I was at my parents' house last night, and Carolyn was at hers, three doors away. She phoned me to warn me that her children and their cousin were heading my way, trick or treating, so I had better answer the door rather than pretending nobody was in.
She phoned me again today to say thanks, and explained how, after they had amassed a decent haul of sweets, the children had gone back to grandma's and sorted them into two piles: sweets they liked, and sweets they didn't. They then gave the second pile to grandma and got her to palm them off on other trick or treaters.
I wonder how many sweets ended up back with their original owners.
A colleague was telling me yesterday about a solicitor friend of his who was at a nightclub and lost his cloakroom ticket. They wouldn't give him his coat back when he came to leave.
"Legally speaking," explained the solicitor, after several minutes' futile argument, "I am quite entitled to come back there and retrieve the coat myself. It wouldn't be theft."
"No, mate," said the bouncer, "it would be fucking suicide."
Believe it or not, I took this photo today with its title already in mind.
I really need to get out less.
BBC: Become scientists, PM urges young
Britain must encourage young people who want to "change the world" to become scientists, Prime Minister Tony Blair has said.
Good start, Prime Minister, but…
He stressed the importance of Britain's knowledge-based economy and said that, to keep it competitive, more scientific pioneering was needed.
ON NO, YOU'VE BLOWN IT!
Just listen to yourself, Tony. Exactly how many kids do you think you're going to coax away from watching the telly all day Media Studies with talk like that? Knowledge-based economy, my peach-like derrière! You've got to appeal to their base instincts. You need to sex it up. You're usually good at that sort of thing.
Don't listen to the Prime Minister, kids—he admits he knows nothing about science. Listen to someone who's been through the science mill. I know I'm no oil painting, but, when I was studying physics at university, the chicks couldn't keep their hands off me. I know it sounds bizarre, but talk about leptons and Bose-Einstein condensate and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is a major turn-on to impressionable young women of undergraduate age. Talk about fighting them off with a shitty stick, you wouldn't believe it.
And it works for the girls too. Even more so, in fact. You know how lads go on and on about Battlestar Galactica and computer games and stuff like that? Well, how do you think they're going to react to lasses who can slip terms like quantum chemistry, magnetic moments, banana bonding, large hadron colliders and Oh-My-God particles into casual conversation? The poor bosons won't stand a chance.
So remember, kids, what the Prime Minister was trying to say was:
college + science = S E X !
Honestly, you think you know someone—you've known them all your life; you camped in the back garden with them as a kid; you shared a pram with them; hell, you've shared Jacuzzis with them; you wouldn't hesitate taking a bullet for them—and then something like this happens:
Carolyn: ...You'll become one of those Grumpy Old Men next!
Richard: Actually, I already am one! Haven't you seen my list?
Carolyn: Is that list in any order? And what's wrong with Phil Collins - I LIKE Phil Collins - actually I'm sure I used to fancy him!
Richard: NOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Not like this, Carolyn. Not like this!
I was inadvertantly sexist yesterday.
I visited the dentist's to have a filling replaced. An extremely attractive young dental assistant showed me into the surgery. It turned out she wasn't the dental assistant; she was the dentist.
I'm not particularly good with needles, and flinched as she was injecting my gum. Half of the anaesthetic ended up in my mouth. It was disgusting.
After a while, she asked if my tongue and lips had started to go numb. They hadn't. We gave it a few more minutes. Still nothing.
"Would you like me to give you some more anaesthetic?" she asked. "We did lose quite a bit."
"No, I'll be fine," I said, bravely.
I'm pretty sure I'd have said yes please, if she'd been a bloke.
Carolyn sent me a text message this afternoon:
Why so drunk?
What is that crazy woman on about this time? I wondered. Then I had a horrible thought and checked my 'Sent' messages:
Dear Carolyn, I am extremely drunk, but you are still a 100% Diamond Geezer. Love, R xx
I have no recollection whatsoever of sending the text message, but I distinctly remember cracking open a bottle of whisky with my parents last night. I think my amnesia must be down to a near-lethal cocktail of Famous Grouse and dental anaesthetic.
Well, that's my theory and I'm sticking with it.
It's good to be friends with Carolyn again, though.
Assuming she's still speaking to me, that is.
For the last couple of months, I've been receiving fortnightly physiotherapy for what can only be described as a groinular injury. I won't go into details, but, suffice to say, I'm seen as something of a conundrum by the physiotherapeutic profession. I've had them pretty baffled.
This morning, my usual physiotherapist sought the second opinion of a colleague who specialises in something I don't claim to understand which seems to involve prodding people. I'm evidently on a bit of a roll this week, because the second physio turned out to be a rather attractive young woman. I promise you I'm not making this up.
So I'm lying there on this couch in just my shorts, thinking of England, with this new physio prodding around down below…
"Could you just relax your muscles, please, Richard?"
"Sure."
"Nice and relaxed… No, that's not it, you're all tense, Richard… Just breathe out slowly and try to relax… No, you're still tense… Do you find it difficult to relax your muscles, Richard?
"I do when you're doing that!"
BBC: BNP leader cleared of race hate
B[ritish] N[ational] P[arty] leader Nick Griffin and party activist Mark Collett have been cleared of inciting racial hatred after a retrial at Leeds Crown Court.
The BNP are a bad news. And I speak as a former, fee-paying member of the National Front. We don't need their sort in West Yorkshire. They should go back to wherever they came from.
BBC: Saddam verdict timing 'suspect'
Former Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind has accused the US of delaying the verdict in Saddam Hussein's trial to coincide with the mid-term polls.
I have to say, the same thought had occurred to me. In fact, I'm kicking myself for not mentioning it on Gruts a couple of days ago, because I could now be suing yer man Rifkind for plagiarism, probably.
What are the odds, do you reckon, of the Americans capturing or killing Bin Laden just before the next presidential elections, with Republican candidate, Condoleezza Rice, taking the credit?
Remember, you heard it here first.
(Unless you've been listening to Jason Calacanis on the Gillmor Gang podcast, that is… Don't want to get sued for plagiarism!)
Those of you with long memories might recall that I firmly believe that 2-D pie charts are far more informative than 3-D ones.
I think this rather amusing 2-D pie chart proves my point. (Internet Explorer users might need to scroll down the page a bit.)
BBC Sport: Richards named in England squad
Now I know what you're thinking, but no such luck, I'm afraid. Note the lack of an apostrophe. They're talking about Manchester City defender, Micah Richards (whose name is an anagram of crash mid-chair, by the way).
BBC: Archbishop attacks public atheism
The Archbishop of York has condemned what he called the systematic erosion of Christianity from public life.
Dr John Sentamu told lay readers illiberal atheists were undermining Britain's religious heritage.
In exactly the same way, presumably, that the arrival of St Augustine on the Isle of Thanet, the Synod of Whitby, the Protestant Reformation, heliocentrism, Catholic Emancipation, the Theory of Evolution by means of Natural Selection, the legalisation of homosexuality and the enthronement of the first black archbishop all undermined our religious heritage.
Sometimes change can be for the better, archbishop.
The day your practising-gay successor is enthroned by a female Archbishop of Canterbury will be the day, perhaps, on which we should start discussing the issue of illiberal atheists.
More Soundbite Science, courtesy of the Beeb (my emphasis added):
BBC: Is this the perfect comedy face?
Scientists have used computer software to come up with what they say is the perfect comedy face.
The University of Stirling team blended together 179 different facial aspects of 20 top comedians…
Researcher Dr Anthony Little, a psychologist, whose work was commissioned by Jongleurs comedy clubs, showed faces with a range of different features to volunteers, and asked them to rate how funny they thought the person was.
Why does the BBC keep giving free publicity to corporate-sponsored rubbish like this on its News website? For some bizarre reason, they've filed it under health.
BBC: Ban organised religion: Sir Elton
Sir Elton John has said he would like to see all organised religion banned and accused it of trying to "turn hatred towards gay people".
What a total pillock!
It's pretty damn rich for a gay man of all people to call for an activity practiced by millions of others (often in private, amongst consenting adults) to be banned.
What we really need, Sir Elton, is for people to work out for themselves that homophobia is wrong, and to work out for themselves that it's pointless praying to Empty Sky.
We need people to overcome their irrational beliefs by becoming rational, not by trying to persecute the irrational beliefs out of them.
(Non-nerds, please feel free to skip this public service announcement.)
Yesterday I upgraded my Internet Explorer web browser to version 7. I upgraded my Firefox browser to version 2 about a month ago. When you run a self-programmed website like Gruts, you need to check it looks OK on both of the major browsers.
For those of you who haven't tried it yet, IE7 is a bit of a curate's egg. It has some very nice new features like tabbed browsing, automagic RSS feed detection, and ClearType font technology (which makes reading web pages much easier on the eyes). But…
The menu, address, search and button bars at the top of the browser on IE7 are a total mess. Pretty much everything has moved, and there is no way to reposition anything, meaning there is an awful lot of wasted screen-space. The address/search bar now takes up an entire (fixed) row. You can't turn off the search box, which means you duplicate on-screen functionality with the Google search bar (if you use it), which is now forced onto its own separate row. Worst of all, the familiar navigation buttons are now all over the place: the back/forward buttons are top-left (before the address field), the refresh button is after the address field, the favourites button is second-row-down top-left, and the rest of the buttons are second-row down top right. Really, a total mess. I have had to become a bit of an expert in keyboard shortcuts in the last 24 hours, which is a major step backwards.
The conspiracy theorist in me suspects that Microsoft is not allowing me to rearrange my menu/address/button/search bars to force me to turn off the Google search bar: it now takes up too much valuable screen-space. To claw some more space back I have also been forced to turn off the menu bar. How bloody annoying is that?
So, despite some nice new features, IE7 completely blows it with the user interface. Which is odd, because Microsoft are usually pretty good at that sort of thing. If I were you, I would wait until they have sorted these issues out. At the moment, Firefox 2 is the much more user-friendly browser. It is also now noticeably faster.
Ooh! Ooh! Just thought of another one for my list of famous people lucky never to have met Rev. Spooner:
- Huckleberry Finn
My dad, watching a gardening programme on telly last night:
"They need the compost to get plenty of nutrients into the plant's bloodstream… I don't mean bloodstream, do I? I mean sap-stream."
When crossing a one-way street, look both ways just in case some sodding idiot cyclist to whom the laws of the road apparently do not apply is bombing down it the wrong way.
When she—for it was indeed a she, although I did not let that curtail my Anglo-Saxon expletives—ends up under a car, the headlines will no doubt read Motorist Kills Cyclist.
How Carolyn (whose surname is Farthing) is appearing to me on Google Talk at the moment:
Right, I'm off to see a man about a haggis. Back in a couple of days. Please feel free to talk amongst yourselves.
I'm back from a weekend in Edinburgh with Jen, who's up there on a two-week course.
I'll give you a few Scotch yarns later in the week. In the meantime, here are some holiday snaps.
[The haggis was fantastic, by the way.]
This one's dead easy to play. As you cross the border from England into Scotland, jubilantly shout out the word:
H O O T S !
For even more fun, when returning the other way, why not play the Entering England Game? The principle's exactly the same, but this time you shout:
O H I S A Y !
As Jen and were going down an escalator in Edinburgh on Saturday, coming up the escalator the other way was a group of a dozen pensioners wearing furry, pink cowboy hats.
"Are you chaps together?" I asked.
They looked back at me as if I was the one wearing a furry, pink cowboy hat.
Jen and I bought a few provisions in a local Spar in Edinburgh on Friday. The total came to £5.10. I handed the woman on the till a £10 note, and Jen handed her a 10p piece. The woman handed back a £5 note as change, which Jen pocketed.
"I'm liking the way that went," said the woman on the till, nodding appreciatively. "I'm liking it a lot."
I hadn't a clue what she was talking about.
I see Bailey's Irish Cream are advertising two exciting new flavours: mint chocolate and crème caramel.
That's on top of their traditional baby vomit flavour.
Guardian: Vatican urged to act quickly on condoms
The World Health Organisation's head of HIV/Aids called on the Vatican yesterday to speed up a decision on the limited use of condoms in pandemic-hit countries.
I do hope the Vatican finally sees some sense. There's a first time for everything. It was the previous pope's irresponsible position on condoms that made me realise that John Paul II was an evil little turd whom they would probably make into a saint one day. (Not that I believe in good and evil, you understand.)
On a lighter note, have you noticed the name of the WHO's head of HIV/AIDS who is calling for the Vatican to change its stance condoms? He is none other than Kevin De Cock.
You couldn't make this stuff up. I'll bet he was teased mercilessly at school.
It lends a whole new meaning to the phrase Thank Kevin for little girls.
I've been putting this one off all week, because I know I won't be able to do it justice. It's one of those stories where you really had to be there, but I've got to try to make some sort of record of it for posterity—if for no other reason than it involves a dead cat.
I spoke with Carolyn on the phone on Monday, and she told me a story which made me laugh so hard that I couldn't breathe, started to go light-headed, and was seeing dots in front of my eyes. I honestly thought I was going to be sick—which would have been pretty embarrassing, as I was at work at the time.
The problem I have repeating Carolyn's story is the very Carolynish way in which she told it: she started in the middle with what sounded like the punch-line, then went back to the beginning, jumped forward and back a bit, then went off on a complete tangent to an entirely different story that was just as funny, then she returned to the first story to flesh out some more details she had just remembered, and so on. It was all over the place, basically—which is hardly surprising, because it started off as a throwaway comment, which I insisted she explain.
Carolyn has previously accused me of embellishing one or two of my stories about her (which, for the record, I honestly don't think I did), but this time I'm going to admit it up front: I simply can't tell this story as Carolyn told it to me because, like I said, it was all over the place. So I'm going to have to use some artistic licence and write it as a monologue, rather than a two-way phone conversation—as if Carolyn were writing it. And I'm going to have to rearrange the story so that it is told in some sort of logical order. I might get one or two of the details slightly wrong, but I'll try to keep to the general spirit of what Carolyn said. [Carolyn has now commented on my version of the story and I have corrected some minor errors.] So here goes:
Did I tell you about the old woman who turned up at my door with a dead cat last Saturday? Well, actually, no she didn't: she turned up without a dead cat. I answered the door and she just stared at me anxiously, not saying anything.
"Can I help you," I asked. She looked down at the children, then looked back at me and mouthed, "Can I have a word?"
So I sent the children off to play, and the woman asked me to follow her up the drive. As we were walking, she asked me if I owned a long-haired, black and white cat. Oh good grief, I thought, what's he been up to now? Don't say he's been making lots of kittens! I bet she wants me to take a whole pile of kittens off her hands!
"Well, no, he's not really ours," I explained, in a bit of a panic; "he's a stray really. He just comes to the house and we sort of feed him. He's not really our cat!"
"Well, I've got him in the car," she said. "He looked so beautiful that I couldn't leave him."
She didn't actually say he was dead at first. When I worked out that he was and asked if he'd been in a road accident, she said yes, so I went to get a towel.
Well the cat clearly didn't look beautiful at all, because he was very clearly dead. We looked at him sadly for a moment, and I wondered what on Earth I was going to tell the children. It was only as the woman had half-lifted the cat out of her car that I realised it didn't look quite right somehow. I had a closer look, and said, "Actually, I'm not sure if that is our cat. Do you mind if I pop into the house again for a moment to check?" So I popped back into the house, and found our cat fast asleep on the bed!
So I went back to the woman and told her that it wasn't our cat. She looked slightly disappointed, and said, "Well, I suppose I'd better bury it myself then… I know, I'll bury it next to the horse I buried the other week!" I thought this was a pretty odd thing to say, but I later worked out she must own a stable or something.
I don't know what made me say it, but I said, "Well, if anyone asks, I'll say it's buried next to a horse"—which is a pretty odd thing to say too, if you think about it. Then, the next thing I knew, this woman was showing me loads of photographs of cats on her mobile phone, as if I liked the things. I don't like cats: I'm allergic to them!
WHY DO PEOPLE KEEP WALKING DOWN MY DRIVE AND DOING WEIRD THINGS?
Did I tell you about the five-or-so people who were walking their dog in our garden a while ago? I think they thought it was a park or something. We eventually had to go out and ask them what they were doing.
And then there was that time a few weeks ago when a whole pile of people decided to have a picnic in our driveway. They had deck-chairs and everything. I couldn't get my car out!
(Like I said, you really had to be there.)
On The Weakest Link last night:
Anne Robinson: In 2006, the TV series Le Bureau was the French version of which popular British sit-com?
Confident Contestant: Only Fools and Horses.
George W Bush (01-May-2003):
