Saturday Glastonbury 2008

Betty: Is there something wrong with me? I can't understand why people like her.

Geoff: I can understand why people like her. I can't understand why intelligent people like her.

Betty: It's like, if you were in a bar where she was performing, you'd carry on your conversation.

Geoff: She's the new Sade. Coffee table music.

Betty: It's like the 80s all over again. When pop music was very polished, accomplished and boring. I hate pop music now.

Geoff: I bet this is going to go on for the full hour. They're not going to show any Elbow or Hot Chip. It's the BBC trying to outdo ITV. If she hadn't been on that Nelson Mandela thing we wouldn't get a full hour of this...Well, actually we probably would. Because everybody's supposed to think she's some sort of genius.

Betty: I'd prefer James Blunt to this. At least you can laugh at him. He's a Tim Nice But Dim figure to me. This is just depressing.

Geoff: It's a choice between this...Joan Armatrading...The Wombats...Sod it, we're watching The Wire.

Betty: "When you walk through the garden..."

Geoff: "You gotta watch your back..."

Betty: "Well I beg your pardon..."

Geoff: "Walk the straight and narrow track..."

Betty: "If you walk with Jesus..."

Geoff: "He's gonna save your soul..."

Betty: "You gotta keep the devil..."

Geoff: "Way down in the hole..."

Betty: "He's got the fire and the fury..."


...ad nauseum...

Seven Songs

Boz has kindly handed me the meme baton. His own choices are great so go check 'em out.

So I must "List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs."

Although my spring sprung many moons ago, I can still dream...


1. Rush - Closer To The Heart
A week in Cornwall with nothing but Planet Rock to listen to may have been depressing but it made me re-evaluate my past. I still liked quite a few of the songs including this wondrous Yes rip-off. And any radio station that has Alice Cooper and Rick Wakeman as DJs can't be all bad.

2. Spiritualized - Soul On Fire
He nearly died, you know! Just think how good he could be if he was clean!

3. Sex Pistols - Bodies
Not an "abortion" song, a "Pauline" song. For more information, read "more info" on the YouTube page.

4. David Bowie - John, I'm Only Dancing
We can't get this version anywhere, just the inferior one on The Best Of David Bowie 1969/74.

5. Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel - White Lines
I've heard this by accident three times in the past few weeks. Is it linked to a new film or something? I wasn't too keen on it when it first came out but I love it now.

6. Scooter - Jumping All Over The World
To celebrate Germany's forthcoming triumphant Euro 2008 victory. As a result of my recent reading and watching, I can imagine a troop of Shane MacGowan's uncles and the puppets from Team America dancing to this. The chorus is, of course, lifted from the sublime A Glass Of Champagne by the brilliant Sailor. Now there's a solid gold classic.

7. Quiet Village - Too High To Move
From one of the albums of the year by Brighton's answer to The Avalanches. What the fuck happened to The Avalanches?

I hereby hand the baton to those of you on my sidebar who haven't yet done this. I'm nosey that way.

North Cornwall, June 2008

It started so well. The weather and the scenery were beautiful.


Absolutely gorgeous

We were really relaxed and laid back.


The foot that launched a thousand ships



Then came the dark clouds.


If Anton Corbijn sold holidays...

And with them came a cloud over my mood. A mini nervous breakdown, caused by the following...

1. Work frustrations rearing their ugly head.
2. The dead atmosphere in the village's one horse pub with its loop of The Eagles Greatest Hits Including The Really Shit Stuff From The Eighties and the seventies menu including gammon with pineapple rings.
3. The small claustrophobic rooms in the cottage.
4. Being woken at 6.30 each morning by the clippety clop hooves of a ghost horse.
5. The shit radio reception in the cottage, giving us a choice of the appalling Virgin or the "Take me back to when I was a miserable fifteen year old" Planet Rock.
6. The shit television reception in the cottage which made all the Euro 2008 matches look like they were being played in snowstorms.
7. Our dirty clothes getting locked in the cottage's broken washing machine.
8. A hairy coastal drive in which I thought the car was going to break down stuck on the edge of a cliff as I attempted a tricky seventy-three point turn.

We left for home six days early.

Those of you who aren't going on holiday this year can laugh your tits off. Go on, it's funny. Those of you going somewhere more sensible, I salute you.

I need a holiday.

A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall

We're off for a couple of weeks on Saturday. Not saying where, mind.

In the meantime, why not go here for some sizzling sausage discourse?

p.s. Bloglines had better sort themselves out by the time we get back. Or at least reply to my query!

Mark Lawson Interviews Alexei Sayle

Something Alexei Sayle said in interview with Mark Lawson. Something along the lines of "You can't be a real writer and host game shows at the same time."

I've never read a novel by Stephen Fry so I'm not really qualified to agree or disagree with Sayle. But I did accidently turn QI on for a couple of minutes at the weekend and wasn't really surprised by the level of sixth form debating society smugness on show.

I confuse Mark Lawson with that journalist who told the Scientologist "YOU WERE NOT THERE!" I kept expecting him to interrupt Sayle with those words. But Sayle was talking about his life and he was there.

He said Ben Elton decided he was going to be famous early on and everything he does is in the pursuit of fame. Ben will never be satisfied. I regularly see young women on the train reading Ben Elton novels. It never seems to be the same one. I'm sure that would satisfy most ugly middle aged men.

I have never attempted to read a Ben Elton novel, or an Alexei Sayle one. I did once try a Rob Newman one but couldn't get into it. I have never read a David Baddiel novel or a Frank Skinner novel or a Dawn French novel or a Jennifer Saunders novel or an Adrian Edmondson novel or a Lenny Henry novel either.

I wonder if any of you have ever read a novel written by one of the New Wave Of Alternative Comedians? Jo Brand? Arthur Smith? You know, one of those.

Royal Flush

It has been announced that Gillian McKeith has been employed by the Royal Family as their personal health advisor.

Here we see the first interview for the post of Royal Faeces Inspector.

The job is live-in and commands a salary of £12,600 per annum. The Queen is interviewing candidates herself as she wants someone she can look in the eye and feel comfortable with.

My Head is My Only House Unless it Rains

The credit crunch is biting or the credit bite is crunching, whatever, and people are losing their homes and first time buyers can't afford mortgages. Of course, it's been coming a long time as house prices have been obscene for a very long time and they've just been getting more and more obscene year by year.

BBC's The Money Programme and Panorama investigate by snooping on a few people's lives.

Except they don't choose people who you may feel sympathy for, people with mortgages at an almost sensible multiple of their salaries (I say "almost sensible" because it has been impossible for some years now for most people to afford a property with a wholly sensible mortgage).

The programme makers choose people like:-

1. The 19 year old boy who lives with his parents. His girlfriend and young child live with her parents. His parents are willing to give him the deposit on a house but mortgage lenders consider him too big a risk. He won't rent because renting is "dead money". This "dead money" bollocks has obviously been drummed into him by his stupid parents who got married at 12, had 16 children and still managed to buy their first home outright at the age of 21!

2. The young couple with a young child who are renting a tiny, damp flat in the very expensive town they grew up in. They deperately want to buy a property. The problem is their combined income is just about enough to keep them in a tiny, damp flat in the very expensive town they grew up in.

3. The family with the 125% mortgage, living in their "dream home" which they bought at the time when house prices peaked.

4. The 23 year old estate agent who has two mortgages. One on a one bedroom house for himself. The other on a one bedroom flat which he can only rent out at a rate which doesn't cover the mortgage he's paying on it.

5. The divorcee mother of one who expects to be able to pay the mortgage on a three bedroom semi all by herself! Is she crazy?

The only thing you can glean from these exposes is that we are living in idiot Britain. Nowhere did they say that house prices are absolutely fucking obscene and that a lot of decent-earning, sensible people are going to lose their homes or cannot afford to buy. No, they choose bleeding idiots for us to feel superior to.

Dumbing down cunts.


******


N.B. Betty's latest post doesn't seem to have been picked up by Bloglines. Has anybody else had this trouble? Is it something to do with her old skool template? Or has she been barred for taking the piss out of Lily Allen?

I Think I Need Some Sunshine

I'm going through a bit of a "blogging's a great way of making cyber friends but what, honestly, have any of us got in common?" phase. I haven't even got much in common with my real life friends, let alone you bunch of self-publishing egotists. Reading the Dawkins book doesn't help because I don't think I've got much in common with other atheists, either.

Take the British Humanist Association, of which Dawkins is a "distinguished" supporter. "The Humanist view of life is progressive and optimistic, in awe of human potential, living without fear of judgement and death, finding enough purpose and meaning in life, love and leaving a good legacy." So says President Polly Toynbee.

My view of life is pretty much the opposite to that. I am no optimist and I'm not going to leave a good legacy. I'm going to go out in an orgy of drink and drugs, not marveling at Mother Nature through Darwinian spectacles.

And as for the Association's "distinguished" supporters. Sirs, Lords, OBEs, MBEs, CBEs. Sir Jonathan Miller CBE! Come on Jonathan, you can do better than that! Sir Jonathan Miller CBE, GCE, BSc, Phd! There, that's better.