Scorchio

A weekend 'phone conversation with my father:

Him: "Sorry to bother you but I need a bit of advice, I'm feeling very warm and I'm starting to get a bit breathless."

Me (feeling breathless due to the combination of asthma, heat and the effects of having, on Tuesday, taking advantage of the cat I don't have's practising for her Backwoodscat Badge to fumigate the house after she'd brought in little friends): "Have you had one of those ice lollies I bought you?"

Him: "I'm saving them for when it gets warm."

If you ever wonder where I get it from. (He had an ice lolly and he was "100% better!")

I had thought the cat I do not have was being uncharacteristically sensible in not sunbathing in the back garden this morning until I saw that she'd found a patch of sun by the closed front gate which meant the postman had to jump over the wall to post today's junk mail. She came in briefly but any hopes that she might come in and stay cool were dashed when she used the litter tray and trotted back out again, demanding tuna with menaces. She's lying on her back in a clump of marjoram with a woodpigeon sitting in the cherry tree not four feet above her head and they're both fast asleep. I'm staying indoors and leaving the silly beggars to it.

The mirror crack'd

Standing in the Co-op, buying a People's Friend and a tin of pineapple chunks, I'm bemused by the conversation behind me. A girl and two lads, all in dark "first accountancy suits." They were talking about the gossip mags on the rack, all boasting pictures of Abby Clancy, who is Nursing Heartache over Peter Crouch's Infidelity. Or as we used to call it: footballer's girlfriend pissed off at his dicking about.

"I mean," said the girl, "if you had a girlfriend like that would you go an sleep with a prostitute?"

"I dunno," said one of the lads, "she looks a bit ropey in that picture."

"She's upset, she's not going to be looking her best."

"Well, I dunno..."

I looked at him. He looked like a badly-filled hot water bottle.

Keeping tabs

One of the Saturday rituals is that I nip round to my parents to cadge a meal and a read of the paper and while I'm there I load up my mum's pill box for the week. She's perfectly capable of doing it herself but it makes me feel like I'm doing something useful. Given all the tablets they're both on I'm astonished they don't rattle but I'm assured this is the norm these days (they couldn't all be placebos, could they?)

The packaging and wrapping of the tablets are just as illogical as any other modern consumable. There are teeny, tiny white pills in teeny, tiny blister packs that can only be opened with a pair of tweezers and a jeweller's glass. There are blister packs that appear to hold big, old-fashioned Zoobs and just disgorge teeny, tiny white pills. The huge red bottle is mostly huge, white stopper. And the horse tablets, two to be taken twice daily, are in the smallest packet in the bag o'pills.

All jammed into the appropriate compartments of the pill box it looks like a child's kaleidoscope. Until the other week it all had a nice retro feel to it: lots of whites and creams, big two-tone capsules in crimson and brown, puce lozenges and capsules in a lovely combination of biscuit yellow and a pale Hooker's green that always reminded me of Ford Anglias. Alas, they've been replaced by a rather garish buttercup yellow and bottle green. I complained about this to my mother.

"They used to be pink and white, I prefer this colour," she replied.

"Why is Thursday morning still there? What happened on Thursday?"

"I've no idea. Don't worry about it."

My dad reminds me that Albert Scanlon was buried on Wednesday. "It's funny to think that I played against him when he was playing for St. Wilf's," says my dad, who was a useful inside-right in his time. I doubt if they've seen each other since then: when the corporation knocked down the old slums to build new ones the lost tribes of Hulme were scattered to the four winds.

When I left they were debating the pros and cons of having Christmas pudding with their tea tonight. There are times when they scare me to death, but I suspect they're getting by rather better than I am.

What's the weather like over Cologne, Jean?

It's Cliff Michelmore's 90th birthday today.

I wonder if they've finished giving him the bumps yet.

Saturday singalong

Lost generation

If I comment I'll spoil it.

BOGOF

I should be ashamed of myself, a grown man shouting in the street...

I'd just been to the shop to get some "luxury bathroom towels." A nine-pack works out cheapest and lasts a while but doesn't fit into a carrier bag so I just carried it home as it was. One of the local knuckle-draggers spotted it as he walked down across the road.

"Hey mister, uh hu!" he shouted, "bog rolls! Uh uh uh!"

"Yes," I shouted back, "I'm planning on having a shit."

Ladies' bottoms

All the papers had pictures of one of this year's winners of the 'Rear of the year award,' awarded by some or other group of bottom-worshippers since time immemorial. True to form, the papers only showed pictures of the lady winner, which is quite right too as it doesn't do for any chap to get too vain about his bottom. And also true to form she stood in the standard A-frame tilted forward at forty-five degrees pose. And very nice too. I won't link to the news reports because you'll already have seen them.

One of my friends used to have an exceptionally nice bottom. She may still do, I've not checked it out recently but given the amount of Killer Attack Yoga she does I can't imagine it will have gone very much to seed. She held onto gawky teenager for an indecently-long time, well into her late thirties. Which, coupled with her habit of wearing leggings to work, could be very distracting. In the old days girls were instructed that ladies bend from the knee, but these days it seems anything goes.

There's a lady on the train I get each morning who has been gifted with a delightful bottom. I'm not sure how old she is: her neck says late forties, her eyes say early fifties (though that could be too much sun and cigarettes). However old she actually is, her bottom is considerably younger. I'm still undecided as to whether this is all down to providence or artfully-selected trouser suits; decency prevents my making a thorough investigation. One of the laments of this modern age is that I feel so damned ungrateful. In a sane and just world I should be able to thank her for making the morning commuter hell a brighter place without her having to worry that I might want to act upon designs on her body (a lad can dream but ambition needs to be grounded in reason). As it is, it's the ingratitude that's so shaming.

If you want to get ahead...

It's a strange thing, but if I go out wearing a hat people stand in the street and stare. I don't wear anything outlandish, they're purely functional items to protect my pate from the elements. I may wear the black fedora, or the brown trilby, or the Panama hat. I have never once worn the Austrian Peculiar Coneheaded Dancers' hat out of doors (or indoors in this house, come to that). It's pouring down, I put on a coat and hat, walk down the road and the young people comment. I wouldn't mind but they all walk around dressed like extras from Mad Max or Pirates of the Caribbean.

"Hey mister! That's a funny hat!"

Shouted one specimen with his crotch round his ankles and a baseball cap on sideways. His mate, sporting two limp strands of hairy spagetthi hanging from his three-quarter crop shorts, laughed appreciatively.

It's good that three-quarters of my Poll Tax goes towards educating these idiots.