rosyrockets.com

my holiday #1

Harry's given me his 3 phone. You know this because since I got it you've all been sent a jpeg memento of my every movement. Or motion. I'm like the opposite of those woolly liberals who make wide-eyed ominous comments about Big Brother (the real one, dummy) and ID cards. Harry says I'm like Penny when she first got her computer. Harry used to go Penny when we played Inspector Gadget. I was the main man, on my gadget skates. Harry was Penny, using "The Ladybird Book of Computers" as a computer. I haven't seen it for a while, but being 20 years ago all the computers looked like Deep Thought.

So I've been in London and York for a while, and I took a lot of photos in York. The one with the stag's head is the Banana Warehouse. There were also towering piles of old suitcases, books, furniture, light fittings and a figurehead on one of the rafters. And a Joan Crawford film playing on a black and white telly. It was very Gilliam lite.

London was ace. There are a lot more photos in the playground, and some of you know the way to get there. The rest of you can all go ask a policeman for directions to Sesame Street. I stayed with Chris in Highgate on the first night. Some of you stole his hat at Monkey Chews. The rest of you may as well conjure in your minds the implications of Rigsby and Harry Hill crammed into Brundlefly's transporter. That is Chris, whom I love dearly, as I do all the surrogate brothers with whom I spent my holiday: Baz, Log, Nick, Pete, and the rest of you are all an etcetera because this is a blog, not an Oscar speech. My Oscar speech would be: "Get lost!" *climbs back into bin*

So mostly, in London, let's just say I wasn't lying when I put "Socialising with friends!" on the "Hobbies" section of my CV, beneath "Wanking and crying - preferably at the same time!". There was a nick and bag theme to London. Nick gave me a bag out of a bin. (The bag was binny. I suppose the bin was baggy, too.) And Angel got his bag nicked in the Moon and Halfpenny in Soho, a notorius bag-theft spot.

In York I tried on my dad's hats and wigs, made lots of compilation CDs, played with my brothers and ate chips with scraps. If you ask for scraps in Scotland, you get "chibbed" in the "pus".

I I I I I I I I I

the bull goose loony

Yesterday morning I picked up "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", perhaps mistaking the photo of tousle-haired Nicholson for my hand-mirror. I've been reading it during bus rides and ad breaks. Of all my old favourites, why did I turn to this in my morning haze? The early chapters log in to my current mental state rather well. The mornings find me enrhumée, rheumy, sleep-doped. By day, the fug lifts but time treacles. Tranquilised under the striplights, and the Big Nurse* picks at a bloodspot, or a gravy spot, or even just a crocodile tear. Well healed Achilles am I. Future shocks and ghosts of fistbite past. De profundis, it takes such smacks to keep my brow furrowed and my mince pies tart. Wavering between such bipolar interpretations of mortification, perhaps my toes drag in watery paranoia and mild defeat, or perhaps the deluge finds centrifuge in my puddling napper, emote by rote, scalextrickery. But the McMurphy** in me is not doomed; he struts proud and pretty like a little red rooster, a wild boor, waiting for the daily leap home. What I'm trying to say is: I hate Mondays! Work is rubbish!

* Anima?
** Manimal?

Days That Shook The World

My dad (pictured) is going to be on BBC4 next week, playing General Haig in the "WWI Christmas Truce" episode. This is because he is cooler than you.

Haven't heard about the WWI Christmas Truce? By the end of the war, the Germans and Tommies had drawn 2:2 so they decided to settle it with penalties. They might excel at "shove half-pfennig" and "Maus Trap", but luckily for us those Krauts kick like girls!