Quietly making fists in my pocket

There are times when having a telephone conversation with my father is like being back at work doing a remote technical support call. After ten minutes'gleaning bits and bobs and correlating them into sensible order, I'll talk it through just to confirm this is where we are and that'll be the point at which some tidbit that kicks the jigsaw asunder gets introduced into the conversation. It all gets sorted in the end but the stress levels aren't helped by my having to compete to be heard over his television while having the cat shouting down my other ear because she doesn't like the telephone.

Just checking

Just a quickie, checking on you all in the current awfulness as you lounge around in your bouncy castles giving out the lairy chat to passing cocker spaniels. I do hope you and yours are all OK and not yet climbing the walls. Look after yourselves you're the only you you've got.

Mrs. Elspeth Smethurst demonstrating her new social distancing costume

Sing along now…

Pumpkins to you, too, madam

Well-heeled couple and their unruly children mooching round St Ann's Square. Children accosting strangers in the dark and yelling: "Trick or treat!" I explain, gently, to one child that it isn't Halloween yet. "You're nine days early," I say.

Yummy-Mummy-manquée looks daggers at me. "Don't deprive them of their childhood! They should have something more than just a skinny frappucino with pistachio syrup and a harlequinade of gaily-coloured crushed macaroons! Look at Rosy-Chi-Chi's creative wearing of an off-the-peg Halloween urchin costume straight from Guardianista Pre-Loved Tat. Give them some money you unfeeling swine!"

Fuck off lady, I can't be doing with it.

I gave a pound to a beggar at the bottom of Deansgate.

Hacked

Apologies to anyone receiving spam from my email address. Yahoo Mail password change *again.* Grr.

Notwork

I'd post all sorts of stuff today but my mobile network's data coverage appears to have gone the way of the great wardrobe spider...

More from the Observer's Book...

A few more from The Observer's Book of Commuters...


The Tiller Girls: Genetically incapable of not walking four abreast along any pavement, station platform or canal towpath. Usually accompanied by raucous laughter, the handbags from hell and an overpowering smell of yesterday's face powder.

Trolley Dollies: Gentlemen of a certain age with suits of a similar vintage pulling along little cases on wheels with neither flair nor accuracy. Imagine Bernard Manning impersonating a BOAC air stewardess and you'd not be far wrong.

Franklin's Lost: They couldn't find the Northwest Passage and by God, they're not going to be finding their bus any time soon. In between times they meander aimlessly sadly between bus stops, driven mad by snow-borne mirages.

That Monday feeling

I know it isn't Monday but...

A constant tussle over livestock

The booklet cost £2.50 and I gave the lady at the desk a £5 note. A proper one with a picture of Dame May Whitty on the back of it. The lady at the desk rummaged in the coin tray for a considerable time. A good half of the tray was covered in pound coins and there was a mound of fifty pence pieces just to one side. But still she rummaged in the coin tray for a considerable time. Reluctantly she palmed a fifty pence piece then rummaged a bit more. In the end she gave me an assortment of 10p coins, some 5p coins, a twenty and the fifty pence piece. Scores of pound coins to give as change and she gave me two hundredweight of half-chewed threepenny bits. You have to wonder about some people.

Bogs

We were having the seat up/down argument the other day. We must have been bored: usually we only argue about sensible things like whether or not Michael Portillo is wearing a merkin on "This Week." Herself says the seat must be down but the lid up. I say that both seat and lid should be down to prevent unpleasant aerosol events in the bathroom. Herself says the seat must be down but the lid up.

The reason she says that is fair enough, I suppose. She claims that pop festivals gave her haemarroids. She reckons it was Glastonbury as done it. After three days eating Pieminster pies and drinking strong fire water she braved the bogs. A hour or so later, when she got to the end of the queue she went in. And came straight back out again. And didn't go to the toilet until she got back home a couple of days later.

Which is why she always insists on the lid staying up: "I like to know what I'm running away from before it's close enough to growl at me!"

From the Observer's Book

Now that The Small Object of Desire has been and got herself a new job I'm back on the public transport commute. I'd forgotten what a trial my fellow commuters are…

The Power Walker: Usually dressed like an extra from the touring production of"Bonfire of the Vanities," they're determined to stride out in a ruthlessly straight line, taking no prisoners in the battle for that stretch of pavement.

The Hypnotised Diagonalists: Earphones glued in to keep out the world, eyes fixed on the mobile device in their hand as they walk straight across you without warning as you try to cross that busy road where the pedestrian crossing's been out of action since last Summer.

Mrs. Overalls: Usually men, Mrs. Overalls dither about in shop doorways, train doorways, tram doorways, in fact any narrow passageway you may need to get through in a hurry. Their motto is: "I'm not actually going anywhere, and by God! neither are you."

The Metropolitan Cyclist: Expensive bike, speedos, hi-vis spectacles and streamlined cycling helmet, the Metropolitan Cyclist has the spatial awareness Ida seven-year-old and the arrogance of a ham actor playing a Spanish grandee in a remake of "Zorro."

TrishanEm: Two or three women functioning as one loud series of announcements about the sexual inadequacies of friends' boyfriends; bulletins about the doings of That Bitch; and Daily Mail headlines. Usually looking like the Black & White Minstrel Show had run out of burnt cork and had to resort to gravy browning.

The sound of gypsy violins in a tin of Ovaltine

My turn to be full of a cold. A tear-stained, snot-ridden idiot.

The Small Object of Desire gets home from work.

"How do you feel?"
"How do I look?"
"A bit grim."
"You're supposed to talk me up, make me feel better.
"You look fucking awful."

Promises I make myself.

I will not do any posts about the Battlestar Lollipop.

I will not do any posts about the Battlestar Lollipop.

I will not do any posts about the Battlestar Lollipop.

Architect's drawing of staff lunch time break-out area

Calm waters

It's an argumentative little body I've hitched myself onto.

Today's …discussion… was about whether, if a duck could sneeze, that sneeze would echo.

Wedding tackle

We are going to a wedding. So far the conversation has consisted of:

• "You're not wearing that."
• "That shirt doesn't go with that suit."
• "What do you think you're wearing?"
• "No."
• "If you think you're going out with me wearing that waistcoat you've got another think coming."
• "She's had to invite their Elaine's lot from Bolton so don't be showing me up."
• "You don't need to wear a hat."

I tried to have the cat go in my place but neither of them were wearing it.

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.

Ruinning out of steam

The Small Object of Desire asked me if I was excited about a big work's project finally coming on stream. I confessed I was not. Puzzled, she asked why not. She thought I'd be relishing the challenge and the opportunities to get a pile of problems finally sorted. And so I should be.

But I'm bored with it.

It took ten years to get off the ground and this preparatory stage, which should have been two or three months tops is nearing it's first anniversary with every final end in sight being just an ephemeral dream.

If this project were Sim City I'd be at the stage now where I'd be fighting the urge to introduce an influenza epidemic to town.

Confound it!

Just at the point where I'd resolved to be more diligent in keeping this blog ticking over and keeping tabs on the fine folks in the blogosphere Blogger goes and changes it's configuration. Now, I'll be honest: it was a bit of a pig to do on my mobile 'phone. But not impossible. It's still a bit of a pig to update but the public front end has suddenly changed. It's quite nice really, very cleanly-presented and all that. But the mobile version strips out all the widgets: no archive list, no blogroll, Hell, I can't even log in from here any more. Very perplexing.

So whereas the plan had been to keep up with you all while I was in transit and write posts at home on the laptop I'll be reading from home and writing on the bus. Expect lots of random place names in Bohemia and mad autocorrect errors…

Something for the weekend

It's a cold and wet Winter's day in Helminthdale and I;m actually happy to be getting back to the workplace when I bump into Walter Brimsdyke, The Borough Environmental Health Officer. He has my sympathy already.

"It's always a bloody Friday afternoon, isn't it? And it's always when it's bloody raining isn't it?"

I strain three face muscles not smiling: I know what comes next...

"They bloody ring up and say: 'I'm very worried about that dead sheep up on the tops. It's been there all week...'"

It's always a bloody Friday afternoon...

Playing to the audience

It's all very well Alan Gibbons telling a library conference that "A library without a librarian is just a room." He doesn't have to work with some of the buggers, let alone try and deliver services despite them.