EUREKA!

I’ve reached an epiphany. Well, I say epiphany, it was more of a creeping resignation to the inevitable: I don’t matter.

I’m not witty, my writing is limited and not particularly coherent, nobody reads what I write and it’s not going to change anything. So, rather than pander to the belief that I need to try really hard in case somebody plucks me from obscurity and hands me a bank account full of author-money, I am just going to witter on in peaks and troughs of time and interest, mainly to appease my own incredible flow of internal drivel and unintelligible monologue. See, even that makes me seem impenetrable and mysterious; believe me it’s not. I just constantly have a merry-go-round of disjointed facts, subjects and profanities inside my mind – picture a cartoon head trauma victim with tweeting birds all around them.

It would be easy to reread the previous crap I’ve generated and delete all but the best bits – but that would be neither honest nor very purposeful. Because my blog has attracted precisely (and I can be exact about this) 0 followers in eighteen months, I don’t feel it would be right to amend or delete with the sole hope that people will start reading it now and discover a witty and contemporary set of word gems. At the very least, it’s not being honest with myself. But then – I don’t matter, so perhaps I shouldn’t worry about it?

Conundrums.

No, no I won’t – I’ll leave the idiocy and poor sentence construction (as helpfully highlighted by Microsoft Word) as is and upload the whole original shooting match. That way, when my kids grow up, they can look at their old dad and start to glean exactly when and where the xenophobia, dementia and dislike of most aspects of life began.

Celebrity Barcelona

I watched Barcelona last night; the greatest football team ever put together (if you exclude the Crystal Palace squad of 1990, natch) playing in a European Cup semi-final against fellow Spaniards and great rivals Real Madrid. It should have been an occasion to bring tears to the eye – the individual excellence of the Barca players as a foil to Mourinho’s tactical nous and cunning.

But it wasn’t.

It was an unending exhibition in tentative, negative football, spoiled only by two moments of brilliance from Messi. Other than his sheer genius, it was as dull and attritional as you can get – think rainy January night game between two dismal mid-table English clubs and you won’t be far out.

However, being neither a football pundit nor a commentator, I want to leave the analysis to the professionals. What prompted this subject was the sheer level of blatant cheating on display, and the rising anger inside me as I think about how much I hate cheats (and, actually, people in general). Puyol, Busquetz (Biscuits?) Sergio, Alves, Ronaldo and Pique were seen by millions falling/ rolling/ crying like they’d been shot in the balls with a BB gun, or bitten by a mosquito so large its proboscis had penetrated their skulls and given their brainboxes a stir up. It was hateful, juvenile and annoying – like a Justin Bieber fan – without the redeeming feature of being a really good football match.

So that got me thinking; who else do I really detest? Here’s a “random” cross-section:

Wayne Rooney. Talented, yes. Strong and tireless, with a good work ethic, yes. BUT: he is an ugly, scowling half-breed with a boiled water balloon for a head and teeth filed out of Werther’s Original. He has an obscene amount of money, far too much for his tiny sprout of a brain to comprehend, and is adorned with so much overpriced cack he looks like the subject of a dire Channel 5 makeover programme for Armenian royalty.

He is also a cheap, philandering bigot with no control over his temper or mouth, and acts like a horny baboon whose dinner has been weed on. In another life, without the talent, he would simply be a scally in a pub, covered in blurred and meaningless amateur tattoos offering out anyone who looked like a threat and spitting on the floor. He is the footballing equivalent of Dane Bowers, being played in heavy, melting prosthetic makeup by Mike Myers.

Jade Goody
Yeah, she’s dead. So what? Are we only allowed to speak positively about the dead? Ok, so Hitler was good at fart jokes, Shipman was a big cuddly bastard and Charlie Manson was brilliant on the harmonica and a gas at parties.

Yes, she was a horrid, pugnacious racist. No, ignorance is not an excuse; but stupidity is some mitigation for her poorly tuned gob. Yes, she was a vapid, talentless nothing with all the appeal of dysentery; but that is true of a large number of slebs [see above, for example]. But what is absolutely, totally inexcusable, in any light, is her choice of partner. She married (remember that, MARRIED) an even greater waste of cells than Jeff Brazier. She took in, loved, shagged and gave her life to a vacuous, oafish nothing with a penchant for rape and sexually assaulting women. He is a gurning, tile-brained semen stain that enjoys forcing himself on women and drinking in Essex nightclubs. If the National Association of Morons held a competition to find the biggest, most cuntiest cunt-brained cunty, he would make Nick Griffin look like John Inman.

You see? Through all the fatuous programmes, books, appearances in Heat magazine and general annoyance that was Jade Goody, the one thing that should always make her a figure of ridicule is her choice of him, among all of us males. Yes, she did incredible amounts of work in raising cancer awareness among young women. But she also MARRIED Jack Tweed. Ying and yang, people.

The presenters of Top Gear
Three frightened, wounded simpletons masquerading as middle-aged ‘blokes’. Probable homosexual, infertile caricatures dressed by C&A (where C&A stands for Cunts and Arselickers).

David Cameron
Sponge-face hooting clam with over-privilege and hatred of the working classes leaking from his every braying orifice.

George Osborne
As above, but the ‘taker’ in the obvious public school order of things. Definite taster of the meat skewer.

Richard Littlejohn
This is too easy.

On cars

On cars
I get very excited about cars. Obviously, not in a rudey ‘hands in the pockets’ way, but I do get excited about cars. I feel I may need to explain myself a little:

I don’t know anything about Supercars, I detest TCC (that c**t Clarkson), I won’t watch the abject self-fellating middle-aged smug pisswater that is Top Gear and I am not interested in top speeds, 0-60 times or who the fucking Stig is. I think F1 drivers are overpaid, British Touring Cars are like watching a one-off banger race organised for day release special needs prisoners with anger issues, and any male driving a Ferrari over the age of 30 has obvious insecurities and a bank balance longer than their flaccid little winky.

My stuff of choice (hell, let’s call it porn) is the small ads for racing car bits. Having dabbled lightly in racing cars in recent years, and with a needy competition car parked impotently on my drive, I feel my fetish is somewhat justified. There is an amazing array of rare, valuable and just plain useless bits advertised online – and one can never tire of trawling through. From ex-F1 carbon wings to pitted magnesium uprights from a 1970s March, it’s easy to get sucked into a fantasy world of unbridled spending and a life sentence of frustrated evenings in the garage.

My own fantasy goes something like this: get a pile of cash (how many people’s fantasies start with that? I bet I’m the first) and just keep clicking and scrolling until a halo of brightly glowing liquid crystals surrounds the holy grail of my perfect project. It could be a saloon car, a single seat racer, an ex-F1 or a homebuild; I’m not proud and I’m easily persuaded, which is a dangerous combination. In the past I’ve fantasised over competition cars called Marrow, Jedi, Terrapin, Atlantic and Ray. I’ve had dark little plots to buy and modify (variously) a Reliant, a Mini, a Land Rover and an Austin 7.

My fantasy then goes much along the line of a football team/ sex partner/ dinner party daydream – gather up as many rare and interesting things as you can, and bolt them together to make something likely to spectators splutter into their overpriced Silverstone tea. I have an ongoing and unrequited desire to touch as much carbon fibre as possible, to handle purposefully angular aluminium machining, to settle for nothing less than aerospace-grade titanium for every nut and bolt. I’ve spent time looking at brakes, tyres, hoses, seats and switches, only to be thwarted by the twin apocalyptic horsemen of lack of cash and lack of actual need. Reality is a sadistic mistress.

There are specialist dealers for this kind of snuff – one is functionally titled “Touring Car Spares” – and some are verging on hoarders of obscure, broken and tiny pieces of racing ephemera. Will you ever need a Van Diemen RF88 rear wishbone? Yes? Good, because I know just the man. Actually, that’s a bad example as FF cars were constantly damaging wishbones, but I’m sure you get the general idea.

So I’m stuck with a longing for carefully constructed, one highly expensive trinkets of limited use. I can’t hang them on the wall in the house (I asked, I was refused) and I don’t have a suitable car to stick them to. I’d love to turn up at a track in a fastidiously fettled race car, engine popping and the sun glinting off the carbon shinies, but the real irony is that it costs so much to go racing that I would have to sell a child before I even unloaded the trailer. And yes, I have asked, and again I was refused.

There are worse things to be fanatical about, not all of them very rational; religion, golf, actual porn, dominoes and Antiques Roadshow. I chose cars – or rather they chose me. Not motorbikes, not Lamborghinis, not the 2011 Ford Mondeo; old, battered, campaigned and tired racing cars. I love them, I wish I could become the equivalent of an unhinged smelly cat lady with a large kitchen filled with leaking Mugen engines and Dymag split rims. And yes, I have asked that too.

Spring breaking point

Spring breaking point
Right, so, my idea to take a picture and upload it every day lasted precisely a fortnight. I think that demonstrates my level of commitment. I am in the process of editing it to make it look like I meant it to be occasional and random (I didn’t) and possibly interesting (it isn’t) as I update it (I probably won’t).

The sun is shining outside and weatherpeople are confidently predicting a mini-heatwave over the next few days. So then, is it any wonder I have two absentees from sickness (in heavily inverted ironic commas) this day before the day before a four-day holiday? No, thought not. I am naturally suspicious anyway, but on a nice warm day in spring just before a bank holiday? Oh please. Don’t worry, sicknotes; it doesn’t look suspect AT ALL that you were FINE yesterday.

Perhaps it’s just petty jealousy on my part – I’d love to be out touching trees or looking at some water – and I envy those that either don’t care or can get away with petty absenteeism and shoddy attitude. Mind you, that makes me seem high-minded and righteous; I’m not, I hate them because they’re out smelling of suncream and radiating smiles whilst I’m in my glazed rabbit hutch responding to emails about dreary contracts, dreaming lazily about eating the bananas in my desk. Bastards (not the bananas, they are innocent victims in all this).

Sometimes I am tempted to long for the days of carefree jobs and days spent outside; remembering the summers working outside, or travelling around London gawping at Knightsbridge show-offs. The lunchtime drinking, 2pm finishes and ‘sick’ days look even more soft-focus on days like this. However… I don’t miss the lack of decent pay, pisspoor career path, 5am starts to get into London, working in dusty bungalows with fussy pensioners making tea of questionable quality and offering Kitkats of equally questionable provenance. I also don’t miss the working outside in the January rain, being alone and poor, an empty house, crap diet and heavily odoured fridge.

It’s a double edged sword, this jealousy. I am in a far better place now (I mean metaphorically, physically I’m in a stagnant pond of a place surrounded by chivvy inbreds) and I have different kinds of satisfaction from life. Don’t get me wrong; I am not railing against getting older (37) or having dependents/ mortgage/ wife/ responsibilities etc; far from it. I like where I am now, it’s just a pity it’s not a great big work-pub-garden-seaside-park hybrid filled with happy people and gently waving trees.

This has clearly got to me more than I thought – having to qualify the idea of calling a banana a bastard and using words like ‘frolicking’ are not my normal fare. I think I’m going stir crazy, sat in here listening to the nth diet conversation while the pigeons outside float around in the arm air, taunting me with their smug cooing. Now they ARE bastards.

Marrij

I got married in July. Here's a picture from my wedding day:



No seriously, it is. I had to move these cows out of a field so that myriad guests could park their cars and pick their way through the dung. I did it in flip-flops and an Hawaiian shirt, waving a stick. One of the more unusual pre-wedding rituals, I suspect. Perhaps that explains the brown cow's quizzical and slightly bemused look. I can only speculate. How now brown cow?

I enjoyed organising the wedding immensely; there is no greater accolade than the appreciation of married-women wannabes who agree with your own choices. It's X-Factor with better food. It was also good to be able to use the little-known skills and objects our friends have hidden or not had cause to use before; marquee erection, cake-making, pig roasting, bouquet-building and iPod DJ? I can point anyone in the right direction.

I could go on for hours, or poorly constructed paragraphs, about what a wonderful day it was or how lovely my wife, our guests and the venue looked. Yadda yadda yadda. Isn't that every wedding? No, we had a field, two questionable blokes cooking an equally questionable pig, Ade Edmondson singing and a best man whose speech referred to me as a 'massive gay'.

And cows.

Perfect.

Pictures #1

Big bug on my wall. 2110 2/7/10






Definitely a work in progress. Riddled with nail holes and painted Easyjet orange. 1800 3/7/10

Poor old Steve Martin

Poor old Steve Martin; he was a friend of mine. Common name leading to misunderstanding, I bet he had that all his adult life. Died at 50 at a birthday party, died in the arms of his wife before she could resuscitate him. Died before he had a chance to sort out the things he was meant to finish, meant to say, meant to start; steam coming off tea cups, half-eaten biscuits and crosswords with the ink still wet.

Funny thing, the word 'friend'. I knew Steve and liked him, he was honest and friendly and entusiastic about those things that mattered to him. But I didn't know his family or background; my opinions formed solely on the meetings I had with him and the things he helped me with. Was he my friend? He was someone I regarded, someone I am sorry to have to mourn. Someone too young and too nice to have that happen.

I do think about mortality, but there's no point in dwelling and scaring myself. If fate exists, which it doesn't, then we're all just milling round the meat counter waiting for our ticket number to pop up on the screen. If fate exists, it's Winner Stays On. Rock paper scissors being played in a dark room over the phone, with no participant knowing the rules. In essence - rubbish.

True, we may make our own luck, but really we just make our own opportunities and the more there are, the more chances for good luck. We may as well just make ourselves happy while we're here, do right by those we love, like and regard.

So here's to you, Steve Martin. Dead at 50, missed and well regarded. A legacy in itself.

Random pictures #2

Garden at sunset, 2045 8/6/10







Sausage, mash and onion gravy. 2030 9/6/10







The fair arrives in town. 1600 10/6/10







Dog n ball. 1950 11/6/10







World Cup night. 2130 12/6/10







Some randy pigeon mating action on the lawn. 1945 14/6/10







Worrying name for a men's product? 2245 15/6/10







Was lucky enough to see this today - a terrific piece of art by Stephen Walter called 'the London Island'. Entirely drawn by pencil, it's six feet across and has unbelievable detail. I saw the original in a building I was working in. 1430 16/6/10







St Pauls from Friday St. 1400 16/6/10







Big ugly traffic jam, M2. 1800 17/6/10







BT Tower from Goodge St. 1330 18/6/10







Makeshift office... At least it's childproof. 1700 21/6/10







Being a good boss, we rigged up the internal tv network to show the football. 1458 23/6/10







Messy garden, badly behaved dog and paddling pool. 1945 25/6/10







Way to relax. 2030 26/6/10







Mimi had enough of the party and the heat. 1600 27/6/10






Bacon, sausage and cheese baguette. Anti- health food. 1030 30/6/10

A picture a day

I have decided that I am going to try and take a single photo every day for a year, and upload them as I go. There is no particular reason for this, other than I think it would be a nice detailed record of a year ‘in the life of’. Not that I consider that a year in the life of me would be remotely interesting to anyone other than me; and even I struggle with it sometimes. However, I’m sure the addition of technicolour wobbly phone pictures will turn it into award-winning literary excellence.

My general remit is just to take a picture of something, anything, which I encounter on that day. I will try not to repeat myself, try not to try too hard and try not to get all up in my own importance and become a dick. Each picture may or may not have an explanation or a title. I’m sure it’s neither original nor particularly exciting, but it’s something I haven’t tried and so I’ll kick it off and see how far I get.

Knowing me as I do, I give it a month.

A FORTNIGHT! I l LASTED TWO WEEKS. I AM SHIT AT WILLPOWER.

My i-less iPad

I ordered a new notebook today. Not a shiny, whirring Windows machine with too many acronyms and numbers in its name, but an actual pile of paper with some tape and glue holding the leaves together. Original, eh?

Years ago, I tried the abomination of the Filofax, an organization system that took more organizing than the disorganized areas of my life it claimed to be able to actually organise. Ironically, I used more pages writing things like “buy more Filofax pages” than anything else. It was the paper-based equivalent of an abusive relationship; a self-perpetuating reminder to fuel the Filofax’s own greed and narcissism. Recently, I tried to make full use of the functions on my iPhone, by introducing my busy social life to its calendar. A quick review (it is now June) shows my last activity of note to be in late April – a football match – and prior to that, March. Can that be right? Is there an ethereal Steve Jobs clone somewhere hacking into my Apple calendar and drawing the conclusion that I am socially retarded and incapable of planning even the merest of objectives? No ‘do shopping’ or ‘get laundry’ (although that last one would mainly consist of asking the wife nicely), not even a ‘birthday’ or ‘anniversary’? Not so much an indictment on my social life as it is on my data entry skills -that makes me feel so much better.

At work my Outlook calendar holds mysterious, colourful banners bearing the legends ‘management meeting’ or ‘monthly update call’, all coded into rows in nice colours dictated by a notional Microsoft-defined category that we all conform to. Is the Christmas break really classed as a ‘birthday’ to an atheist? In my Outlook-land it is, and to hell with the consequences. D’you see what I did there?

My guilty secret is that, much as I am proud of my coloured tiles and precise timings, I actually only do it that nicely because I know other people look at it. No, I’m afraid that my life depends on my notebook (the wood pulp kind) and the very disorganized scribblings therein. They are sometimes cryptic, with a half-life measured in days before they become irrelevant even to me. I am tempted to ring some of the numbers just to find out who is on the other end – speed dating for contractors and managers.

In my current book, I have planned a house move, new kitchen, new garage, a child, a racing car, one Lithuanian Navy destroyer and a Lifeboat. Quite apart from the work meeting notes, actions and ringed email addresses, there are scattered references to train times, resistors, disciplinary hearings, puff pastry, funerals, spice racks and a fish tank. A tidy mind is a healthy mind, apparently; if the same is true of notebooks, will someone please page Doctor Legg?

Monte Carlo and bust...

In project and financial management, there exists a set of sums called the Monte Carlo Simulation. This is an Excel spreadsheet that takes a set of expected minimum and maximum figures for a project, applies a sort of ’randomiser’ and produces a figure where the variables have been taken into account. Neat trick – a fruit machine or a magic 8-ball to work out how much money we are going to spend. Forget surveyors, estimators, management techniques; use a random number generator to come up with a number, and bill the client that. Easy.

In fact, why not tape lots of footage of the Lottery and simply come up with a number based on Lotto balls, where the first number is somewhere within your ‘scientifically devised’ parameters? Alternatively, feed teeny tiny numbered balls the size of corn to pigeons and come up with a number by wiping guano from the pavement of Trafalgar Square. Or a system of tattooed piglets being chased by a particularly hungry and vicious gypsy mob. Or a giant numbered dart board in the shape of Jack Tweed’s face that various strangers get to sneeze or gob on. Closest to the rapist’s mouth wins a prize. It could be a new fairground attraction, or a Channel 5 game show.

I digress. Do we really need to rely on Bill Gates farting random numbers to work out how much our buildings will cost? Is our construction industry forever indebted to Microsoft or controlled by its unerring accuracy? Instead, I suggest a new system. Each project is given a specific figure to work to (let’s call it a ‘budget’) and makes it happen for that. Special personnel are employed to manage that ‘budget’ and make it work – if they don’t, they are sacked. Innovative, eh? On the other hand, we could input all our project figures into Excel and it randomly produce where the bill gets sent. That could prove interesting, and no more scientific or reliable than guesstimating the numbers.

I have a cannonball...

I have a cannonball in my garage; a huge, rusted, iron ball the size of a football. I acquired it when Claire was gardening, she took it as a gift "so long as you carry it". It's a very odd thing to own, a cannonball, and I don't suppose it is something many people today have got.

It does beg the question "why is it in your garage?" when it is absolutely the most cumbersome and useless thing one could have for a trinket; well, I am fascinated by it. It's a cannonball, for goodness sake!

It was apparently dredged up from the Thames estuary some years ago and ended up as a curio in a pensioner's garden, from whence it was liberated and cleaned up by yours truly. It is devoid of markings (do weapons of mass destruction carry logos - 'this dirty bomb is brought to you by B&Q'?) so I can only speculate how old it might be and where it was made. Indeed, is it friendly? Is it a piece of foreign ordnance used for nefarious and violent purposes against the Empire?

I don't think I've ever had anything with the history and mystery surrounding it that this has; if it is genuine (and I don't believe you can buy modern fake cannonballs on eBay) then it is at least 175 years old and possibly very much more. It was obviously fired from somewhere to somewhere either in test, jest or anger, but from where and by whom we will never know. Did some French powder monkey with a life expectancy measured in weeks load it into a huge weapon designed and intended to kill jolly Jack Tars with hearts of Oak? Did a drunken sailor lob it over the side or drop it? Was it cast by Royal Ordnance to test a new device?

It is the most purposeful and obvious object, in that it was only ever made for one thing - firing from a BFO gun. But it is absolutely pointless now, could not and would not be used in any modern context. Made in an age where it was ubiquitous, surviving in an age where it is utterly pointless. It tells us so little in it's physical form.

MY EYES!!!!

There are times when I wish my head was detachable and I could reach inside and clean thoughts and memories off the surface of my brain with a Cif wipe. Sometimes I want nothing more than to permanently purge horrible thoughts and imaginings from my psyche forever…

I work in an office with a group of what are loosely termed ‘ladies’. Luckily I manage this office, allowing me the luxury of closing my door and avoiding their inane and often grossly incorrect discussions. I try to distance myself and refrain from correcting their grammar, facts, arguing against their bigoted points of view and attempting to enlighten them from their jaw-dropping lack of social awareness. However, sometimes I am at such a loss with their conversations it is impossible to do anything other than listen. And then regret it.

To describe the girls I work with as slim and attractive would be an understatement. To describe ‘understatement’ as ‘lie’ would also be an understatement. I think. They are, in a nutshell, bigger in girth and ugliness than they are in brain capacity. So when, earlier today, they described to me the items they bought form an Ann Summers party, I literally fetched a can opener and attempted a full leucotomy (Google it). Together with the altogether stultifying and brain-crippling purchase of crotchless underwear (a horrid idea, even on the prettiest of axe wounds), they also purchased a cheerleader outfit (in size 22), Pina Colada lubricant (for a size 18), nipple tassles (for a pregnant size 20), chocolate body paint (I’m sure at least one of them could eat a human, so this is surely just a garnish) and a spray to delay the male orgasm. That last one has to be taking the piss; personally I couldn’t manage an orgasm with any one of them if they had pictures of Rachel Weisz tattooed on their faces and I was drinking liquid speedballs from a pint glass.

The idea of fugly sex with, between or featuring any of them is alien to me; and I’m guessing that seeing one of them in chocolate body paint and un-gusseted panties would be the very personification of a polished turd.

I made attempts to etch-a-sketch erase my brain, but the violent shaking just made my head ache and I felt sick – as if I didn’t already. Having spent the week listening to frightening reports of illegal torture techniques used on terrorist suspects, I feel sure that it is only a matter of time before fundamentalists (guilty or otherwise) are howling in agony and pleading for their lives in a secret CIA camp, their eyes bleeding and their brains melting with the sight of these girls, loaded on WKD and Cheeky Vimto, erotica catalogue in pudgy hand, dancing to Dizzee Rascal; wobbling and gyrating in ill-fitting lycra sex-wear, edible and titillating items adorning them, spilling fat and grotesque gobs of unhealth like great big deep fried human Mars Bars. With tits.

See? I bet you want me to pass the Cif wipes now, while you attempt to unscrew your ears and flip open your cortex. Grim, isn’t it?

Plot thickening

I'm bored with kids' TV, so my warped mind has been in overdrive coming up with alternatives that would stimulate my brain. So here are some alternative plot lines for In The Night Garden...

1. The Ninky Nonk becomes a version of Murder On The Orient Express and every time it disappears through the bush, it goes dark inside. When it emerges, one character has been brutally slain and their gored bodies left bleeding on the carpet. A clue to the identity of the killer would be smeared in blood and grey matter on the window.

2. The Tombliboos are infiltrated by islamic fundamentalists and one of them (probably Tombliboo Oo, as he's a bastard anyway) appears sporting a beard and Qur'an. Instead of Tombliboo music, the perpetrator wails out a call to prayer at 5am. Systematically he brainwashes the other two and together they lay seige to the bridge, which they identify as of military importance. Only the intervention of a Special Forces unit led by Iggle Piggle can defeat them, and IP-007 (as he will be code named) eventually dispatches them all with a silenced Glock and Bowie knife.

3. Upsy Daisy gets done by all male members of ITNG, the episode ending with her being bent over her bed by Iggle Piggle, while licking spuff off Makka Pakka's sponge. With Mr Pontipine sticking out of her arsehole.

4. The Pontipines, disenchanted with the state allocation of property - they do live in a poxy little house, after all - hijack the Pinky Ponk and load it with explosives and Hydrogen. Whilst dropping propaganda leaflets manufactured by Mister Maker, they fly the massively flammable airship into one of the Ha-Hoos, igniting a huge fireball visible from Balamory.

5. Makka Pakka loses his mind, and instead of using soap on his sponge he loads it with Hydrochloric Acid and washes the faces off the Tombliboos.

6. In an episode reminiscent of 24, Upsy Daisy (played by her out of Lost) has to go round the whole garden searchng for a bomb planted by unnamed terrorists as the episode clock ticks down - a big comedy clock, with the contorted faces of frightened Numberjacks on it. Eventually, having explored all the areas, she is eventually hoisted by her own petard as her bed (which has been following her round) is found to be carrying a Die Hard size atomic weapon. She shits herself, her hair stands up and there is a blast so large it makes a new star in the end credits.

7. Tag Team wrestling between ITNG and the Tweenies, ending with Iggle Piggle clubbing Jake to death with a metal folding chair (a la WWE) and Upsy Daisy gouging out Fizz's eyes.

8. The Pontipines are found to be gypsies, and the bailiffs are sent in to evict them. Their house is found to have excrement smeared up the walls and a stash of scrap metal round the back.

9. Makka Pakka discovers all the flowers are in fact Opiates, and the whole cast lay about shooting up and dying of massive overdoses. Makka Pakka sets up a fortified drug den in his cave, with the Wottingers as lookouts, and deals Opium to the Teletubbies, cut with ground up stones and rabbit bones. A pale and not breathing Po is found slumped over the Noo Noo, a needle stuck in the triangle thing on his head.

10. A pitched battle following an invasion of the Garden by disenfranchised CBeebies characters, during which the Tombliboos take to the trees and drop stones on the invaders. Charlie and Lola are hung and beaten like Pinatas by Iggle Piggle, Roly Mo gets beasted and cooked over a spit by the Wottingers and Pontipines (combined forces) and Tommy Zoom has his torso separated from hi slegs by a speeding Ninky Nonk. The denouement is a Wicker Man - style scene in which Mr Tumble, beaten and tortured to the point of death, is eaten by a Ha Hoo and shat out as a large clown-flavoured pellet with a red nose.

11. In The Reich Garden: Makka Pakka is Josef Mengeler, his cave (which nobody ever goes in) is the scene of unutterable atrocity and horror. The Pontipines and Wottingers are housed in a Jewish ghetto, awaiting removal by the Ninky Nonk to Auschwitz. The Graf Ponk hovers overhead spying on the remaining inhabitants, and the Tombliboos - members of a fervent Hitler Youth - are tasked with guarding the maximum security house and bridgehead. Eva Braun (Upsy Daisy) and yer actual Adolf (Iggle Piggle) formulate a plan to annexe Chuggington for the transport links, and eventually across the African plains, where they aim to enslave Mama Mirabelle and her band of animal resistance front.

It's a scary place, my head...

Imperial-isms

It never fails to raise a smile on my face when I consider the contradictions that we both enjoy and endure; as a nation, we love to make things difficult for ourselves. An example:

We fill our cars up with petrol priced in litres, only to quote miles per gallon figures. Then, we fill our tyres up with pounds per square inch (tyres which have their width in mm and their diameter in inches) and set off in our heavy cars (measured in kg) to our destinations (measured in miles) guided by signs in yards and miles. We drink our beer in pints, our wine from metric bottles, our spirits in imperial gills and our soft drink from litre bottles. We know our height in feet and inches and our weight in pounds, and yet we are all uber-conscious about the grams of fat in our food. When born, our children will draw blank looks if their weight is quoted in kg or grams, but we all smile and nod sagely when parents proudly announce the length of their offspring. In mm. The grander among us measure our gardens in acres – and measure our lawn feed from a metric bag. Our houses are measured in square feet and yet they are built with metric bricks, imperial doors, metric pipe work and imperial timber. We know our nails and screws are metric, because it says it on the boxes, but we still feel more comfortable referring to them in inches.

Our temperatures are in Celsius, our rainfall in inches, our wind speed in mph and our snowfall in cm. When it gets cold, we press a metric-width switch to send a metric unit of electricity to turn on our imperial boilers, and send heated water (measured in metric) down metric pipes to radiators rated in imperial – all so we can keep comfortably warm, metrically. The angle of our hills is measured in degrees (imperial) but rolling down them causes us to speed up due to gravity (which we know in metric). We burn calories, not Joules, understand horsepower, not Watts, pound-feet not Newton-metres.

So we’re an imperial nation? Err, not quite. Be honest; do you know how hot it is in Fahrenheit, the capacity of your car engine in cubic inches, how many grams there are in an ounce or the difference between a ton and a tonne? Thought not. We’re a hybrid nation, a bastard cross of convenience and empirical stubbornness. We hate change, but we hate having to think even more. Take the time of 9,192,631,770 periods of radiation corresponding to the transition between the 2 hyperfine levels of the ground state of the Caesium 133 atom at 0 K to think about that. Or a second, whichever is longer.

I've become a Daily Mail reader...

I’m confused; I am encountering a feeling entirely new to me and it is causing massive discord in my internal workings. Indulge me:

I like to think that I am a reasonably well-balanced, well-read(ish) individual who knows right from wrong and good from bad. I detest the knee-jerk, mob-inciting sensationalist journalism that pervades our daily lives, and I refuse to consider the option of castrating rapists or deporting every single immigrant just because they have the chagrin to be ill in our country. Daily Mail journalists, meanwhile, should be hung and flogged simply for having the credentials (ingrained racism and misplaced patriotic fervour) to work for that rag. And that’s the problem; I’m starting to become one of those types, and there’s nothing I can do about it…

I saw the news reports on the child in Dundee that died at the hands of an uncaring mother and her violent psychopath of a boyfriend. I read the detail, considered my thoughts and decided roundly that the perpetrators should be executed. Similarly, the parents of young Peter, the baby that died horribly at the hands of violent pathetic imbeciles should be removed from the gene pool. Preferably flogged with razor wire, rolled in sand and vinegar and impaled to become weeping lollipops in a pit of pre-menstrual bears. At the time of writing this, my own son is twenty-one moths old, and despite his foibles he is absolutely guaranteed to raise a smile when I think about him. All babies, and especially toddlers, are loud and difficult; it happens. What doesn’t excuse the anger and frustration we all feel as new(ish) parents is punching said toddler in the mouth, stubbing a fag out on them, or allowing your equally disturbed and pea-brained Rottweiler to bite them.

What is utterly inexcusable in my mind is the concept of applying force to a child of such magnitude that it physically breaks them into small pieces. Consider scaling that force up to adults – what piece of machinery would you have to employ in order to deliver such a blow to a grown-up stomach? Mind you, given the parents, it could be fun finding out. A big, steam-powered punching machine with a glove made from roofing felt and angle-iron, weighted with bags of decomposing family pets and shark shit maybe. When I read such reports I get a physically hollow feeling in my chest, and the idea of inflicting such misery on my own children is so incomprehensible that I simply become angry and confused, like a Sun reader attempting to understand the idea of balanced debate. Or Jeremy Clarkson trying to grasp the concept of subtle irony.

I actively distance myself from those elements of the news now, much as I don’t like having to hide behind a cushion and avoid current affairs. I think my own problem is that I simply cannot fathom such violence against any child, annoying or otherwise, as they are wholly and completely innocent and trusting. Take your petty anguish and despair out on someone your own size, you unhinged abusive shit-for-brains bed-wetting torturer. Just don’t hurt babies, because my brain can’t handle the exasperation.

Things I do like...

In the interests of providing a balanced opinion, some things I do like:

The sound of my son laughing, the idea of having a son, celery, Private Eye, the ability to win people over by being reasonable and fair, Spaniels, water, cheesy Wotsits, Die Hard, Mahler, the smell of Castrol R, grass, smiling, clean windows, turkey, magnesium, ice, naturally pretty girls, hope, dishwashers, please and thank you, woodshavings, the voice of the woman on Vodafone voicemail, sarcasm, Cornetto, John Williams, square edges, trumpets, castles, trial and error, woodpigeons, lasagne, autumn, white paint, rockets and green eyes. That should do it.

NOT

I like to be warm, not hot; dry, not perspiring; awake, not conscious; quiet, not silent. I want to be taught, not patronised; entertained, not marketed to; persuaded, not targeted. I see colours as subjective; religion as intractable; attraction as elation. I dislike religion, not belief; defamation, not sarcasm; dissection, not examination. I aim for somethings, not everything; fact, not rhetoric; understanding, not acceptance. I've been rejected but not defeated; found out but not caught; labelled but not branded. I'm working for mine, not me; a career, not a job; life, not a lottery win. My cup still has some in it; my butter side is up; i look up to think, never down. I'm nothing special, not a special nothing. I'm given to faults, but not giving in to having them. I'm me, not you.

Wittering #2

There are some groups of people with which I have no sympathy. Some which I can't stomach for one reason and one reason only: their earnings. The justification for paying some people more in a year than I'll turn over in my working lifetime is just plain wrong. Footballers, for example... Now it is said that a room full of Chimpanzees with typewriters would eventually type Shakespeare; now if the freakishly talented ones managed a sentence, they would be equivalent to top football players and could be rewarded with obscene amounts of money, access to the most hideous cars and tricked by News of the World prostitutes. But, and here's the thing, they would still be Chimps, they would still pick fleas off each other and throw their excrement at you, and more than likely masturbate freely while being interviewed by Lorraine Kelly. Well, who wouldn't? So that's my view- pay footballers with bananas and old tyres on rope, and televise monkeys wanking over word processors. Sky would show it, without a doubt...

Teenage ticks

When I was sixteen I met a girl who, inevitably, I fell for. Let's call her Sarah- for no other reason than that is her real name. She was perfect; long straight black hair, stunning complexion and a cutesy mole on her top lip, ideally placed as a full stop to her beauty. We were close, visiting each other and conversing by letter (a much missed and forgotten format), and we talked as much as possible. Like the inept, emotionally unpropagated turd seed that I was I never told her what I thought of her, never tried to kiss her, never did anything other than let it sit in my brain like a sticky goo that refused to be coughed up in words. She, also inevitably, ended up getting off with the slimiest twat in school and broke my spotty heart. I hid it well; only around 95 percent of people noticed and I managed to keep it off the news. Just. I wonder about her sometimes- her name is too common to search for so I'm left wondering, probably eternally. I hope she's fat and unhappy though, just because I'm not. Bint.