Music to panic by

That nice Pearl periodically uses the caprices of title selection by audio shuffle to read the auguries of the day. The serendipity of this appeals to me rather so I thought I'd have a shot at it during a tram ride to the Small Object of Desire's gaff...

The songs my iPhone threw out at me were:

• Half Man Half Biscuit: "Joy Division Oven Gloves"
• Smokey Wood and the Wood Chips: "Keep on Truckin'"
• Allan Sherman: "It's a Most Unusual Play"
• Henry Hall: "Here Comes The Bogeyman"
• The Supernaturals: "The Day Before Yesterday's Man"
• Weird Al Yankowicz: "Jurassic Park"

If anyone wants me I'll be curled up in a ball over there...

On hearing the first ice cream van of Spring

Dear sir,

Kevin and The Small Object of Desire cannot come to work today because it is a nice day and they want to spend all morning in bed and then go and play out they are not well

Yours sincerely,

Our Mum (Mrs.)

Unearthed treasure

Frabjous joy.

Frog, clearing the decks in readiness for one or other of the latest bits of nonsense, accidentally disinterred a bit of history. He has found the only remaining entire copy, in living colour, of the pantomime we co-wrote about fourteen years ago: "Blibala and the Forty Beancats." We wrote it over the space of five weeks, each taking a turn at writing a page and largely ignoring anything in the way of plot, characterisation, continuity or plain common sense that may have crept into the earlier portion of the script. We printed off a few copies, covers boldly declaring that the whole shebang had been sponsored by Socko, the Wonder Duck-Whitener. I managed to lose my copy in the move over to Railway Cuttings (ditto the unpublished A0 poster version of "King of the B-Movies" starring Stanley Baldwin as Sexton Blake).

I'll stir myself to share the joy over the next few days. I'm still quite pleased with the ending.

I remember when all this was fields

The small niece-child is learning a bit of Spanish at school, which I think is no bad thing. As is the way with these things, it is the purest accident: one of the teachers happens to be Spanish, it's not in the school prospectus. The idea of a school prospectus bewilders me slightly as I'm of that age when you went to your local primary school unless your parents were particularly keen Roman Catapults in which case you went to the nearest R.C. similar. And that was the end of it, none of this trawling through prospectuses, web sites and league tables and poring one's way through the Ofsted reports. Not that I hold much faith in the latter anyway: every school I go past in the course of an ordinary week has a big banner strapped to the front boasting of its Ofsted plaudits ("Sums were enthralling" — Harold Hobsbon). It pisses me off to think that the money schools are spending on Ofsted Plaudit banners could fund a medium-sized county library service book fund for a year.

Anyway… We went to our local primary school, which was good because it was within walking distance, which was good because hardly anyone had a car and them that did only ever used it for their dads to go to and from work.

Our local school was out in the middle of a big field just by the motorway. Over the years the field got bigger and became a school playing field as the wilder edges were given over to dutifully-manicured grass. At the end of the field, behind the first houses of the estate, was a particularly wild stretch full of mustards and thistles and the occasional haunt of lizards. Through this ran the brook which started off from out of nowhere near the cornflake factory and ran for a couple of miles before trickling into the Irwell at Barton. At the school end it was a bit sluggish and fed a small pond choked with water mint. Further up you could squeeze through the railings behind the builder's yard and look for sticklebacks and stray frogs. I wonder how many kids these days get to see a stickleback; it is a concern.

Over yonder, where the shopping centre car park is now, there was a field of Friesian cows, gently a-mooing and chewing their cuds. Behind would be Barton Power Station, a miniature edition of Battersea. I miss that almost as much as the annual air show, three days of random aerospace history to-ing and fro-ing to the aerodrome for the Sunday event. Gypsy moths and a Vulcan bomber were a given. Sometimes there'd be the thrill of a Hurricane or Lockheed Lightning and, just that once, a Spitfire and a Lancaster. Sunday tea time would see everyone standing in their front gardens to watch the Red Arrows and then it was officially over.

Behind the school was the freight line that fed goods to the western half of what was then Europe's biggest industrial complex (that was the reason why we were semi-rural as far as the rates were concerned). Just the other side was a scabby field of scrubby grass, home to partridge, lapwing and many a courting couple. That's concrete now, with a warehouse stuck on it.

Now it's all cropped green fields, car parks and triple carriageways serving the shopping centre. The quiet Sunday afternoon walk behind the church and round to the main road is an expensive leisure complex. And kids trapped in the school run are taken round the shops to socialise them.

I'm under no illusions as to just how rough things were really in the sixties. But the brook at Longford, now culverted and covered over by concrete and beer cans and old mattresses was once lively with yellow flag irises and water boatmen and I don't think much of the swap.

Donkey floss

Judging by the overgrown state of the near side of the garden we won't be short on wild garlic or boysenberries this year. The damson has just come into bloom and there's quite a lot of sturdy growth on the blackcurrants. This year I shall be paying a but more attention to the gooseberry bush; between the attentions of gooseberry sawfly and a rambling rose I thought I'd disposed of two years ago it had a fret time of it this year.

All this will no doubt be superintended by Hugh, the cat I do not have. Hugh's current sleeping quarters vary between my front doorstep, under the lilac tree and under next door's car. All this despite the fact that next door went to the trouble of buying it a covered cat bed and putting it inside their wash house doorway, well away from wind and rain. I am assured that This Is How Cats Are and it accords with all my experience of the beasts. Having been acquainted for nearly two years it surprised me that I've only just noticed that Hugh is, in fact, a little kiddie's cartoon cat. He really is a rectangle with little stubbly legs and a bit of a tail stuck on one corner.

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.

The bits they cut out of The Lovers' Guide, part two

The entirely inappropriate fake orgasm.

Update from the Matto Grosso

As per usual, the garden is in a bit of a state. In part this is down to my lassitude; in part due to spending half of each week over at The Small Object of Desire's gaff. And then in January we decided to set to it:

• We had a go at installing the fence panels I bought last March. I might have a go at supergluing the bits together again.


• The front garden is piled knee-high with prunings of lilac, hazel, dogwood and roses. I may yet make a bonfire.


• Many of last year's cheeky lengeths of brambles have been grubbed out and chopped back...

Which is where I came a cropper. A particularly egregious bramble shoot ran from the bramble patch on the railway embankment, shot up the air, wrapped itself round a branch of the conifer about twelve feet up and then descended into my garden, rooting itself along the length of the back border. So I decided: I'm having you, you bastard.

And that's what I was doing when I fell out of the tree.

Luckily, no bones broken though quite considerable pain and a full Robert Newton Long John limp right up to the beginning of last week.

In the meantime, the garden's been full of snowdrops and crocus and a cluster of double hellebores has been doing the business since Christmas. Not one daffodil yet, dammit. The big pot that should be chock full of Salome and February Gold has been waterlogged all winter after an ants' nest clogged up the drainage holes (silly buggers). I have hopes of the venerable clump of King Alfreds under the big rose bush but I reckon I'll be doing some bulb-buying come the Autumn.

I intend filling all the gaps with foxgloves and ox-eye daisies.

When I get round to it.

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…

The bits they cut out of The Lovers' Guide, part one

For all you sexual athletes out there...

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...

More good reasons for not writing that one over there...

An after-works drink with Ken Barmy at The Duck and Pullet.

For the past decade and a half we have shared stories of the black and bleak madnesses of the running of public libraries and laughed uproariously at the absurdity of it all.

We found nothing to laugh at in the climate of the day.

Titularity

If ever I get round to writing a book I shall call it: "Tales Of The Greased Anaconda"

Hearts and flowers

"Gentlemen: give her a Valentine's Day she'll always remember: forget to buy her a card" -- Viz Top Tips

It's a funny thing to realise The Small Object of Desire and myself have been knocking about together for over a year now.

It's been a bit of a learning curve for both of us. I know now that there is no right answer to "Am I getting fat?" (The least worst answer seems to be: "Do you want this bar of chocolate?") And I hope she learns some day that if she's giving me a lift part way to work then I really don't care about getting out in The Right Parking Space in the car park we're not stopping at when I'm going to miss the bus because we've passed three bus stops and drove on by. (We won't mention "Dancing On Ice." Because I am a gentleman.)

The similarities between us are sometimes alarming. At some stage in the relationship we'll be able to arrange things such that we'll be sleeping at the house where the milk, bread and breakfast cereal are (the usual trick is to have the milk at her house and the cereal at mine, twenty miles away). And our finickitiness makes cooking ia challenge: I won't eat chicken or sea-life and she won't eat beans or anything green that isn't spinach or corned beef.

But we seem to be coping…

R.I.P. Charlie

Tremendously sad to hear that Charlie Callahan (Professor B. Worm) has passed away. His occasional quiet words of support were always appreciated.