Sailing by

People ask me what it's like now I've climbed aboard The Battleship Lollipop. It would not be too far a stretch to say that it was a rip-roaring adventure. In fact, it would be a craven lie. It is as it is.

Enterprises of great pith and moment do as such moments do and so it has done. You never spot all the snags until you've occupied the place, as the Afghans told Alexander the Great, and look what good that did him.

All that stuff you're reading in that Wendy's blog? I suspect we are both part of the same architectural experiment.

Now where did I put those fart machines...?

Should have gone to voice over

I am sore vexed by an advert on the telly. For spectacles. Sore vexed. It involves a grey-haired bloke sidling up to a mirror and saying:

"It's goodbye Trevor, and..."

He dons his glasses

"It's hello to..."

And that's the bit I can never catch. I'm convinced he says "Tito," which makes sense because he looks like Marshall Tito, but it doesn't seem right even for a spectacles advert.

Some of the ones I should have saved for the secret secret blog

Some more post titles lost to the mists...

• Now look what you made me do: I've squashed a chaffinch!
• Can you hear the Trappists sing?
• Blue geraniums will mean your biro's leaking
• Jamming with the Freddie and the Dreamers tribute band
• Jimmy's magic patch: a social worker writes
• We've had to nail down the mobile chip shop
• The Girl With The Peggy Mount Tattoo
• Arsehole's Comedy
• Heaven and Charing Cross
• The Shrieking Pit and other lollipop ladies

Dancing with tigers

Judging by the state of the The Cat I Don't Have the growing season is upon us, which is a tad premature given that the Daily Express is promising us another Ice Age and all the musk oxen you can eat at your local MacDonald's. At the moment it is 55% by volume fur, 10% garden debris, 5% exotic fauna and, optimistically, we'd like to think the rest is cat. I'm happy to take it on trust, I'm not going in there no matter how insistent the invitation.

Last weekend we were ripped from our slumbers by the most appalling caterwauling. The Small Object of Desire sat bolt upright, looked at her watch, realised it was not quite yet noon and said things Not Fit For A Sunday. I looked outside and saw that it was cat. She was sitting in the rosemary bush yelling like The Banshee Who Stood On Some Lego at Frankie Howerd, the cat from two doors down. They are not friends. We call him Frankie Howerd partly because he looks like the late Frankie's last Irish but mostly because he has the same vocalisations. It's quite unnerving to be lying there in the footstep hours of the night listening to something outside going: "Oooh... No. I'm down to my last titter." If he ever encounters the collared dove that sounds like Lesley Philips we'll be having Elstree on the doormat asking for royalties.

Guilt tripping

That Savvy and that Scarlet have decided to embark on the 365 day challenge (or in Scarly's case the 509 day challenge but she's always been a one for the wild excesses). This makes me feel tremendously guilty, given my neglect of this place. So I'll have a bash at it myself.

Let's see if I can make it last a week...

Career opportunities we missed

We were watching "It Shouldn't Happen To An Australian Zoo Vet" or somesuch on the Discovery Channel. Much time was spent on the business of giving a giant tortoise a barium enema. Isn't that brilliant? A world full of pain and misery and there are still people willing to go about the place giving tortoises barium enemas.

What a glorious and wonderful thing it would be to have that on your curriculum vitae: "I have the ability to give give tortoises the shits."

Fancy dress

The Small Object of Desire and myself are going to a wedding this Spring. Not ours, I hasten to add; we've had that conversation and although (a) we both have the dressing-up togs and (b) we intend living together for a bit, it turns out that neither of us are fussed enough to go to the expense and neither of us could fit into the clobber anyway. Somebody else's.

The tension, as always in these affairs, is clothes. The bride-to-be told her bridesmaid (The Small Object) that she can have any colour dress so long as it's mid-blue. Luckily, in the end they both fell for something in royal blue with a blue gauze-y thing overlaying it to make it look shimmery mid-blue which they can both live with. So that leaves the shoes. Women and shoes. You know what I mean. Made worse by the bride's having Very Strong Views On Shoes and the Small Object having completely different Very Strong Views On Shoes. As only women can. Even intelligent women capable of being quite sensible and practical when the mood takes them. Or perhaps especially so. I suggested wellingtons. I don't know how I survived into my fifties.

And then there's the elephant in the room: my suit.

"We need to think about getting you a suit."
"We did that last month."
"No. A suit for the wedding. What sort of suit were you thinking about getting?"
"I wasn't. Can't I go in my new suit?"
"No, that's your work suit."
"How about one of the beige linen suits I've got?"
"Because they're beige and because they've all got stains along the arms where you've spilt tea and leant in it."
"They're good suits. Very comfy."
"Not with those trousers. I can tell your religion when you're wearing them."
"So not them then?"
"No. What sort of suit are you getting?"
"How about something nice in Black Watch tartan?"
"We'll talk about this later."

The awful thing is: I'm now at an age where I can see myself buying and wearing a suit in Black Watch tartan.

Rubbing shoulders with the stars

I bumped into Eugene Pallette on the tram this afternoon. He was passing himself off as a matron from Crumpsall but the voice was a dead giveaway.