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.

Zoo Quest To The West Country

We'd decided - finally! - to go on our first proper holiday, as opposed to the occasional day out and that week we spent in bed. We were a bit tentative as we're both picky sociopaths so we decided that we'd best move about a bit, just in case. So we did a lightning visit to the pointy bit at the bottom of the country. (Alas, too fleeting to give a shout to them nice Pat and Scarlet.) After a few nice days we pootled back home, taking a meandering track that would eventually get us back hereabouts...

There was a giant flea Market at Newton Poppleford. Imagine our dismay to find that they were, in fact, selling giant fleas.

The gents lavatory at Bridgewater had advertisements for Easter eggs, which is wrong on so very many levels

Egad!!! I am sure I bumped into Armand and Michaela Denis in the Book Barn at Hallatrow on the way over to Mummerset. They were filming the habits of two middle-aged ladies who were complaining that the Shell Guide to Gardening wasn't in the conchology section.

"I've never read a Jilly Cooper book, have you?"
"I don't know that I have."

Oh come now! You'd know if you had…

There were acres and acres of Thackery and Dickens and yards of Collins pocket literature. Meanwhile, as always, the collectors of detective fiction hang onto their spoils. And I really have to ask: were there really that many copies of John Halifax, Gentleman printed?

In Bath we met a chap by the river who invited us to his 53rd birthday. We were politely non-committal; as a rule we don't accept party invitation from people who are foaming at the mouth. Especially not when it's still only ten in the morning. It's a bit too much like being back at work.

Bank holiday television

You can tell it's a bank holiday Monday by the state of the programmes they put on the telly, though God knows it gets more like a perpetual bank holiday every day:

• There is, of course, no news .


• On Channel Five a bunch of oddly-wrought blokes from places you've never heard of (including Dartford) are competing for the title of "The World's Strangest Man."


• On Alibabble, Miss Marple forsakes St. Mary Mead to spend a weekend at Melchester to watch Roy of the Rovers pit his footballing skills against Billy the Fish.


• Oh goodie. A special holiday showing of " Indiana Potter and
  the Eggheads of Hollyoaks."

I'm looking forward to later tonight when Tess Daley and Nick Knowles present "Zoo Time" live from the Trocadero, Southport.

Shadows at midnight

Merry New Year to all!!!!

And now, a fillum...

I don't know why Morrissey didn't do more Rudolf Friml covers

A Chrimbo singalong...

Rather despite myself I like this. Partly because the tempo's fast enough for Maria Carey to sing properly and not do those ridiculous arpeggios. But mostly because it feels like a Phil Spector Wall Of Sound number.

And to keep up the tempo...

Many a slip

As sure as eggs…

The onset of the first serious frost and light smattering of snow is guaranteed to be the signal for half the drivers down our way to park their cars on the pavement to give them their Sunday afternoon jet wash, ready for the Christmas hostilities.

The spirit of thingy

We got worrying about what Morrisey does for Christmas.

We'd come to an inconclusive point in the debate about the gender of the Roadrunner (my argument that Wile E. Coyote was a metaphor for an America struggling to come to terms with it's sexuality depended on the Roadrunner's being a ladyboy). And The Small Object of Desire was determined that not only was Aled Jones not Pinocchio ("he's made out of wood: that's why he's got varnished rosy cheeks that don't move when he talks." "No. He's just Welsh.") but his name was on the list for the firing squad come the revolution.

That's when she started worrying about what Morrisey does for Christmas.

I tried to reassure her that it would be business as usual and he'd have tea with the chimps in the monkey house at Bristol Zoo, giving passers-by a running commentary with a selection of the unconvincing voices out of the corner of his mouth that used to delight us when he was on "Animal Magic."

"I expect he just goes round his mam's for a nut cutlet," she muttered.

Give us a blob

The acting profession is a hard one. Spare a kind thought for Fireman Blob, one of British animation's fallen by the wayside.

You see, originally, it was Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Blob.

There they were, all kitted out and helmets freshly-polished when the nice men from Camberwick Green took themselves off to BBC Television Centre to sell the idea to children's telly. And all went well until... Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Blob.

"What the hell is that?" asked the Commissioning Editor.

"Fireman Blob," replied the animators.

"Get rid of that. It looks like you got that far and couldn't be arsed."

And so it came to pass: after a heated, but ultimately futile, discussion poor old Fireman Blob got his marching orders and was replaced by the felicitously-named Grub.

The rest is history. Embittered, Blob turned his back on the industry and went back to provincial repertory theatre, touring the West Country with Joan Littlewood's production of "No Sex, Please, We're British." When last seen, he was playing "unpleasant thing on the bathroom floor" in Robin Asquith's seminal "Confessions of a Sagger Maker's Bottom Knocker," a pale reflection of glories that might have been.

Such is the hardship behind the glamour of showbiz.

The delights of the hedgerow

One of the treats of these late Autumn mornings is the sight of people out and about taking Rover and Fido, or Fang and Tyson, out for a constitutional. The doggies frolic hither and thither, all agog with the smells of the day while their owners follow behind collecting little lumps of dog shit in their little carrier bags. I'm told it makes for a cheeky little country wine.

Unoccupied

Oh, it's all very well for Ed Millipede to decide to jump onto the Occupy Bits of Pavement to Piss Off the Daily Mail but I'd be more amenable to this attempt to co-opt the protests for political advantage had we heard or seen much of the outrage at the Labour party conference.

The speech I would have wanted to hear would have included something like this:

"There are those in the financial sector who say that the time for atonement is over. These are the people who said that the good times shall roll forever and whose mistakes are hurting ordinary people every day. Vulnerable people who find their care needs being ignored because of cuts. Children and families who find that their playgrounds and libraries are no more. Companies that can't find investment capital when they need it. Small businessmen who find their markets have vanished because their customers have shut up shop. These are the people who are being hurt and for them there is no easy taxpayer-funded return to Business As Usual.

"There are those in the financial sector who say that the time for atonement is over. I think of the bank clerks and the teachers, the nurses and the builders, the overworked and the unemployed and I say to those in the financial sector: no. I say to them: boys and girls, some humility is called for.

"You fucked the economy.

"You don't get to say when the time for atonement is over. Ask the people of Britain when they've stopped being hurt by your actions."