THE NOT SO GREAT ESCAPE

I was struggling to come up with anything new for you today, so instead I have taken the bones from a small incident that happened last week and expanded them into this little offering. I’m sure some parts of it will seem terribly familiar to some of you, but, maybe there is a bit more insight into the thinking process (or lack of it) behind those recent strange events. Either that, or this is all totally irrelevant and you can quite happily skip this one if you like...


I’ve been giving rather a lot of thought to escapes and endings recently, not least because, due to my own idiocy, I needed to escape for a couple of days to reassess my so-called “web-life” and my position in relationship to it, and how I personally chose to interact with the wibbly-wobbly-world. I wondered, quite seriously, whether I would be much happier if I were to eliminate my entire web presence, and disappear off into the modern equivalent of an electronic desert island. Is that even possible in this crazy web-driven world we all now inhabit? I do know people, real genuine people, who have nothing at all in the way of computer interaction with the rest of the world, and they seem fairly content with everything except the fact that people keep on trying to tell them that they need an email address.

It’s not as if I’m an all-encompassing omnipresent “Fry-like” presence myself. Heck, I wouldn’t even have a mobile phone if work hadn’t insisted, so it should be easy enough, I thought, to “switch off” for a couple of days and sort out just what it is that I want from my “other” electronic existence. How did I want it to work for me? Joining the FizzBoks and the Twits hadn’t exactly been my most self-esteem-building experiences, and they were both things I had kind of reluctantly approached and been rather sucked into against my better judgement. However, I was there now, and whatever presence I had seemed to sort of work most of the time, even if I’d never really taken to it with the kind of religious fervour that some seem to.

Anyway, with all this in mind, I set about closing down a few connections for a few days in order that I wouldn’t be bothered by the whole general mish-mash of the complicated interactions of so many people and things trying to scream out that they were here and grab hold of my limited attention. Being occasionally supremely digitally illiterate, I set about my task before I had really thought it through. It’s a strange thing really that you go through all the processes of setting up accounts and suchlike and are generally so pleased that you’ve managed to get the thing to work at all, that you forget how it was that you actually got it to work. Three years later (or whatever) when you finally replace your steam driven device with something newer and more 21st century, you go through the whole process again on a brand new operating system, and you’re there at four in the morning screaming at the bloody thing about how the old one used to work, so “why can’t you???”

Maybe that’s just me then…

I was halfway down my list of contacts (or, if you prefer “friends”), merrily “blocking” away until I remembered that there was a privacy setting that probably actually did what I needed it to, and “blocking” wasn't the way to go at all and had, quite possibly, dire consequences for all those tentative relationships that I was so brazenly switching off. So, if any of you reading this got caught in that particular fishing net, then you have my hugest apologies if you were or indeed still are feeling “snubbed”.

They don't come back you know... any marketing “expert” will tell you that. Then again… What on Earth do they know about anything?

So anyway, a few days have passed now and my brain has swung back from its latest adventures out there beyond the rim and “I have returned”, and I am still struggling to reset the privacy settings back to what they once were. It also turns out that, much like the drains, “unblocking” is a lot more difficult than “blocking”. This, until the very occasion when I came to use it, I did not know. I just thought that it was a bit like setting a preference and you could switch them “on” and “off”, but it seems to involve getting embroiled in a much more complicated situation than that and you are effectively required to beg humble forgiveness once the hammer has been allowed to fall.

I guess that must just be the price you pay for occasionally displaying signs above and beyond my normal level of stupidity. Mind you, if that’s the only penalty, I guess I got off rather lightly this time, although I suspect it’s not the sort of thing you get away with twice. For a while I managed to lose count and, knowing that I had inadvertently removed ten from my list of thirty (I know, I’m just so very popular… Who’d have thunk it?) before the penny dropped, I thought that I could now only think of nine to reapproach. I was convinced that someone had completely slipped from my memory, which, in terms of friendships and the like was not good. Really not good at all.

It turns out that, as well as being partially computer illiterate when it comes to procedures which are a more rare occurance, I sometimes can’t count either. I wrote down two lists of nine people, neither of which added up to ten and it took me fifteen minutes to spot that only eight of the names were on both lists which means, in the terms of statistical analysis, that both lists of nine included ten legitimate distinct and separate users. Sometimes nine plus nine does equal ten.

Of course it will not have escaped your notice, because you are very wise and intelligent people and, if you weren’t, well I’m about to tell you anyway, that the irony of all this was that, having decided to crawl back under my rock for a while, I then had to spend more time socially networking than I would normally have done sorting out the mess I made of trying to get away from it...

As to endings…

65 MILLION YEARS TO EAST SUSSEX

A new species of dinosaur was found in one of the pits at the Ashdown Brickworks near Bexhill, East Sussex.

Marvin was a dinosaur and he knew it. The modern, fast pace of life didn’t really suit him. He looked back fondly upon much simpler times when going out for a light snack meant chasing down a few smaller reptiles and washing them down with a couple of hairy mammals for dessert, but those days were long gone, and unlikely ever to return.

That had truly been his idea of a moveable feast, one that ran and needed to be caught. Being presented with a chocolate bunny by his manager once a year didn’t really cut it, especially one with those irritating little bells around its neck that he’d obviously picked up at the petrol station on his way to work in the morning. He blinked away a small tear at the thought of the petrol, remembering again how it was actually the compressed remains of all of the world he’d once known.

Easter was thankfully a few months behind him now. He’d never found it to be his favourite time of year, what with that four-day break to spend kicking around the house suppressing the urge to run rampant and eat a few passing tourists, and as for the eggs… Did these “people” have no shame? Tactless so-and-sos, munching away on the effigies of the children he could never have. He was too many million years away from his mate and all of his offspring had choked along with everyone else when the asteroid hit. All of the other few survivors had upped and died as soon as their time came and future generations had started shrinking and growing feathers and all kinds of other things so that eventually, far from being one of the tiniest of the terrible lizards, he’d found himself to be the largest.

He smiled at the memory. There had been good hunting in those days.

His stomach gurgled.

He looked about him amongst his fellow commuters standing alongside him on the platform to see whether anyone had noticed, but nobody had. It was strange, he always thought, that there he was, a six-foot lizard in a business suit, and nobody felt any need to remark upon it. This is why he liked living in England, people had learned to mind their own business. He snuck a tentative claw inside his briefcase and pulled out a raw chop to suck on, and the taste of the flesh in his mouth satiated the craving for a while. A bowler-hatted gentleman standing next to him, his eyes fixed on the pages of the “Financial Times” newspaper held open in front of him, tutted slightly as a small droplet of fat splattered onto the page he was engrossed in, but he failed to acknowledge Marvin’s apologetic glance and carried on reading.

Marvin glanced at his watch. He should really have bought a paper. There were still a couple more minutes before he would have to cram himself in with all the others for the stifling 45 minute journey to the city. They were quite lucky living this far out really, as you could usually at least guarantee a seat, and unlike most of his fellow passengers, Marvin quite enjoyed the stifling heat, especially at this time of year. He enjoyed much less, of course, the sweating it tended to cause from everyone else, but not because of the smell. That really didn’t bother him at all. It was because it made him so very hungry. Luckily a few chops defrosted overnight tended to settle the cravings, but he did wonder whether, if there was too long a delay one evening, he might very well finally lose all control and snack on a few of his companions.

He never really understood why he hadn’t gone the way of the rest of the dinosaurs. Perhaps being right at the very epicentre of the blast had saved him, he was never really sure, and it wasn’t the sort of thing you could just go up to someone and ask them about. One thing he had learned during his surprisingly long life was not to draw attention to himself. Living a quiet life like the one he currently did in his little house slap-bang in the middle of the East Sussex commuter belt was fine by him.

It was an odd life that he was living for the last of his kind. He’d spent hundreds of millions of years just refusing to evolve anything but a few of the more useful skills, whilst all of his friends had curled up and died. It had taken him a while to realise that he seemed to be living a very long time because the concept of time hadn’t really been something that he and his fellow dinosaurs had thought about all that much back in the swamplands. To be honest, they hadn’t thought about very much at all, not like nowadays. These days he did a lot of thinking, about things like his own remarkable survival. That had, perhaps, been something to do with the asteroid, he supposed. Back in those far gone times, of course, most of their days had been spent merely thinking about and then finding things to eat and how to avoid being eaten themselves, a lifestyle not dissimilar, he noted with a slight grin, to his more recent life working as an accountant.

At last the train rolled into the station and, pausing only to let the gentleman with the now crisply folded copy of the FT climb aboard and take his usual place next to the aisle, Marvin got on the train, and headed once more towards the urban jungle.

THE BIG RED MINI

It is a very strange phenomenon that when you really start to think about one thing, a whole raft of other memories can suddenly come to mind. This one particular photograph is a case in point. It is Christmas 1968, and the family are all staying at my grandparents’ house. The tiny potato-faced one is nearly four and a half years old and has just come face-to-face with his main present for that particular Christmas Day, a red plastic Mini that you could actually sit in and drive about the place.

This, it has turned out, was the only version of Alec Issigonis’s classic Mini car design that I have ever owned, well, apart from ones like the toy one I mentioned once getting around new year. Suddenly I’m noticing a slight trend in the pattern of gift giving here, which sadly never manifested itself with the “real thing” at a time when it would have been quite useful. I suppose that I’m being unfair there, because I did get bought a car shortly after I passed my test, a Mk1 Ford Escort in Electric Blue that cost about £300. It might not have been sparklingly new, and the brakes on the entire left side might have been a touch suspect, and you could open it with a half-pence piece, but it was a gift happily given and gratefully received.

Rather strangely, those early Escorts do seem to have become a bit iconic in recent years. I was in a craft shop recently, moping around the model kits whilst wool was being chosen, and amongst all the kits for making E-Type Jags and Ferraris, there were kits for that very Escort, a simple little family saloon from the early 1970s. Mine came to an ignominious end, colliding back-end to back-end with a Yellow VW Passat owned by a builder when those suspect brakes were tested rather too suddenly on a wet road and found wanting as the world slowly spun through about 135 degrees.

My friend Matthew at college used to drive a green Mini when he was occasionally allowed to borrow it during term time. It was a fine old classic from the pre-BL era with those rather funky horizontally sliding windows in the side doors, and a slight tendency to fling its wiper blades away at the worst possible moment. A later “sort of” girlfriend was also a bit of a fan of the Mini, and I fully expected her to take part in the annual owners’ club drive to Italy one year. It’s probably just as well that the relationship didn’t take, because four days in a Mini with me would probably have found her deciding to drive straight off the road and into a canyon.

So that’s pretty much my entire experience of the Mini car, apart from the one that the garage lent me once when Blinky was in for some major surgery. That was, however, one of the “new” ones and you had to start it by positioning something that looked like a tiny frying pan into the dashboard. It was an impressive car, but it just wasn’t the same.

The house we were all in on that long ago Christmas morning was called “The Hawthorns” and was a largish detached house built by my grandfather in the 1950s and (rather too) quickly sold by him 20 years later so that he could then go off and build their retirement bungalow. It seems odd to me now that a plumber would dabble in architecture, but I suppose that his various contacts in the trades and trade organisations helped to make it a slightly more feasible project for a tradesman to attempt. Oddly enough, I have few desires in that direction, finding even the prospect of having builders come to this ramshackle little place to do some much needed maintenance rather more than I can bear. Over the years, I have occasionally gone back and had a look at the place. The last time was admittedly quite a few years ago now, but it had been extended massively and the original house is all but buried within its new form. It looks as if some of the adjacent land has also been bought, as there is now a huge new driveway leading up to the house and so these days it resembles a tiny mansion. I do sometimes wonder whether the current owners might be interested in the construction photographs that I still have in a box (somewhere…), but I’m not really brave enough to go and knock on the door and ask them.

They might, after all, “release the hounds!”

My very first memories of having insomnia can be traced back to those Christmases in that house. I can recall one endless Christmas Eve where I didn’t sleep one wink as I lay next to a radiator, under the window, on the sun lounger that made up my bed in the guest bedroom my parents were also sleeping in. (I told you it was odd what else came to mind…). Some people try to tell me that insomniacs actually sleep a lot longer than they claim to, because they say that you spend a lot of the time in a half-dream state, but even now I can now recall every blooming second of that long and sleepless night from my childhood, and I can remember the almost agonising slowness of it ticking endlessly away.

Also in that picture is the petrol station/garage that was another gift that year. I thought that I had it for many, many years, because I remember the day I finally put it onto the bonfire. At our own house there was a patch of ground behind the garden swing where we used to regularly burn the rubbish on a Saturday morning. I got to quite like bonfires and would even be left to tend them at an age when it was probably hugely inappropriate for me to do so. One weekend, after the terrible “Summerland” fire had been all over the news, I decided that my garage should suffer the same fate, and up in flames it went.

I’ve just had a look and discovered that the Summerland fire on the Isle of Man was in 1973, but I was convinced that it was at least a couple of years later than that, because I would have been very young in 1973 to be so aware of the consequences of such a massive disaster. I suppose I must have started to become aware of the possibilities of disaster about that time, because holiday jets seemed to be constantly falling out of the skies in those days, and the Moorgate Tube disaster also sticks vividly in my memory. Serena Williams may well describe the past year as being a “disaster”, but I learned the true meaning of the word long ago.

My awareness of the aircraft disasters came, I think, because of the general air of nervousness surrounding my own first flight in late 1972. Cheap package deals to countries like Yugoslavia had finally become available if you saved really hard. I think they were so cheap because you got to fly on the pencil-thin Russian Tupolev 134A  aircraft that looked ever so flimsy sitting on the tarmac alongside the study looking 737s and never instilled the greatest of confidence as you approached it in the days when you had to walk across the actual ground to get to your plane.

One little photo, and suddenly we’ve been taken a journey through classic cars to Italy and Yugoslavia, a little bit of almost forgotten modern history, a touch of insomnia and some dabblings in architecture. All of this knowledge is, as yet, unknown to the tiny potato-faced one. I wonder if I could step into the picture and whisper in his ear to do something else with his life, whether he would take any notice?

I doubt it. He was a stubborn little sod.

QUATERMASS AND THE POTATO

After the lights suddenly went out, the people in the Abbey started to panic, and fled in every direction they could in order to escape the horror. One of the television cameras had been left in such haste by its operator that he had left it switched on, and, as it slowly tilted back upon its unlocked mountings, the team sitting watching in the mobile control room saw a glimpse of something high up, hanging from the roof beams, something unusual and horrible to look at.

Professor Quatermass struggled to make progress, pushing against the flow of fleeing people to try to get closer to the great doors. At one point he tried to shout above the noises and the screams, “Listen! Listen to me! I am a scientist…” He paused, winded slightly, as a technician barged into him, but he managed to stay on his feet which probably saved his life. Thankfully, his sturdy overcoat took most of the force of the blow and he recovered quickly and began battling forward once more.

“My name is…” he began again, wondering if it would really help, “Quatermass. Professor Bernard Quatermass. If that name means anything at all to you…”

“Oh yeah, we know what it means!” A rough cockney accent drifted across the general melee. “It’s all your fault, innit?” The Professor whipped around, trying to locate the source of this accusation, but the whirling sea of panicked faces failed to reveal him from amongst their number.

“Please…” cried the Professor, but his tormentor, the only person who had appeared to hear his voice had already been swept away by the crowds. Suddenly, he had passed beyond them, and it became strangely quiet and he felt quite alone. With a slight shudder, he gathered his wits and approached the sturdy oak doors, pausing for a moment before plunging into the forbidding darkness within.

He stopped for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. With the power failure the Abbey was only lit by a few guttering candles, whatever moonlight could penetrate the ancient stained glass, and the flickering embers from the burning clothes of the technician who had been so recently and horrifyingly electrocuted.

He looked upwards, towards the ancient roof beams, and thought that he saw something moving. He blinked and looked again. He could hardly believe his eyes. The vast organic mass that was just hanging there was bigger than he could have possibly imagined. Just what was it that Victor had eaten that had caused such a horrific transformation?

Outside in the sky, the clouds parted to reveal the full moon and, just for a moment, the thing that was once his friends and colleagues, was bathed in a soft and intense light. Quatermass could immediately see from the shoots writhing and twisting from one end of the tuberous mass that the creature was about to spawn. If that happened, it would probably mean the end of all human life on this planet. Humanity would, quite literally, have had its chips.

Why, oh why had the hospital chosen to feed him that baked potato that first evening after the crash landing? Why hadn’t they let him keep Victor in the controlled environment of his lab instead of whisking him away and into the hands of doctors untrained in matters of space medicine? Whatever organism it was that had consumed Victor’s fellow astronauts and adopted Victor’s form could, it seemed, assume the fundamental genetic profile of whatever living tissue it came into contact with. Why the form of the humble potato had come to dominate over three of the finest minds the British Rocket Group had amongst its number was a question for another time, and another enquiry. If, of course, they ever had another opportunity to meet up at all and have that particular post-mortem.

That anonymous cockney had been right, of course. It was all his fault. He should have insisted, but Judith had been so determined and he felt that he had done her enough harm as it was. She had wanted Victor to be moved as far as was possible from the influence of the Professor, and, upon bitter reflection, he could hardly blame her for that. Sometimes he looked into the mirror of a morning and felt like running away himself.

He stepped forward out of the shadows and into a pool of light. “Victor…” he tried to whisper, but his voice wouldn’t come. He cleared his throat. High above his head, the creature shifted menacingly, reacting to the noise.

“Victor!” This time the Professor shouted authoritatively. Again the creature stirred. Was it possible that it was actually listening to him? Did the combined consciousnesses of Greene, Reichenheim and Carroon still exist somewhere within that mass of animated vegetable matter? If they did, perhaps there was some hope for mankind after all, if only he could get through to them…

He drew himself up to his full height and tried to project an image of strength that he certainly did not feel, but which had occasionally been known to strike unnecessary terror into the hearts of his undergraduate students back in his University days.

“Carroon… Reichenheim… Greene… I am speaking to whatever human part of you still remains. I implore you, if there remains within you any vestige of humanity, please, I…I’m begging you… For the sake of all mankind… Do whatever it is you can do… You must do… For… for Judith! Victor! For Judith! For all of us…”

The creature made a sound, half roar and half moan. Quatermass wasn’t sure but could he, did he…, make out the word “Judith” buried within it, or was that just his imagination, his hope…? The form twisted and then there was a sudden spasm, and then another, and another. Something was definitely happening. What it was he simply could not tell. This could be the end of everything or just the beginning of something far worse. For a moment he just stood there and watched, but then his instinct for self-preservation clicked in and he took a few steps to his left to shelter underneath the boards of a scaffolding tower.

Seconds later the air was full of falling pulp as the creature exploded above him and a huge mashy rain of potato fell all around him whilst he just stood there in utter disbelief. After the last drop had fallen, the Professor stepped sadly forward, dipped his finger into the pile of grey organic matter in front of him and, for reasons that he could never really understand, took a taste.

He smiled appreciatively, wondering perhaps whether, instead of ending mankind’s future, the creature would have helped feed it. He stepped forward, remembering those last words that Victor had said on that fateful morning before climbing into the capsule.

“Man, we got mashed last night…”

“REAL” PEOPLE

Before we start I need to admit straight off the bat that I have never watched “The Apprentice”, so when a number of faces that I didn’t recognise popped up on the cover of my shiny new Radio Times this week, I realised that I was a probably a little bit out of touch, but then, that’s nothing new. Being out of touch with what the rest of the world “reckons” seems to be becoming a bit of a trademark position for me to be in lately. Oops! Slipping off topic there slightly. So, where were we? Oh yes, “The Apprentice”. What I have seen over the years are thirty second trailers for the programme and the amount of gittishness on display just in those fragments persuaded me that such a show really was not for me.

This did make me wonder though. Is it necessary to be a total git to be a successful businessperson? Is that the most vital first “bullet point” to add to these modern-style “How great am I?” CVs? More relevantly, are the “contestants” for that particular quiz show format (because that’s what it is, when you boil it down to basics… Ah! If only…) picked because they are gittish, or do they just pretend to be gittish for the cameras, or are they actually pleasant for 95% of the time, but the film editors just choose the moments of unpleasantness to make it all a bit more “televisual” and “entertaining”…? I do wonder about the possibility of that in particular, but then I remember “Big Brother” (which, in fairness, I also didn’t watch much…) and being told of the almost permanent levels of gittishness being displayed on that show. To be able to be almost permanently gittish for eight to thirteen weeks, constantly and non-stop, tends to just prove one thing: You are a git.

But then I considered something else. How many of us, if our own lives were subjected to such intense scrutiny wouldn’t come across as being gittish ourselves? I know that if TV cameras were fitted in my house and my car, there would probably be enough gittishness displayed to be edited down and fill at least half an hour a week, and I’m someone who barely has any regular interaction with anyone.

“Git on the Go” is my current favourite potential title, by the way.

Naturally, and rather sadly, when it comes to “The Apprentice”, I have also seen various clips from the show disguising themselves as “news” on other TV shows. Oh, and parodies, of course. I mustn’t forget the parodies. These are the things that tell me that certain things are now in the wider public perception. I may not watch “The Apprentice”, but I certainly know that it’s out there.

I shouldn’t really. I should just try and ignore it. Otherwise it only encourages them…

Coincidentally I recently watched the movie “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” for the first time recently, and whilst it is a beautifully crafted work, it does tell a very bizarre tale, based upon the memoirs or, if you prefer, ravings (or otherwise) of the game show pioneer Chuck Barris. Part of the tale it tells, and the part most relevant to what I am discussing here, is the rise of “The Gong Show” on USTV back in the 1970s. If you are unfamiliar with it, “ordinary” Americans would attempt, however poorly, to entertain within the limits of their own talents until the judging panel could bear it no longer and struck a gong to banish them from their sight.

In the end, this tells us two things. One, you can never underestimate what so-called “ordinary” people are prepared to do just to get on TV at all, and two, people making complete fools of themselves in public is, apparently, hugely popular. “The Gong Show” did rather open the floodgates for a whole raft of different shows, from “You’ve been Framed” to “The X Factor” where members of the general public, in an effort to show the wider world that they exist at all, are prepared to make utter fools of themselves in order for a remote chance of “fame”, however fleeting that “fame” might be and however lacking in any actual discernable skills they may be.

I suppose that “The Gong Show” is exactly the same as “Britain’s Got Talent” only with the gong replacing those passing judgement from on high (or behind a desk, if you prefer). To be honest, I’ve never watched one edition of “Britain’s Got Talent” or “The X Factor” or any of those shows, but lots of others do. I suppose that the show does help some people follow their dreams, and some of them with actual genuinely undiscovered talent do seem to actually manage to achieve them because of it, but sadly, so many of those who think that they are great and could have been considered to be so if only they had got the breaks, seldom are. It does astonish me how popular these shows actually are with viewers, too, because I personally have never been particularly fond of watching “real” or “ordinary” people on TV. I’m not even particularly fond of “vox pops” on the news. All of us “reckoning” we know better about everything becomes pretty tiresome fairly quickly, especially as in the majority of cases, we patently don’t. You only need to read a few pages of this waffle to know how little I know about anything, and I like to think that I’m pretty well informed. Well, about some things at least, although “people” do still rather bewilder me.

Nowadays certain “news” programmes will fill huge chunks of their airtime trying to encourage the general public to email, text, tweet, comment on FizzBok or phone in with what they “reckon” about just about any topic at all, and very rarely does it provide the viewing public with any new or unbiased insight into anything very much. Mostly it ends up being just a load of people with very specific personal agendas assuming that the world should either make them a dictator (“I’d soon sort a few things out…”), be more like them (“Why doesn’t everyone agree with me about this issue?”), or even give a toss. After all, this is what we have blogging for...

Of course there’s nothing “ordinary” about any of us. It is actually pretty extraordinary that any of us are here at all, so maybe what I really mean is that I don’t like watching non-celebrities on television. Although that’s not strictly true either, because I find most “celebrities” to be pretty gittish, too. I tend towards the seemingly unfashionable theory that I like my entertainment to be performed by professionals who actually know what they’re doing, and my experts to have a certain amount of expertise. In certain matters anyway. Sadly, the only “experts” we do seem to admire, respect and pay any real attention to nowadays seem to be those folk behind the desk replacing the gong.

Some days, I think I prefer the gong.

COLUMBO: REQUIEM FOR A FALLEN STAR

A wealthy businessman, played (it usually seems) by Patrick McGoohan, thinks that he has come up with a way to commit the perfect murder and get away with it. Over the course of the next thirty minutes or so, we see him preparing to do the crime, and then actually going through with it. When his victim finally does lie photogenically deceased upon a thick carpet in an ostentatious office or apartment somewhere, this wicked villain will slyly smile to himself with a wry grin that is not really one of remorse, and the scene will fade to black and, just for a while, it really looks as if the smug little swine is actually going to get clean away with it.

What on earth kind of a murder mystery is this? We already know who “dunnit”. We even know how they “dunnit”. For a moment it seems highly unlikely that the producers of this are going to be able to sustain our interest for the full ninety minutes scheduled airtime. Where’s the remote…?

Uh-oh… Hold on… who’s that scruffy little man hanging around the bins? Could it be that there was a witness to this nefarious act? Perhaps the smug guy isn’t going to get away with it after all, although I’m pretty worried about the homeless guy’s chances of survival given what our villain has just done…

“Hi, I’m Lieutenant Columbo, can have a few moments of your time please, sir…?”

With the recent sad passing of the actor Peter Falk, I thought this was as good a time as any to reflect on that rather special television show – more a series of television movies really – that was “Columbo”, a character much parodied in cheap comedy (although the show was a lot smarter than it was usually given credit for by them), because of his easily mimicked range of mannerisms and look, and a show which was being produced for television for an almost unbelievable 35 years between 1968 and 2003.

We used to love watching “Columbo” in our house. Whenever “Mystery Movie” came on we were hoping it would be a “Columbo” rather than “McMillan and Wife” although my sister seemed to prefer “McCloud” but I imagine that was probably due to the horses. Actually neither of the others were that bad, and I probably looked forward quite keenly to a “McCloud” myself if I’m being really honest, but our hearts and hopes really belonged to “Columbo”.

Perhaps it was our own desire to always side with the underdog that did it, because, whilst we always knew he would get his man (or woman), physically the Lieutenant didn’t strike you as being the most impressive of figures. A shabby looking little one-eyed man in a badly cut brown suit and battered raincoat, always chewing on the end of a cheap cigar, and who  always seemed to be constantly bewildered and distracted by the strangest of details, and yet who had a mind like a steel trap and weaved a complex web before the very eyes of the villain he was about to snare and then politely allowed them to walk right into it. The criminals always thought that they far cleverer than he was, and they were always quite wrong.

William Link was the man who created the character of Columbo for TV, claiming that he was inspired by the character of Porfiry Petrovich in the book “Crime and Punishment” by Dostoevsky. It is sometimes strange how the kind of great literature that no-one seems to actually want to read any more manages to get smuggled into our living rooms under the guise of being popular television. I once said “Well, it’s hardly Dostoevsky” out loud at work, trying to make the point that the allegedly confusing email hadn’t been all that complicated. It was a big mistake. I think they thought I’d sneezed as they looked at each other as if I was “The Idiot” (which, by the way, he also wrote…). Others have claimed to see elements of G.K. Chesterton’s “Father Brown” in the character, Inspector Fichet from “Les Diaboliques”, or even Inspector Clouseau, but that probably only proves that there are some basic fundamentals that feature in most fictional detectives. Anyway, none of that really matters, because it was Peter Falk who brought the character to life and embodied him most successfully to make him a true television icon.

There is just one more thing. In the end, what was so great about “Columbo” was that it taught us not to judge by appearances, and to never underestimate someone just because we thought they looked a bit unusual, and that’s not the worst thing to learn from a tale that’s supposed to be about that very worst of crimes, the killing of one human being by another.

RIP Peter Falk. (1927-2011)

“DINKY” DAYS 2: SEVEN YEARS LATER

I wasn’t going to bother you with this, but since my previous little tale about my old “Dinky Toys” catalogue went down so well (slight pause to savour a moment steeped in heavy sarcasm), I thought I could “entertain” you still further by telling you all about its faithful companion, which sat alongside it waiting to be rediscovered on that same dusty shelf a couple of weeks ago.

This version dates from about seven years later and is copyright marked 1977, and is in much better condition as it dates from a time when I would have been around thirteen years old and well into my “preservation of precious things” phase.

The world has changed. The price for such a catalogue is now 5p, which in the currency at the time of the old catalogue would have been one shilling, or 12d and represents a 400% price increase over those few short years. It seems odd now, living in a time when 5p has become so much fiddling small change to think about what a mighty figure the shilling once was when £5 a year could once employ the services of a housemaid.

Interesting too that the decimalisation of our currency wasn’t supposed to make things more expensive, but inevitably did, which is something to bear in mind when the Euro is ultimately brought in (should it survive...). Looking back upon those intervening years I can clearly remember the days when people still felt the need to “convert” the price of things into “old money” just to see how expensive they really were, and five divided by twelve was always going to mean that things got rounded up, even with the long lost “half pence piece” doing its best to even things out. Strangely enough, I don’t really remember when people generally stopped doing that (although I occasionally still do…). Equally, even if I try really hard, I have no memory at all of ever handing over one of those huge, brown discs that were the “old pennies” in a shop, although I must have done so many times as a tiny new potato.

Anyway, it’s seven years later and decimalisation is far behind us, the Queen’s Silver Jubilee and the coming of Punk Rock are upon us and in this brave, confident new world, “Dinky Toys” remain a cornerstone of many a young chap’s toybox. There seems to be “trouble at mill” though. The exciting new designs being promoted to the eagerly waiting world on the cover are from an American TV show that had ended about the time of that previous catalogue. On the pages within, the hugely popular “Space: 1999” Eagle transporters have had a restyled paint job with the engine cowlings now being presented in a nasty red plastic effect and the freighter becoming “metallic” blue. Dinky have been very loyal to the Gerry Anderson shows, with the “Interceptor” and “SHADO Mobile” tie in toys from his long defunct 1960s show “UFO” still seeming to be popular, although the sole survivor from the previous range of toys in that earlier catalogue, the much-loved “Thunderbird 2”, has now also been resprayed blue.

Heresy!

Otherwise the toys of 1977 remain very similar to those of the late 1960s, even though the way chosen to display them has altered, with slightly blurry photographs just being labeled with enigmatic numbers, and line drawing of the side profile of each vehicle helpfully telling you how big they are, or other “special features” like that. There is even a model (a person model, not a car model… A model amongst the models… Hmmm…) being used to make the pages more “exciting”, although he is a small child wearing a variety of helmets (astronaut, racing driver, policeman, soldier, construction worker… I wonder if he ended up singing with the “Village People”…?), presumably to help remind the potential customer quite what their target demographic actually was.

The cars themselves are a strange late 1970s bunch. John Steed’s “Special” Leyland Jaguar appears to have a spring-loaded door to knock down villains (and diabolical masterminds, obviously), but on the opposite page to one displaying such sportscar greats as a Lamborghini Marzal, a Corvette Stingray, a Porsche and (er…) a Triumph TR7, there are three cars of a less exciting hue, two of which are actually brown; A Mini, a Volvo estate and an Austin Princess, which does actually win my own personal award for the worst single car in the history of car making ever. I bet the kids were blown away by the exciting possibilities that trio offered up.

Much of the rest of the catalogue displays toys of a commercial or military nature which probably shows the way that the sales of toy cars were starting to move in, towards the “serious collector”. Aircraft, tanks and ships sit alongside the diggers, wagons  and police vehicles, although one final surprise does get pulled out of the hat in that year celebrating all things “regal” when Cinderella’s Coach from “The Slipper and the Rose” makes an appearance, although the young model himself doesn’t make an appearance and get to wear a tricorn hat (nor, to be fair, a tiara if we are considering all the potential headwear available to the designers) on that particular page.

The final few pages speak volumes about the various mergers and acquisitions that have taken place in the toy industry during the years between those two publications. Seven pages are devoted to promoting Meccano products, which have also moved with the times, as well as “Mogul” Steel Toys, whatever they were. They look big, chunky and American, as if Dinky were trying another merger to try to muscle in on the then popular “Tonka” market.

As for Meccano, well, the “new” Plastic Meccano has arrived, and the photo for their new “Prima” construction toy even has a girl in it. There was now “Pocket Meccano” (try getting that on a plane nowadays…), a crane building set and even “Multikits” to build Army vehicles (Oddly, I now remember I used to have one of these), Combat vehicles (did toymakers just assume that all boys were interested was “war”?), or Highway construction vehicles (as you were, apparently not…), and the main Meccano range itself now sees to come in sound and sturdy proper wooden cases.

None of these innovative new products would ultimately save Meccano, of course, as it was doomed to failure within a few short years, but it’s nice to see they were still trying.

THE LAD HIMSELF

“Here’s one for the teenagers...”

He died 43 years ago today, when I was a month short of my 4th birthday, at an age slightly younger than I am now, alone in a basement room on the opposite side of the world. So why the relatively short and tragic life of Tony Hancock has always been a source of fascination for me is sometimes unclear. Maybe it’s because he shared both his year of birth and his initials (kind of) with my dad, but that’s a bit of a reach to be honest. All I know is that it is biographies of this particular life that I have most read, and sometimes it is his melancholy that most strikes a chord with me during my own darker moments.

Luckily for me, my own demons don’t drive me to drink, and equally lucky for me, I’ve not got his kind of talent, because I suspect that I have the kind of personality which means that it might eat me up and destroy me much as his seems to have him. Tony Hancock was pretty much the most successful television performer of his time. He was one of a number of comics who came out of the forces at the end of the Second World War having done a certain amount of years in Forces Entertainment and then ended up in London trying to forge some kind of career for themselves as the unstoppable rise of television began its slow erosion of the world of music hall.

Somehow he managed to break into radio and had a very successful stint as the “flippin’ kids” muttering headmaster in “Educating Archie”, that rather bizarre seeming quirk of audio entertainment, a radio show based around the visual conceit of a ventriloquist act. Shortly after this he was given his own radio show “Hancock’s Half Hour” which, in the very capable hands of the writing duo of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, grew, alongside “The Goon Show” to become one of those broadcasting rarities, a “phenomenon”.

Alongside Sidney James, Hattie Jacques, Bill Kerr, Kenneth Williams and many others, the slightly pompous, slightly nervous “everyman” character of Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock – possibly most effectively seen in the famous “Sunday Afternoon at Home” episode - grew to become one of the most popular radio characters of the age, and, very naturally, made the leap to television in the middle of the 1950s, and a number of successful series, in both mediums followed, with the TV series continuing, with the occasional slight change of format, into the early 1960s. Episodes such as “The Blood Donor” and “The Radio Ham” from his final BBC series “Hancock” have become part of the bedrock of our national shared comedy culture, much as Basil Fawlty, Edmund Blackadder and Father Ted Crilly have to later generations.

Sadly, however, somewhere along the way, in his private life, a monster was created, and it is this monster that tends to feed the most sensational accounts of his brief life. It is difficult for fans of any popular performer to come to terms with understanding any of the monstrous behaviour they might get up to in their private lives and contrasting it with the simple pleasure of their performances in their public life. So many of our top comedians of those times - Peter Sellars and Frankie Howerd are two other names that spring immediately to mind - seem to have had such tragic personal lives away from the limelight. Tony Hancock seems to have struggled more than most, and despite the obvious glamour that the lifestyle has, he seems to have been crippled by appalling self-doubt, and an ability to permanently close the door on his friends and colleagues (and ultimately himself) without so much as a backwards glance. Not only that but he was a monstrous alcoholic to an almost legendary degree, which is quite possibly what actually led to his ruin.

The first book of the books about his life that I read was by his second wife Freddie, and I read it whilst I was at college and at about the time that a number of the surviving television episodes were being rerun on Sunday nights on BBC1. Tony Hancock was obviously having a bit of a cultural revival at that time and, like with a lot of things, I was drawn right in alongside everybody else. I remember an interview on Breakfast TV some time in the years when Selina Scott and the strangely unglamorous Frank Bough presented it, during which the book got mentioned and, having a vague recollection of the name of Tony Hancock I sought it out and bought it. It was fascinating stuff, and, despite the obvious horrors that were exposed, I became fascinated by the man’s career and tried to find out more, and the intervening years, listening to and watching some of his astonishing performances have been a joy and a delight.

Tony Hancock’s career went into something of a tail-spin after his final BBC series and never really seemed to recover, and the harder he tried to regain his lost glories, the worse his life seemed to get, and yet his audience still seemed to adore him despite all of that. Eventually he took his own life in that lonely basement flat in Australia on the 24th of June 1968 having decided, it seems, that things just seemed to go wrong too many times.

After he’d been cremated, the task of carrying his ashes back to England was given to the actor Willie Rushton who took them onto the plane in a travel bag, however, the aircrew of that flight insisted that “Mr Hancock” should be allowed to travel first class, with the urn apparently getting a seat to itself. That is always a story that moves me, no matter how many times I read it.

This is a man who was loved, even if he seemed to hate himself.

It’s too easy to dwell on the dark side of the life of one of the country’s all-time favourite comedy performers. Instead, I do prefer to think of the joy that his performances brought to the world when he was at the height of his success, because it is the laughter which those shows brought to so many that should be what we remember, and, with that in mind, I’ll leave you with just a few of my favourite Hancock moments, none of which he wrote himself of course, but all of which he brought an indelible life to, and, whilst he himself would have disliked the prospect intensely, seeing that kind of thing as the basest kind of humour, became the catchphrases for a generation.

“Did Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain?”; “Are you insinuating that I’m portly?”; and, of course, the immortal “A pint? That’s very nearly an armful!”

I HAD LOOKED LITERALLY EVERYWHERE

A few months ago I started looking for a small, green photo album that I used to keep happening upon every time I was busy looking for something else. It is a battered little keepsake with just the slight decorative touch of an art deco sunshine motif on the cover in gold. I searched the house from top to bottom and became more and more obsessed with finding it, believing it to be the only album that had a picture in it of an old lacquered cabinet which my grandparents used to own. Why this was a particular need at that moment does, rather naturally, escape me now, but suffice to say, finding that album became a tiny bit of an obsession for slightly longer than could really be considered rational.

Anyway, it never turned up and I reluctantly turned my thoughts to other things, although, whenever some other item pinged into my subconscious and had to be tracked down, I would remember the album and hope ever-so-slightly that this might be the search when it chose to show up instead. The rest of the time the memory of that failed search did kind of linger at the back of my mind even though I was trying to forget all about it.

Sometimes, though, when I’ve failed to find something specific, I don’t want to forget about it, and sometimes I do forget about it when I shouldn’t. Which is why pages of my work notebooks, or the occasional fading post-it note, still stuck to some surface or other around the place, will have the word “FIND” written in the closest thing that I can do to neat handwriting, and have a rather bizarrely described and quite obscure item (or - more usually - a short list) written beneath it.

Months passed and another passing thought sprang to mind recently, and that wretched album suddenly became something I was determined to track down. This was inevitably getting rather silly, but, on a recent Sunday morning, before the rest of the universe stirred, I spent more than two hours moving books off shelves and opening old storage boxes full of once strangely vital-seeming tat, and all to no avail. The flippin’ thing was just nowhere to be found.

I had quite pretty much turned the the contents of the house upside down looking for the blessed thing and had now (I thought...) looked quite literally everywhere I could think of where it might possibly be, and all of those places where my memory imagined that I thought that I might once have seen it, but that little green book was just not willing to be tracked down. It had gone, and I resigned myself that it was probably lost forever…

Ironically, of course, on other days, during other hunts for other objects, it used to turn up all the time. I used to keep finding it and being distracted by it, bathing in the warm glow of nostalgia for a few minutes instead of getting on with the task in hand. It’s not a comprehensive album, in fact I think it might only contain half a dozen or so pictures taken on a Christmas morning when I was about four years old, but by now the thing itself had become irrelevant, it was only the finding of it that mattered.

At one point, against all my rational judgement, I even descended to wildest superstition and called upon St Anthony all to no avail. I knew that I had obviously put it somewhere specific so I would know where it was, quite possibly because I kept on finding it during my other quests and decided that I liked the nostalgic moment it manifested so much that this was something that I should have easily available to me “close to hand”. Sometimes I even convinced myself that, using the theory of hiding things in plain sight, I was probably looking right at it but I just couldn’t see it.

Wild scenarios started to form in the mind. It must have got put into that box of stuff we sorted and took to the charity shop a couple of years ago, or it wasn’t even at this house I was looking at it, or perhaps I had imagined the whole thing and it never even really existed in the first place.

The other thing is that I had convinced myself that the thing was going to turn out to have been within arms reach of me whilst I was sitting right here. I must have sat here, spinning the chair around for quite a while trying to will that particular nonsensical idea to be truthful. I think that I just had that feeling of brewing inevitable irony…

Eventually, I had to give up. Even the tried and trusted techniques of finding it when I’ve been looking for something else entirely, or forgetting about it all together for a while had failed to make this particular object manifest itself…

Oh, there it is…

No, just kidding…

Defeated, and with the wee small hours of Sunday all burning away, I gave up, and set about my normal Sunday morning chores with a slight air of despond. Over a cup of reviving tea, I admitted to the beloved about what I had done with those early morning hours, and tried to convince her that the charity box had accidentally scoffed the thing and transported it to some other place forever. She was having none of it, convinced that it would be in that dark corner behind the TV where she was sure she had last seen it. I, of course, had searched that area with my own toothless equivalent of a fine-toothed comb on many previous occasions during my previous hunting trips and was dubious, but, as the toast was browning in the toaster I went for one last look and found it within thirty seconds with a resounding astonished mutter of “You son of a b…” being directed at it as it amazingly sat in my hand once again.

Oddly, now that I have found it, I am struggling remember why an image of that cabinet, the reason that I started to look for it in the first place, was so important at the time. In the meantime, whilst I dredge the darkest corners of my memory to work out that little gem, I’ll have to find somewhere safe to keep the album, and I am in absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the whole sorry madness will start again the next time I think of it…

"WITH THE ANGELS"

Before we start, there is no specific criticism of any one person intended with this, I just felt that I really wanted to explain in greater depth what I thought I was actually thinking that I was referring to in an internet exchange (“Angelgate”...?) which rather spiralled away from its original intent, and about which it was suggested - very correctly - that I should really save for this blog. Sadly, what passes for my sense of humour means that I have now taken full advantage of the availability of an unlimited character count and examined the event at length and in almost tedious forensic detail, which means, ultimately, that it isn’t a particularly interesting read and is very possibly the very epitome of making a mountain out of a molehill, but I share it today for the sake of completeness - after all, I have now bloody well written the thing (albeit admittedly whilst in a foul mood on a weekend afternoon) - but also because there is nothing else. I really should point out that I am prepared to admit that I am quite probably very wrong about some of the things discussed in this particular offering. Some of the points of view being expressed are unlikely to be very widely held (apart, of course, from the first statement, that’s a given...), perhaps not even by me if you catch me on another day, but then, precisely because they are just that, a “point of view”, means that they are, I suppose, at least “valid”, if unlikely to be “popular”...

I am an idiot.

It’s true. I am. Not only that, I know that I am.

No-one with my lack of social abilities and people skills should really feel themselves qualified to comment upon the doings and sayings of anyone who is so much more “successful” at these over-rated talents, because I’m generally having to come to terms with the fact that I really don’t understand the fundamental way the world and our society works and am pretty unlikely ever to.

Of course this just proves that I am such an idiot.

I should really not dip my toe into the murky waters of “social networking”. I don’t think that I’m built to handle it successfully, and it only seems to bring me pain. I seldom buy into other people’s rather predictable assumptions about how everyone else’s family relationships must, by default, be as “happy” as theirs is, and am frequently appalled and brought to the very brink of throwing up by a lot of the cloying, gushing nonsense that flies around in these places which sometimes seems like a virtual world mostly populated by the kind of people who find a certain amount of sophistication and wit within the verses written in greetings cards.

One recent morning, instead of biting my lip and getting the hell out of there, for once, in a weak moment (perhaps because I had woken up incredibly early and in a foul mood because a cold was brewing up nicely in my system, although there is no excuse for it really), I got so irritated by one tiny little phrase that I felt the need to remark upon it, and all sorts of bother unfolded. I know. I should just have left it alone, but the devil was in me and decided to show my hand. Sadly, you see, I had had enough. Too many times I had tried to keep the bile down, but something inside me decided that I was not going to let it go. Too many times, all of those little “Repost this garbage if you have the best mother in the world” style guff had popped up and ruined my mood. Those things are precisely the kind of horrible (if well-intentioned) nonsense precisely designed to make me feel nauseous and make me want to do serious harm to myself and any electronic equipment which might just happen to be in the vicinity. That famous Charlie Brooker quote springs to mind (again…): “If I could create a virus that’d make readers’ monitors spit glass in their ungrateful eyes the moment they click  ‘post comment’, I would” (This should primarily be directed at myself, by the way).

And yet, here I am posting comments of my own every day. How very hypocritical of me…

The stupid, stupid thing is that I can always understand the sentiment behind the thought, it’s just what I occasionally see as the unutterable blandness of these little messages, and the thoughtless, perhaps even slightly pathetically easy simplicity of copying and pasting somebody else’s sentiments and passing them off as your own that I sometimes find so irritating, and it happens so often on these sites that one day, one truly regrettable day, I was bound to snap and remark upon it, probably at quite the wrong moment to quite the wrong person, and unfortunate outcomes would naturally ensue. I tend to think that, should you wish it, by all means spare a lovely thought for your loved ones every once in a while, but make it your thought and not just something you do because everybody else is. If you do love your mother, take the time to actually tell her with some words and thoughts of your own, and not just announce it to the world via some duplicated platitude that someone else has guilted you into.

Still, I’m usually open to a bit of reasoned debate. This, I now realise, was a mistake. Those places are not the forums for that sort of discussion, although, to be fair, neither is this one, either. Many is the time when I’ve thought I’ve been writing about one thing, only to find out that other people think I’m writing about something completely different. I think that I’m talking about the summertime, but it seems it was just dull old cricket that I was speaking of. I think I’m composing a theory about gender roles in society, but it seems that I was only talking about Meccano. Sometimes my basic themes are being hung on another peg, just to get me started, and yet it is only that peg that is remarked upon. Rather oddly to me, something intended as a fairly light-hearted observation about one thing explodes in my face because it just wasn’t the most appropriate place to mention it. In the end, I deleted it all and reprinted it here after the suggestion that I should save it for my blog, after all, I am now pretty sure that here at least, hardly anyone is actually listening, so I can safely and quite happily contemplate my own navel without bothering anybody else. As the following transcript demonstrates (which, I must point out, has been mildly edited to protect some identities), sometimes the rawness of the one topic completely overwhelms the intention:

In honour of Father's Day we are trying to see how many of you are willing to change your profile picture to a picture of your dad and keep it there till June 19. I did and so have several others. If you like this idea, please repost this as your status so everyone gets the word and see how many fathers show up on FB. Repost even if your father is with the angels.

"With the angels...?" Oh good grief... Can't we use the "d" word any more? (Actually come to think of it "good grief" is precisely what that expression is trying to do...) MAWH(1)

I suppose you'd rather Hamlet say "Shall I kill myself or what? I dunno."

Hardly the same thing at all. To me, "With the angels" is the kind of quasi-religious euphemistic nonsense used by grown-ups to explain to children what's happened to their pet hamsters. It's certainly not poetry. All fair enough if this posting idea was originally aimed at children, of course, but seeing as so many adults are joining in, it's just strikes me as sort of twee. What do I know? It was early... I woke up with a cold... MAWH(2)

I copied and pasted X's request not out of any misplaced sense of loyalty or any religious beliefs I hold myself as I have none... But in the general good nature it was originally posted and requested.

I along with many other people who have gone through this, lost a very dear friend and parent a few years ago and also (like X) thought it would be as good a day as any to remember this very fact... regardless of anyone else's beliefs... Live and let live is my belief system.

"And flights of angels sing thee to they rest". I'm quite happy for people to believe what they want. They can believe the earth is flat and the moon is made of green cheese if they like. I don't know whether my dad is dancing with "Hill's Angels", investigating with "Charlie's Angels", or riding with some "Hell's Angels" (although I suspect it's none of the above being as he's been dead for more than a quarter of a century) it doesn't make any difference to the fact that in my opinion (and it is only my opinion) "with the angels" is a very childish and banal phrase... and the only belief system being criticised here (if there is any controversial thought being made) is the one that makes our language descend into mundane cliche at every opportunity. MAWH(3) 

Like I said, I am an idiot.

I think, rather oddly, that I was most saddened at the discovery that I was being accused of wanting to dumb down the language in what I thought was a fairly reasoned analysis of what I found to be a less than eloquent phraseology. Anyone, I thought, who had read anything I had written during this past half year or so would have (I would have hoped) realised that I was of the quite opposite point of view. Equally, I have written about family on a number of occasions, but it has become increasingly clear that my daily musings are not fully read, nor is anything therein very memorable.

As I write these words so regularly, I do tend to assume that they are being read regularly, too, and with a certain amount of concentration, although my recent ventures into more detailed statistical analysis have found me discovering that this isn’t the case at all. With most visits averaging less than five seconds, I can’t imagine that what I had hoped was my attempt at finely honed phraseology is being mulled over by anyone other than the author and a very few loyal readers. Before this discovery, I tended to assume that people are tuned in, have memories and are paying attention, otherwise (as is becoming abundantly clear) it really does start to get a little pointless, and I might as well shut down all the access routes and just write the thing for myself. This might well be the most logical approach to take and may well make these mutterings slightly less of an obsession and help me to get my life back. Equally, instead of spending many night-time hours thinking about subjects and some not inconsiderable energy on honing them in my free time, I could just try and compose five lines of “funny” or “sentimental” gibberish without too much thought and then move along and get on with my day. This seems to be what our culture “likes” and prefers to read nowadays,  and my railing against the kind of sentimentalist guff that passes for the height of sophistication will all have been pointless.

People of course will always read things differently to the way you choose to write them. Ironically, I had been writing something along those very lines only the day before in my piece on “Weasel Words” that remained so unloved, but then, a lot of that particular piece had been precisely about how much I do love the fine use of words, which made the notion that I wouldn’t even more painful to bear.

These are the reasons I suspect that I genuinely don’t have any real friends whom I actually see any more, and why I really should ignore the world of FizzBok at all costs. I know that I am ultimately destined for a sad, lonely and unremembered death on some miserable future date, and the prospect of that no longer surprises me any more. After all, if people really do irritate someone like me so much, the last thing I would choose to do is slip off this mortal coil surrounded by a sea of faces all contorted in a tableau of cloying sentimentality and grief. I don’t think that it was ever very likely, anyway.

Ah, well. These things always pass and are quickly forgotten. Almost as quickly forgotten as all these musings will be. I’m sure all of my thoughts that I wrote last week have already slipped from your thoughts, if you ever read them at all. That is the way of these things, and perhaps, in the end, that’s a pretty good thing.

(1) I mistakenly thought the “good” and “grief” analogy - pointing out that the "angels" euphemism was being used to mask the darker truth - was quite a witty juxtaposition myself. Notice how I used a euphemism myself in order to attempt to make sure no-one would be offended. All to no avail, of course, but I did wonder whether the dreaded word “dead” was a FizzBok taboo at that stage... 

(2) I knew “quasi-religious” was probably a mistake when I wrote it, and bound to be misinterpreted as an attack on religious belief, rather than a criticism of the use of popularist pseudo-religious terms that sometimes passes for actual real faith. However, I still think that all that “angels” stuff is usually spouted in this context by people who only go into a church for the occasional wedding, and yet claim to be CofE on every census form without feeling brave enough to admit otherwise. Meanwhile I do believe that Shakespeare was a poet and wordsmith of the first order, and comparing that sort of Hallmark-style nonsense to Hamlet actually just strikes me as being the basis of a very woolly argument.

(3) I still think that’s a fairly rational and lucid reply under the circumstances, and really was a vague attempt to lighten the mood. Mind you, I do still think that, in that context, “With the angels” is a banal and childish phrase (in my opinion, of course…).