In terms of fanciability, Demons won hands down. It has Philip Glenister (mmm - craggy), a rent-a-hunk dweeb Van Helsing (mmm - American friendly) and that bird who acts media - is that right? who is always seeing into the Other World for ITV (presumably in this case, watching A Song for Eurovision on BBC1). Last week as a fake medium but real lesbian in "Affinity", and now a real medium but a fake person in this odd little pudding of a programme. Having resisted the craggy charms of PG - probably due to his pointless and unconvincing American accent, combined in an unlikely way with being called Rupert - the massaging of a piece of fur enabled her to see Mackenzie Crook in a False Nose. There's clairvoyance. If we could all do that there would be no more tv. At all.

Demons had hopeful moments - a convex-eyed lemur with skanky fur biting off a mop head in self defence; he wasn't allergic to his teeth, and just as well as he had two rows of needle sharpies - but some tedious half hours - such as when the toothy mini-demon was captured in a laundry bag. Also a bit depressing that they kill the demons with some kind of guns. If that's all it takes, what makes that van Helsing so special, eh? And it's not really A FIGHT, which is what I look for 5 minutes before the end of a programme; that or Rupert Penry Jones with his shirt off. I'm not picky, but I like some satisfaction. The smited demon was Mackenzie Crook, who lent the whole some thespian cred, Christian Cooke signally Not Being Up To It, and I was sorry to see him smitten in such a wrongful way, particularly when I would quite like to see him in a clinch with Zoe Tapper, preferably with his stick on nose coming adrift.

Graham Norton was more interesting. Having been cast down to the point of giving up by the outcome of the last Eurovision, I am mightily heartened by the news that in fact we are not giving up, but rather giving Eurovision our best shot. Our best shot is ALW and Graham Norton. Crucially, ALW has been on a charm offensive around the Eastern Bloc. Strangely, they do seem to find him charming, and it certainly seems a more hopeful approach than whingeing; whether the Russian popstar can really make over his "many, many fans" remains to be seen, as does whether the UK Chosen can be touted and trawled about the whole of Eastern Europe to any effect in the lead up to the Big Day. But I am glad we are not lying down and taking it. Good will prevail. Perhaps. In a bit.

Actually Not Mea Culpa

2008-12-30T03:49:00.001-08:00

... a New Year's Reflection on the Difficulty of Throwing Things Away ...

Nearly 2009, and the Christmas Holidays make me reflect anew on the difficulty I have with property management. Don't get me wrong, I like property. As somebody who slept a lot on the floors of others more provident than myself, who lived without heating and who was down to my minimum weight when financially unequal to eating enough food to keep anywhere above it, I am partial to the security of a roof over my head, to heating and to eating (particularly, I have realised, to pink and yellow food, of which more anon). Until recently, I owned a car, and I was pretty partial to that, as well. Sadly, some of the unpropertied who live nearby were partial to pissing on my wealth and status and now I don't have one any more.

I don't do very well, you will notice, at maintaining my property. I have a constant struggle to keep up with the washing up. I have a losing struggle to keep up with the gardening. And I have a Fucking Rout going on on my ass concerning the paper. There's this hole in my front door which rains paper. Catalogues, free papers, free magazines, things that fall out of free papers, updates from charitable concerns that I give to, updates from charitable concerns that feel I should give to them, demands from charitable concerns that I give to that I should give them more, demands from weird sects that have got my name from the charitable concerns who reward my donations with attempts to piss me off more than you would imagine humanly possible, and - most off-pissingly of all - suggestions that I might like 42 new credit cards (though happily there have been significantly fewer of these of late). Picture me unable to reach my front door for the drifts of rubbishy paper that swirls and eddies round the porch under the Hole In The Door, obscuring the lovingly tiled floor and needing to be disposed of.

At this point, enter the government - never good news. Because they say that getting rid of it is not somebody else's responsibility, but mine. And it cannot go off to landfill in a plastic binbag, oh no; it must be lovingly packed into mighty stack- parcels tied with string and put out for the recycling men.

Well, why? When did the possible end of the world become down to me? I didn't ask for it, I didn't want it, and I don't want to deal with it. I have enough shit to deal with what with earning enough to pay my council tax and getting up at 5am to help the police push my stolen car back up the hill so forensics can fail to find out who took it. I have lessons to prepare and a garden to neglect. I don't need the guilt and I can't find the fucking string; why does it have to make me feel so bad?

You know the answers to these questions, Mrs Crosspatch, you are thinking, and indeed I do. I have to, because nobody else will. But what I wonder about is, why does nobody try to make the litter-generators deal with their own mess, while the government - local and national - is perfectly happy to hound ME about dealing with it? Goodness - couldn't be one rule for the corporations and one for the Little People, could it?

AND AS FOR SAINSBURY'S ... well, if their values make them different, why don't they JUST STOP making and giving plastic bags. They could just switch to charging 1p a bag and USE PAPER ONES - like the US and like Sainsbury's themselves used to. Long ago, in the days when the world and I were still young. Goodness me, it's the hard life being the Only One Who Knows Best. Happy New Year.

'Tis the season ...

2008-12-22T07:10:00.000-08:00

... to complain bitterly and without rest about the quality of TV and particularly the wickedness of phone-in shows. And so to Strictly Come Dancing. A Big Row is in train (so say) because Tom Chambers won, in spite of the fact that he wasn't the best dancer. And we say, SO WHAT?

This series of Strictly was particularly galling. In the early days, it was pleasingly naff, and the dial-up dosh used to go to Sport Aid. Now it's all got glitteringly commercial, the dancing is taken with deadly - and for a tv show, fatal - seriousness, and it has lost its Blue Peter charm.

This year there was SO MUCH NONSENSE about the dancing pig, as John Sergeant was called. He could not dance. The list of contestants who couldn't dance has been mighty, and frequently distinguished; Julian Clary couldn't, all of Holby City couldn't, all of ITV Breakfast TV couldn't. And we chortled and hooted and voted. That's how it works. This year the Fear Of The Public got so bad that the press and judges hounded somebody out, and I think this was very sad. The crapness of some of the dancers is as much part of the show as the goodness of others. Do you suppose Shakespeare spent his writing days bemoaning how he had to write slapstick dialogue for base, crude woodworkers, when all he wanted to pen was the poetry of the sublime? How one hopes not. Getting your knickers knotted over the dancing in Strictly is ignoring its pull as drama. Give us the low comedy and give it to us in sequins.

More to the point, Strictly is a fine opportunity for the public to award its favours to those it, well, favours. Did Tom Chambers win because he was more popular than the other finalists? No, he won because in the event, he had the best show dance, which actually has been the desideratum in every series so far. He got into the last two because of his popularity. And why? Because the judges had systematically kept in Lisa Snowdon week after week while the public tried desperately to kick her out. Why? Because Lisa lacks the same degree of mass appeal. She is plainly popular enough to be a model and a radio presenter - or in other words, to have successfully dodged a real hard day's work for a crap day's pay at any point in her life - but is she as popular as him? No, she's not, and why should she be? When did it get so wrong for the public to like somebody better than somebody else? Lisa Snowdon lacks Chambers' warmth, and in competition, personality is as important as dancing.

To boot, Lisa Snowdon's preservation put out two other people I enjoyed watching; Austin Healy and Cherie Lunghi. And Rachel looks lovely and dances divinely - but that's all. And who cares how well somebody does the waltz? I watch for the tangos and the American Smooths. And the Really Crap Dancing, and the sweet, patient, and funny. Stick this in your dancing preciousness pipe and smoke it.

A Thing That Isn't What It Used To Be

2008-08-23T02:26:00.000-07:00

It's been a shocker of a summer for my mid-life crisis. In many ways, having a mid-life crisis at nearly 42 is pretty good going - suggests I'm not pegging out until 84, for a start. However, I have made no plans for it, so it's a bit of a shock.

The first sign was when a short rotund man made a sweeping reference to "middle aged women" and excepted present company, and since the other women present were in their twenties, I realised with surprise he must be speaking to me. Middle aged woman, me? It was more the objectification of it than the term, I think, which shocked me. I have become Something - a Thing which can be judged and generalised about, not myself. Well well.

And then a character in Grey's Anatomy referred to women who can no longer have children as "dried up", suggesting that they should do needlepoint. How guilty I instantly felt about my knitting and sewing. Obviously my happy relationship with manufacture of weird clothing for myself, others and dolls is a sign of my (unforgivable) infertility. The fact that I was brought up to knit and sew, as well as cook, as part of my mother's lifeskills course and have cheerfully made myself increasingly eccentric clothing throughout my adult life was suddenly indicative of - something socially unacceptable. Something socially inferior and unworthy. Some thing.

Things went downhill with Frankie Boyle describing people with pets as those who have "tried to have a relationship with a member of [their] own species". Good Godfrey Cambridge, me again. I even find the relationship with the cats - who poop before the washing machine, vom everywhere and shed like bastards while demanding to sit on my lap if I am still for more than 30 seconds - frequently trying.

And then Kevin Bishop described Madonna dressed in dance clothes as "Mutton". But she dances, what is she supposed to wear? And thus my whole crisis comes to focus on my clothes (which I must not make for myself).

What is somebody 42 supposed to wear? I have never gone in for being well dressed; I much prefer dressed up. I like to yomp about in personae - tart, horsy hellkite, landgirl, hobnail booted Victoriana - and just finding myself having to wear sensible clothes to teach has made me pretty miserable. Looking at fashion magazines just confuses me. Although impractical enough to warm my heart, the models are so toothpick skeletal that I cannot see the clothes. All I can see is malnutrition and aliens. Funnily enough, they are apparently not things.

Well well again. I have no solutions. I am a Thing, and when I decide what Thing to be I shall carry on and be that. Perhaps this is a time for supreme eccentricity. Then people will see eccentricity before they see a middle aged woman. If I am to be a Thing, think I should like that Thing rather better than the other.

Because You're Worth It

2008-07-30T00:32:00.001-07:00

Phil Beadle is very cross. Last week on Can't Read, Can't Write, he was cross because he attended a lesson for English as an Additional Language, and found it boring. He felt the learners weren't learning anything. The woman who ran the course pointed out that they had results which suggested they did. Mr Beadle went off and smouldered.

Then he attempted to teach his adults and I became very cross. I became cross with his insistence that the school system has exclusively failed these people. Maybe it has failed some of them. But not Linda. Linda is old (46) and she is by turns truculent and weepy. Linda is the kind of person who, when she finally learns to read, complains that the world is full of words and she can't shut them out. Linda is a pain in the arse.

Phil spends the first episode dancing around Linda like a lovesick schoolboy. He gives her special learning tools - albeit pipecleaners - and tells her that her "barriers to learning" are not in her, but in the way she's taught. There are only nine people in the class, and yet Linda is getting taught on her own. In the second episode, Phil attempts to explain commas in a traditional "chalk and talk" sesh, and, rude as usual, Linda first interrupts and barracks the lesson, and then storms out to the accompaniment of Phil saying he's pissed off with "this" (which I took to be her behaviour). This viewer very much concurred.

When he visits her and eats humble pie she tells him that she lost all respect for him when he did that, as he should be the adult. It seems to have escaped Linda's notice that, at 46, (older than her teacher), she has long left behind the privileges of childhood. Being a learner does not mean you are supposed to be a social or emotional child, or a rude shithead. Still, what does it matter, as a calligrapher was despatched to help Linda at home, and a lesson of spacehoppers planned for her greater engagement.

Meanwhile, James, 28, whose mother won't help him and who has taken sick days off with stress about his failure to do his homework, is still sitting in his corner feeling confused. Because he is not a shit.

This is one of the things that pisses me off about the education system in this land; pains in the arse get more attention. Poor behaviour and vile manners are consistently rewarded. And this begs the question, well, are they worth it? I think not. Some people are just difficult and selfish, and as children they crap all over the learning of their classmates, and as adults they turn into self-righteous souls whose fault it never is. Treating them like little nuggets of gold does nobody any favours except them. Others, like James, make no trouble, and are marginalised and ignored as a result. Look who isn't learning.

I know that this is perilously close to talking about the "undeserving poor", but some people choose to be horrid, and why anybody owes them anything is beyond me. Teach the nice. The selfish should be sent off to think on their sins. Because if we have 5 million functionally illiterate people, and some are slow and some are just a pain in the arse, the odds are the slow ones are being held back, and the teacher driven to nervous breakdown, by the mouthy selfish ones (who are ALWAYS in a numerical minority, in my experience.)

And who's worth it? The utilitarian answer is surely to teach those who are willing to try and not those who aren't. Looking at Linda, it seems all they want is a wider consumer choice of grievance, and surely that they will find with or without education.

For further information - the link below deals with Euro-wide illiteracy. Quake with fear, Eurolings.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/feb/19/furthereducation.uk1

Love on a Knife Edge

2008-07-26T00:10:00.000-07:00

This week I am besotted with Sweeney Todd - the film rather than the man, so you may relax; I shall not be going to get my legs shaved and returning legless below the knee, pursued by a short lady selling foot-burgers. ("Eat your own legs, Mrs?") Good thing too, for doubtless I would be quite unable to evade her, in my new semi-pinless state.

Anyway, it's been a long week of repeated viewings, because it's an admirable hairpiece. Of course it's pretty - it's Tim Burton - but it's also mordantly funny, with wit and a perfectly plotted tragic structure.

I myself think Mr Todd is much misunderstood; after all, he has had to put up with his own kidnapping as well as that of his nearest and dearest, false charges and imprisonment, deportation, the rape of his wife by the judge who framed him, and the fifteen year imprisonment of his daughter by said judge to boot. Obviously the whole family are quite mad, but encountering the moustache-twirling Judge Turpin would drive anybody to the edge. Much to my regret Mr Rickman did not sing in Latin about how bad he feels for letching after his ward while oggling her through a peephole in the wall, wanking and beating himself with a frayed and knotted rope - which I would have paid good money to see. (It's apparently in the original; I did not come up with that fine orchestration myself. Maybe I shall just pay good money to the New York Metropolitan Opera to see somebody else do it sometime. It's in the repertory.)

Unfairly, he metes out the same punishment to all; the innocent, the guilty of some small untruths, or the guilty as Judge Turpin, and this makes me feel a bit sad - although also shriek with demonic larffter as he does a lot of it while singing wistfully about how he misses his daughter.

And here is the true greatness of the piece; it is unreal. Some very serious things have been written about Sweeney and capitalism, social mobility and his failure to address his problems in a mature and 21st century way ("He has choices"). These rather miss the point. All very well to gloat on about how capitalism encourages people to poo on the heads of others, but it misses the point of what it does - which is tragedy. With a lot of dark comedy and sung counterpoint on the way. Really, you should see it.

This week has also been notable for its lack of Getting Out Of Bed and Getting On With It, so I am posting this just to prove to myself I'm still here. Apologies if it's rather pedestrian.

The Wrong Pants

2008-07-07T02:15:00.000-07:00

Okay, anybody who Really Cares about sport is a bit nuts and probably a prey to their hormones (ie testosterone) because none of it actually matters one iota. Still, for the last week of June and the first of July in England, a lot of the population is nuts, and for once, including me. So I have something to say about the tennis.

I have watched Wimbledon with various levels of fervour ever since I was ten years old, when I went to tea with a girl so cool her television-making mum let her have people over with nobody else in, and we ate cucumber spread on white bread and watched tennis with the wonder of children still enraptured by the glory that was colour television, and the heady sense of adulthood that lone tea and tv inspired. I treasured the wins of Boris Becker, yawned and switched over from Pete Sampras, and fell asleep during Edberg; and for the last few years I have squeaked "Too good!" in chorus with commentators during many a Federer rally.

Federer is a funny faced little thing, with his squashy nose and hiding teeth, but I have warmed to him over the years - in spite of his tedious consistency - for two reasons. Firstly, he is invariably one of the gracious and the generous. It's hard to watch a Federer match without disquisitions on his charitable work (presumably to reclaim his reputation as he straight-set -squashes opponents on-court like so many flies). In interview he is polite and rather dull. He sets a good example for sportspeople, many of whom behave extremely badly - in some cases to the extent of sexual and physical assault. Not so Mr Roger. His recreations are mainly buying lovely new suits. Who doesn't love a man with nothing to prove?

Secondly because he is not only a brilliant placer of the ball - someone who can create beautifully unreturnable shots, exquisitely placed in the corner or on the line, who can move about and return shots that lesser players wave to as they go by, who can surprise the viewer with his ability to out-think somebody sitting on a sofa and find the time to do it - but because he moves with such elegance. He is a big teddy bear type bloke with a lot of body fur, but when he plays a backhand, he adopts a pose famous mainly in ballet (an attitude) and sculptures of Eros or Cupid. Ridiculously but truly, he is graceful.

For these reasons, I can forgive him an awful lot. And on finals day, he graciously wore white underwear, which was a relief. Nadal always does, but he is troubled by his mighty muscular beefcake bottom. He is a bull of a boy, with an arse too powerful to be comfortable in its trowsis, and the amount of time he spends picking his Nike plus fours out of his bumcrack beggars belief and sometimes holds up play. If I were Nike, I would be busy redesigning his shorts, but to be fair, his pants are serious and appear to be about the same size as your average Spanx Magic Knickers. Maybe they were magic, too, while plainly Mr F was not wearing his lucky pants. We saw them in earlier rounds, and they aren't white. Nuff said.

Which brings us to the deep disappointment of his loss yesterday. I accept that he would have to lose sometime, and there would be no other giant killer than Rafael Nadal - likewise a poster boy for good manners and charming behaviour, clearly the perfect escort for Miss Robson to the Champions' Dinner UNLIKE SAFIN WHO IS 28 DAMMIT - who could bring him down. I also accept that Rafael Nadal, who has been writing a delightful blog for the Times Online this year, in which his Home-Loving Charm has been on daily view, is probably a relatively nice person to be beaten by, and that the crowd just adore him. He is young, devoted to his family, works as hard as nails, and he deserves his victory; but I was not impressed by his fans' behaviour yesterday.

Federer actually blew the match by not challenging a couple of bad calls at psychologically key moments, and by dumping many many balls in the net, which he does not usually do. To some extent this was as much a match lost by Federer as won by Nadal. But he cannot have been assisted by the untimely shrieks of "Come on!" to Nadal in mid-stroke, or the calling of "Out!" during rallies. If the spectators can't behave, they can watch on telly.

I also didn't like the chanting of "Rafa! Rafa!" between points. For the first time, I felt the crowd at Wimbledon was ungentlemanly. I felt it a bit during Murray's matches, but frankly the Brits need all the help they can get, and since there is no prospect of them blundering into a final, it seems less important. (One hopes the will French shriek for M Gasquet at least as loudly should a re-match occur at Roland Garros.) Still - there is no need for it to turn into football. One should watch the tennis, as much as enjoying supporting the players. Especially when I (alone) am in a proper English manner supporting the underdog, without the aid of lucky pants.

Who Knows?

2008-07-04T02:12:00.000-07:00

I am not enjoying the Three Part Finale bit of Dr Who as much as I have some of the heretofore. I wasn't even before I started fretting about the possible loss of David Tennant. I recognised its general slide in the his'n'hers episodes. The Doctor Alone episode was pretty good, but Donna's was quite a load of old poo poo. It was riddled with inconsistencies and liberal pseudo-political nonsense. It felt like Torchwooden.

And now all those Extra Characters invented for spin-offs have resurrected themselves and are running about Saturday PrimeTime like they have a right. We're all Extra Glad Owen and Tosh bought it at the end of Torchwood now. But still - have to put up with Wooden Faced Gwen and Scared Face Martha and monkey muzzled sex dwarfette Rose, whom I continue to loathe, even now she has been improved by the addition of a very big gun. She blew the head off a dalek, mind, and one feels a sneaking admiration for anybody who does that - allied to an indignant wish to know why she hasn't brought more of this fine arsenal to Arm The Whole Human Race. When she isn't atomising daleks or worrying about the end of the universe, she takes time out to scare off looters - it's all about priorities and compromise. I can't warm to her.

Fortunately, I have been happily engaged with Criminal Justice this week. I am pleased to note that some idiot high up in the legal profession is Very Upset by it, which proves that he does not have enough to do, and that the writer is doing something right. How ridiculous, to be upset by a bit of grainily lit telly. Thought Judges were clever - my mistake. Of course it's not an accurate depiction of everyday life in the legal system; it's drama. Entertainment. BBC1 at 9 o'clock for heaven's sake. Does the man think that Holby City is a transcript of a day in a hospital, or Hotel Babylon a true reflection of the hospitality industry? Ridiculous Gudgeon.

The most amusing thing about it all is Ben's runaway success with the Laydeez - more impressive with his current tootsie defending him against accusations of the last one's murder. Ben Whishaw is a very good pick for a lead, because where most of the leads one sees are so breathtakingly beautiful that it's like looking at an Armani suit - you know you'll never bring yourself to pay a four figure sum for it, and half the wonder is that you can never have it - Whishaw is more Miss Selfridge than Miss Dior, and you are pretty sure you could find one of those on the high street - or the pub - for three pints and a packet of jelly babies.

Don't know you'd want to take him home, mind.

Ennobling Stuff

2008-06-28T05:12:00.000-07:00

Last night I was privileged to see Lord Levy expatiating on why Gordon Brown should not be PM. I can think of lots and lots of reasons, but none would co-incide with Lord Levy's. His objection to GB appears to be that he hasn't any rich friends.

It was a fascinatingly nasty thesis, and what made it even more compelling was that it had not crossed its exponent's mind that having rich friends - even if a true sine qua non for power - is not a proper basis for power in a democratic society. That Tony has left, taking his rich friends with him doesn't alter his successor's right to be PM. And Lord Levy - a man without democratic mandate of any kind - should put up or shut up. I take it that he is free to take his money away, now that he has got his title. Perhaps he is peeved that some of his mates can't buy one; this is the only interpretation I can put on his objection to the PM's "not having rich friends of his own."

Nobody outside the Labour Party gives a shit that it is £20 million in debt. Although given what GB has done to the country in terms of evil PFS buildings, it is no surprise, it just doesn't matter to anybody but the labour party. People like Wilde and Sheridan made a career out of being fabulously broke, and I personally think that the ruling party going into bankruptcy would be edge-of-the-seat stuff. Rock on, I say.

True Love

2008-06-20T14:11:00.000-07:00

Appallingly, I have a crush on somebody called Giles. I know what you are thinking. You are thinking firstly, Bold Move, Krenzle; for all the Gileses you know are even now upping their Yurts and trundling off to Outer Mongolia as fast as their 4X4s will carry them. And secondly you are thinking, Giles Who? Nobody is called Giles. Foden? Brandreth? By all that's holy pray not. Don't be so silly; Giles Coren of course.

Of course, for he is short and kinda sorta fubsy and sports some serious facial fungus. It is all quite perfect, for I could never smooch a somebody beardy. It hurts. I had one mate at University who had very soft and furry designer stubble, but he was exceptional - and looking at Giles Coren, one just knows that his beardiness is scratchy, just like you know about suralun's. Another mate - this one female with the soft beardless skin that that so frequently implies - has a husband of a bearded type, and her face is always reddened and rough around her mouth and chin. "Chronic beard-burn," she explains.

But he bounces about being full of beans and any other nosh he can neck, having far too much energy and eating - really - like a stevedore. Also I think he is really REALLY cocky. Together with his constant limited flirtation with Sue Perkins I find that very comforting.

However, there is no need to stop at Giles Coren - not for me, at least - for it is summer now, and Wimbledon is here, with the great joy that is the international tennis circuit. WONDER at The Great British Hope's hopeless haircut, as he has a wedge at the back and an outgrown flat top at the front. GAWP at the Returning Champion's continuing passion for dark coloured underwear in defiance of the transparent combi of Wimbledon's all white dress code and sweating 2 buckets per hour. LAUGH at the ridiculous behaviour of all and sundry when they are surprised by any form of weather - newspaper hats on hot days, expressions of continuing surprise on rainy ones. I love the summer.

Another way I can tell it's summer is I'm so easily pleased. Everything is great. I like Doctor Who, I can't get over how much I enjoyed a DVD about a pig-faced girl, and indeed another about a group of Americans reading Jane Austen. Must be the Vitamin D. I am even pleased by my friend's choice of name for her new daughter*; just love the summer. Even when it rains.

* Penelope, Jane Austen Book Club, Sasha

Left Hand, Right Hand

2008-06-15T13:54:00.000-07:00

I see there is famine in Ethiopia again. I see this largely because the tv is awash with children in dire need of food, but also because I have started receiving the emails from Concern International, which I get whenever some new crisis pitches up (about once every six weeks or so.) Sometimes I feel there is a point to giving - apparently £50 can buy a whole load of Plumpynut (yes it really is called that - hi-energy nosh for malnourished people). Clearly money well spent (unlike on the Myanmar crisis, where none of the aid was allowed in.) This makes me feel Extremely Guilty about even contemplating the purchase of, for instance, £30 worth of skincare, let alone frittering another £20 on re-rooting Sindy dolls.

However, I do not particularly favour Concern International, and this is why. In the first place, there is the issue of their paying £1000 a day for "consultancy" services. Nobody is worth that much, and I suspect that anybody who earns that much can afford to donate their time for nothing. It also smacks of imposing the Will of the Developed, which always makes me antsy. Having worked with people myself, I am aware that many of them need stuff imposed for their own or their community's good, but it still makes me nervous.

Secondly, Concern do not provide you with the biggest bang for your charitable buck. My faves are Unicef, because they send Happy Stories and pictures of Saved Children Smiling. I know this is shallow but frankly it is also what you want. Concern just carries on finding more and more things wrong with the world and it just makes me DESPERATE. I feel I should sell my house and go and live in a poor place and catch something nasty - which I don't plan on doing, so that the only net result is I feel guilty and resentful.

Resentment, I find, does not encourage generosity. It just means you sit about thinking THERE IS NOTHING TO BE DONE IT IS ALL HOPELESS.

When we come to my great question about charitable giving - how much is enough? A fixed amount? A percentage of your income? Take home or net? Enough to feed your proportion of the LDC population? More, because I am still working and there won't be much to be got from me when I'm living off Mr Brown's 2p a year pension (in a boat due to global warming. Or an upturned umbrella if I can't afford a boat.) ? Apart from more than we are currently sending, how much is enough? Is it measured by what you can afford, or what is needed, or what makes a difference?

Every time I see a Judge on television I have other thoughts about charity; namely that I would happily stump up a few quid a month to sponsor sharp but poor women with a bit of nous and a sense of justice (although The Word is, that this lack of women QCs is due to the age of the Bench, and the number of women employed as barristers 40 years ago. So maybe I should be agitating for a Compulsory Retirement Age for the old codger QCs.)

I am genuinely curious about whether anybody has any answers. Just enough to assuage my guilt would be fine, if only somebody would tell me how much that is and where it should go.

I look forward to hearing from you.

The Hireling

2008-06-12T10:34:00.000-07:00

Many features of the final of The Apprentice are just too heart-warming to be passed over without a little gloat.

It was so very pleasing to see the dream team of Alex and Helene squabble and bicker and point fingers at each other throughout, and highly entertaining to see them ably "assisted" by Kevin. Between explaining how unjust it was that he had been dismissed so early and hadn't won it, he crept round Alex like a cut-price fight fixer, bigging him up and dissing Helene. Having chosen the cherub-faced toxic-bar for their team, there was little Alex could say. Last week Nick described him as "subtle", which I take it is Management Speak for sly and untrustworthy, so he probably didn't want to say anything anyway. That really reduces your chances of successful slyness and untrustworthiness.

After a nail-biting middle portion of show where I gloomily assumed that Glum Helene and Creepy Alex were doomed to success, for the designer had suggested a brilliant (though blatantly expensive) bottle, and it looked like this would swing it for them, hurrah! it was a total fix and the others won. I did wonder what Helene meant when she said she was glad to be working with Alex - was she looking forward to blaming him when they failed (as she did, looking satisfied for the first time in the show)? Or was it that she was too stupid to realise that she and Alex were by some margin the weaker candidates - those who had signally failed throughout to show any real ability? A woman keener on the Good Excuse than the Good Winning, I sagely concluded.

And then Alex wept in the back of the taxi. I found this made me like him for the first moment ever. Clearly still a prize prick, as soon as he cried, I decided maybe he was not all bad. He was back on form on "You're Fired" through, and I remembered I should know better. He was given a pink hairbrush that tells him how lovely his hair is, in many different phrases. The perfect gift, and I was surprised he could resist giving it a go immediately. He should just love it. And deep down, I do like the vainglorious dorks to be happy.

Viva Lucinda!

2008-06-08T09:32:00.000-07:00

Time for all good chaps to stand up and say, hurrah that Lucinda won't be Surulun's Apprentice!

We are all too prone to wish for our favourite characters to "win" on tv contest shows, but the truth about The Apprentice is that the prize is one anybody with the full complement of marbles would pay good money to avoid.

Work in a shabby office in Brentwood? With a grumpy little scratchy faced gremlin shouting and harumphing at you? Having to wear ugly clothes and have people say horrible personal remarks to you? For a salary cut? Why would Lucinda want any such prize? Why would anybody?

This probably accounts for the overall repulsiveness of the candidates on the show. Anybody who would want to work in such conditions is clearly wanting in either imagination or common sense - and neither type is somebody you'd miss much down the pub. Or in the office, come to that. Lucinda was too polite and too clever and too amusingly dressed to be part of the gruff little gremlin's business empire. I wish her well, and couldn't combine that with wishing her Viglen. Two of the remaining candidates are quite hideous in terms of morals and manners, and they richly deserve it. They are also eye-poppingly incompetent and cannot identify good practice when they see it. Quick! to Brentwood with them!

All good people say amen.

NEVER FORGET

I just accidentally caught Take That in concert on T4. It was amazing. Gary Barlow sounds exactly like a Alex from A Clockwork Orange - it's like the character has been reincarnated as a Butlin's Redcoat. And I have never seen four people work so hard in my life. Mr Barlow is nearly not a Suet Pudding Boy any longer; though Mark Owen can still find an inch to pinch, it is on Mr Barlow's bum, where anybody should be a bit squodgy.

Jason Orange and Howard did pole-dancing, which was frankly terrifying. It explained exactly why no woman frequents such clubs, as did the remainder of the number where the ladies wore the silver jackets (though disappointingly not the trowsis) and the lads did the lap dancing. Any man opening a club for the ladies' market runs the risks of instance arrest for what looks like some sort of shape-up-and-sexually-harass to music class.

Then they all stood on a piano and made the audience sing, Gary Barlow terrifying people into acquiescence with his bizarre Malcolm McDowall channelling and Howard skipping about like a loose-limbed 6 and a half foot puppet. He's the scariest one to have on your lap.

Gutted I didn't go now.

Euro-Schmeuro: Time To Go

2008-05-25T01:11:00.001-07:00

Today the sun for sorrow dares not show its head; rain is thrown down in skyfulls upon the grateful green and ungrateful populace of this grassy isle, and I am through with Eurovision.

Even Terry Wogan is wondering if he's through with it, and that's got to be a sign.

It is time to say something about Eastern Europe, and here it is; we have had nothing in common with them for the last millennium, and now it is time to Cut Them Loose. There are people in the UK from abroad with whom we have much in common - in particular a history of colonisation -and to these people our loyalties are due. But Eastern Europe - land of snow, pogroms and heavy embroidery - has very little common history with the UK. As its Eurovision voting shows.

I found the whole fiasco this year almost creepily all-white and largely all-shite. Apart from Bjorn giving the votes from Sweden - barely legal, nervous as a Herbert Lom in a Fritz Lang classic and blatantly liquored up, giggling "yes it's true" after delivering himself of the "dix points" score - I didn't enjoy much of it, although the French entry fascinated me. We come in for a lot of stick on the continent (apparently) for Not Taking It Seriously. Well, if having four female backing singers in false beards and taches and a singer arriving in a tiny car sucking helium out of a globe beach ball is taking it seriously we certainly have some way to go. AND YET the French got a good deal more than 14 points.

We came - for anybody who doesn't know - joint bottom with Poland and Germany, each with 14 points out of a possible 2494. We should have a Little Chat with Germany. When there are about 50 countries in a competition and we (Germany, France, Spain and the UK) pay 40% of the cost, we should be looking into whether we can get better value for money out of withdrawing and spending the money elsewhere, because paying through the nose for the Barefoot Russian narcissist is not a good return on any investment. (He's cross-eyed for crying out loud. What is it with cross-eyed men that in the first place they consider themselves sexy and in the second anybody agrees? Nobody thought Bjorn Borg was sexy. The world was a lot more sensible in the seventies.)

So - time to turn the whole thing over to Simon Cowell. Let us put Eurovision off onto some oblique rubbishy channel and invite our mates whom we fight with (ie our Euro-neighbours) to put forth their best for Westeuro Idol or The EU's Got Talent. The important thing is A Local Squabble for Local People. The French, Germans, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese all have hideously embarrassing colonial histories and a corresponding tolerance of different coloured skin and cultural diversity as part of their emergent new-world identities. Eastern Europe have the bitching of the Balkans and the Coalition of CUBR (Countries that Used to Be Russia); we should have our own CUBE (Countries that Used to Be Empires) because damn we are different.

Sod it, we should have A Song for the Western Europe and its Ex-Colonies (Russia does - and we pay for it) - think how funky that would be - it is time to line up with who we actually have something in common with.

No Tea one, Karma nil

2008-05-12T07:45:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a month - moreorless - and I have not been visited by the migraine goblins, so perhaps the no tea has something to be said for it. More shockingly, I have not missed it at all, partly because I have discovered liquorice tea, which I think is better than anything else anyway. It is made by UK Yogis in response to the horror of teaching Yoga in the West. Drink the tea, skip the lotus position. It has cute little "thoughts for the day" on the tags. And I think that's cute.

Meanwhile, the Karma email has been a complete sell. I have not got a job, or a boyfriend, or a social life, and I have failed my standardisation for SATs marking; to say nothing of a massive humanitarian disaster in Myanmar, which is not something I hoped for. There may be spiritual forces at work in the world, but I am not convinced they are at the beck and call of humans. If they were life would be a damn sight easier, and I would have achieved world domination/peace/justice from my seedy old armchair while watching Nancyvision.

ENDANGERED NANCYS

This week's endangered were Niamh and Ashley, and the red headed Scot got the chop - not very surprisingly, as ALW has never liked her. I like Jessie less and less as the weeks pass and I have to watch her galumphing about in nasty emerald-hued satin nighties. She no longer seems coltish to me now, she seems more like a slightly small heifer. When she dashes off stage right after being told "YOU could still be Nancy" you can feel the boards shake under the hefty hammering of her hobnailed booties. God knows what it's like having her in a small space. Will nobody rid us of this curly turbulence? quoth Kerensa the Good. And the answer is, probably not, for Andrew is desperate for her to win. I am desperate for Jodie or Rachel to win, which is of course the kiss of death.

THE APPRENTICE

Kill! Kill! This series is quite perfect because so many of them are so horrid, that it's just a statistical likelihood that somebody you loathe will get the boot on any given show. On the other hand, the number of nice candidates (Lucinda and Sara) is so limited, that two weeks could put paid to the need to watch at all. Win win really.

An A to Z of the Sad State of Us

2008-05-04T05:19:00.000-07:00

I saw Boy A last night and now I can't get the damn thing out of my head. (Readers of a sensitive disposition stop now.)

It concerns the release after detention of a young man who was imprisoned as a child for the killing - with another boy - of another child; in this case it's a girl of about their own age, but otherwise the situation clearly parallells the killing of Jamie Bulger.

The point about Boy A is that he has grown up a decent hardworking well-intentioned lad, burdened with guilt and fear about his past, but apparently exemplary in his present. This, too, mirrors the Jamie Bulger case.

Where the film is different from most of the press on the case, is that it takes up Boy A's story - we are invited to identify with him, to see his childhood, to sympathise with his rehabilitation and attempts to make a normal life after his release. The press and the legal system notably did not take this line about the perpetrators in reality; in 2001 when the boys came up for parole, there were still numerous calls for them to be "punished" longer, for them never to be released, endless appeals about the feelings of the dead child's mother, endless demands that they should suffer, that revenge should be somehow exacted.

The film is amazing - not because of its perfect script, which actually seemed to me beautiful in scene and dialogue, but flawed in structure, but because of the compelling conviction of both the lead and the director; the viewer is lead to care about Boy A a lot more than s/he does about the vast majority of "good" characters on tv. We see him as a victim as a child and a trier as an adult, and we hope for the best for him. We hope for his salvation; I did, anyway.

The trouble with the film is that it skates over the horror of the original crime, but at the end of it that is still where one's mind returns; to the murder of a two year old which was a bloody, panicky, horrible killing, which nobody stopped, and which afterwards was too awful to accept. What breaks your heart about it is the feeling that it could so easily not have happened. It would have been so easy for somebody to say something, to stop them; it would have been so easy for his mother not to be distracted for that single moment; it would have been so easy, for so long, for them to go back, to leave him at a police station or on somebody's doorstep, and for it to have had another, better ending.

But it happened, and so did the curious response of the UK press and legal system. I call it curious because it is almost unique in the annals of the press that neither the parents of any of the parties nor the social workers were blamed. On this occasion, the two children stood alone. They were tried as adults, though clearly unable to understand much of what was going on - something I believe would be forbidden by European law now - and their identities were made known to the press, although only ten years old at the time. Both boys had a catalogue of victim survival that would make an angel weep, and a probation officer feel no surprise at all. Between them they racked up bullying, school failure, neglect, violence and sexual abuse. The Home Secretary wanted to imprison them for thirty years, in defiance of all legal precedent and guidelines of the time. And 17 years later, people still bay for blood.

And it is because we cannot be free of it. What I remember, what I always remember, is the idea of the last part of Jamie Bulger's life. Not the two years before, when he must have been an ordinary and often happy child, but the awful last afternoon, which replays and which I empathise with so strongly that I imagine his pain and confusion as my own, amplified by my adult, external sympathy, the hope that - like the car keys you just locked in the car, like the dreadful truth you just articulated, like the mistake you knew you were making - the tape will rewind and time will allow this one correction, this one time. And that little boy is gone now; there is no likelihood, in any religion in the world, nor outside of one either, that he can be suffering any longer. It is the living who are trapped in that last corridor of horrible time; it is we who re-live it; strange that we cannot forgive the people who perpetrated it, because surely they are right there as well, only worse, with memory instead of imagination. I suppose we cannot forgive them, because they did it to us; and perhaps we haven't the last quarter inch of generosity to realise truly, in our hearts, that they what they have done to us, they have done to themselves as well.

Good Karma

2008-04-27T08:27:00.000-07:00

Somebody sent me a good karma email this week. It is full of good advice and sound wisdom, and apparently the more people you pass it on to, the better your own karma will become. She who sent it to me doesn't understand how it can possibly work, that you get better and better karma as you send it to more people. I don't know why, it makes perfect sense to me. Where it falls down a bit is that claims that all one has ever hoped for will take shape if you send it to fifteen people or more.

Whoever wrote that clearly doesn't know just how hopeful I am. I hope for many things, including an end to the guilt I have to endure when driving my car, solutions to the problem of global warming and peace in our time. And when these problems are solved - along with my more mundane and personal ones, like finding employment and a life partner who lives to clean and encourage, without wishing for payment or even excessive praise - I expect to feel a little sad that I will have saved the world and that nobody will ever know. Except you lot. So when it all starts to go right, remember this and think kindly of me.

The High Price of Tea

2008-04-15T00:10:00.000-07:00

I have spent the last few days on a Bed of Pain. The bed itself was fine - I have laboured long and hard to make sure that I have the most comfortable bed in the world - but I was languishing in Pain on it.

I was Suffering from migraine. Or not, medical opinion varies. It was a one-sided headache which made me feel nauseous, but (on this occasion) without accompanying funny coloured lights (which was a mercy. If somebody had told me when I was eighteen that I would not enjoy free coloured lights with different coloured borders hovering around in the air, I would not have bought it. Life is a very chastening business.) Anyway, my doctor is completely unconvinced and says I suffer from tension headaches, and so I am driven to Home Remedies - depriving myself of tea, coffee, chocolate and cheese. The last three really aren't an issue - I dearly love cheese, but shouldn't eat it anyway because it is implicated in the fact that my cup size has gone up four letters in the last six years, or in other words, it maketh me porky. But tea - crumbs, tea.

My morning pick-me-up, my eleven o'clock shot, my refreshing lunch-time brew and my home-time treat. I am so dull these days I am nearly flawless - and now, my only vice, my favourite fix! to be so cruelly deprived of almost my last remaining pleasure! Two days of moaning into my pillows was enough, though, and now my new vices will be liquorice and orange teas - and possibly, later in the month, peony and other weird flavours. Four weeks without tea; can this be sustained without descent into madness? I shall have to see, for I can lose no more of my life to the misery of the migraine if it can be prevented. I have not had a cup of tea since Friday afternoon; three days down and twenty-five to go. Bye bye to tea. Hello to Rude Health.

NANCYLAND

Well, I was wrong - the Nancies had to snog somebody, but it wasn't Capn Jack. Poor guy must be all smooched out from Torchwood. They had to snog a Joseph. He was sweet and didn't mind that Keisha had been eating onions.

Finally said tarah to Tara, who sang rather craply throughout, and then opened her larynx and sang a blinder on her way out. Was she nobbled, I wonder; she was criticized for being "pop-py" - they meant that she sounded like a pop singer, not a red flower - but what she had to sing was "I Can't Live (If Living is Without You)" and "Let's Hear It for the Boy" - the definition of pop. Did she misguidedly choose these songs for herself? I think not - I smell stitch-up here; but then - that would be the all-controlling BBC, the unelected representative of The People and What's Best for Them.

This year's contenders are all excellent singers - the Irish leading the way with three of the final nine, all lookers and two about nineteen. Meanly, I find myself hoping that one of the older ones gets the role - Rachel or Francesca or Sarah, who have been living in London pounding pavements and going to auditions and living off crap jobs for five years - simply because the 17/18/19 year olds have had such an easy time of it so far. Niamh is pleased that she's cooking her own sausages and doing her own laundry - a proper achievement for a 17 year old to pique herself on, but not a life story to make you feel that she's earned a plum role in the West End. As for Jessie, a coltish copper-curl-tossing Irish colleen, it doesn't matter that she can't act for toffee and giggles like an idiot when she has to try, because ALW can barely stay in his seat for praising her. Is he harping on about her accent, which is at least as strong as Simona's? Funny that.

Dr Who was really good. Why it was called "The Fires of Pompeii" instead of "Written in Stone" is anybody's guess, but even through the dark mists of pain I enjoyed it. What splendid fun it is not to have a soupy tweeny girl in lurve with the knobbly kneed doctor, but instead the voluptuous Donna giving voice to More Estuary Indignation at every turn. She even makes him cross, which is fabulous. Loving it loving it loving it.

An End to The Torcher

2008-04-06T03:06:00.001-07:00

Torchwood finally bowed out on Friday night - much to our collective relief, no doubt. It was, however, an enjoyable episode, with lots going on, and The Other Coat (Captain John) much in evidence. He blew up lots of bits of Cardiff, gave Jack a ring while burying him alive, and did lots of "business" - actor-speak for picking things up and faffing about with them to indicate mental state or give the audience something to look at. It was all good fun. He also strung Capn Jack up by his arms and didn't support his feet, but Capn Jack refused to be suffocated as he actually would, and continued chatting away like a good'un.

As usual, the best bit was after the show, when the BBC aired "Torchwood Confidential". It is always a tad creepy when the Beeb does its little panegyric love-ins, but TC is so far up its own bottom that it is worth watching just to listen to one's own involuntary yelps of disbelief.

There are No Women on TC. No women apparently write or produce on this show, and the men only communicate by email. Or maybe they pretend only to communicate by email to show the viewing public just how cool and techno-literate they are, because this lot are spods. Not the semi-cool geek-types whose spoddiness is generated by insane intellectual passion rather than social hopelessness, like Gareth "okay, I may be geeky but I have a black Fred Perry polo shirt, you know" Malone off the choir; no, this lot are the more oafish, not-quite-outstanding-at-anything-so-we-hang-round-in-a-gang lot who probably still deal out dirty looks and snide remarks to the true geeks. They are marked out by their love, not for their craft, but for their self-importance. The beating heart, one suspects, of BBC production.

They talk a lot about how "difficult" it is to kill off a character, but what they say doesn't ring true. They don't care about these characters, surely? If they care, why are they so cardboard? And oh good Godfrey Cambridge, there it is. The characters are cardboard because they reflect the production team. No girl would aspire to go out with one, no single individual is permitted self-knowledge by the remainder of the pack, No One Is Greater Than The Show; they are the Stalinist State perfected through the prism of the English Public School System; socio-emotionally and intellectually foetal to a man.

The girls - who front the series - put in an appearance. Apparently the tears Gwen cries in the show "are real tears". Are we supposed to be impressed by this? One is reminded of Laurence Olivier suggesting to a fellow thesp. that he "try acting". The dangers of confusing reality and fantasy are well documented, but here is one of the less publicised ones - that of making fantasy pointless. After all, the art of drama is to fake it.

MEANWHILE ... OVER ON BBC ONE

How I enjoyed Dr Who! I type this with some astonishment, as I didn't enjoy the last series to the point where I couldn't be bothered to watch it. I have intensely disliked both the last two assistants; the worst thing was that they both Loved the Doctor, and that really isn't right, especially when he is David Tennant. No working relationship can survive interplanetary breeding programmes, as evidenced by last night's ep. Happily, Catherine Tate is here, and we are all much happier now.

Catherine Tate is not a creature of heart-stopping beauty. She may have a wealth of auburn hair and eyes you could lose your soul in, but she is also a woman with an unfashionably buxom arse and the accent of true Estuary Outrage. Instead of being a show pony, she is a quick-witted funny feisty woman, who can also act. How on earth did she end up on Dr Who? Let us all praise the Powers That Be, who have sent us a lovely Goddess to use her own wit and elan to rescue us from the tedium of poorly pretended hanky-panky yearning fests that this once-classic show has been in danger of being swallowed by. If the Doctor can avoid being Tinkerbell in a cage needing all the world to believe in fairies, this series could yet be a watchable thing. Yippee!

Branded

2008-03-23T08:44:00.000-07:00

By a concatenation of circumstances too complicated to bother with I ended up doing my shop in Tesco's yesterday. Tesco is on my list of Things To Be Avoided If Possible, but it was moderately interesting to be there.

Different supermarkets, I have noticed, do different things well. Sainsbury's, for instance, has reasonable bread (well - the Taste the Difference range) and bagels, and a lime and cannellini bean dip which makes me make Cookie Monster noises of happiness. Tesco cannot bake to save its horrid life. All its bread is dry. I always get Tesco bread home and wonder if it's yesterday's; stale is the norm. Asda bread smells too bad to take into your house. There is Something Nasty going on in the Asda bakery, and I have no desire to find its results loosening my fillings.

Yesterday it also had No Diet Baked Beans In Small Tins. It had own brand, but let's face it, Heinz have some sort of addictive chemical that others don't, and there is no point trying any other brand for baked beans, tomato soup or tomato ketchup. They don't taste the same, and it is like being a cat weaned onto Whiskas who is now being fobbed off with Go-Cat to try. I find this impressive; lots of own brands just aren't worthwhile - Kelloggs, for instance, has no superiority in branflakes or sultana bran, and you may as well buy Generic. However, when it comes to Special K, Kelloggs is somehow - better. It's lighter and less clarty. Eating Special K is just like eating cardboard however you slice it, so this is the lesser of two evils; but isn't it when there are two evils that it matters most to have that tiny margin of increased bearability?

UPDATE:
A couple of days after the No Diet Baked Beans in Tesco debacle, I wended my way to Waitrose (accompanying my sister, who is too delicate for Tesco). It was a scene of nearly sylvan delightfulness. The aisles of Waitrose are staffed by teenagers of delicate beauty and low plummy accents, the tills by women of a tad more experience but similarly RP accents. Nobody shouts or blocks your way by gathering in mighty legions of the supermarket-uniformed with loading pallets in a circle between you and the milk. Not only did it have Diet Baked Beans, it has cheaper sun dried tomatoes than Sainsbury's and sweet chestnut spread. And its own brand food tastes like food.

And the moral of this is, you should not go to Tesco, where £1 in every £8 is spent. You should support your local Waitrose. Use it or lose it. Because if they fall by the wayside, where will you be able to get a pint of milk safe in the knowledge that you will never run into anybody you know ever?

Too Late ...

2008-03-20T08:09:00.000-07:00

Torchwood may be improving, but its credibility is being hopelessly undermined by Capn Jack's parallel universe existence as Judge John on I'd Do Anything. I am hopelessly ashamed of myself - as is so often the case when I admit to my preferred telly viewing - but already I am doomed to be drawn more and more into I'd Do Anything. It is the inevitable attraction of opposites: belonging to the humanoid sub-genus "I'd do nothing under any circumstances including probably the threat of death by encroaching natural disaster bar make a last cup of tea", I am magnetically attracted to the stories of those best described as the sub-genus "those who can be a little bit arsed" and mesmerised by "those who'd do anything".

Although loathing Andrew Lloyd Webber with a fixed and beady hardness which he has done nothing much except appear on my telly to deserve, I suffered similarly during How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria. I grew increasingly fixated on the Romanian Maria who was unsuitable but could sing circles round any of the others. Blatantly bloody scary, having survived a post-Soviet hell-dimension and escaped, she had neither the accent nor the softness to play a singing ninny-nunny-nanny type, but how could you not admire her sheer flinty determination? You weren't given much of a choice; it was a total fix for Connie from the get-go - see Krenztvs passim on anti-democracy in vote-in shows on the BBC. ALW got to choose. Sometimes he chose crapcakes candidates to make sure Connie wouldn't have any competition. One suspects that the reason the BBC promotes Comic and Sport Relief so enthusiastically is that the public phone in money which is then spent without the smallest reference to the donors, and nothing gets the BBC hot like money whose destination they choose. I'm not suggesting they embezzle it, just that they love to be the Power who picks what's worthwhile and what isn't.

I couldn't watch Joseph because it made me feel ill. I was unable to fancy ANY of them, and I didn't go much on the Judges' opinions of good singing voices either, because they all seemed to me to have trained in the Tinny and Nasal School of Song - you know, We'll Make You Sound Like a Calling Kitten OR YOUR MONEY BACK!

But Nancy and Oliver - what more heady cocktail could the BBC offer? Girls with tragic stories (and only one, disapproving Daddy between them) and big eyed boy children with perfect skin and unbroken voices (every single one with a Very Supportive Daddy); the whole thing is a festival of camp that only the hardest heart could refuse.

Over the coming weeks, the many, many sad stories of these girls' lives will be put to the test; their poverty, lack of opportunity and struggles against adversity explored, explained and subjected to the public vote, until one girl, who may or may not seem to be the best at singing, acting or dancing (but who will at some stage be called upon to smooch Capn Jack, mark my words gentle reader) will be crowned Queen of the Nancies. It's ten weeks of utter bliss.

White Nights & Secret Histories

2008-03-14T04:20:00.001-07:00

As part of the BBC season about white Britain, there was a "re-evaluation" of Enoch Powell's famous "rivers of blood" speech last Friday. The history of the late sixties and early seventies alone made an interesting programme, its claim to "re-evaluate" the speech still more so. The speech remains one of the most mis-quoted in recent history, because like all great quotes, the man never actually said it - and this seemed to be the key point. Enoch Powell never said it. In a subsequent telly outing, he defined his terms very clearly, explaining that he did not see people as different because of their colour, but because of their culture.

The programme seemed to seek to make him directly responsible for a failed policy of multiculturalism, precisely because he had opposed and, worse, sought to open a debate about it. Apparently neither the media coverage, nor the internal politics of his party, nor the fears of the native working class at the start of an economically wobbly period were in any way to blame. Well done them, eh?

The mob loved him, and the mob in this case were Alabama via Huddersfield, but Enoch Powell had not taught them this. I suggest anybody who thinks the British Empire did not deliberately make the British people very racist indeed, by calculated campaigns of indoctrination to justify itself, consciously "stepped up" on the arrival of emigrants from the West Indies after the war, is a lazy and partial historian. Enoch Powell's language was indubitably racistand ugly, and its emotive nature actually damaged his case, because it allowed the debate to be stifled and obscured by the opposition, who seized on it to make him seem inhumane and dangerous. One should beware people who issue warnings about other people's faults; we see the faults in others we most abhor in ourselves.

Enoch Powell looked dangerous. He had the bright piercing blue eyes of an out-and-out maniac. You would not wish to be trapped in a lift with Enoch Powell and that piercing gaze. He looked like he might laser you in two with it if you disagreed with him. But his real misfortune was that he was intelligent and educated. He thought that politicians could talk about issues like grown up people, and that things could be discussed, and who knows, even retracted if they seemed to have been taken the wrong way, or to have suggested something mistaken or not-thought-through. Enoch Powell believed in freedom of speech, and that is, indeed, very dangerous - for politicians.

For the rest of us, it is important. Debates need to be had. Those who advocate violence to resolve conflict are a problem, but those who think that violence can be avoided when food and space and other good stuff are limited and population is not are idiots. History shows that sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "No! No! I can't hear you!" solves nothing. Politicians have got so mealy-mouthed and wishy washy that nobody addresses how inbred children make up a disproportionate number of those born with disabilities, and teachers are blamed for the kidnap of 13 year old girls by their parents for forced marriage.

The next offering was "The Poles Are Coming!" a hilarious programme which told us all what we already know, the highlight of which for me was the Peterborovian natives explaining over their cans of Stella outside the Unemployment Office that they were desperate for work, but not so desperate they would do any. The work on offer was arduous, cold and grim - vegetable harvesting, and it was a long day. That said, it paid £7 an hour. I know this is not a great deal of money, but seven hours of it would pay more than a week's income support, and that would mean that in the other days of the week, you could easily earn more money than you get on the dole. You would have to earn your rent as well, but that would still mean you would end up with £100 a week in your pocket. Dammit, I bought a house on £7.50 an hour.

This fits in with My Mighty Question: if we have migrants finding jobs, why are we paying able bodied homegrown couch potatoes to sit around on the dole? I want to know.

I'm also quite interested in how come all these foreign workers - who are surely paying tax - are such a strain on resources. Where is all that income tax going? Or have the government lost that as well? Oh look, there's the problem! Not the migrants, but the crapsticks administration who don't know they are there because they don't keep records at passport control or at the Tax Office. William the Conqueror would never have run the country like this.

Back with Enoch Powell and voluntary repatriation, I felt that the Czech sleeping under a bush, and the Poles who spoke of people who "couldn't come back" might not have found that as racist a policy as all that.

Eurovisual

2008-03-02T06:55:00.000-08:00

I have a sneaking regard for the Eurovision Song Contest. It is rather like one's parents' stories about the war; having found them tedious and annoying for the first thirty years, sometime in your fourth decade you change your mind and decide they are interesting, and social history, and not so much justification for homicide as they once seemed.

However, unlike your parents' stories about the war, Eurovision has actually changed. And with every passing year it becomes more camp, more bizarre, and more incomprehensible.

It has long been hard to understand by what criterion Israel is part of Europe. Indeed, my understanding of Israel was that it was created by people who needed to escape Europe, so even its desire to be involved is pretty baffling. Geographically (which is often how countries are defined) Israel appears to be in Northern Africa or the Middle East. Really not Europe. Yet there they are, upon occasion even there they are winning. Strange.

Less strange but more annoying, is the addition of every tiny country which used to be in Russia and now wants to be in the EU. Again, this is all very bizarre - they made a great deal of fuss about not being in Russia, but five minutes out and they want to join another pan-European community. It makes little if any sense. If they think Brussels is going to allow them their own sense of individual nationalism, they clearly haven't yet been through the designated food definition laws which have got the English Press so aeriated so often in the last 35 years. If they think Brussels is going to dole out the profits of capitalism so as to help them to catch up to the West, they must think that Western Europe has no sense of self-preservation or self-promotion, which is not a conclusion history would necessarily lead to.

However, this would not matter if they weren't busily voting tactically in the Eurovision Song Contest that it has become practically a foregone conclusion that a) an Eastern European former Communist State will win and b) nobody West of the Iron Curtain will get a look-in.

This fills my soul with dark inchoate rage.

Let us for a moment discuss the music. The music was - throughout one's childhood - nearly uniformly awful, but the songs that won were sometimes quite perky little pop songs. The point was that there was always one song that was okay - and this all-right-tune, regardless of the petty politics of Malta and Spain and Certain Other Countries always voting for each other, won. It was the law.

Now, however, there is far too much politics. And it isn't right. Primarily because it strips us of even a remote chance of winning - worse, of a remote chance of making a decent showing on the score board. This flies in the face of all Eurovision tradition; Nul Point throughout is the province of the Scandinavians. But the real problem is not the dodgy tactical voting - although I would like to point out that these people are using the tools of democracy to make a laughing stock of us - no, the real problem is that there are around a million of these itty bitty teeny weeny totty dotty Used-To-Be-In-Russia countries. If you have about ten countries in a contest, then you have a statistical hope of winning every ten years or so. Once you are up to 49 countries - well, you do the sums. I think England should start watching again in about 2046.

When I rule the world, I will fix this in a simple manner, or by making the votes of countries proportionate to their population. Since we have always been - with Germany - the industrial heart of Europe, with the resultantly dense population, and now we have started another wave of immigration, I figure England's will be the only vote worth having. We will once again rule the musical waves and Hurrah for Us. Alternatively, we should start breaking down our countries into smaller components, allowing us to rig the voting. The UK has four parts for a kick off, without getting into the whole question of the Isles of Wight, Scilly and Man, and the Channel Islands. France has Brittany, Spain has Catalonia, and Germany could claim to be about five countries right off the bat.

The Eurovision Contest, however, has another plan. This year there will be not one but TWO semi-finals. This will bring a certain result, which is - all Western Europe will be out before the final. Western Europe will then not watch the final in droves. Eastern Europe - which uses the Contest primarily as a platform for national advertising for tourism etc - will have lost their target audience and be Annoyed. And next year, I suppose the Contest Planners hope, one or two of the Westerners will be allowed back in. I don't know that this will work, but I do assume it's their plan. And if it doesn't work - well, who cares? Let's have our own competition; something we do best; something only we Brits can do - live costume drama anybody?

Torchered to Death

2008-02-29T01:58:00.000-08:00

It was a big day for Torchwood. Billed by the BBC as "their darkest hour", they were facing up to the fact that Owen was dead. After 5 minutes of screentime and an hour in their world, they had had enough of that facing up to facts malarkey, and Capn Jack went to a church full of snoozing weevils, who kept a Special Glove (twin to Buffy's glove of Mynhegon) which brings people back to life in a biscuit tin under a small avalanche of broken dolls. I was pleased by this detail, and I have started to warm to Torchwood.

Soon Owen was up and running, full of the darkness of death, and acting as a portal for Death Itself. It was very important to the gang to stop Death from claiming thirteen victims. Otherwise Death would walk the earth and his hunger would know no bounds. Many people might point out that Death does walk the earth, and that the idea that he would gain control seems - well, are the Dead going to be more dead after Death comes back? Will there be more of them? It didn't seem to make any sense. Still, it was clearly an important piece of information, since Death bothered to mutter it to himself in a strange Death-language that took the alien technology (everything in Torchwood is done with alien technology, probably including the special effects, meaning there's no need to worry about them taking over the world just yet) several seconds longer than usual to translate. This was just long enough for Tosh to say it wasn't working - she is named after what she talks, and should have whacked the Alien Tech with a human fist before making any such ridiculous claims.

Then Death followed them to a hospital - apparently a work-related decision; maybe Death was feeling too peaky to kill the healthy, though the gang thought it was due to Death's wish to conceal his plan. Shouldn't have possessed Owen and talked to himself in front of the CCTV then. Things carried on making less and less sense until Owen played two-man ring o' roses with Death which despatched it back to the Other Place. Don't ask, I've no idea what it was all about, and neither has anybody else - certainly nobody on the creative side.

Owen being dead is actually a hoot. He can't sleep, shag or drink, and this makes him very sad. However, it does mean it's now safe for him to date the Femme Fatale of the Group - Tosh. They can't have sex, but then none of the women in this show are permitted to do so - only boys, and preferably together.

Anyway, I said it was a big day for Torchwood and so it was - the day we found out whether Capn Jack's omni-sexuality embraced necrophilia. And it turned out it didn't. There are still some places - like Canadians having sex with dead people, or women having sex with anybody at all, that are too dark for even the post-Watershed BBC to go. Thank goodness.

I know it's only me ...

2008-02-21T12:18:00.000-08:00

But hell, couldn't Torchwood just try to be something other than a feeble imitation of Buffy?

Bad enough that the episodes are weak re-tellings without the wit and character of the original, but surely they could have changed the titles? "End of Days" and "Sleeper" are both straight steals, and "Something Borrowed" echoes "Something Blue". It's just - depressing, to make so little effort, and insulting to your audience, to assume they won't notice.

Owen is about as dead as I am. Possibly less.

As I say, I'm growing increasingly convinced it's only me...

Intergalactic Austin Powers

2008-02-07T11:51:00.000-08:00

Scary episode this week: horrible people chopping up an innocent off-world creature for meat while it was still - quite inexplicably - alive. Gwen's man finding out that she meets her half of the rent by hunting aliens. And Capn Jack Not Getting Any. My he looked hacked off. He emoted teariness, wood-faced fury and ethical dilemma by turns, but we viewers knew that what was really pissing him off was that he had been FORCED to go a whole fifty minutes without a snog.

At one point he had Gwen in a tight-shot up against a tall order, but still she did not dive forward with a small gasp and smother him in a suffocating 90 second screen kiss. I don't know why; he was telling her she couldn't run up to her husband until after he had endangered and/or incriminated himself with the alien-butchers, which was just as alluring as his talk last week on how he was glad he'd left his home planet because he'd seen such amazing stuff, and that earnt him a Random Snog from one of the team. There was neither lead-up to this snog, nor was there any sequel to it; it seems that this is just what happens to any character left alone with Capn Jack. He doesn't care what he snogs or sticks his dick into; far from being an alien, he seems - well, pathologically & superhormonally male. He pretended to cry out of pity for the alien whale, but for my money, when Burn Gorman was struggling with an Acme Comedy Syringe full of Alien Whale Killer (his own invention; three buckets full of which he had cunningly knocked up in two seconds flat from the contents of an Ikea shelving unit full of bottles of coloured liquid, none larger than the average bottle of cough mixture) in a "mercy killing", it was not the continued anguish of being butchered piecemeal that he was rescuing the house-sized mammal from; no indeed, it was the likeliness of a romantic interlude with "Capn Jack".

That man has no more right to that rank than I have. He's so blatantly somebody who's made up an army label for himself so he can impress people who don't know any better. He hasn't even got the knowledge to pretend to a decent rank. Captain indeed. At least Dr Who used to be helped out by a Brigadier - fallen on hard times now. But now, Capn Jack uses his rank to get dates and it's all a very obvious ploy. "I'm a Captain, baby, does it make you horny, baby?" I kept expecting to hear him crooning at the chained leviathan. Or Rhys, whom he was also very tetchy about not getting to snog.

Oh well, there is always next week, when I think it will be Burn Gorman's turn for Capn Jack's attentions. His character should be well up for it. He uses extra terrestrial rohypnol to get relationships; his sexual politics are just exactly the same as Capn Jack's.

Does it make you horny, baby?

Oh, the Shame ...

2008-02-04T11:23:00.000-08:00

Once again I am gripped by febrile guilty interest in something I know I shouldn't be watching. This one is called "Vanity Lair" and it is on T4 Sunday at lunchtime (when people of my age should be serving up crispy roasts to ungrateful oiky children of their own genetic stamp.)

There are ten self-selected "beautiful people" who sit around wanting to shag each other in a mild sort of way, but are prevented by their own all-absorbing narcissism, a series of "tests" of their attractiveness, and the fact that each week they have two new auditionees, of whom one will stay, duly choosing who to evict to make room for them. So either they shag everyone or no one.

The show claims it will test "what is most attractive", and advertises a hope that qualities other than the skindeep will emerge victorious. What currently looks like it will emerge victorious is having a penis. Already the group has chosen to take in a man, and he has chosen to evict a woman, leaving the group 6:4 male. The boys and the girls like men - boys because they're the elite, like themselves, girls because they dislike other girls for being shallow and vain, like themselves. Within a very few weeks, that will be a very boy heavy house.

When I first stumbled across it, I thought it was a remake of that film where nobody can leave the dinner party; they are rather creepy. My impression was not altered by the fact that when their faces were tested for symmetry the boy whose face was least symmetrical left the dinner table for the toilet and retched. It was the most extraordinary display of distress. Not for the first time, I wondered if Channel 4 has Gone Too Far. Obviously the person concerned is vapid beyond the wildest wet-dreams of Heat magazine, but the fact that he was genuinely upset fascinated me. He has no sense of self beyond his floppy hair. He doesn't even realise it. I genuinely wondered if he should be on show, because surely believing you are only as good as your hair-do indicates that the balance of your mind is disturbed.

Or maybe it's just me. Maybe I am eccentric because I don't think my value as a human is dependent on the floppiness of my hair. Maybe I shall be watching next week.

Buffy's Still Better

2008-01-20T10:47:00.000-08:00

The BBC is making valiant efforts with Torchwood, and one wishes them well. But still, it is important that I let them have some hints about why it is still not as good as Buffy.

1. Characters and Casting

They all look very similar. Owing probably to restricted budget, but possibly restricted acting range, you never get moments when you are oggling a character's face as it emotes Something Important. For some reason, nothing in Torchwood ever seems very important, although often it does look overplayed. It would matter less if they didn't all look the same - a bunch of people in poor light with similar colouring and height. It is NO GOOD having people who look similar on the telly, because it confuses the viewer. I refer Torchwood - and other programmes - to Buffy. Three leads of either sex, all distinctive. The female leads have DIFFERENT COLOUR HAIR and sometimes even different heights. The male leads have DIFFERENT AGES AND COSTUMES AS WELL AS DIFFERENT COLOURED HAIR. And different accents.

I never understand quite why anybody casts similar looking types in the same programme, but the BBC have done it all my life. I suppose it hardly helps that good looking people tend to have regular features, and therefore a tendency to resemble each other. But I still don't believe they're trying. Having carefully cast identical actors, they continue to dress them like two sets of triplets - except for Capn Jack, who has A Coat. He is currently being challenged in Coat Supremacy by Spike from Buffy, who sports The Coat in the Buffyverse. Spike has A New Coat in Torchwood; it is a rather dashing Redcoat in the Hussar style. When it comes down to the Coat Wars, my money is on Spike. He is daringly wearing colour, apart from anything else. Oh yes, and he has that conviction that the rest of the cast lack. Wait and see.

2. Want of Drama

Why is it nothing matters on British TV? Is it to do with our lack of international clout? American TV is full of High Stakes and all that guff. When Torchwood tells me that Cardiff is about to be exploded by nuclear-warhead-wielding aliens, I just don't believe them. What on earth would aliens be up to in Cardiff? Hoping to blend in better because alien accents sound like Welsh ones? Pull the other one. Either they'd be in the middle of nowhere, or the White House. Not the Millennium Stadium. And why blow it up? It's all a bit ho hum.

3. No Relationships

Do they know each other? Really? Crumbs.

Their Hearts Were On The Left

2008-01-12T06:25:00.000-08:00

... A quick but baffling reflection on the insanity of language revision ...

I learnt last week that the words "blind" and "deaf" are offensive.

The re-designation of these words as offensive puzzles me. I am plainly missing something. I understand perfectly how a word describing race can be pejorative, but then, there are two major factors contibuting to this. One is that the words follow the act - black people have been systematically denied their rights as well as acknowledgement as human in the eyes of a manufactured hierarchy. This has been a cultural excuse made for an economic and social system of privilege. White people benefited from racism. This doesn't make all white people racist, any more than all white people benefited equally, but it is no good denying that the people who gained were exclusively not black. That was the point. Therefore, the words were part of the problem. If culture is developed in order to justify an injustice, the way words emerge to suggest inequality - how their meaning is skewed or manipulated - is part of that injustice.

In the case of those who are blind or deaf, I fail to understand how society has manipulated these conditions to benefit those who are do not have them. I have never, ever heard anybody use either as an insult. Do sighted people need to belittle the sightless in order to gain? Do they do so? Are blind and/or deaf people discriminated against for reasons that have to do solely with their appearance?

And this brings me to my second point; that the user of racist language was spoilt for choice. There were - and sadly, are - a plethora of racially abusive terms, because racism itself was so pervasive that words were constantly perjorated into abusive terms. But there are no alternative words for blind or for deaf. Neither has ever connoted stupidity or dishonesty or any other bad quality, as far as I know. They exist solely with one meaning.

Furthermore, I discovered that it is not just the words themselves, but any phrase containing them, which Somebody has decided is offensive. The phrase "blind spot", for example, is supposedly offensive to those who cannot see. So presumably, when you are driving and thinking about overtaking and swearing as you bob about like a fishing fly on a stormy pond, trying desperately to check what monster BMW is hoving into range at 100mph, it is offensive to YOU. More true than whoever started this knew.

It seems rather absurd to decide that a word for which no synonym exists is offensive and should be avoided. Perhaps when you need to use the word "blind", you are supposed to shut your eyes and start flailing your arms about and walking into things to convey your meaning? Seems to me that would be an awful lot more offensive than the word.

Who has decided that these words are offensive? Have all the people who are without sight or hearing in any degree been consulted and duly voted? This would seem to me to be a key issue here, as would the degree of sight or hearing impairment from which they suffer. If they aren't actually without sight or hearing, then obviously they have no more right to find these terms offensive than anybody else, as they don't apply to them more than to anybody else. These, my friends, are deep waters.

After reading Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct", I agreed with the theory that language is creolized - ie invented anew for every generation, every group of learners. In a big world, meaning is hard to pin down, when none of us speaks quite the same tongue. I am not sure that that means that it's a good idea to say that only people who have been "re-educated" to say certain words have good hearts. Maybe a little common sense and crediting others with good intentions rather than mean or offensive ones would be a start.

Are we nearly there yet? (2012)

2007-12-23T12:18:00.000-08:00

If not, why not? Christmas, which to be fair is looking pretty tired and tatty by the night before Christmas Eve, has now been going on for six weeks, and long before I have sung carols, opened gifts, and pulled crackers, the tv has decided it's over. The adverts are no longer dominated by scent and aftershave, but by "SALE STARTS BOXING DAY!!!"

It is as though there is no time to do anything , because you should be planning to do something else. Having endured Christmas shopping in Sainsbury's this very day, I am in no mood to go out on Wednesday and shop for anything, thank you very much. I found the last parking place in the world and when I left an idiot would hardly let me drive off for mooching and lurking over it before I had left it. Go out on Wednesday? I should cocoa.

NOTICE TO SHOPS: I HAVEN'T HAD MY CHRISTMAS YET. LEAVE ME ALONE YOU VULTUROUS BASTARDS.

It's exactly the same as the annoying television habit of obscuring credits by plastering details of coming attractions on a split-screen at the end of a programme. This makes me feel not only put-upon, but annoyed. I like the credits. Sometimes I'm curious as to who has played a role or composed the music. Sometimes I like to enjoy a moment of quiet reflection on the programme just finished. Never do I wish to have the creepy voice of the Phantom of the Operative Bungloiderers yattering on in a smarmy Smashing and Nicey voice about my possible viewing choices which have not yet even started. It causes me to switch off the tv faster than I ever thought anything could. If not, I mute it and concentrate on my knitting, for I expect if I watch these workings of the Dark Fairies my brain will be turned to mush.

Bungloiderers at the BBC have also been on the case at Strictly Come Dancing, where this season's Saturday night subtitles have been striking for many reasons, all fine examples of Numptiness Unleashed. I enjoyed the information that Matt di Angelo is an alumnus of the Slyvia Young Theatre School, but this dyslexic reinterpretation did not equal the subtitler's earlier Fabulous Mistake of broadcasting "Name and Name: Number 09011 21 30 XX", instead of the full names of the couple and their voting number. It sort of brought the BBC to a whole new level of phoneline tampering, but by reason of sheer incompetence, which is always a nice change from grasping and avaricious deceit. Rather like Channel 4's moments of sound mixing during the last few weeks, when sound has just buggered off, or wrong pictures been matched to the track, this is amusing mainly because these people spend huge sums on their Empires, and yet they don't train their broadcast staff - the frontline, you might say. The operatives are thinking about their futures too much to carry out their tasks, and their masters are too busy with their plans for World Domination to waste energy on the Here and Now. We sit at home, being ignored for being now.

It reminds me of government. They, too, want me to get on with my future before I have dealt with my presents. Get on with your life, underlings, because if you don't hurry up and finish first, everybody else will be after your afters. Except for me. I will be at home, watching rubbish tv and knitting. Stitch that.

Chrstmas Creeps Closer ...

2007-12-06T04:08:00.000-08:00

... you can't run and you can't hide. Seasonal inebriation and weirdness is afoot all around. People have started talking to themselves in shops. For some reason Christmas shopping brings us nutters out in droves, and we wander about the glittery displays wittering away to ourselves like so many senile fairies at a spell-chanting convention, trying desperately to remember their incantations wordperfect. Some sing soft seasonal melodies to themselves as they sway in front of sparkling trees and little fluffy fairy figures. I feel terrifically at home in department stores at this time of the year.

The wind is blowing up a bit now, as well. I live in an area called Windmill Hill, which, it may or may not surprise you to learn, is windy. It's clearly still a bit of a shock to the council, who must receive about a thousand requests for new recycling boxes and mini-bins every Christmastide, for they are emptied at around 10 am, leaving them a good seven hours to play the excellent wind-powered game of "which bin can get the furthest away from home" which so delights their little plastic souls. For those which don't enjoy that there is also, "which bin/box can cause most havoc and hazard on the roads", a popular secondary game, often drawing passers by into the fun. High times.

Also, my car has been vandalised, and this is another sign of the time of year. In December some dimwit - a term I use advisedly - tries to nick my car. According to the police they are trying to get home, which is heart-rendingly sad as my car, though small and ancient and easy to get into, is impossible to drive away due to it having an immobiliser chip in it. Since they have not found this out (over five years and three attempted thefts, people!) I assume they must be off-worlders and their belief that my car will fly them home is so sad that I nearly weep with pity for them. Frustrated by our Earth Hi-Technology, they chuck the plastic lock cowl into the back seat and re-lock the door and have to walk home anyway.

So - Christmas is on its way, and this year there is a threat in my world of No Proper Dinner - a taster of what it will be like to be old and have nobody to make angel costumes for. It is not particularly nice for anybody, but we must plod on, brains melted with concern about tinsel and stuffing, and complain as heartily as we can until it is all safely over.

I Just Wonder ... if anybody anticipates getting or giving anything truly wanted this year? Answers please!

Just How Sexist Are We These Days, Anyway?

2007-11-25T12:54:00.000-08:00

I grew up in an era when girls did have to pretend to be boys to get on. I don't have any complaints; a bloke who disliked girls with hairy pins when I was first at University could resign himself to three years of celibacy, and Serve The Rude Baskets Right.

However, I can't pretend it wasn't a bit of a relief when we could start being a bit saucy again and the Lesbian Contingent were allowed out of their hideous handknits. And all the time the pay gap was closing ... or well, it wasn't really, was it?

I look at the BBC these days and wonder WTF they're up to. Oggling the old goggle box, I often wonder where are the women on telly? And the answer is, in the newsroom. The number of women newsreaders is very striking and nowadays you even occasionally see TWO WOMEN (in trouser suits, usually) reading the main news on the main channels. Oooh.

Strangely, women have largely disappeared from light entertainment; panels for Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Mock the Week and Have I Got News For You are often entirely male, which puts me off programmes I would otherwise watch. Anne Widdecombe enlivened the latter considerably on Friday, and should be hired permanently. Fat chance; having more balls than most of the male room she was presenting, she still lacks the main hiring criterion.

ROBIN HOOD AND HIS INDISTINGUISHABLE MEN

Finally the Great Leap Backward - because this is the kind of serial I grew up with, where there was one woman, with whom all the guest men fell hopelessly in love each week, and met with Quite Inexplicable Rejection, for the Hero never gave the Heroine so much as a chocolate kiss, let alone any commitment. Were life to resemble these serials in its sexual behaviour, humanity would have died out hundreds of years ago. Or at least shrunk to the population of the Isle of Wight.

All the regular men are quite indistinguishable from each other. I have watched this show regular-like from the start, and can barely tell the Treacherous Bastard member of the gang from the loyal 4th in command, or either from Robin. They are as monozygotic a selection as ever despatched from central casting, which may explain why the guards in Nottingham never recognise them as they stroll merrily in and out of the castle with the odd change of headwear, but always in a Large Gang. Last week, indeed, the gang managed to get all the way from Sherwood Forest, on foot, before any among them noticed that the forbidden-by-Robin Maid Marion had accompanied them. Is it mildly offensive that Robin does nothing but tie Marion up and order her about, and she has to apologise to him for disobedience, while he never does? You decide.

The chief indication of sexism, though, is that there are hardly any women in the cast. Why is Gisbourne hopelessly in love with Marion? Because there are No Options, the whole of Nottingham being empty of women. For those of you who remember your reading of The Dialectic of Sex, Ms Firestone's idea was that women's lower sex-class means that to justify partnership with them, men must believe that the One they love is Special. If Robin Hood's treatment of Marian doesn't furnish a glaring example of this, while "Jak", also a woman, is like George in the Famous Five, or a Serbian Sworn Virgin, a woman who accesses the privileges of the higher caste sex by denying her own, further illustrates it, it's hard to know what does. Though the constant belittling of Much might be a further example.

Though technically male, Much is Robin's faithful servant, and does the cooking. The others treat him like a skivvy, and upon occasion throw his cooking at him. Because there are no women, Much is treated as one, and not in the way any woman would be pleased by.

A show often stands or falls by its portrayal of same sex relationships. I stopped watching Smallville after an episode where all the "goodies" were so appalled and repulsed by a lesbian that she was deemed to be wicked solely on that premise. (This is a series shown on Channel 4. How very politically correct is that?) The fact that she was also wicked in terms of storyline helped to confirm that the programme-makers' political views really were as nasty as those of the characters.

Compare with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a show which had one of its principal characters develop into a lesbian with no ill effects on her character whatsoever - almost as though sexuality is not any kind of moral barometer. Buffy was a radically different show, with real sophistication and depth, reflected in its character development, and it was the maturity and possibly real life experience of its makers that allowed it to be so.

In an era when in real life most half-way sensible blokes marry high-income-generating women - lawyers, doctors, architects, business-women - is this a programme which shows women or men in a way we really aspire to be? Hell no. A lack of imagination and awareness makes this a pretty poor piece in terms of politics or reflection of society. Escapism? After watching this, how I long for some.

The Humbling of Revel Horwood

2007-11-19T08:29:00.000-08:00

FREE AT LAST!

It is done. The trap sprung, the goose cooked, and Kate Garraway finally voted off Strictly Come Dancing. Hurrah! For her sad little rictus frozen claw-fingered paws as she fell back into a catatonic pose supported only by the superhuman strength of her long-suffering partner were too much for human sympathy to bear. Here, gentle viewer, was a woman unable to walk unaided about the dance floor in a sparkly dress. Her hand gestures - horrid dead-meerkat paws aside - were often assertive and even elegant, but she was unable to - well, stand up and walk about. The judges suggested she had no sense of rhythm, and it seems certain that this contributed to her magnificent inability to see what was coming next, even after six days of unbroken rehearsal. Nine out of ten steps came as a complete surprise to her, this must surely have contributed to her repeated injuries. It is easy to hurt oneself if one is moving about without the smallest notion of where one's body is going or what it may do next, let alone if there is another person in one's space moving with a similar degree of mystery.

But Kate Garraway has brought one prodigious moment to television; she brought Craig Revel-Horwood to button his lip.

Mr Revel-Horwood has always liked to be quite stinging in his remarks, and not always constructively critical, either. But Miss Garraway was the Elizabeth Bennet to his Mr Darcy, and by her, he has been properly humbled. By connecting the continuing public vote to keep her in with the pity generated by the judges' cruelty, he has finally seen the light and renounced rudeness. Though it must have pained him, he spoke highly of her "courage" in coming out to dance on Saturday night; and with justification, for someone of her clumsiness must be pretty brave just to get out of bed. Even after he had got his wish, and she had made the bottom two, he was gracious and spoke only of his obligation as a judge, rather than metaphorically trampling all over her with the hobnailed boots of accurate comment.

This goes to show what I have always felt about Craig; he is a big soft lass at heart, and upset and distressed when people don't like him, and I find I rather do.

TOO FAT TO WORK

Apparently there are 2,000 people in the UK "too fat to work". Fair enough, only they are on disability benefit. Why does this not count as "intentional disability", in the same way that giving up a job used to count as making oneself intentionally unemployed, leading to ineligibility for benefit?

And also, if you are too fat to work, you are also too fat to be entitled to state benefits to buy any fatty food. Such people should be given foodstamps for truly tedious food like bulgar wheat and carrots, and should have to walk a certain number of steps each day to collect them. They should absolutely not be allowed to have cars, because that Isn't Helping, is it? If I find out the Too Fat To Work have cars, I'm going to freak. Wasn't one Henry VIII enough? What is the world coming to when we have 2,000 of them?

Customer Satisfaction Survey

2007-11-12T02:32:00.000-08:00

I've just had a customer satisfaction survey - from the Council.

I am thrilled. I morris dance with fervid joy. I have never, ever been satisfied with any of the "services" provided by the Council. Public transport sucks, the schools are among the worst in the country, the council tax levy among the highest, and only yesterday the search for parking in the city centre had me on the verge of tears. Bristol's city centre is hopelessly underutilised, in my opinion, as a direct consequence of the council's poor planning. The only available parking is extortionately expensive - I have checked, and Bristol's £3.20 for two hours is the most I have ever been expected to shell out anywhere, including Kensington and Chelsea. Like many of the Distraught Citizens of the City, I have found myself moreorless coerced into paying to park in the Mighty Galleries Car Park, a multi-storey number reminiscent of the Death Star, though possibly with more warnings about your liability for items left in your car. It certainly feels like a journey to the Dark Side, and had I a Jedi lightsabre and the good fortune to find Council Leader Helen Holland between me and the path to Marks and Spencer, I suspect that my hatred might well overwhelm me and lo we would have four council leaders for the price of one, completing my initiation as Darth Gardner.

Why the Evil Council (most undemocratically composed of the Labour group, instead of the Lib Dems duly elected to the majority) robs its taxpayers blind for street parking, instead of just running what must be a highly profitable multi-storey which charges less, is something they have never explained. Possibly because they do not wish to out themselves as a bunch of spendthrift incompetent dollops. Like nobody has noticed.

Back to my customer satisfaction: since the strange Paper I have received does not mention which particular complaint they wish me to comment on, it is quite difficult to complete. I have made two different complaints; one about being awoken by a noisy and re-starting warehouse alarm, and one about Fiery Rubbish, and their response has been quite different.

For the alarm, they kindly said they would send someone to investigate, then rang me back that same night to say it had been off when they visited, and perhaps I could let them know when it started again. Then somebody else telephoned me again the next day to repeat the good news.

The Fiery Rubbish was quite different. Next door but one to me houses people who make more rubbish than seems humanly possible. In a dramatic face-off, the dustmen refused their refuse, until eventually I rang up the council explaining that I objected to living next door to 20 bags full of rubbish on the walkway, usually split by investigative feral felines, foxes or possibly rats, spilling chicken bones and dirty nappies, and that I was not convinced the dustmen's "teaching them a lesson" approach was having the desired effect.

The telephone operative agreed to action it, and some of the rubbish disappeared. Then the rubbish at the bottom of the steps was fired. I was awoken by the flashing lights of the local fire brigade putting it out.

Almost as fired up as the rubbish, I rang again, and demanded that Something Be Done. And to be fair, it has improved massively. Except for the random dumping of toy buggies, old furniture and television sets, almost no refuse is left out on the walkway now for much longer than the statutory fortnight. There have been no further fires, and a significant reduction in the nappy / chicken spillage. But why the council would ask me whether somebody has let me know and kept me in touch with this, I cannot fathom. In the first place, surely if somebody had, there would be a record, and in the second place, why on earth would I care? I don't need the council to talk me through the trauma of the dirty nappies, I just want them to sort out the damn rubbish.

And just for the record, I will not be filling out their monitoring form. They have no right to monitor the gender, colour, sexual orientation or anything else about those who would rather not live on a tip. They should Just Deal With It.

Today I am a Lifer ...

2007-11-06T00:19:00.000-08:00

I have low expectations.

It is part of who I am; much of the limitation of my achievement can be directly traced to my limitation of expectation - mine and other people's, mainly mine.

However, today even these modest expectations are Not Being Met, and I am warning the universe, because today, Matthew, I am a Lifer. "Lifers", as you will know, are people - men, largely - who have committed crimes sufficiently nasty to be banged up forever - at least in theory and on the paperwork. When I worked in Probation, the point about Lifers was they were HARD. They were dealt with by specialist officers, a Crack Troop trained to recommend refusal of parole and groupwork to serial rapists and murderers. The Dangerous Offenders POs were so determined and rational they did not give chocolate biscuits to their crims - the polar opposite of Groupwork, where these were a vital part of the befriending and rehabilitation process. I digress. The thing about Lifers is that for the first few years of their sentences, with no hope of parole, they enjoy a reputation for uncontrollability that would be the envy of Britney Spears. They infest prisons, fighting, wounding and generally making a nuisance of themselves to all who cross their paths, because they have nothing whatsoever to lose (much the same is true of the more unpleasant among schoolchildren. As soon as it is legal to restrain 13 year old children in orange fright wigs and encourage others to throw custard soaked sponges at them there will be a lot less conviction among the junior Tontos that they have nothing to lose, and the world will improve very quickly.)

HOWEVER, custard sponging would probably not work for Lifers - certainly it would not have any effect on my stony determination - and today, I am a Lifer. I ask little of the world, but I expect my modest needs to be met. And so, I set out my demands:

1. Kelly and Brendan must be voted off Strictly Come Dancing. Preferably with immediate effect. Perhaps like Emily of Ex X Factor infamy, they might be caught "happy-slapping" some innocent party - Kate Garraway, maybe - on a mobile Device, resulting in their prompt dismissal from the show. Without the public having to look any more at Kelly's ridiculous sequin scarf waving Wonder Woman antics. Why is she running round in her knickers? Even sparkly knickers look a bit silly in public, and combined with Brendan and his corset fetish, it is all too annoying. People who dress like that belong in 1950s Western motion pictures or Eastern European Eurovision Entries.

2. Sootycat must stop pooping on the bathroom floor. Once the poop has been delivered, it is pointless to hope she will not attempt to cover it with a towel or bathmat, because she is pretty cretinous, and obviously doesn't realise I can instantly see if she has clawed down a towel and crumpled it up in the middle of the floor, and even if I were Stone Blind, I would be able to identify the whiff of catshit and make some deductions so astute as to astonish Sherlock Holmes himself. Neither am I overly impressed by her vomiting over my shoes, but one step at a time.

3. I must be delivered a Sinecure. My needs are modest, but I no longer wish to have to do unpleasant things to obtain the money to meet them. If I were prepared to do disagreeable stuff for money I could have Come Upon The Town, so I don't want to do any more. If no sinecure is forthcoming, I shall have to become a Webcam performance artist, and I bet you would all much rather I didn't do that.

You have been warned. Don't mess with me. I am a Lifer.

Strictly Go Homing

2007-10-29T03:16:00.000-07:00

I am really not sure about democracy. Leaving aside the huge problems it creates in government, which fiddles the system and then throws its weight about because it has "a mandate", the weaknesses in it are very plainly demonstrated by Strictly Come Dancing.

How come Gabby Logan - lovely, rhythmic gymnast Gabby, with her amazing figure (after TWINS, people!) and her staggering work ethic - is off, while Kute but Krappy Kate and Kenny live to dance another day? It is Democracy At Work. Or, to be more precise, another skewed and controlled system.

The Judges have always had first say, and distributed the first votes, and now, under a new, improved Gordon Brown regime, they have the final say, as well, cherry picking the "best" of the bottom two in a sadistic Sunday dance-off.

So this year the voters are really under the cosh, because now they have to keep those they hope to see again out of the bottom two. And it seems not to have occurred to the producers, or whichever fruit loop changed the system, that there is NOTHING people loathe more than knowing that Their Input Doesn't Count. The point used to be that the public had the final say. Okay, often this reflected painful truths about our society, or our taste in dancing, but nobody could claim it wasn't a straighforward system.

The reason Christopher Parker was kept in for eleventy seven episodes more than he should have been was partly the fact that - like God - we love a trier, but mainly because the Judges were utterly cruel to him. The nuttiness that keeps us great rose up in rebellion against the Voices of Sequinned Authority, and as a nation we voted for the Hopeless One to be given new challenges and represent our own uselessness. When Julian Clary proved nearly as poor, we cheerfully voted for him. Did we care that he moves like Andy Pandy might with a carrot up his little wooden bot, that he wore the clothes better than he wore the moves, that he had as much rhythm as a single vegetable rolling unfettered around the back of a transit van? Did we hell. He went on "It Takes Two" with Miss Erin Whiplash and Valerie the dog, and we remembered how well we like a little bit of camp, and voted, voted, voted.

This ends up with the Great Sadness of Gabby. In my book, she too was a trier. She had the misfortune, however, of being a succeeder. The tactical voters - voting to keep in the couples they hope will improve, or who they feel have had a raw deal (whose heart doesn't ache for Anton du Beke, who has Yet Another Celeb who can't cut it, while Brendan Cole has another glamour puss, this time clearly with ballet training?) fight it out at the bottom of the pile.

So perhaps the problem is not democracy, but the mistrust those in authority have over our voting habits. The more our powers are constricted, the more we weave, dodge and manipulate the system. And poor Gabby Logan, whom I admire for her determination and drive, fails to attract the vote by reason of her competence.

Bye Bye Wild Guy

2007-10-25T11:31:00.000-07:00

The Wild Gourmets is at an end. This is sad, for the pointlessness of this series touched and moved me deeply. What were they hoping to prove? Viewers are most unlikely to be able to pop up to Scotland for the red deer cull for their daily dinners, so the programme fails to be like most cook shows, where you might conceivably improve your life by making some of the recipes. Equally, stomping about the Scottish Highlands with a land rover shows us very little that is unfamiliar enough to be a revelation, so the "wild" side of things seems pretty tame; a far cry from Bruce Parry or Bear Grylls.

Still, they earned my kindly if rather patronising respect because Guy can kill a deer with a single shot, poke it in the eye to check it's dead, and then gut it without turning a hair. Tommy can pick an entire salad from a mouldy old wall, and confidently identify berries that won't kill you so she can cook them for Guy when he returns with the Meat and Makes Fire for her. As old fashioned family values go, they are Poster Children. And of course, should anything ever bring civilisation to collapse, they would be good types to Take To The Woods With. Remember you read it here first.

Happy Snapping

2007-10-20T08:29:00.000-07:00

This week the Wild Gourmets stepped up a gear by going fishing. Wading about the marshy shallows of East Anglia, they got a flounder. A flounder is, as any readers of fairy tales knows, a bloody good catch, not least because they often turn out to be magic speaking fish who offer you a statutory three-wish deal in exchange for not eating them (indicating a high degree of tastiness, when you think about it. Unless I was very hungry, I suspect I would be bought off with the offer of a single wish by any speaking fish. Or even just a nice chat.)

This fish did not speak, partly because Guy was so busy extolling its fleshiness it would have been well lucky to get a word in edgeways before suffocation kicked in. There would have been no point in his letting the fish speak, anyway, as he was so excited that any more stimulation would have caused expiration on the spot. He spoke so long and glowingly about the lovely fleshy flounder and what a wondrous fine, decadent breakfast it would make, that I began to think he would embrace the other fairy tale standby, and send it to the King, in the hope of future marital links to the Royal Household (going up in the world really has got harder, hasn't it?) But the longing for fried breakfast overcame his proper duty to his sovereign, and we cannot look forward to Tommy marrying a Prince any time soon. Disappointingly, as I have considerable respect for Tommy, even if she does celebrate the first days of winter by sewing herself into chunky knitwear.

On the subject of the Royals, I notice that William and Kate have been suffering from Papping again. I could almost feel sorry for them, because it must be so vile and horrible, being hounded by Mad-Max style mercenaries with long lenses when you have ALWAYS worn knickers in public places and thus done nothing to merit the intrusion of what seems very like a bunch of motorised psychopaths. But I can't, and it's to do with their insistence on having "an ordinary life". Rich people have no right to an ordinary life.

Firstly, to work. If you have enough money to live off without working, you should have no right to take well-paid work from out of the way of those who don't. Is Kate Middleton "middle class"? Not in my book. If your daddy is a millionaire, don't you sort of go up a grade? And rich people never get out of bed for the minimum wage. I say no. The rich should only be entitled to minimum wage. Work is for most people the ticket to a better life, and just how could people as rich as the Royals have a materially better life? The money from well-paid jobs should go to poorer people - ones who support children and work for a living, perhaps. And if they make a mess of running the BBC - well, so what? The men who gave us Maisie Raine need sacking anyway, and so do those who steal people's money on Premium Rate Phone-Ins.

Secondly, to being Defender of the Faith. You can't hold this title - or even be second in line to inherit it, imho - without realising that with the cash comes responsibility. Since I seem to remember that Jesus says the rich need to sell all they have and give the money to the poor in order to obtain heaven, I am Massively Shocked that none of the holders of the title, in its whole nearly-500 year history, have ever spent their time flogging off as many estates as they can, and making donations all over the shop, but they nobly choose to sacrifice themselves for us by keeping the poor out of the way of temptation or solvency or any of that nonsense. Thank you very much Royal Family, we say. But it's not an ordinary life, is it? So the Paparazzi hound you and it's frightful - but it's their cross, I guess, because that's the one they choose. So, one way or another, even though I do think it's an abuse of their human rights - I can't bring myself to feel much sympathy.

Give a Car a Break ...

2007-10-14T06:05:00.000-07:00

Actually, I have given my cute little Corsakins a break - I drove it into a white van on Thursday morning. Eek. A break in its headlamp, front wing, bumper and bonnet. I was turning out of my road and I looked and looked the other way and checked the other way again and then drove forward and there was this van that had come out of nowhere! as people who don't look properly invariably say. Worse, I don't know if I saw it and didn't notice, or if I didn't look properly or if it really did appear through a rip in the space-time continuum - although given the enthusiastic appearance of a Witness for the White Van, my money's against this last. I got a really long way across the road before I hit it, so I suspect he had time to swerve, as well.

Then the twelve-year-old driving the van got out and said cheerily to my ashy green little face behind the feebly waving pencil, "Oh, it's far too early in the morning for all this, isn't it?" and when I had finished giving him my details, "Well, nice to meet you, anyway." Crazy earthlet. Doesn't he mean "We have to stop meeting like this?"

Anyway, now my car is in a Sorry State, so I, brave and foolish owner of only TPFT insurance, am seeking advice. Should I:

a) Get it properly repaired?
b) Get it partially repaired and resign myself to looking like I drive a scrapyard dodgem?
c) Not repair it at all and wait to see how long until I am arrested / it falls apart around me in the middle of the A370?
d) Knock the whole sorry thing on the head and buy a new car?

If any of you knows a bodyworker type who could be soft-soaped into charging me under £600 to do the job, let me know. (I could offer to coach his children in English in exchange, but I do realise that this may not be practical - and English teaching is probably much cheaper than car-fixing ... not for the first time I suspect I'm in the Wrong Job, except when I imagine just how bad a car repaired by me would look ...)

Like so much of life, it's a horrid nightmare, and next time I swear I'll look, I swear I will ...

Not Getting Richer

2007-10-09T03:07:00.000-07:00

STOP PRESS, CHICKEN LICKEN! The sky is falling! Oh my God, we're not getting richer! Forget about floods in Vietnam, child-stealing in China, the dodginess of local council services - this is important!!!

For too long we have allowed ourselves to be distracted from what's really important by piddling little issues like party politics, international humanitarianism, and illegal wars over the oil supply. Now comes the reckoning. We've been getting richer year on year since the 1950s, and now WE'RE NOT. What a chastening thought. Just because we have too many cars in the cities to find space to park them, too many waste computing and electronics items to dispose of without shipping them to the other side of the world, and children who totter to school jingling with mobiles, MP3s, iPods, assorted silver chains and Playboy Bunny charms like so many Christmas trees put out in a stiff breeze, does not suggest by any stretch of a wild imagination that we might damn well have ENOUGH. Hell no.

If we don't carry on getting richer, what will become of us? Will children have to pay attention at school because they can no longer text their paramours in neighbouring classrooms? Might we start looking favourably on flower-growing and vegetable cultivation, in our tragic desperation? Might we have a greater inclination to hold conversations than vast vats of beer chugging contests? Could the housing market realign itself with incomes, so that nurses and firemen could afford to buy a roof over their hardworking heads? Maybe people would begin to eat vegetables and home cooking instead of Ready Meals and die later and with a lower amount of obesity and farting. Oh it is all too horrible to contemplate. Quick, how can we solve the problem?

The Wild Gourmets - Dumb With Admiration

2007-10-05T08:11:00.001-07:00

Channel 4 Tuesdays 8.30pm

I am dumbstruck with admiration by this programme. It has two Very Posh Types - one of each sex - running about the countryside causing annnoyance to local landowners by chirruping on about how you can Feast Off The Land FOR FREE!

Turns out stuff you need for this venture - and can presumably get for free - includes a gurt big shotgun, shooting licence, fishing rods, an extensive portable kitchen garden of herbs and olive oil, and a large Land Rover. Up till last Tuesday night I thought that getting these things for free was probably illegal, so I struggle to articulate the full extent of my frothy-mouthing jazz-hand-waving excitement at this good news.

I missed the first episode (which presumably covered the acquisition of these goodies in some step by step detail) to discover the mad naked people heartily throwing buckets of water over themselves while justifying this open [air] masochism with plucky references to "bush showers". It's all so splendid, and so utterly irrelevant to feasting off the land for free - though sadly Tommy (who is a Lady) is not quite as sporting as Guy, and often keeps her very Guernsey jerseyed outfits on.

Another splendid feature of this prog is the way that whenever they Utterly Fail to catch their supper, they say "It's not a supermarket, if you can take feast or famine then you'll live well off the land." What is this, Channel Four Fluffy Outdoor Eating Half Hour, or Rudyard Kipling? What a doodlenoodle headed thing to say. You said you were going to feast off the land, and now You've Failed. Eat grass, you posh mollynoddle, go on, EAT THE GRASS. But sadly they refuse the grass, and still more sadly refuse to poach salt-turf-eating sheep, and instead choose to trade turnip-cutting for a leg of lamb. I found this a bit poor spirited, but I suppose it is better than if they had shot the farmer from the other side of the Bristol Channel, cited that rather evil law from Very Long Ago that says English shooting of Welsh people is legal, and then appropriated his whole flock and family, which is how I understand is how the upper classes have traditionally lived for free off the land.