And I really wish you weren’t. Because while there is much to love about a languid steam* through the rolling countryside. None of it includes the besuited human elements who have confused volume with importance.

If there were every a competition to crown the phrase most loaded with banality, a split decision would separate “Hello, 5:59 as usual, Yes back at 6:53, no I am still a boring and pointless twat” and “Please hold, your call is important to us“. With my casting vote, carriage-bore would receive both a small trophy and a first class excursion under the wheels of a passing train.

Yet, as the grimy suburbs of it-really-isn’t-that greater London were exchanged for the leafy smugness of Oxfordshire, my ire was drawn to the indisputable fact that the cockage to square foot ratio is even greater in our fine capital, than ten fat, middle aged men microwaving their ears in a doomed attempt to find someone who thinks they are worth listening to.

Let me furnish you with an example of how your average Londoner cares for nothing but himself**. During the now famous summer rains, navigating the broad streets of Bishopgate was somewhat hampered by an eye poking spikey roof. Looking upwards brought flashbacks of Hitchcock’s “The Birds” as sodding great Golf*** tarpaulins weaved in from all angles.

The only amusement was watching testosterone fuelled jousts of chicken as London-Man – cranked up to ramming speed – sallied forth like a first world war major heading over the top. The inevitable clash of brolly on brolly brought forth much swearing and no apologies. I swore too when the realisation that the bloke allegedly murdered by a poisoned umbrella tip had probably just been minding his own business on a busy street under rainy skies.

I pondered some more on this and other illustrative examples – Hotel rooms costing the same as cars, tube trains breaching almost all of the Human Right laws, Taxi’s having locked doors and no opening windows – to arrive at the inevitable conclusion that London is really shit, isn’t it?

Once I’d completed that rigorous analysis of 10 million people – and because the journey time back to Ledbury is better measured using units of glacial epochs – a slightly drunken conversation on the best cat recipes came floating back. The rather British Caterole was out pimped by the rather more cosmopolitan Catatoue and Cat L’orange. But my personal favourite was that old stable: Steak and Kitty pudding.

Don’t even try and do better. It took a damn fine bottle of red to create the definitive dead moggy cookbook, and it’s hard to see how that can be bettered.

* The coffee urn of nuclear death more than makes up for a lack of actual firebox waste products.

** Two mobile phones, one willy, zero politeness.

*** A pit offence even before size comes into it. What kind of sport needs an umbrella? You don’t even get that in snooker.

Our cat* is a proper mentalist. For the first nine years of life, it was a cold, calculating, face scratching little bastard with a mind sharpened to the point of evaluating every decision on how it could end up with more food. I knew it was a bit of a player on the transition from cutesy, puring, soulful ‘get me, get ME‘ to ‘see ya, wouldn’t want to be ya‘ taking all the time it took to free it from the local Cat Rescue.

And it is because Darwinism has yet to equip your average domestic feline with opposed thumbs that we ever saw the ungrateful bugger. Only the successful operation of a tin opener separated it from being a latch-flap pet – well that and its’ visceral joy at trapping fear shitting mice in a bin shaped wall of death scenario. At 4am. Every night, In our bedroom. For a fucking eternity.

Thankfully the passing years have slowed the vicious little sod down, so it’s rare now that I find my morning stumble interrupted by the squidgy horror of bare feet accessorised by bloody intestines. Instead, it has switched tactics, and is now fully in touch with its’ bonkers side.

First the looper fucker decided to take on a sleepy rabbit which ended in a towel based rugby tackle of the shit scared ** bunny, and the softest of rebukes from Carol “Now, please don’t bring rabbits into the house anymore. If that’s ok. Oh here’s some prime steak to get over the trauma”

And now it has taken to climbing the side of the log in a doomed attempt to gain entry through a tightly closed window. In the spirit of context, I should explain that due to lack of cat exit/entry system, I manually flap it every night in the manner of the Flintstones’ opening sequence.

It appears to have taken this quite badly, and after a few bloody amusing cat wailing plaintively against a locked door situation, the brain damaged nutter has taken to making a frankly dangerous ascent of the North Face of the Pine – only to find it can’t get back down.

So what does it do? Does it wait patiently to morning? Does it retrace its’ steps and hang about until it is let back in? Does it fuck?***, instead it yowls like the mad bastard it is and waits for a) some kind person to let it back in or b) a not so kind person to try for a home run using nothing other than a i) cat and ii) stick with a nail in it.

And now it’s taking to hiding in the bushes, sulking like a nine year old*** and refusing to return to the mother lode until a a family member prostrates themselves on the deck, with cat food delicacies rubbed into their hair.

I really want a dog. A proper pet you don’t have to bend down to pat. Something loyal, steadfast and friendly. I’ve been scanning the local adds for “Dog for sale: Eats anything, Loves Cats”

* Semantically less troubling that “Carol and the kids’ cat which shares a house with me, while I spend every day inventing new horrors to prove how much I hate it”

** Let me insert the word literally here.

*** Unlikely after the op. One is annoying. Any more and it’d be a swift combination of sack, water and bricks.

**** A sulk so deep they call it Cousteau.

… this time of year. For women, Tennis. For men, masturbation. Oh come on blokes, who spend eleven months of the year watching twenty two girly-men mincing about for ten grand an hour, or declaring a fascination for thirty more engaging in mud wrestling with funny shaped balls, have suddenly become tennis aficionados.”Oh can we put the Tennis on love”. Red button, Google for who has the biggest tits in the woman’s’ game, select match and get all jiggy with the remote control*. “No, not the men – especially that English hating Scot whose clearly descended from a certain W.Wallace – their power ruins the very aesthetics that make tennis so special” is a lie chucked into the black hole of disbelief worn by long suffering wives and girlfriends.

“Let’s watch this instead” / “Who’s playing?” “Not sure” / “Sharapova you say?” / “Pretty?” / “Well okay I suppose but not a patch on you” hurtles he-lies comet** while one’s inner willy is giving it the pumping elbow “Woooaaaahh, get a LOAD of that body, if she grunts like that on a tennis court, she is going to be absolutely sodding cosmic in the sack”

And now she’s out. Beaten by her rather plain compatriot only recently released from a facefull of teenage acne. And not just beaten, comprehensively stuffed which kind of gets us back to where we started. So a million men lament the buggeration that a once in a generation talent/beauty morph is pounded off court by a girl whose had giblet stuffing in her recent vocational history.

So I’ve heard anyway. I’ve been watching bit of the football occasionally flicking over the BBC smugness to see yet another plucky brit narrowly beaten 6-0, 6-0. Only the Scot left (I love this, “I am not Scottish, I am a Scot” – right on fuzzy hair, reject all that English middle class loving, good on you) and he’s clearly hunting for some distant Spanish ancestry to save him from showing any allegiance to the flag.

Wimbledon may be an institution but it’s a bloody odd one. What people remember of the empire gate-crashed by a million nations who are significantly better at the game. It’s last night of the proms with tennis racquets instead of conducting batons, but the whole displaced nationalism and dangerously edged hats shines through, even tho the sainted Tim has passed onto the commentary box.

Still now all the nice boys and girls have been knocked out, there’s confusion multiplied by 10,000 spectators trying to work out if they should transfer their affection to a fella who clearly cares not the slightest for their adoration. That makes it worth watching even tho the glamour puss has been shown the door.

* I have so many lame wank gags lined up, there’ll be a small prize for who gets them all.

** I believe St. Peter will take that terrible pun into account when sending me “downstairs“`