July 3, 2009

"Hello?"

"Hello."

Pause.

"Hello?"

"Yeh, am ere."

"What can I do for you?"

"Are you the right people?"

"I don't know yet. How can I help?"

"Right" - and you have imagine the scouse twang here - "I won us a George Foreman grill in a competition in yer paper, right, for Mudder's Day."

"Okay."

"And it's noh werrrrrkin."

"It doesn't work?"

"Nah, like."

"I see. It's never worked?"

"Oh yeh. It werrrked, like. But I dink a fuse as blown."

"Have you got the guarantee?"

"Nah."

"So, what is it do you want me to do?"

"Dunno."

"I see."

"So, youse can't do noddin den?"

"Well, no. I've never fixed a George Foreman grill before. It's not really what we do here."

"Oh."

"So..."

"Alrice. Ta anywhey."

June 30, 2009

I have discovered today that the president of the Rotary Club of New York is called David Wankoff.

No, really.

And the fun doesn't stop there.

Later today - not long from now, in fact - I'm meeting up with one of my old Thailand-dwelling mates, Roz, and her friend, who happens to be a new blogger from this parish.

Roz is the headteacher of a cool school on Koh Samui, which has recently added a special needs programme (and buildings) to its services.

Now, in Thailand, when referring to someone politely, you always add "Khun" before the name. A bit like our Master or Mr or Mrs or Miss (but not bleedin muzz, or whatever it is).

After having heard the David Wankoff anecdote before, Roz tells me she has recently taken on a new teaching assistant, and wrote a piece about them in her school newsletter for parents.

And she's left me wondering if there is a better name in the world than Khun Tee.

EDIT: That link Leisure Man has posted below takes you to a YouTube video featuring a Dr Mustafa Kunt.

June 30, 2009

Tangoreceptor, noun
Sensory receptor responding to touch

"You actually said 'You know - when you've been Tango-ed' to her, and you still wonder why you're single?" asked a baffled Nipper, who'd spent his evening working on his tapenade and was really rather pleased with it.

"It was a jester's shoes moment," said Zeds, downcast.

"Clearly."

June 29, 2009

Gordon Brown is laying out the government's "draft legislative programme" in the Commons as I write this.

In amongst all his exciting and of course visionary plans is "a guarantee for one-to-one personal tutors for children at primary and secondary schools".

Yep. One tutor per pupil, he reckons.

That is on top of the many other equally wild and ludicrous pledges - god I hate that word - he's making too.

This on a day when Mandleson has casually said a figure wouldn't be able to be put on the Government's spending plans until after the next general election.

Which is when they'll almost certainly be out of Government.

So not only is Brown effectively starting the general election run-up early with what is effectively Labour's latest manifesto of lies and unattainable hopes, he's doing it without admitting what he'll spend - and more importantly where he'll have to cut spending, and massively - knowing that the whole thing is a bomb he's leaving behind to blow up under - most probably - David Cameron.

They're funny with their manifestos, Labour.

Twelve years after "education, education, education" they're still trying to find ways to get kids reading.

There was never the promised referendum on the European Constitution - instead the name was changed to "Lisbon Treaty" and then said with straight faces that it was something different.

And there was the partial ban on smoking in establishments that served food that the moment they got re-elected got changed to a blanket ban, ruining thousands and thousands of businesses overnight and many more since (see Redleader for more details...)

At a time when they say they want to clean up Parliament's finances, why bother spending a fortune preparing this legislative programme, half of which they know will never come to fruition?

Gordon Brown can promise as many things as he likes. Maybe two teachers for every pupil - perhaps four.

The fact is, he and his lickspittle cronies won't be around when it has to be explained that he can't do any of these things after all.

So why not just give us an election now?

June 29, 2009

I was asked this weekend: "Will you come to Glastonbury with me next year?"

"I would sooner," I replied, "bite off the balls of my own feet, repeatedly lump hammer my gonads, set fire to my hair, ram screwdrivers into my ears, chisel off my kneecaps, force concrete into my arse, and flay my own back with highly heated barbed wire, than spend so much as a single moment even watching the sodding thing on television, never mind spend days watching a load of people I've never heard of, don't like and certainly want to watch or listen, in the company of thousands of bearded gypsies wearing hemp and talking about how it was so much better before it went all commercial, like, man. Does that answer your question?"

"Pretty much. Will you come to Santorini with me for a week at the end of July on a dead cheap flight then?"

"Twist my arm, why don't you."

June 29, 2009

It is ridiculously hot in your office?

Because it's getting bloody hot in mine.

Then the phone rings.

"Hello, would you be so kind as to put me through to your distribution department, please?" asks a nicely spoken old lady.

"Certainly," I say, dialling the extension.

It's engaged, which I explain, and offer her the direct number.

"Oh, I've been ringing that for ten minutes now, and it's been engaged."

"Ah. Well, perhaps if you wait a little while?"

"Can't you put me through?"

"I'm afraid not. Because they're engaged, you see. You'll just have to try a little later."

"Well this isn't very good, is it? I want to go and sit in the garden."

Cue sounds of catastrophic explosion in Birkenhead.

June 29, 2009

...the volume of emails chugging into Outlook Express - eventually - and we're talking about about 180 here, most of them useless, as always - that have "requested a receipt".

Bugger off!

June 29, 2009

Glumiferous, adj
Bearing glumes

"Gloomy?" asked Nipper.

"Yes," said Zeds. "Sun pissed off away all weekend yet again, and here it is, Monday morning, me in work, and it's back with a bloody vengeance."

June 27, 2009

Martinet, noun
A strict disciplinarian; one who adheres to rules

"Completely within the rules?" asked Nipper.

"Yes," said Zeds. "Perfectly ensconced."

"And what time can I expect you back?"

"That's entirely up to her. After all - I don't ever get to set the rules, do I?"

June 26, 2009

I've just broken the news to Eggbod - well, I actually sent the text last night but she only got it this morning - who is currently holidaying in Scotland and is as web free as one can be.

She texts back to ask if Gordon Brown has sent his message of support to the Jackson family yet.

I reply suggesting he'll be moonwalking along Downing Street singing ee-hee around midday.

June 26, 2009

Vaniloquence, noun
Vain or foolish talk

"Please, tell me, yet a-bloody-gain, about your connection with the late, great, if somewhat slightly jaded, scarred, and tainted, Michael Jackson?" asked Nipper, after having been precisely asked by Zeds to do so.

"Thank for you asking," replied Zeds, "as it's not something I usually like to mention. Not very often, anyway."

"Pint, please," said Nipper, to the barman, turning off his non-buzzard ears to something he'd heard a million times before.

"I'm still a little chuffed that back in 1995, when Nicky Campbell had the afternoon slot on Radio One, he dedicated his daily Teasingly Topical Teatime Triple Tracker to a newspaper story that day about a reporter who'd had something of a scoop, and that one of the songs the listeners chose was Jackson's Man In The Mirror."

"Is that it?" asked the barman.

"Oh yes," said Zeds.

"You're barred," said the bar, er, man.

June 25, 2009

Apparently

June 25, 2009

Hurry up.

June 25, 2009

Dacoitage, noun
Robbery by gang or mob

They'd been sat, together, in the police station waiting room, maybe for almost an hour before they got called to the desk.

Zeds explained what had been taken: A tear blinked as he tapped silently on his own chest.

"You know you're not going to get it back, don't you?" said the officer, sympathetically, empathetically, and pathetically.

"He knows," said Nipper, quietly. "But we had to report it."

June 24, 2009

I do like Prime Minister's Questions - just because you can see the verbal punches bouncing off Grown Brown's miserable, battered face.

This week's ding dong was on who's going to spend the most money after next year's general election - Labour or the Tories.

As usual, slippery David Cameron managed to get away without giving any of his own policies or spending plans - but then, at the end of the day, he hasn't got his fingers on the public purse, and it's Brown who's accountable.

And how accountable he is.

The man veers and stumbles ever more to the precipice of his fantasy world.

The world where he boasts about upping public spending to save the country.

Yeah, that's right. Because that's just what this country needs.

More civil servants, middle managers, administrators, quangos, first, second and third tier health "trusts", advisory bodies, development agencies, utterly useless "tsars".

I don't know about you, but I just can't get enough of people unable to get a proper job telling me what to do, how to do it, and that it's "what the people want".

And while banging his stumpy, chewed fingers onto the despatch box ten minutes or so ago, doing the Tories' job for them by growling about their alleged proposed cuts, Brown said they "will not be allowed to happen".

Which presumably means he really is going to try to get some form of proportional representation into the legislature in a last, vain, outrageous hope of retaining his stolen power.

Horrible, though, aren't they? Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls, aka Mr and Mrs Smug, puppet Alistair Darling, and matriachal overlord of all she thinks she surveys, Harriet Harman.

People think it is hot today. Just wait till next year.

June 24, 2009

Keloid, noun
Hard scar tissue which grows over injured skin

"Are we now working on the basis that what doesn't actually kill you makes you stronger?" wondered Nipper, who had frankly made a right mess of the poached eggs, never having got the hang of the whisk motion, but was at least making a decent fist of the toast, and had been thoughtful enough to bring along some Tabasco.

"Hardly. Tell that to a soldier with one leg."

June 23, 2009

I've got a new friend, on Facebook - a friend of a real life friend.

They've been reading this blog - Thai Tales, to start with, because that's where our mutual friend and I met (in Thailand) - plus other posts I've pointed towards.

This is my galloping hubris handed a Red Bull, I know, but, with the permission of the author, I reproduce this poem written about all things red and JD here:

words on a page

the essence of you

sentiment and disdain

courage that falters

love that is agonising

messages, no defence

I pretend

I know you

smile and warm

stark, harsh, honesty

no secrets

How.

Did this happen?

mesmerized

those words again

I’m reading

all consuming

your search for approval

I throw mine at you

careless with myself

through the stillness

you can’t hear me

yet I am me again

I hold a pen

grip and feel

awakened

he who enters my psyche

thoughts controlled

your need crushes me

an intrigue and desire

pulsing

trembling emotions

you’re an image

and yet I respond

aching and longing

for your words on a page

Even I don't have the balls to comment on the sentiments, but, really, how nice is that from a stranger?

Memo to self: Write more.

June 23, 2009

Wow. And wow again.

Read about it here.

Thanks to leisure-man for the heads up (via Twitter).

June 23, 2009

The editor's phone rings, and I intercept it.

"Hello love, I've not got my glasses on so I'm not too sure who I should be speaking to."

"How can I help you?"

"I want to know if you've got any numbers for hypnotists."

"Eh? Why would we?"

"I thought you would."

"Have you looked in the phone book?"

"No. Can you look for me?"

"[EXPLODE]"

June 23, 2009

Gordon Brown has written an article today - well, has leant his name to some anonymous spin doctor's article anyway - in which "he" declares thunderously (as though he has any clout left at all, the idiot), in that rude, pompous, let's-put-all-this-stuff-and-nonsense-behind-us-and-move-on-for-that-is-what-the-people-want way of his, that "from now on" - and just wait for this; I really am genuinely staggered - "we serve one master: The British people."

You can just imagine him lifting his fat jowly grey face up towards the author of this meaningless bollocks and wobbling: "Well done. Good man. Great job."

So wounded and useless is he, he'll let anything be done in his name. Including a newspaper article where he succinctly explains, in a nutshell, that up until this day it's actually all been about him and his parliamentary chums, and not, in fact, the country.

And it still is, too, isn't it Gordon? Otherwise we'd have had an election, wouldn't we?

Then we have John Bercow installed as Speaker of the House of Commons. Jesus H Christ.

Six hundred and forty six members of parliament have spent the last month shrieking like schoolgirls about how dedicated they are to cleaning up "the rules", squealing about how life from now on will be one of probity, purity and compliance.

So what's the first step towards this?

Using spiteful political trickery to ensure that the man they all, equally, hate, gets the Speaker's job, just so that someone the other side might like doesn't.

Wretched, useless, spineless, feckless, brain dead tossers - the lot of them.

Ding dong. Bring out your dead.