Date

On Sunday I went on a date. We had arranged to meet in a pub. I arrived at the pub first. As I approached the door I looked through the window, into the pub It was full of groovy duders, drunk or getting drunk. More or less immediately,I also noticed a colleague from work. She and I have had cordial relations but she is a marketeer and the historic tensions between the techies and the 'flower arrangers' have often turned violent. I sometimes have wondered if she views me as the enemy. Or whether I view her as such for that matter.

I was not disarmed. I decided the best solution would be, short of coming face-to-face with her, to ignore that she was there. I bought a beer, took it to a table and waited for my date.

My date turns up.

She is the spit of the colleague.

I buy her a drink and we start talking. My colleague is rich, jewish and lives in Golders Green. Ditto the date.

At this point I was grateful of the post against which the date was leaning. Also I hadn't spotted the colleague for a some while. I wondered if she had left. But as I got up, to go to the gents, and walked around the post, I saw that the colleague was leaning against the other side.

As the exchanges with the date came to more and more remind me of exchanges that I had had with the colleague, and as I tried to drop my voice lower and lower, although it was probably completely inaudible at a standard volume, against the roar of the pub, I felt the evening deflate wetly onto the floor.

It was a blessing it was a Sunday. The pub shut at 10.30.

The date offered me a lift back to the tube.

'Drop me a line,' I said, and then added brilliantly, 'or I'll drop you one'. How is that for noncomittal?I have now have a keenly honed get-out line.

96.8 - we're back in the hunt. If I can limit my binge drinking to one weekend night, who knows what can be achieved?

Are squirrels the new rats?

'So I found myself asking "are squirrels the new rats?"'

On the way to the Shop, I noticed a grubby brush emerging from the bins. Looking closer I could see its owner perching on the rim, eating some indescribable footstuff. Noticing my interest, the squirrel scaled down the bin and as brazen as a pigeon approached me. I effected a lack of in interest and continued to walk. Unperturbed, the beastie took up a position in the middle in the (none-too-busy) thoroughfare of Jacaranda Grove.

I always remember squirrel as being great skirters of edges and not so much occupiers of areas. I presume that they feared death from the air - hawks and suchlike. Or the maniacal sadistic cats.

I eyed the squirrel and the squirrel eyed me. This critter was no Squirrel Nutkins. he looked distinctly peaky, suspisciously like a vector of disease. He'd probably be knocking in a few lady squirrels. The explosion in the population suggested that he and his confrere had been.

He got the better of me and I moved on.

Unmanned by the imagined virility of a squirrel .. these reflections are those of the Dry Bonk Holiday. I noticed an ad in the Lonely Hearts Columns titled 'my mind is my errogenous zone' . The woman said that she wanted someone who was intellectual in a 'Sunday Papers' kind-of-way. Yes, if you like pulling off over the lingerie section of a mail-order catalogue. I am trying to think of who she could be reading for this kind of stimulation. W.F. Deedes, Peter Hitchens? Worse, Barbara Ellen, Decca Aitkenhead? Worst, Richard Littlejohn, Gary Bushell? I think she best leave the mind for drifting. She should probe the secrets of her being further in order to find errogenous zones better adapted for the ecstasy she finds in the columnists.

Loop

Why do songs and expressions stick in your head? Today I hear the chanted name of 'Moqtada Al Sadr' alternating with the refrain of 'If I was your girlfriend' by Prince.

It's a third conditional, an impossible state of affairs, so it should be 'if I were your girlfriend'. Sadly our mother tongue's few nods to the subjunctive mood are being phased out. We'll only be left with 'if I were you'. I don't expect that Prince agonised over 'was vs. were' but I can see that 'were' would have buggered up the line rhytmically and tonally. 'If I were your girlfriend' -

'Whose this one coming with his 'weres', the cat's bleedin' mother?'

I see eye-to-eye with Prince here. But it is not a position in which I would be happy to remain. Aside from the fact that he is only marginally more butch than Liberace, his face is set rigid with desire in the expression of the butcher's dog eyeing a sausage. And he has done no favours to manhood in the general.
Woman to Man 'What would you do if you were my girlfriend?'
Man to Woman 'Er .. dunno'.

Aside from the dying fall, that is at present locked in my memory , I can't bring to mind the rest of the song. I remember that Prince gets histrionic in the middle eight, providing squealed approximations of how he is feeling. It a guitar solo by other means and Prince is a vocal axeman. He should have laid down his chopper and settle with looping the music ad nauseam. But unlike TLC, SWV, Kylie and Janet Jackson, Ponce, as he subsequently has reminded us many times, is not simply a pop artist but an Artist. And all the worse for it.

Abracadabra

I was in a deep slump in front of the TV at the Jacaranda Palace, debating the merits of going to bed. I suffer more from from 'the Terrors of the Night' than when I lived with others so going to bed is not an unqualified 'good thing'. Shuttling between Channel 4 and BBC 4, I miscued and hit BBC 3. There I encountered 'Mind, Body and Kick Arse'.

In my life I have had 5 fights - won two, lost two and a draw.

Fight One - Shaun Howard. After school one day Shaun Howard, 12, came at me, 10.
Fight Two - Verily I smited Shaun Howard's arse down, Old Testament style, the afternoon following Fight One.
Fight Three - Peter Allen, 14, took a lot of damage from me, also 14, but persisted in teasing me about the crush I had on Katherine Racey, 16. Verdict - Draw.
Fight Four - Holmer Green Youth Disco. Youth, 18 (? - he was driving a mini), asked me,16, outside and I agreed. The youth retrieved a chain from Mini. Rather pompously, I said that I didn't fight with Weapons. He said that he did and suggested that I use one of the iron posts that were strewn across the snow covered field. I turned my back on him and he jumped me. I took my portion without crying. I remember him looking down at me with my arms pinned by his knees and the punches raining in. He called me a 'country boy'. I thought this a bit rich given he was from Holmer Green. I came away with my jeans ripped.
An abject loss, not even plucky.
Fight Five - The 'Bum Fight', Brixton. On the way home from a club, still tripping the light fantastic, a tramp tried to smash a bottle over my head. The bottle bounced off. I managed to connect through the fug of my feel-good consciousness to an inner rage. I got the tramp in a headlock and ran in a shop window. Tramp keeled over. A win but not a dignified one.

I am looking to retire with this record.

'Mind, Body and Kick Arse' seemed to suggest however that you can never truly disarm and that you should maintain a state of martial readiness for attacks with knives and snooker cues, for men coming at you before and aft and the occasional bout with machetes or guns.

On the hope that I would be let off the invidious business of Mortal Combat on the basis that I had come wrongly equipped, I am the sort of person who would bring a knife to a gunfight. 'Mind, Body and Kick Arse' concurred that it was better to face a gun with a knife and it went further suggesting that it is better still to face a gun armed only with your barefists.

'Mind, Body and Kick Arse' fell into a context part and an application part. Like Jamie Oliver hanging out with the greengrocers and butchers of his trendy unspecified London Borough, the presenter, a martial artist Brummie sporting an antipodean jazz beard, first goes to sit at the feet of Eastern Masters. These Sensis are marked out by an embarrassment of the life-force, 'chi' and they had the measure of the Brummie in both physical and spiritual matters. Spliced with these 'theory' articles, this Bruce Lee of the Midlands turned to the brutish application of what he had learnt. He spread the word to bouncers, rugby players, snooker devotees and sports car enthusiasts. Unlike with 'the Naked Chef' the how-tos were so scant and delivered at such speed it was clear that there was no expectation that the viewer would be practicing the moves at home. Imagine how much more objectionable watching Oliver would be if you didn't think there was any chance of emulating his cockney culinary feats.

On the other hand I was very impressed by the Eastern Masters. They were old men's old men, a few heartbeats from an nirvana that they were already acquainted with even in their earthly forms. I am wondering if there are any Mr Miyagis local to Hackney and happy to take on an 'impetuous one' keen to improve his stats. I am not doing any of that washing windows shit though.




From 'zingerman’s big box of meat'


The box includes a pound each of Niman Ranch Smoked Ham and Pastrami, our Classic Black Angus Lean Corned Beef, Edward’s Breakfast Sausage, Nueske’s Applewood Smoked Bacon, Usinger’s Liverwurst, a link of Real Spanish Smoked Chorizo Sausage and two links of Niman Ranch Smoked Napoletani Salami. Over 7 lbs of meaty goodness, rounded out with a loaf each of Roadhouse Bread and Farm Bread.
Requires overnight shipping and a strong will not to overdo it.

Stellafication

Friday night and a speedy stellafication was achieved. We went to the Seacow first off, where we laid on the sauce thickly by toasting ourselves various congratulatory rubbish. And then to a usual-ish sort of bar, and then to the Redstar. By the time we had reached the Redstar we were wandering around like the victims of an train-crash.

So I was shredded the next day. 'The screaming reds', as Hollygolightly would have it, and to borrow another of her expressions, 'Quel Idiot!' R. and I sent a series of profane txts to each other, in an effort to make light of this exigency.

'Cock in toaster. Cock ON FIRE. No more wiener.'

There it was, and you knew it would get worse before it would get better.

Met with J. She offered the observation that aged twenty-one the body know no fear. Ten years later and the body is sending 'concerned' messages, in the form of enzyme and andrenalin release, back to the Executive High Command. J's suggestion was to go easy on yourself.

On Sunday I was blown off of another appointment so I went to play tennis with N and R. N has stopped smoking and is feeling weller and more energetic than he has a right to feel. I asked whether he got the jitters after booze. 'Had them for years,' he said in a blase fashion.

There then followed a boozey evening meal which, as my dad would likely point out, was 'much better than you would get in a restaurant.'
'What would you pay for it?' Mum would ask rhetorically,
'Hundred Pounds Up'.

Glands up to today so feel that death is imminent.

Terra Incognita

'Am going to China. For a year.'

Whisper it, for fear of the Jinx.

/BoxofRice, /BoxofDimSum ... ?

13 going on 30

'We are all 30 going on 13', opines Victoria Coren. What is it that shackles the Sunday Hacks and Hackettes to the most stupid received wisdom? The variety of ages in the population of 30 years olds spreads from a few hours old to one hundred and beyond. My inner child has become exceptionally petulent of late. I am 33 going on 2. My 13 year old self was someone in their late fifties. I remember a picture of me with my head cocked back rather snootily, as if I were a Lord of the Admiralty.

The occasion of Coren's piece is the film '13 going on 30'. It is a swapped-body number ('Big John, Little John', 'Big'). I understand it to be another lumbering reworking of the truth that American are monstrously at home with themselves. I was up-close-and-personal with this truth at the weekend.

I took a train ride from A to B in the company of a youngish american girl who was braying her wants and needs at a brother who was at the other end of the phone. The realisation dawned that if I had a front row seat on her consciousness, I could not have had more access to the core of the girl's being. With appalling directness she made demand after demand for the brother's love, for his understanding and for a full servicing of her wants and her needs. A more fluent modulation of desire I have never heard. Physically she was well presented but had that unpreposessing cornfed look that my Dad used to call pudgey. He used it of Carrie Fisher/Princess Leia. Her thickening ankles and matronly aspect spoke of her time in the sun almost being up. And I have to say, I wasn't sorry.

Wnekar

So there I am. I'm in the Virgin Megastore. I've bought a pair of shoes from Paul Smith. £80 for a pair of trainers, the distinguishing feature of which, is that they have no distinguishing features - they are completely white. The Art Op bag that they are packaged in is swinging off my arm. In my hand I have Prince Po's Slickness LP. It's produced by Danger Mouse. Do you know his work? No? I've listened to it in the meantime. It's rubbish. What is the chance that some ghetto blud will ever say something that speaks to me again? Zero. I pick up a Bella or Hello. Shell from Big Brother is on the front. She is in her underwear. I am immediately angry. Why isn't she naked? We've seen her naked. She should be naked. A young lady breezes past me. She is sporting a Tshirt with the legend,
'I fcuk but don't kiss on the first date'.
'Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.' I think.

It's a lunchtime low.


96.9 - 'H'allegedly, h'allegedly', as Ali G says.

how I nearly lost yesterday's lunch at today's lunch

The Big Cheese's PA has come to sit opposite me. There is no partition between my and her desk. We will become intimates. She has a voice that testifies to social leaps that it wasn't quite prepared for. She has a diction more contorted still. I noted that she was taking some time moving her stuff onto her new desk.
'No-one in support will get off their bleedin' chuffs for me', she explained.

So Ms Chuff, it is (thanks P).

I don't know if it was the mention of support's chuffs that triggered me but am now in subterrenean agony.

Today I have had such ructions. Beneath the surface the tectonic conveyor belt has turned molten. Explosive emissions. Clay expelled hard into the water. Expulsions of sediment so violent that it threatens to uncouple the plumbing within.

Walking back from a pasta trough with the pregnant P, it threatened to be me who would drop the baby. Our sit in Soho square was curtailed. I made a Captain Oates move around the corner, to 'spare the others'. P kindly offered to return to the office and that relief of the disabled loo. Oh the shame.

Ms Chuff eventually managed to summonSsupport. She tried to throw her weight around with them. No-one throws their weight around with Support. Support are the largest and more deadly creatures on the Savannah.

When Ms Chuff refered to her PC as her monitor. Support looked at one another with an undisguised, 'we've got a right one here'. Ms Chuff got more irrate. She tried to plug her PC in herself. Again support stepped in and told her it needed to be 'built'. Mystification. I think that Ms Chuff is going to turn out to be an A1 non-techie. I tried to intervene with a cat-call of, 'just stick it in!' Support gave me a look of, 'you're a one'.

Ms Chuff has flounced off. But she will be back.

98 and a lot. Bleep tests tonight.

No idea

I went to see 'the History Boys' by Alan Bennett. I sympathised with the teachers.

I was sat in the backrow of the stalls, just infront of the wheelchairs. As I took my seat again after the interval an old man in a heavy 60 suit that smelt of carpet turned to his wife in the wheelchair behind him.
'Who's it by?' said the man.
'No idea, said the woman. 'Who's it by?' she shouted at an usher.
'Alan Bennett', replied the usher.
The old man smiled.
'We might have known, mightn't we?' he said.

97.1

RAGE

David Mamet writes -

[The vacarious identification with the 'good' characters in violent films] represses human feelings of rage, and our shame at them.

Mamet's article is interesting. I thought about it while I was watching 'Three Kings'.

The film's accommodation of the Other consisted of our boys assisting the good (disident) elements of Sadam's Iraq. Its whistle-blowing consisted of telling us that the first Iraq war was an oil war and that that the Kuwaitis were rich*. Its ending reaffirmed that the essential goodness of America lives on in the hearts of men like Clooney and Wahlberg. The price for our boys' survival was the touching death of a deficient piece of apparently celibate White Trash (Ice Cube, unlike the priapic Clooney and fertile Walhberg showed no sexual proclivites but he had a relationship with Jesus. A good second best. He provided the predictable monkish presence that often lurks in violent films).

My first thought was that I could live with the film if the ending was dynamited and all the US guys died. But that bought me up against the thought that the middle - which a 'Gunfight at the OK Corral' - ought to be done away with too. The film's prophylatics - its indie credentials, the dialogues with the enemy where the enemy lands some palpable hits and the creepy but botched attempts at establishing an equivalence between American humanity and Arab humanity - all failed.

Somewhere in every war film is the daddy war film 'Zulu', where the undifferentiated or, at best, barely sketched mass of darker faces are set against the sharp delineations of Whitey visog. Rubbish.

So far, so worthy. Fair-trade-bean coffee for everyone wearing Hemp trousers.

I was struck by Mamet's formula 'shame at our rage'. I can't think of any home for rage. 'Rage against the dying of the light'. Not much risk associates with rage if you are checking out. You won't have to face up to it tomorrow because you are dead. The only rage I can think of, is that exhibitted by children before they have been 'sat on the naughty step' (less useful version of smacking, I discover) to cool off.

I read an interesting but pedestrian paper about how in the Philosophical Anthropology of Max Scheler, rage relates to envy in the jobbing man of ressentiment. (There is a good bit on the affectivity of ressentiment -

anger, rage, begrudging, rancor, spite, Schadenfreude, hatred, malice, the tendency to detract, jealousy, envy, resentment, desire for revenge.

A day at the office then.) What seems apparent is that in that man of ressentiment (that's me and you buddy), rage is notable by its not being manifest but at the same time the psychological motive force that spins covetous Man on the Wheel of Ixion.

So what is the solution? Out to the woods for a Primal Scream?

Two things that are providing more than minor irritation at the moment -
1) Almost being killed on my bike and being completely to blame. Can my reader suggest any way to deflect blame from yours truly onto the driver? The drivers incidentally have already got their pound of flesh too. On the two recent occasions that it happened, I've had one 'Twat' and one 'Prick''.
2) References to 'Chemistry', as in 'there was no Chemistry between us'. Before I go any further, I should say that I haven't yet (well recently, everyone has had the chemistry card being played) been on the receiving end of that catch-all cry-off. But I am reading a lot about it. The custom is for the woman to deliver it. The man doesn't deliver this line because if something is not-up-to-scratch, it tends to be clearly and immediately evident and is not shrouded in the mystery of a chemical reaction. Allied to its cloakedness, 'Chemistry; has a strong whiff of arbitrariness. Perhaps the perceived lack of chemistry was down to the setting. Perhaps the lighting was wrong. These are entirely contingent matters which the other party can do little about. Male-me has the good grace not to say, 'well, I didn't think much of her rack' because the breast is not the determinant of whether the encounter has legs on it. Legs are a separate issue.

If you want to give the other person the dust off then have the good grace to say what you object too. 'I find his hauteur off-putting', 'he has buck-teeth', 'He is too tactile'.

I've written so much today, that I almost can't be arsed to read through it to see if it makes any sense. If you get meat vomitus, don't puke it up on your shoes.

97.8




*As an aside, how does knowing that either or both of the Iraq wars were oil wars help? Does that impugn their goals? My understanding is that in the 1970s Opec countries, in agreement with the US set the oil currency, as dollars. The trade of oil in dollars subsequently allowed the US to print sufficient money so that they could run what would have normally been bankrupting balance-0f-trade deficits. Just before America designated the countries making up the Axis of Evil, Iran followed by Iraq or Iraq followed by Iran (I forget which) proposed that the trade in oil should be in Euros. There was some economic validity to their proposal in that more trade takes place in Euros globally than in Dollars. The proposal could have found favour globally. Coupled with the enmity towards Saddam and the fear of Taliban-style government either in Iraq or Saudi Arabia, the US started to their campaign to force the Iraqis to recolonise themselves in America's image.
In this light you can see why the French and Germans opposed the war and why we headed off to save the Yankee dollar (and the little brother, the English pound). But if we had fallen in behind France and Germany and had been quiescent to Iran and Iraq's economic mischief would Opec switch to trading in Euros? What would become of the backwash of prosperity that laps onto the shores of the 52nd state? Would it look better for Gunther and Jean-Claude than little Tommy? Knowing fuck all about these matter, I would hazard that if the Sow from which we suckle had dried up, our meal ticket which has been underwritten by consumer spending and housing speculation would devalue such that we could no longer redeem it against a pain-aux-raisin. It would be back to white toast with the crust cut off for us. No more 'xbox for Christmas'. If the one of the role of the politician is to preserve the wealth of the country, then the Iraq war at the time could be argued to be necessary to our secured prosperity.

So it was an oil war. So what?