April is The Cruellest Month....

After many moons another blog. Not because there's been nothing to say - just that the effort required to book space on the computer means I now write on the back of an envelope instead of on the back of the internet. Same difference.

So here we are five months later. In a pixilated economy, with our new best friend Obama trying to tidy it all up and re-freeze the ice caps like lime flavoured ice pops after they'd left the fridge door open. Increasingly I'm feeling like I'm in a really bad disaster movie. For instance, only last night my neighbour knocked on the door with reports of a smell of gas rising through the pavement. Stand back it's gonna blow. Soon the house was swarming with fluorescent jackets and bleeping bleepers. We'll be back in half an hour to drill up the pavement they said at 11.30 pm on a Friday night. A decided to have a bath before they switched everything off. Went to turn it on. A beer and a little look at a bicycle parts website later.......Drip drip drip. His bath had come to him. Through the kitchen ceiling next to the light socket. Stand back it's gonna blow. But no. They couldn't afford the special FX, so all that happened was we mopped the floor and the gas people drilled two tiny holes outside then drew yellow chalk round them.

Vacuuming dust coils from around drum kit in boys room I muse upon missing Trivial Pursuit cards and Teenagers Lost Watch. Recent sleuthings convince me that watch has been sold and cards have been used for roaches. Dare not mention to A who is is now the Dad from Quadrophenia despite his Irvine Welsh Glasgow years. Raise loose floorboards searching for stash and own lost marbles.

In this fickle time between winter and sun, April is chucking cold blossom on the pavement. The small children are big. And the eldest is away to the woods. A mental spring clean. A paradigm shift. Remembering always that truth is stranger than fiction. Remembering to look - but not too closely. Clean those windows.

I think I have to go. And it will be more Shawshank Redemption than The Great Escape.
(3 film - and 2 literary references in one blog indicate a winter of hibernation.)

Pick n Mix

As the four boys relaxed in the luxurious crumb upholstered
interior of the speeding Peugeot 406 estate, the talk was of the
morning's football...'What a goal!' exclaimed L, his flinty
gaze alert under a superficially relaxed stance.

'Don't look now but we've got company' murmured B.
I took a sharp right - careering through a shop front and winding
up in a deserted carpark. 'I think we've lost them' said J through
gritted teeth.'Can't believe you have to pay to park on a Sunday though'
grunted L.' We don't' said B as he brought down the parking meter in a
hail of bullets. 'Make it snappy guys - the film starts in five'.

The agents honed bodies tensed for action.'They've tracked my phone.
They know we're here. Quick. The roof!' Expertly they scaled the wall,
bounding across the tiles to the Peckham Multiplex - sending several
lumps of Deco architecture crashing to the pavement in the process.

Meanwhile the mysterious leather gloved Mr X intercepted the coded
message on the abandoned phone:
'Will u b home 4 t?'

J clutched the bullet wound on his arm 'Are we gonna make it?'
'It'll be tight- but if we don't pull this one we'll staying in at playtime. Forever!' B was ashen as they approached the kiosk. Fingers crossed. Here we go.
'Four children and one adult please' said J firmly. Minutes seemed
like a lifetime as they waited for the hungover-looking youth to print out the tickets....

J didn't flinch as he felt the inevitable muzzle of a gun in his back.
'Ah Mr Bond' purred a chillingly familiar voice...'It seems you have
forgotten your Pick n Mix....'

(To be continued........)

It's Closer Than You Think.

Feathers Ruffled

This week I joined the online discussion forum for local residents.

Like Caspar Hauser on a bad hair day, I wandered through the creaky door of this virtual village pub and everything went quiet....

A slightly obtuse statement endorsing a friend's new retail venture resulted in accusations of fraud and me being blocked from the site. People suspected I was the self promoting owner of the business. I had seriously breached the etiquette. The hostility my comment generated was amazing, even when it became clear I was unconnected to the owner.

In this cultural melting pot new tribes are still developing, both virtually and in Real Life. Tight little communities with their own rules, rituals and language. And I had spoken the wrong language...

So I apologise unreservedly to all those affected or offended...
Please accept 3 cows, a goat, and 2 Nintendogs.

Hey kids remember this day. Er.. mum wasn't it that other guy?

Cildo Meireles:Something Fishy at The Tate Modern

The Mighty Bush. Wall St. Crash and Bash

George we'll start with you. How the mighty have fallen. It's all your fault. Yep - that everybody has to work themslves into wan bleached out existance just to survive and ends up living on the knife edge of sanity. Being a Wall Street banker right now must be great. At last you are released from greed to go and keep sheep (or something with Kevin Costner in it.) Someone has to take the blame - and this month it's your turn, President Boosh. In July it was China - but then the Olympics were so much fun we forgot all about His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Damage Done. Who he? Funny old fusspot with glasses.  Anyway they ain't rich so it don't matter wot happens to Tibetans. 

...and now for Something (not quite) Completely Different.

All Secondary Schools are equal. But some are more equal than others. Don't go there you will be punched and become stupid. Do go here. It's all shiny and the teachers have nice hair.... 3 years later - entire reversal of opinion.

Fickle, Lemming like flock of parents topple over educational cliff to intellectual death and middle class alcoholism. And no, your job probably isn't safe. Particularly if you collide particles.

Now that the Cern Giant, as it were - (now there's a person with problems) has broken. What will happen? They can't all be getting their soldering irons out. Must be some element of redundancy.

Thank goodness somebody, probably God, sabotaged it before we all ended up in a strange screaming Francis Bacon world of anti-matter where it rains donuts.

How do you get Protons to stay in a tunnel anyway? If they are that teensy why don't they just jostle between the metal molecules to Proton Freedom? Please answer this genuine question !

So they whizzed round getting faster and faster. When they got very fast they got heavy. Then they were going to be bashed together. A bit like Crashing and Bashing. A game played with die cast matchbox model cars by, as I recall , seven year old boys.  

I think we could learn a lot but  "There's a hole in my neighbourhood down which, of late. I cannot help but fall."  Frankly, Elbow, with a sentence as clumsy as that, you deserve it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXzugu39pKM 

I'm off to do some hoovering.