2012 - 1

Sex is Back!

Just when you thought it was safe to switch on the TV again - now that Channel 5 has swapped tits for CSI - BBC3 unleashes a week of programmes about having it off, losing ones virginity, solo pleasure and how to get your keyboard all jizzumed up.

The advert makes it look like it was designed for teenagers and young twenty-somethings, but in reality BBC3's audience of middle-aged men will probably explode. What I found particularly worrying was the line from said advert that features a man saying something along the lines of, "there are less people talking about it and more people doing it" meaning 'sex'. This baffled me somewhat because when I was young there were hundreds of people talking about it and only a minuscule percentage were actually doing it!

What a Load of Bollocks

I got my first bollocking, of sorts, this week.

After 4 continuous hours of being picked at the way you pick an ageing scab, I finally lost my cool a wee bit and suggested the person who was giving me a generally hard time was 'talking a load of bollocks'. Said recipient of the statement took umbrage at it and reported me to my boss, who didn't really give me a bollocking but it's such a good intro...

We tend to forget that the word 'bollocks' was the subject of a court case brought by Virgin Records on behalf of the Sex Pistols. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollocks and that, as this Wiki piece says, has two distinct meanings and in modern parlance is used more often to describe something as rubbish or nonsense. The problem is, like the German composer Thomas Wanker, you can't really use the word (or his surname) in sensitive company...

A Fruity New Year

On January 5th, I ate what will be the last raspberries off of my canes. The fact that all that was left on these sheaths of new wood were some plump bright red berries, while all the leaves have gone was weird enough, but there is something slightly surreal about eating this year's raspberry crop as early as June and they won't be my first of the year!

The Met Office has suggested that January will stay above average, but we might see some real winter weather by February. The Daily Mail was quick to point out that the winter of 1947 - regarded as possibly the worst of the 20th century according to this doyen of original facts - didn't really start until January 24th and lasted until the middle of March. I believe we still won't be able to forecast what the weather is going to do more than a couple of weeks ahead in 100 years, mainly because of the chaotic nature of meteorology and the millions upon millions of variables no computer yet invented could predict.

It'll be how it'll be.

Snot Fair

If you are of a delicate disposition then look away now.

I went back to work feeling like I could have done with a few more days off, just to make sure that I had shaken off the last of whatever bugs ruined my Christmas. But the reality was I felt well enough to face the hordes. I did, however, realise that I would need to go armed with a mountain of paper tissues because every square inch of phlegm I'd built up over the previous two weeks decided that Wednesday would be the day it started to make an appearance.

Having a chest and head full of green gunk is unpleasant at the best of times and you really don't want to be around someone hawking great globules of goo unless you're in a different county, but I had to deal with it in a very public setting. Catarrh is possibly one of the most unpleasant of human bi-products and I've always believed that it has its own intelligence, mainly because it seems to do whatever it feels like and we have little or no control over it.

This bizarre trait has come to my rescue somewhat in the last few days; it's like my body is holding it all in until I can be alone, to really have a good blow or cough. The wife went back to work this morning - yes, it's a Saturday, but it's worth a lot of money and she's been off two weeks and I think she's got a little bored. I got out of bed just before 9am and have been ... um... expectorating like a bastard all morning. I could have wallpapered an entire theatre with the amount of junk that suddenly feels the urge to depart my warm and crappy body.

Still, it will be nice to breath properly again. However, I get the feeling I'm still going to be the country's leading phlegm producer by the time this supposed cold weather finally hits us.

It's a shame that you can't use it for something. It's like bindweed, tons of it and with no practical value or application whatsoever.

Now, while I have the house to myself, I'm going to write a review.