Listen to the wonderful syrupy sound: Les Paul and Mary Ford – incredible.
and then look at how lovely the sky was yesterday
I’m off to go and see this today. Toodlepip.
Does anyone else see the word WANKER when they look at this picture?
Apparently The Krypton Factor is having a makeover and making a comeback to our screens soon. We used to call it the Cripple Factor in our house. In fact, we never used to call anything by it’s proper name – even each other. Anyway, I digress.
Wooh – did you see those shellsuits? Branded the ‘toughest show on telelvision – the quiz was hosted by Gordon Burns for its entire 18-year run. For the mighty comeback, its producers have promised to use “the latest technology” to challenge the next set of participants’ observation skills, intelligence and general knowledge.There will also be a return for the assault course which has been described as “iconic, menacing and 100% entertaining”. Here is a little clip centred around the ‘rapid response round’ – check out the ‘specially-designed speed chariots’ about 2 minutes in. It is almost vintage Monty Python.
Someone on Youtube has commented that they thought the theme tune (by Art Of Noise) was the best theme tune on tv ever. No it wasn’t – it was this!
these freakoids need to be put down for their own good:
I got a letter today (oh boy)! It was from my pathetic pension company Lincoln Assurance – oh I feel so assured thank you. Not. Only yesterday I was surmising that my pension must be a bit buggered considering that I knew the aforesaid pension company is US owned and based on ‘slow moving commodities’ Doh! Big doh! Anyway – guess what the letter said? Yes – you guessed right.
Sorry – due to there being no money left your monthly pension payment needs to go up – that way we can possibly recoup some of your money that we have squandered over the years and eventually tell you that it has not performed when you are old and ready to retire only to realise that you can’t. Actually – it was much worse than that – it really said – due to an ‘error’ it appears that your premiums have not been automatically increased by 7.5% per annum which they should have been since you took out the policy. We have identified that a number of these increases have been missed, which you may have also noticed from the annual mailings and statements we send you (er..no.). Please accept our apologies for this. (So you are admitting that it is your error then?). To correct this we will reinstate the automatic increase from the next policy anniversary in 2009. The level at which your premium will increase is not yet known (why not?) and so we will let you know this nearer the time. If you do not wish us to reinstate the increase then please complete the enclosed reply slip and return to us in the pre-paid envelope. (So I have a choice – then? Oh whoopee.) Not that I am paranoid or anything but:(a) they have been trusted with my money every month for the last 12 years
(b) if they have made ‘an error’ then shouldn’t they be compensating me for loss of pension performance/revenue to date?
(c) do they think I was born fucking yesterday? It appears they have a massive shortfall to correct due to the current nonsense world money meltdown situation and are possibly using this ‘ploy’ to recoup the money back in a sort of mini bail-out plan
(d) I will get to the bottom of this and they will become tired of speaking to me
(e) how do I get my hands on the little money I have invested in my idiot pension over the last 12 years with these buffoons? This is all I have to say to them:
(photo: courtesy of Big Al Davies – ukelele player extraordinaire to the stars)
I’m off to my dearly beloved most favourite person ever Godfather’s memorial/scattering/wake tomorrow – I may be gone for some time. Hit me for six if truth be known. I’m dreading it. Here is a picture of us at Chessington Zoo when I was nearly two (ish). I remember everything about it – it was a cold winter’s day and that was my favourite coat but I didn’t like having my hood up and I kept grabbing Chris’s eye sockets because he was the tallest man in the world – and the best. He will be so missed.
Chris Heneghan Always My Favourite 1945 – 2008
It’s the radiator! Noooooo.
The mechanic told me to stop thinking of my car as a love affair and put it on ebay.
I have been doing this all day (see above). Yes. It is a woman screaming. Let me tell you why:
09:00 Car seems a little weird to drive. There is a burning smell front left. It is an old Saab 900. It is ‘the Wagon of Rock’. It is about to kill me. How could it? I have just shelled out a whole year’s worth of road tax on it and I love it so. I nearly burn my hand off undoing the water reservoir thingy (some of you (notice I didn’t say ‘some male readers’) may know the correct term for what I am describing). Muchos steam and loud pitched squealing noise coming from the top. Sort of exhilarating in a worrying way. I go inside and don some fetching heavy duty blue rubber gloves (just in case) and pour water into the empty reservoir. It drains straight through and onto the street. Oh good. At best a split hose/at worst a new radiator which means scrap squidge for the (vintage moneypit) Saab. I can’t drive to the mechanic at the end of the road because it is blocked by an angry looking delivery man who isn’t going to move. So I have to drive all around the block. The mechanic isn’t there. So I have to drive all the way back again and park the car, write a note, walk down. post the keys etc etc. 09:30 Call my friend who I was going to meet at the airport for a quick coffee before he flies to Australia to say – sorry – not coming. Disappointing. Run for the bus – go to work. 10:30 Delays delays delays. Get stopped by Asthma research chugger – pretend I am on my mobile and show him my inhaler – no thanks. 11:30 Finally get to work. Have to crunch tons of work into a very small time frame. 14:50 Waiting for bus to take me to school to pick up the Son of Romo. It is freezing and there is every bus except mine. 15:10 Twenty mins left – my attention turns to a notice on bus stop about ‘closures’ and ‘diversions’. The diversion goes about two miles out of the way – I realise even if the bus comes now – I won’t make it. Decide to walk. 15:11 Am seriously power-walking with heavy bag. My neck hurts. My phone rings. It is a number that looks vaguely familiar. I answer. I shouldn’t have. 15:12 Having to listen to an ex-colleague who called up to talk to me about why I hadn’t worked with him for 10 years. He apologised for being a rabid freebase addict then but is clean and a Buddhist now. I knew that. He had forgotten that I only saw him 6 years ago and he was really drunk and aggressive and unpleasant so the Romo steel curtains came down. I’m like that. Be as horrible as you like for as long as you like – I’ll take it – then boom! Steel shutters engage. I will not speak to you again. I am almost having a coronary from the shock of being put on the spot, actually sort of enjoying talking to him again but kind of not either whilst I am power-walking next to a busy A-road of filthy traffic. I walk over Twickenham Bridge – he is still talking at me really loudly and has been for at least 5 mins – I fantasise about throwing my phone into the river – I see it in slow motion. I couldn’t as my arm has the equivalent of lockjaw. 15:35 Now waiting for another bus with Son of Romo showing off to his friends doing karate at the bus stop and blocking most pedestrians that are trying to squeeze by. 15:45 Bus 1 arrives. It’s full. Doesn’t stop. 15:55 (Could have walked by now but a mother I am talking to can’t be bothered and won’t).Bus arrives. Not In Service. 15:58 Bus arrives but he won’t let us on as he says in sign language that he needs a break. He sits there reading a paper for ten mins with the doors locked. It is now raining. Wanker. 16:10 Stop by the mechanics at the end of the road. He looks at me sheepishly and says he has had one of those days. We laugh – yes me too. He can’t even look at the car until tomorrow and looks very worried – he is worried that the radiator has gone. I decide to not think about it. We walk back out into the rain. 17:04 Terrible rasping screams coming from the front room. Son of Romo writhing in pain because he ‘can’t live without the telly’. He looks like he is channelling The Omen. I try to re-boot the cable box. Nothing works. It’s all freezing and cutting out and highly annoying. Oh well, it’s a dvd then. Possessed demon rasps: I haaaate dvd’s. I say: Do you want cheese on your pasta pesto? And walk away before the hex is upon me. 20:00 Have made fishcakes. Oven has been on for an hour but still not hot – just warm. 21:00 Fishcakes have been in an hour – but still not hot – just poisoningly warm. 22:00 Eating burnt grilled fishcakes. Aaaaaghhhhhhhhh!
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Yes – they were having a picnic in the NCP car park in Richmond last Wednesday. Insane.
Filming in Barking – oh the beauty.
That sex doll from Barking – strangled with her own arms. I discovered her when I went for a wee. Wasn’t nice. But I wee’d all the same.
More poor sex doll from Barking.
Unfortunately I knocked all the precariously placed cans off the shelf with a soft rubber ball at a funfair – much to the delight of my son and to the total bemusement of the stall owner seeing as no one is ever meant to win. Come on Scooby – let’s strap you in. He’s going ‘on holiday’ soon. It’s a one-way ticket I think.
One of Boy George’s entourage outside gay bar Profiles opposite work – quite possibly the worst track suit of all time. D&G leopard polyester reflective nightmare.
Out walking on the Thames embankment with my Dad – I presume it is paint.
The only time I have ever toe’d the line.
My Dad made and stuck this to a bag of birthday presents for me much earlier this year and wonders why he ‘got so many funny looks’ on the tube while he was carrying it.
Graffiti – haven’t got a clue what it all means.
Family with a tiny dog and deep plum hair having an argument outside Carluccio’s. Mother kept quiet. I’m not surprised. She looked a bit disappointed too. Weary.
A big thanks to Mr Planet Mondo for finding this. For years I have kept an unlabelled vhs tape with me wherever I go – from bedsit, from bar to street to bookie (no not really that was from Up The Junction by Squeeze but it’s such a great line!) to shared flat, to another shared flat, to one more flat and finally to my own house. We don’t have a vhs player that works in the house anymore despite them being un-thrown away and languishing in a cupboard somewhere. It has Tom Jones 72 Special DO NOT ERASE written on it in furious pencil. It has survived and I really must get it transferred to dvd before it gets too old and worn to play properly. Like a sad geek I have trawled the internet into the early hours on many an evening to find the whole programme and have found almost all of it apart from this – which is one of the highlights of the special alongside Tom’s duet with Ella Fitzgerald which I posted up last month. Then of course there was Little Richard, Joe Cocker and Johnny Cash. But Sammy Davis Jr’s version of Stevie Wonder’s For Once In My Life is perfect in every way. I love his voice, his outfit, his fag (he must have put the drink down just out of shot on that occasion), the dancers (the one to his left is/was his wife Altoise) and of course the vertical stripes – who said horizontal stripes are unflattering?
Music and performances like this make me happy. Yeah!
Good grief – Iggy Pop wears Crocs in Cannes shocker!
No – you are not allowed to laugh at the stack shoe as he has one leg quite a bit shorter than the other and a really bad back. He may be the only person in the world I have to force myself to forgive for wearing such abominable footwear.
Whatever happened to The Avalanches? They were a great band and Kuntz and Maguire made one of the best videos ever – here it is:
But what does it all mean? Which reminds me – I saw Bobby Gillespie walking through Soho today singing like an absent-minded child in the sun.
Rockmother 