… I give you Senator William McAdoo on Warren Harding whose “speeches left the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea. Sometimes these meandering words would actually capture a straggling thought and bear it triumphantly, a prisoner in their midst, until it died of servitude and overwork”

Now that is a proper put down. Reminds me of a few people. No, since you asked, I wasn’t including myself.

No, this isn’t some sudden epiphany or life changing statement, something rather more mundane but intensely irritating. Today’s paper offered up a story that the Government has spunked£1 billion pounds of taxpayers (er, that’s our then) money on transport initiatives in the last ten years. Doesn’t sound much I hear you say well here’s the kicker; none of that money has actually been spent on building anything at all. No tunnels dug, no stations opened, no roads widened.

This litany of serial incompetence can be subdivided into£250 million on CrossRail feasibility studies,£74 million on “tram preparation” whatever that is,£20 million on Thameslink consultancy and a further£20 million deciding what to do with the road to Stonehenge? How can that cost£20 million without actually lifting a shovel? What kind of study was it? Loads of£2000 a day consultants ensconced in a Bahamas’ hotel wondering “well what about if we cladded it with jism and dead antelopes, that’d be authentic“.

My personal favourite is 32 million squandered by Fat Boy Prescott commissioning “Multi Model” studies whatever the fuck they are. The reports are currently being recycled as peat somewhere in the “stuff no one gives a crap about” filing room in Whitehall.

I could go on but burst blood vessels await. The TimesOnline has more.

It’s hard to know what’s worst; the fact that congestion, environmental pollution and the power of the car destroy and devalue the country every single day while a billion pounds is squandered, or that someone is earning a hell of a living grazing off the fat of Government stupidity.

So in the style of “if you can’t beat them, join them“, I’m considering moonlighting as an environmental impact advisor (dirt). This means being paid to ride my bike.

Not the nonsense on the TV which along with Big Brother, Love Island and I’m a total gimboid please humiliate me render me Amish amongst my hipper colleagues. Did you see what Coleen did last night?“/”No, unfortunately I was already booked to disembowel myself with a wet kipper and frankly it seemed to offer more scope for entertainment“

Anyway televisual snobbery apart, memorable things have been happening this week, unfortunately I appear to have lost the ability to remember them. Firstly my phone/pda/camera/watermelon thingybob jumped out of my trouser pocket and into an unused shoe. That can be the only reason why I found it there, after tearing around the house like an arthritic but still whirling dervish for a couple of hours. Those shoes in particular could, and probably should, be reclassified as weapons grade munitions due to a year of sweaty commuting. Amazingly the calendar/contact list/buzzsaw survived immersion in the noxious footbeds and provided sterling service until I lost it exactly twelve hours later.

How did that happen? I’ll get to it shortly but it is deserving of a unique entry. Well I think so anyway and currently embarrassment begets writer’s block.

Once re-united with my virus scanner/internet browser/nose and beard trimmer, so vexed was I with my memory loss that the intense concentration required to ensure it didn’t once more leap from my personage, saw me abandon a very expensive rain jacket on the train. I’m only telling you this now as the nice man at Chiltern Snailways (never have a bad word to say about ˜em, honest) found it by proxy and it’s now back in my happy grasp.

Continue reading “Lost!” →

This is fantastic. A judge in the Philippines has been chucked off the bench for adding three mystical dwarves to his judging team. These are three dwarves that only he can see but they advise him on how to pass sentance. Amazingly he filed an appeal but slightly less amazingly it was thrown out on the grounds that “psychic phenomena had no place in the judiciary.”

Oh I beg to differ – wouldn’t that be ace; “my Lord, I now call Lord Such latterly of the Monster Raving Loonies who will exonerate me on every charge. Obviously not all of you may be able to see him” or “Any more ectoplasm in the courtroom and someone’s going to be in contempt whether I can see them or not“.

Although the judge in question is understandably downhearted at his failed appeal, he can be cherished in the knowledge that “From obscurity, my name and the three mystic dwarves became immortal”. That’s alright then.

Still at least the worst hasn’t happened in that “dalliance with dwarves would gradually erode the public’s acceptance of the judiciary as the guardian of the law, if not make it an object of ridicule.”

No we’ve got the British Justice System for that. Imaginary dwarves optional, sense of the ridiculous mandatory.

It’s all here

Great isn’t it? Deforestation of the Amazon precede the season’s openers with talking heads talking bollocks and deluded fans predicting feats of sporting heroism that in any other context would be categorised as ˜blatant untruths from diseased minds“. You know the kind of thing yeah, I know we finished bottom by thirty points, our manager was sacked for playing a lobster at centre forward and the ground was destroyed by a fallen satellite “ but I fancy us for Europe this year“

When you support a club like mine, all your best results come before a ball has been kicked – or again thinking of my home club, an opponent. Although support totally fails to capture my level of participation once the 1985-86 season terminated any actual turning up at the ground and then running away when the fighting started. This was in the days before all seater stadiums, instead four oblong sheds framed a white lined pasture that the cows had only recently dispensed with. Seats were seen as firstly rather middle class and secondly as ammunition. Occasionally if the butty van had run out of hotdogs (mining town, we had no need for abstract concepts, a hot dog was exactly that although warm road-kill offers a more descriptive summary), the shaven, sunken eyed hooligans with swastikas on their arms and hate in their eyes, used to eat the seats. Barking Mad as they were, I’d have to say it was a far safer culinary option that the sausage-inna-bun with Pirelli markings.

Sheffield was a two club city (ah the old jokes come flooding back: Best two clubs in South Yorkshire, United and Rotherham“, cue three days fighting and opportunistic looting) with Wednesday (a.k.a the pigs“, the trotters“, the grunters“, those big fucking lads in blue and white shirts, shit run for it“) having the best ground, the historical trophy provenance and the better team. United (a.ka. The blades“, The bottom of the league“, The team closest to administration“) had a long history without actually winning much, a lowly league position and a team of has-beens and never-likely-to-do-beens. I was queuing up a Sean Bean gag there but you’re spared. For now.

Obviously I supported United. Continue reading “Football’s Back!” →

Well that’s a relief because after the trials and tribulations of the last month, carbon dating would suggest a conservative estimate of about a 1000 years. It’s my birthday you see and the passing of time is definitely beginning to affect hair (almost gone), recovery periods (measured with a calendar) and neurosis’s (measured with a calculator).

Turning 38 last year was a bit of a wrench but at least it was just possible to deny impending middle age. 38 can be cheekily defined as mid to late thirties” but at 39, you just can’t keep living the lie. The best I’ve come up with is not quite 40” and not dead yet”

I don’t expect to have to go through this emotional hand wringing once the big four o arrives since I’ll be deep into therapy. However I did consider one last forlorn effort to attain a high level of fitness, a midriff that lacked a convex bulge and a diet that doesn’t consider peanuts and lager to contain all the essential food groups2.

But it’s become clear that even if this made me live longer, it’d make me miserable now, and I’d probably not thank myself forty years later. I’ve been a middle aged cynic ranting impotently at the world since the age of about twenty so realistically an octanarian version of Al is not somebody even I’d want to spend any time with.

I also spent a mad minute wondering how long my increasingly battered frame should be subjected to mountain bikes, or more specifically what happens when you crash mountain bikes. But then as some cleverer and yet more cheesy than I once said getting old is mandatory, growing old is optional”

So I’ll rage against the dying of the light a while longer. With a bag of crisps and a nice cold lager. And possibly some slippers.