Geriatric Sex Games

God. I'm. Bored!

I need to get a job, but I also need to find something to occupy my time during these 'summer' months. I know how sad this is going to sound, but I seem to be slightly lost without football to fall back on. That's some achievement as I'd virtually given up on the game by the mid 1990s. It was Euro 96 that rekindled my interest and I've been suffering for 15 years...

I could go dancing naked on the lawn, but the temperature on the patio is 11 degrees which is fucking ridiculous as we're 9 days away from midsummer. But if I did that I'd slip over, do my back in and probably impale my large stomach on some rose bushes, catch septicaemia (if you can catch it) and end up on a hospital ward full of eccentric old bastards who do nothing but complain about the food and having to piss in jars. The alternative to this would be to go for a bike ride, but I gave the bike away last week. I could have sex, but there are laws against dragging people off the street and forcing yourself on them and I'm sure 73 year old Ernie wouldn't be happy, as he's the most attractive person I've seen walk past the house in the last hour... So, what better than to be sitting in my office listening to cheesy early '00s electro pop and contemplating my navel - which appears to have got bigger since my girth has expanded.

Obviously, having had a week with lots of oddities in it, a day of rain and boredom was always going to be an anticlimax. After all, my life can't be one long surreal moment all the time. Can it?

Considering I've spent a large percentage of my life under the influence of drugs, you would have thought that talking surreal bollocks would come easy. But no, it's something that comes along normally when I least expect or want it and like last night in the pub, a great one-liner or statement will be lost to the slow drift of adult memories. I sometimes wonder what people would have made of conversations I've had with various friends over the years; the ones that have started quite harmlessly and have descended into a world that only exists in between my ears...

Have any of you ever been to Wollaston? It was once in Birmingham, but the locals thought it was really boring so they banished the entire district to Northamptonshire, where it has thrived and has a cul-de-sac called Bell End. Doc Martens used to be made there; it has a water tower, another street called The Gap and another called Hookham's Path. I once couldn't find it, but that was back in the 1980s, and it was where I received the most startlingly stupid driving offence ever. I was driving home after another 30 hour plus deadline in London. It had been a long one and we didn't get a lot of sleep and we didn't get much chance to kick back and have a spliff; so as I was leaving at around 3:00am, my then boss gave me a big bag of grass; some of the stash which he'd been given to pay for comic mart advertising. I say 'gave me', but I had to pay for it, but I also weighed it out, so I made bloody sure I got a bonus.

I could do the trip from Finchley to Wellingborough in about 55 minutes - average - at that time in the morning and it was only because of places like Wollaston that stopped me from doing the 64 mile trip in less than 50 minutes (I did it once in 47 minutes, door to door, but I'd averaged 130 on the M1 and 90 on the A roads. I should have known better). This particular morning, it was clear, dry and mild; it was the middle of October and I'd seen about a dozen vehicles, all told, since junction 10 of the M1. I wasn't caning it, because I was coming into Wollaston, which is actually by-passed but I'd been stopped and warned by a solitary policeman a year earlier about driving like a bastard in the fog, so I was aware that the Old Bill had a presence there at ridiculous times of the day. I got to the roundabout and there was a milk float in front of me. There was also a 300 yard stretch of road leading up to the hill going out of the town. It's a blind summit, but at 4.10:am and pitch dark you can see oncoming headlights across country for miles.

I didn't see the red Mondeo parked on the road to the municipal tip, but it saw me. I overtook the milk float as it was going up the hill. It was going less than 20mph and I overtook it in about 3 seconds - nothing was coming from the other direction and I didn't pass one oncoming vehicle between there and Wellingborough until the red Mondeo reappeared with its hidden lights flashing. I really had no idea why he'd pulled me; you see I'd seen it follow me up the hill in Wollaston and had that 'feeling' it was a plain clothed police car, so I'd stuck rigidly to the speed limit. I'd not been drinking; I hadn't even had a smoke and I was still young and full of spunk.

I was really pissed off. It was 4.30 in the morning; I was knackered; I wanted my bed and 20 hours sleep and there were two coppers in the Mondeo and as I threw my car door open to ask what the hell I'd been pulled over for I remembered I had about an ounce of grass in my top pocket and my shoulders' slumped. Whatever I had or hadn't done, I was fucked.

The memory that sticks in my mind the most was being asked if 'I was known to them' and the degree of disbelief both coppers expressed at the concept that I was coming home from work. I couldn't resist asking why they'd pulled me - did I have a light out? I certainly wasn't speeding. I was asked to get into the back of their car and I sank even lower. I really wanted to have a go, especially when I discovered they'd pulled me for 'dangerous driving' and 'overtaking on a solid white line.' I had done neither; I'd started to overtake the milk float with 200 yards of broken lines left and there was nothing dangerous about the manoeuvre. But I couldn't really argue this with them. It was 4.30am and they were bored and there was two of them which meant that they could charge me and I had no legs to stand on. Argue with them and risk being arrested or searched and then a stupid driving offence would become a possession or even intent to supply charge. Also, they weren't lying; it was 4.30, I had been up for 36 hours. Wanting to get home and not be stuck behind a milk float for the four miles from Wollaston to Wellingborough was no an excuse, even if overtaking opportunities disappeared at the brow of that particular hill.

I sat there and listened to these two jumped up little Hitlers justifying why they'd pulled me; give me a lecture on the dangers of overtaking on hills and generally have them be condescending to me. I got 6 points on my license and a £150 fine - which, it has to be said, was paid for by my boss at the time because he felt I wouldn't have been going home at that time of the morning if it hadn't of been for him - so fair play to him. I considered going back to the scene and taking photos, mounting a case of my own and taking it to court and fighting it all the way. I knew, even then, that this kind of tenacious defence often resulted in the CPS just walking away; if someone has a case they'd rather walk away than be beaten and look like they're pandering to stupid policemen. But, it happened at a time (1996 - see the link?) when I was having massive agoraphobic episodes and I wasn't actually that bothered about the penalty points, just the fine and that had been handled for me.

Even now, whenever I'm out that way and especially over the last few years when I've actively worked with Wellingborough police, I've wanted to see the two traffic cops and (half) jovially call them a couple of cunts. I can't remember their names, but I'll never forget what they looked like. They probably got moved on to another force, or perhaps someone with more balls than me decided to fight one of their ludicrous allegations and they got shafted out of the force and into something more suited to their talents - sheep shagging or some MP's arse wiper...

I find it scary that 1996 seems so much like yesterday and is nearly a third of my life away. But it also amazes me that some of the teenagers who came into my shop in 1989 are now in their 40s...

All That Glitters is Not Gold

Every so often, I look at the letters OMG and think, 'Yep, I can understand why they said that even if I think it's a slightly daft way of expressing surprise or amazement."

Thursday 9th June was day where had I been 30 years younger I would have been uttering OMGs all over the shop!

Back in the late 80s, before my shop, when I flitted in and out of work, I used to hang around with some dodgy geezas. They weren't Premier league villains, but could probably give League Two villains a run for their money. One of the chief protagonists was a wiry little hard man called Cliff, who liked Dobermans, drugs and shagging, when he wasn't kneecapping people or other nefarious stuff. I actually found him quite funny in a sinister and scary kind of way and he liked me - thank the stars - which meant I could be myself around him. I haven't seen Cliff in probably 21 years. The last I heard of him was that he was doing time for a big LSD bust.

I was in the Weston Favell Centre on my back from some errands, when someone called my name. I looked around, saw no one I recognised and put my head down again. Then my name rang out again and I thought, 'I recognise that voice', but I could see no one I even vaguely knew. So I shrugged and turned again to go when my name was called for a third time. This time I turned and all I saw was a woman, probably in her fifties, standing looking at me with her hands on her hips. She was thin and exceedingly ugly, but there was something familiar about her. Then she started laughing. "You should see the look on your face!" She cried, and I'm standing there thinking, 'I know you, I'm sure of it'. But I could not for the life of me place her.

To cut an excruciating story short. I was looking at Cliff, who is now Joanne!

30 minutes and an awkward coffee later I had the full SP as Cliff (as was) used to say. Cliff had entered prison, spent a year keeping out of trouble, started doing some courses, met a man who was a hash dealing self-proclaimed new age guru and the two hit it off in a totally platonic way. Cliff's backside was never defiled, he was quick to emphasise as if he saw questions appearing as real words at the front of my forehead. Cliff got heavily into the kind of New Age bollocks that is both slightly crackpot, but equally enticing to the right kind of susceptible hippy or ex-addict. Tonnes of crystals, I-chings, chakras, incense and faux Buddhist banalities. Cliff's guru claimed he could read and interpret auras and one afternoon he told my old friend that he was living a lie.

Cliff/Joanne explained to me that the guru said he was actually a woman in a man's body; that his unhappiness was all tied to his failure to accept his inner woman. He said Cliff needed to build a life around the things he should be rather than pretend to be something he wasn't. I was always convinced he made a good nutter, but, hey, what do I know about auras? Shortly after Cliff came out of prison, he swapped his wardrobe for that of a woman, and began living life as Joanne. There's me sitting there thinking, 'Okay, he's barking mad, he's living life as a man in drag, who just happens to look like a man in drag, but he seems happy enough', when he starts to tell me about the £25k he's spent on corrective surgery - he specifically called it 'corrective' not a gender realignment. She even offered to show me what a good job her surgeon had made of her brand new vagina, but thought Costa Coffee was probably not a good place to go flashing your fanny in...

My face must have been a picture, because, no offence to Joanne, but I was feeling extremely weird - it was like I'd walked into another world. She just didn't look particularly feminine. but she's living with another woman on one of the council estates, trains and works as a peripatetic nurse and was about as threatening as Les Dawson in drag. She was quick to point out to me that at no point has she ever been attracted to men; has never been with a man and that I could rest easy (gosh, how relieved was I?).

When I got home I felt slightly strange; like I'd been on Candid Camera or maybe had just woken from a really bizarre dream. Come to think of it, I had more lucid dreams when I stopped smoking than yesterday morning was like.

By the time I dosed off on the sofa during the One Show I'd just about forgotten my day. I slept too long, woke up at 7.55 and was supposed to meet Roger at 8 so we could go for a pint. I won't go into the details of it, but during the two hours we were at the pub we learnt far too much for fragile middle-aged men.

Are you aware there's a sex act operating in Benidorm where a woman in her fifties pulls all manner of items, ranging from fairy lights to rubber chickens out of her... um... er... vaginal passage? She's a millionaire, apparently. This woman has so much control over her labia that she can open beer bottles in her front bottom... As if this wasn't enough bizarre imagery for one evening, we then discovered that most girls under the age of 25 consider pubic hair to be a) a hindrance, b) unhygienic, c) unsightly and d) unnecessary. These facts and several others that frankly I'm just too old and embarrassed to mention made me realise that growing up when I did might have been a relatively promiscuous time, but only relatively. The sex lives of the young and trendy is very much the same but ultimately much different from when I was their age.

When you factor in all the other things I've discovered about the yoof of today from the jobs I've done for the last 10 years, you have to wonder about the long term future for mankind, if on one side you have the puritans and on the other the hedonism - I'm wondering if the latter is actually winning, despite all we hear about oppression and fundamentalism.

I'm a bit Victorian, I think.

Random Bollocks

The fishwife showed his fuckwittedness today; well not directly, but through his stupidity.

The wife was stopped again by him; I disappeared as quickly as possible as soon as I heard his dulcet tones. He wondered if the wife had heard anything about an emergency black bin collection - I stood in the kitchen wondering if he was obsessed with bins and why he was so eager for the black bin to be collected...

Come to think of it, I haven't seen his wife for days, so perhaps he's killed her, chopped her into pieces and put her in the black bin and is hoping that the collectors are so stupid they won't notice body parts and 6 litres of blood being thrown in the back of a crusher. She'd just about fit in a black bin now; a couple of years ago you would have needed two...

Fishwife's father-in-law has access to cut down trees and every six weeks or so he delivers a trailer full of logs for Fishwife's wood burner. He has more wood than fucking Sherwood Forest and I've mentioned a few times that we would be happy to buy some of the wood off of his father-in-law or even him. He's always either avoided the question or said, "No, we'll sort you some out," and never has. We had a neighbour like him in Wellingborough who we called Ubiquitous Dave, because he was always there, knew everybody and could get you anything you wanted until you actually asked him for it and then he'd disappear until he figured you'd forgotten about asking him. Anyhow, a few months ago he says, "I've got a brown wheelie bin full of small logs; I'm going to put it out for the bin man unless you want it." I bit his hand off, but we never saw the wheelie bin until Monday when he stuck it outside the back of our gate and then hung over the fence and explained that we might not want all of it.

Now, the wood has been in this bin for two years and it has been gathering dust and climbing weeds at the bottom of his garden, but suddenly it's imperative that we empty the bin ASAP because. So today we started to do it. The first thing we were amazed at was the quality of the wood - it was as good as all the other stuff, nice and dry and we couldn't quite work out why he was going to dump it. But then again, we couldn't understand his obsession with the new bin collections. We got about two thirds of the way down the bin when I discovered something altogether really unpleasant... But first a story I told waaaay back when this blog didn't have a 2 suffix.

I remember him about 5 years ago putting disposable nappies into the brown composting bin. You might be aware that disposable nappies take about 200 years to decompose and have a half life not dissimilar to plutonium. I pulled him up on it and he was all apologetic, claiming it was a complete accident and he wasn't thinking. He promptly took the nappies out of the bin and back into his house. The following day when the bins were out and he had gone to work, I lifted the lid and saw that he'd put the nappies back in the bin and covered then up - badly - with some grass clippings. I took them out and put them in his black bin. It took me 12 seconds.

Fast forward back to today and his brown bin had at least half a dozen plastic bags full of dog shit - he owns a dog and I'm afraid I sort of lost it. The wife shushed me because he was at home and I said, "I don't give a fuck. I call him a fuckwit," thumbing in the direction of the Fuckwit, "But this guy is a prize wanker. He has two kids; what are they going to learn if their respected fishwife of a father puts non-compostable shit in brown bins. The man is a fucking imbecile." Then I found two empty Coke cans and a glass bottle as well, right at the bottom of the bin - which also had about 8 inches of soil in it.

I was not happy and my mood didn't get any better when one of the dogs ate half of my freshly made coconut cake and then proceeded to roll in some very unhealthy looking shit while out for a walk. She doesn't do things by half, our Marley.

Marley has been well out of my good books during the last week. I've been like a bear with a excruciatingly sore head - the wife was contemplating going into work rather than spending five days with Mr Angry. Fortunately, I've been more than useful around the house and without much prompting.

***

We're already picking strawberries and raspberries and it's barely June. To be fair, the strawberries are small and tasteless, but that's probably to do with the lack of rain we've had. What I am disappointed in is my French beans, which have been piss poor and I only have 2 out of 30 up. Two feet away from them are a dozen runner bean plants going apeshit. I don't understand beans.

My spinach has been awesome! Had over 3lbs in the last week and the seeds were 10 years old! My beetroots are doing well; my spuds look healthier than ever before and my peppers are doing better than I expected (one of them got Marley-ised, but I managed to save its life, despite almost being snapped in half).

Me and my vegetable adventures, eh? Rock and fucking roll!

***

I need a job...

***

I also still need a new fucking keyboard. Yes, I know I've not gone on about my keyboard for some time lulling you all into a false sense of believing that I'm used to it now, but I'm not. It's a nightmare.

Onan the Fishwife

Back in 1982, when I attended my first ever Glastonbury festival (headlined by Judy Tzuke no less) I came across a number of things - it was that kind of festival - however, one of the running jokes was a poem called Conan the Fishwife, which particularly tickled me as I was a fan of comics at the time and the idea of Conan the Barbarian as a mithering old woman constantly moaning and groaning about stuff was particularly funny. I have spent years trying to track the poem down, but I believe it is lost to the ether of time.

To the right is a picture of the crowd at Glasto that year; I might be in the picture!

Obviously, nearly 30 years later, I have my own personal fishwife, oft mentioned in these pages. This morning at 6.55am, the wife finally got to see why I call him that.

The wife is off work for a few days; we've got some stuff to do, but essentially it's a good excuse for her to get a few well deserved lay-ins. At 6.55 this morning, Fishwife decided to take all of his wheelie bins down the alley between houses. This set Lexy off, who yodels rather than barks and subsequently, we got woken up. The wife, huffing and puffing decides to let the ducks and rabbit out and trudging downstairs and into the garden in her dressing gown and slippers, bellowing at Lexy to 'shut the fuck up' - she's got a lovely way with words when she's angry - she inadvertently walked straight into the clutches of early morning fishwife; who is the same as any other time of the day fishwife, but far more annoying.

"Wah Wah Wah Wah Waaaah?" He says.

"I dunno, #####," she says.

"Wah Wah Wah Wah Wah Wah Waaaah Wah Wah Waaaah?"

"I. Don't. Know. #####!"

"Wah Wah Wah Wah Waaaah. Wah Wah Wah Wah, Wah Wah Waaaah?" No response from the wife. "Wah wah?" Back door slams. She comes trudging upstairs, kicks her slipper off and it goes flying into the bedroom knocking the contents of the dressing table everywhere.

"Fuck! Mutter grumble fuck mutter grumble, arsehole..."

"The fishwife?" I asks from my cosy warm side of the bed.

"Jesus! Is the man an imbecile or what?"

"I've told you what he's like."

"God, I didn't know he was that bad. He's just full of banalities and stupid fucking pointless questions."

"He only has the kids to talk to, that's why if he sees one of us he's at the fence."

"He was just asking me questions about the bin collections. I told him I didn't know, so he just went on about it anyhow, 'if they're not collecting the black bin that'll be another two weeks before it's collected' - at fucking 7 o'clock in the morning I really don't give a shit. The man is a twat. It's like living next to Flo again!" Flo was one of our neighbours in Wellingborough who was old and lonely and subsequently whenever she saw you in the garden would come and talk at you. She was so bad we stopped going into the garden until my Dad erected a big fence between the gardens, which in turn made her hate us - but that's a different story.

As it turned out, it was a good job he did mither at the wife the way he did because we discovered that our bin collection day was Tuesday rather than Wednesday. The new collection details are clearly put on the washable plastic fridge sticky thing that the new collection agency sent us last week - brown bins this week and every two weeks after, black bins next week and every two weeks after that. He's put his black bin out as well. The wife is right, of course, the man is indeed a twat. but I'd rather have him than Fuckwit (who, incidentally now only has one car and still manages to park it everywhere but in front of his own house!).

Actually, I'd rather live in the middle of nowhere with just a field of sheep for company. The bleating would be better than the constant Wah Wah Wah Wah Waaaah you get from next door, or the high-pitched Wah Wah Wah Wah Waaaah you get from his son.

One last thing - anyone coming to our 25th anniversary bash in September seen referring to the fishwife as 'the fishwife' will be forced to spend a weekend in a room with him naked with no earplugs.

Space Bong Baby

35 years ago today I went to my first comic mart. For the majority of you, a comic mart is like a record fair; it's a bunch of dodgy dealers in a room selling their wares to a bunch of unsuspecting idiots with money to burn.

35 years ago it was June 6, 1976 and it was hot. Very, very hot. While farting about on the 'net, I discovered just how awesome 1976 was. Are you aware that there were 36 consecutive days where the temperature exceeded 25 degrees centigrade? From the 23rd June through until the first week of July there were 15 consecutive days when the temperature exceeded 32C somewhere in the country and on five consecutive days it exceeded 35C. Or the fact that the temperature in London didn't drop below 20 degrees between May 4 and September 30 (except at night, obviously). Rainfall levels for June, July and August up to the 30th were what is now called 'trace'. In other words, it didn't rain and if it did we didn't notice it. But, here's a weird one for you; August Bank Holiday Monday in 1976 saw violent thunderstorms and torrential rain; so much rain that we had the entire summer average in 12 hours, making that summer no drier or wetter than any other year!

One little known fact is that on a day in June 1975, the 3rd to be precise, it snowed in England. I was at school watching the skies grow dark and then the heavens opened. There was so much snow that it even settled for a while. It is a memory I think will stay with me until I lose my marbles. Another little known fact about the summer of 1975 is that it was comparable to 1976 in temperatures, but much shorter. While 1976 had the first days where 35C was passed during the 20th century, 1975 briefly held the record for the hottest day, with 34.9C recorded near Gravesend in August.

Another dull weather fact, is that the warmest day of the year in 1985 was October 1st. It reached 30.5C and this was after the equinox. 1985 was a dreadful summer, even worse than 2006, 2008 and 2009, which were all pretty grim. On October 1st, 1985, me, the wife and our friends Graham and Clare (who now live in Queensland, which is very hot) went to Woburn Abbey and photos from that day show that the sun was sitting in an autumnal position.

In 1991, the country sizzled again. I remember sitting on my stool out the front of my shop as the temperatures got very close, but never reached 100 degrees. The warmest day, in July, was 99.7 degrees; the air was like soup and if you moved you started sweating. We were in the throes of a deep southerly air stream and it was so humid it played havoc with asthma sufferers.

June 6, 2011 and the temperature according to the thermometer in my car is 14C; it is overcast, it feels as though there's rain in the air and as I mentioned elsewhere, the forecast doesn't look as though it's going to improve before Wimbledon. Global warming has meant that the UK doesn't have summers any more; it has glorious springs and autumns; May and September are the best times to go on holiday.

***

Yes, I'm fully aware that the above is dull and boring; but I'm unemployed; what do you expect?

The TV and DVD Dump Thing

I talk about TV and film enough, so I thought I'd talk about it some more... In a brand new stylee. I'm going to translate this entire column into Albanian, then when you translate it back into English it will read like an idiot with six toes has written it on an Etch-a-Sketch.

Or not.

While we wait around for another (possibly tedious) season of True Blood and what surely can't be another brilliant season of Dexter, there are some strange things on telly at the moment (or not as the case may be).

The much talked about Game of Thrones has grown on me, but only like Athlete's Foot. I watch it with the feeling that perhaps I'm not treating it with the same gravitas I would something else (hence why I tend to refer to it as Game of Thongs) and while it finally seems to be getting somewhere, I tend to agree with my friend Kelvin who seems to think that this series has been about setting scenes for future series rather than actually getting on with it.

Sean Bean has also grown on me, probably because his Eddard Stark is not Boromir. The dwarf played by Peter Dinklage is probably the best thing about the series, yet didn't appear in the best episode so far (last week's). It seems to have an abundance of nudity, homosexuality, sword play, incest and intrigue to appeal to most fantasy fans, plus it hints at future storylines where we might actually get to meet proper fantasy creatures. All in a HBO series - quite extraordinary.

Over on the rival PPV station Starz, their attempt at out-Gaming GoT is drawing to a close. Camelot is due on Channel 4 in a few weeks and if you like naked girlies and Joe Ffiennes growling his way through the role of Merlin then you will love this (in fact, Ffiennes is the best thing in this series by a country mile, but he is an actor, unlike the rest of the cast...)

Camelot is a load of shite and I'm only sticking with it because next week is the finale. It has been thoroughly 90125 in its approach and to be honest you wouldn't take King Arthur that seriously if you lived there, especially with the dodgy ponytail. People wearing dodgy ponytails should have their ability to procreate severed. This is a series that is pure soap opera. Eva Green is quite fit in a real women kind of way. Avoid unless you're on your own and fancy a wank (but only for the first few episodes, the nudity dries up like the story after episode 4).

I've been banging on about how poor Doctor Who has been and I feel I should quantify this. I really like Matt Smith and I really like his Doctor. I feel Steven Moffat has attempted to bite off more than he can chew and if, as several of my friends are true, and this is a two series story arc, then he should know better because it's a kids' programme and if you're going to do this then it needs to be able to be followed and shouldn't rely on the viewer to have to fill in gaps in the narrative. I like it, but I actually find more problems with it than I ever did RTD's run on the show. Yes, Davies and Tennant were responsible for some crap episodes, but put it all in context. it isn't Sylvester McCoy; the sets aren't wobbling and some of the aliens actually look alien. If I was giving it a mid-term exam, I'd say B- 'can do better'.

Something the wife has been enjoying, but I'm struggling with is AMC's US version of the Danish series (translated) The Killing. I have several problems with this and they are: it is literally chock-a-block full of SyFy alumni. So far I've counted no fewer than 10 people who have been series regulars in cancelled SF shows - it makes it difficult to believe when you have characters from The 4400, Battlestar Galactica, various Stargates, Star Trek and a bunch of other shows. Nothing seems to be happening in the show apart from it rains almost every minute of the day. If I lived in Seattle, I would be complaining about the bad image this series gives the city. Not only do the policemen seem inept, but so do the politicians. I desperately want to like this series, but it's just hard going (and that's what I expected if I'd watched the Danish version first).

This seems to be endemic of AMC, who are responsible for The Walking Dead and a few other shows I've been recommended. It seems to promise much and deliver bugger all.

Someone commented recently when I was badmouthing some TV show that I couldn't talk as I'd sat through 10 seasons of Smallville. Fair point, but I can't remember publicly stating that I ever enjoyed the series. I watched it because it killed 45 minutes after the wife went to bed and was there when I was off work recuperating from a shoulder op. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless I really didn't like them and even then it wouldn't work because they'd have to be imbecilic to stick with it like I did. Oh...

I have witnessed a lot of extremely dodgy films in recent weeks, to the point where the wife views anything I put into the DVD player with the utmost suspicion. There have been few films I can honestly say that have impressed me.

We both thought that Voyage of the Dawn Treader felt like an easy way to end the Narnia films. it left it open at the end, but would anyone really be that bothered, especially as the next three books have little or no connection to the kids who have featured prominently in the first three films?

Speaking of films that looked like they were designed specifically for future sequels; we watched Priest last night - based on a manga comic and starring Paul Bettany (who seems to have reinvented himself as an action hero) as the eponymous vampire hunting hero, Karl Urban and a few familiar faces like Madchen Amick, Christopher Plummer and Steven Moyer. Visually it was excellent, but it never seemed to reach a climax and sort of petered out at the end. It ended with a set up for a follow up, but my guess is that it probably won't be successful enough for that to happen.

One film that did impress us also featured vampires. Stake Land is possibly one of the top 5 films I've seen this year and the only person in it you would have heard of was Kelly McGillis and she was so aged and dowdy you had to look hard to see the fit bird that starred opposite Tom Cruise in Top Gun. What a stunningly good film? It was made for about $500, but conveyed a real feeling of menace and the sets were remarkable. It reminded me of Monsters and that isn't a bad thing. The vampires in the film were also pretty good; a cross between zombies and characters from the Evil Dead; the only thing that spoiled it was the contrived villain at the end. A villain, it should be noted, who was very similar to Karl Urban's character in Priest.

Sitting on the pile of 'to be watched' are the two David Essex films from the early 70s - That'll Be the Day and Stardust; Tideland, A Cock & Bull Story, True Grit, six series of Ideal and in the same vein Smiley Face by the man who subjected us to Mysterious Skin. That's then; now it's time for something else...

Mutter Grumble Mutter Grumble

I'm not in a good mood.

"Think positive; at least they sent you a letter saying you had been unsuccessful, that doesn't happen nowadays."

A comment made by a friend yesterday after I'd received a letter telling me that my application had been unsuccessful. To be fair, it is rare that an employer will bother to waste postage to tell applicants they have been out of luck. you normally only get one if you've been to an interview and they don't want to phone you and tell you after. There was also the caveat on the letter that said that my skills would be useful to the organisation, so keep looking at their web page for future positions.

You have to look at the positives, otherwise despair is all that's left.

I confidently said, when I filled in the application, that I'd made probably the best job of an application form I've ever done. I followed the job and person specification to the letter; edited, re-edited and made everything just right. I said to the wife after sending it off that I met every single one of the Essential person specifications and all but one of the desired specifications - that was that I am not a qualified teacher. All I can think is that the job was applied to by a horde of unemployed teachers...

It, of course, could be my age. I'll be 50 next year and I'm wondering if prospective employers are scared that I might be a curmudgeonly old bastard who has no connection with young people (the job I went for was to help 14-18 year olds into education, employment or training courses) any longer. I just don't know. All I do know is that when I received the letter, my first thought was, 'Well, they don't send letters out telling you how unsuccessful you've been - I wonder when the interview is!?' That might have been the crushing blow I felt when I read the letter.

I have the opportunity to go and work with adults with learning difficulties. the job is about 12 miles away and pays £6.81 per hour (no shift or weekend enhancements) and depending on whether or not I'd actually like doing it. "You'll either love it or hate it," said my mate who has connections with the establishment. The problem is, I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I need to be earning something in the region of what I've just lost; anything less and we're in trouble. We've already cut back on stuff over the last year, not for fear of impending redundancy, but because the cost of living has gone up. Fuel costs on average 26p a litre more now than it did last summer; food bills have risen despite us cutting back on non-essentials. When David Cameron says we're all in this together; it's actually a case of some of us are in it far deeper than others.

***

With half-hearted apologies to my friends that Twitter, but nothing I've seen this week or in the last two years makes me even the slightest bit interested in it. One mate said that seeing as My Monthly Curse is going down well then I had no excuses not to be tweeting; I could publicise it even further. Another friend was really impressed with the way he was picking up 'followers' and after the Ryan Giggs fiasco, I saw several people's tweets on the BBC suggesting that it was nigh on impossible to sue or put embargoes on the people who tweet, because...

I struggle to put Status Updates on Facebook nowadays; the last thing I want to do or read is 100 characters of horse shit posted by someone else. I can see the benefits of the service where news dissemination is concerned; but not if I have to read what people had for breakfast, how solid their last shit was or any pointless or stupid bit of gossip about someone I don't know, will never know and am unlikely to want to know.

I don't care about followers. Really. Once you start getting people taking a lot of notice, you start to censor yourself - well, I do with my blog. Plus, if others lives are as exciting as mine then I don't want to read about it, encapsulated into a maximum number of characters. If television killed the art of conversation, then Twitter is killing detail.

I also really have a problem with Twitter people and their 'holier than thou' fucking attitude, where they think they're so much better than everybody else because they tweet.

Not interested.

***

Make the most of the weather today because if the three long range weather forecasts I've read in the last few days are anything to go by then Wimbledon will be a washout; Glastonbury will be returning to the Dark Ages again with mudslides and cholera and we'll all be wondering whether or not Britain is ever going to have a normal summer again.

Even the Met Office don't have a lot of confidence about the coming months. A generally westerly air stream is going to keep temperatures below average, with rain for the north and west and no change in the pattern. The BBC's monthly outlook is singing a different tune, suggesting that high pressure is going to dominate for June and it will be dry and sunny and warm; I expect that will change on Monday when the updated forecast is put in place.

Accuweather were the people who forecast the December cold snap to end, long before everyone else, and they have the rest of June looking poor. They've been pretty much spot on with their forecasts since I pooh-poohed their mild weather just after Christmas forecast.

Told you.

***

Obviously my state of mind hasn't been helped by my former employer's fuckwittedness regarding my salary, mileage and redundancy pay - none of which has arrived correctly or at all. It seems that I'm being penalised twice by the county council. Can't wait until I finally get all that's owed to me, that'll be the day I tell the world all the things I'm not going to at the moment.

***

Linking nicely into the last line of the above: I'm trying to download a couple of old films: That'll Be the Day and Stardust and it's proving to be more difficult than I imagined. I would have thought that two classic 1970s British films would be easier to find than most things, but this is not the case. It has been well over 30 years since I've seen either and I have fond memories. In fact, the final line of Stardust, uttered by Adam Faith, is one I've never forgotten and feel it is one of the best final lines in a film ever.

If you haven't seen the film or don't want to know what the line is, look away now:

Don't you fucking die on me!

Marvellous.

Now, if you're reading this, fuck off and do something practical; don't spend the rest of the last day of summer whittling it away on a poxy computer (or Twitter).