There are two kinds of people: my kind, and assholes

A large factor in the rise of the blog is the opportunity to vent spleens, to voice opinions, to rail against perceived injustice. Regular visitors to this site will have noticed that I tend to favour rambling tales about my escapades ahead of impassioned rants. You’re unlikely to find incisive political comment here.

That situation is not going to change now. However, while watching the France v Spain game in the World Cup this evening, I was reminded of one thing that really does p*ss me off. There are plenty of things that depress and upset me about football circa 2006 but I don’t want to talk here about diving, gamesmanship, or the increasingly insidious role of agents. Not even the spiralling wages and money obsessed culture that’s causing the game to implode. No, the thing that really bugs me is names. Specifically, the way that commentators (and Clive Tyldesley, when I am King you will be first against the wall) now feel chummy enough with the players to refer to them using cutesy nicknames. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you ‘Manu’ Petit, ‘Seba’ Veron, and ‘Rafa’ Benitez, to name but three. When those three arrived on our shores they were known as their mothers had intended: Emmanuel, Juan Sebastian, and Rafael. So why the change Tyldesley you monkey? Did they personally ask to be referred to in these matey terms? The nadir though has to be ‘Bolo’ Zenden. What?? Bolo?? His name is Boudewijn. There are few better names than Boudewijn. So where the frig has ‘Bolo’ appeared from? He sounds like a clown! Seriously, it makes my blood boil. Watching any televised coverage is liable to get me hurling obscenities at the screen. This whole sorry rant was sparked tonight by the appearance of Spanish midfielder, Francesc, sorry, ‘Cesc’ Fabregas. I suppose I can’t blame Tyldesley and his commentary brethren for calling him ‘Cesc’ as he appears to have removed his surname entirely and now has ‘Cesc’ on the back of his shirt. FIFA should stop faffing about with the technicalities of the offside law and clamp down on important issues like this. I want to see nicknames outlawed unless you are Brazilian.

So it’s hat off to my new favourite footballer, someone who is upholding the traditional values of the people’s game. Take a bow, Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink.

A cry for help

Comrades, I fear the worst. Spirits in the camp are low and we are now fearing the end. We have word that the enemy is growing in number and they are gathering on the horizon. Surely we do not have long before they make their assault. It feels like all we can do now is pray, and wait.

The goddam pigeons are really getting me down. The rain has knacked the masking tape and so my screw/pen combo has failed. And it's not just one or two pigeons now either - there are loads of the bastards. I apologise for the expletives but this is really depressing me now.

Munch asked why I'm trying to ban the pigeons anyway - why can only some birds dine at my feeder? Here are my reasons:

1. they eat everything. Everything. The other, smaller birds don't stand a chance.
2. they are heavy - constantly landing on the feeder will surely soon knock it off the window. It will then most likely break when it hits the floor. And no birds will eat then. Will you be happy then pigeons???
3. have I said they eat everything? well they do it bloody quickly too. If I were to refill the feeder every time it gets empty I would end up spending more on feeding the birds than I do on feeding myself. Some of the pigeons probably have higher BMI than me as it is.

So I need suggestions. And not just 'shoot them'. How can I be rid of this menace?

NO ESCAPE FOR HAIRS

I'm a bit late with this, but it has been sat as a draft for nearly 3 months so I may as well do something with it. This entry has been the ginger step-child that nobody at Blog Party HQ wants to talk about. I kept meaning to do a comedy pic of my face, perhaps with no skin on it or something but I never got around to it.


MEN! Not totally satisfied with your shave? Still searching for that smooth finish? Something that will improve your chances at work AND at home? You've tried everything: Single blade razor? Get with the program Sweeney Todd! Two blades?? Mach3??? How about Quattro???? Ok, electric? Get real. There's only one thing for it* : Go large and scrape 5 blades down your face.

Yep, in case you weren't already aware, Gillette has now launched the world's first 5-blade razor - the Fusion (http://www.gillette.com/men/index_fusion.htm). It’s due to revolutionise the British male’s shaving ‘experience’ later this year. We can finally wave goodbye to those remaining stubborn stubble that just WILL NOT be removed by FOUR blades.

Others will do the usual 'where next?' comments wittier and better than me (there's an amusing piece about the razor here: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930). The thought of it does scare me though. I once was a bit careless with the old Mach 3 and wound up with something akin to the Adidas logo etched into my chin. And a lot of blood splashing onto the porcelain. Having said that, if it can remove the outcrop of hair around the back of my lower jaw on the left of my face that I always seem to miss then I'll snap it up.

* until a couple of years time when someone raises the stakes YET AGAIN with the grooming equivalent of a Cat o' nine tails.

Four-pen durch technik

Something’s got to give. Saturday morning, 5am, another pigeon alarm call. The bars are preventing them eating the food but the screws aren’t having the desired effect. Two pigeons are regularly sat on the feeder roof, still attempting to gorge on the yummy seeds contained beneath. I admire their perseverance, but also want to kill them. There appear to be two solutions:

1. make further modifications and try and stop them sitting on the feeder top. If they can’t do that and also can’t get to the food, hopefully they’ll piss off and let me sleep.
2. admit defeat, remove the feeder from my window and put it on the kitchen window instead. This won’t solve the problem of the pigeons eating all my food but it will end the relentless cacophony outside my window every morning.

For the time being I take option 1. I foolishly believe that I can conquer nature. The screws I used clearly aren’t big enough, I need bigger, taller spikes so that it’s impossible for pigeons to land on the feeder top. But what can I use? More scrabbling about in the kitchen (trying to find 12 inch nails – the idea of a spike now appeals to me in my vengeful, sleep-deprived state) and I come across a stash of old biros. Most of them seem to be those free ones you get with mailouts from the RSPCA etc. I take four of these, remove the ink bit and tape these to the top of the feeder. Come on then pigeons – I’ve raised the stakes. Seconds out…Round 2!

I don't want no pigeons

I'm sure there are blogs dedicated to restoration of a classic car, or maybe the progress of a charity in their efforts to raise money to fund the erection of a Brian Clough statue in Middlesbrough, for instance. My blog, Blog Party (thanks again), appears to now be a simple vehicle for chronicling my messing up of a perfectly attractive bird feeder. It now looks like a prop from Mad Max.

Came back from a weekend up north and virtually the first thing I did on returning was inspect the feeder. I wasn’t particularly confident that my feeder fortifications would have worked and I was right: the pens were either knocked over or knocked off entirely, and again there was virtually no food left.

So, after a month of generally happy bird action, I took the very unhappy decision to remove the feeder from my window. A sad day indeed. However, sweet dreams are made of this. Hopefully.

The feeder has now taken up residence on the kitchen window. The pigeons may have won the battle, but the war goes on. While trying to figure out my next move I realised that, by happy coincidence, my pens fitted neatly over the screw spikes which should make them much more difficult to knock over. So I added 3 more. Over to you, pigeons…

Pimp my feeder

Another day, another blog about feeding the birds (for anyone with a Profanisaurus, I definitely am not talking about ‘feeding the ducks’). Last night I had a mystery to solve. In the morning the feeder had been virtually full but by the time I came home it was empty. It looked like someone had hoovered the thing – there was nothing left in it. I was baffled – what could have done that?

I didn’t have to wait too long to find out. At 5am (hurrah!) I was awoken by lots of noise outside my window. I was amazed to find a pigeon was flapping about, attempting to land on the feeder. After a couple of failed attempts it successfully landed and began to peck away. I scared it off by throwing a pair of boxer shorts at the window. Dirty pigeons, they love a bit of it.

I tried to go back to sleep, but now I was too busy thinking about how to resolve the situation. I had to stop pigeons using the feeder – no other birds would stand a chance and it would also cost me a packet in bird food. It may have been 5am, but it was time for some more Blue Peter DIY.

First, I used masking tape to make a bar across the front of the feeder hopefully preventing bigger birds from being able to land on it. Don’t worry though – I stuck 2 pieces of tape back to back so that there was no stickiness open to the air and there was no risk of causing any avian injuries. Satisfied with my handiwork, I tried to go back to sleep. A few minutes later, more racket. My initial delight at the recent success of the feeder was beginning to wane. Hoist by me own petard for birds. Somehow, the pigeon had managed to get past my makeshift bar and was back on the feeder gobbling up the food once more. A second pigeon was attempting to land on my windowsill. So back out again, this time adding two more bars. But I couldn’t stop there. No, I had to show those pigeons that they should give up trying to get onto the feeder, and piss off and let me kip.

After a root about in the kitchen (05.40am), I found some spare screw-type things and stuck three of these onto the roof of the feeder in order to stop pigeons landing on there. At ease RSPB wardens, I was careful to use flat-topped screws so there would be no impaled birdie accidents.

At the end of all this, my feeder now looked like it could go a few rounds with ‘Sir Killalot’ on Robot Wars:



It reminds me of the petrol station on the way out of Manchester towards Liverpool that’s practically armour-plated. The masking tape bars are only likely to be a short-term solution though – heavy rain and they’ll be knacked. Any ideas?

What’s in the box? See whatcha got!

Although it may not look like it, my life is not one constant rotation of jive dancing and bonding with nature. No, sometimes I also manage to do other stuff and last Sunday that meant joining the East London hipsters at the 4th Art Car Boot Sale in a car park off Brick Lane.

I wasn’t convinced by the Rich Tea biscuits bitten and signed by Gavin Turk and the badges/T-shirts involving Ken Livingstone, the congestion charge logo and an extreme swear word weren’t convincing me to open my wallet either.

One thing did grab me though: Truck Art

This was a truck full of outwardly identical boxes. You pay £30 and pick a box. Inside is a piece of artwork. Simple. I’m not usually the adventurous kind but sod it, nothing ventured and all that. So into the truck I went, hoping that I’d pick something brilliant.

Here’s my box:

I must have been the first to have a go, because a photographer started snapping away as I unwrapped my box, and a small crowd soon gathered to see what I had got. And here it is:

The accompanying certificate tells me that my work is by Hackerman Ines Virginia*. Here’s what else is on the certificate:

“A colourful tablecloth is the main subject of the series given to me by a boy from Sri Lanka. He was blind in one eye. He could only see strong colours on the other.”

Title of the work: “Mainland”, May 2006.

Born in Dover in 1985. Studied BA Fine Arts at Goldsmith’s College but never completed the degree due to health problems. Lives and works in Dover.

A list of exhibitions shows that Hackerman’s work has been shown in London, Prague, Bologne and Berlin.

* Subsequent google searching suggests that her name is actually Virginia Hackerman. I have only managed to find one link to her (which refers to the Prague work). If anyone can do any better, let me know.

The Claw

This evening I decided to have another bash at the lawn, and went to ask my neighbour if he had any shears that I could borrow. After rooting around in his cellar, he came back with half a lawnmower and some cobwebbed, rusted shears. He then went back into the cellar and returned waving a hedge strimmer. I was certainly excited by the prospect of wielding something that looked like a chainsaw. I would definitely remove a lot of grass with it – it wouldn’t stand a chance! – but I’d probably end up taking a few limbs with it. The rest of the lawnmower failed to appear, so it was the antique shears. He’d been very generous in searching and so I felt I had to at least give them a try.

So back to the garden and I got stuck in. They weren’t great, but on most occasions they did manage to chop through the grass at the first attempt. Which was a definite improvement on what had gone before. I soon got carried away with it and must have done about 30 minutes steady chopping. Stopping for a rest and to assess my handiwork, I tried to let go of the shears…uh oh. My hands, particularly the right, had locked themselves into the gripping position around the handles. I managed to slide the handle from my fingers but my right hand remained in the same position, and was also shaking. My left hand quickly began to recover its normal flexibility, but the right remained a gnarled, withered claw. I’d given myself a Beadle hand!



What further gardening adventures await?

Only two days to go...

…and I can barely contain my excitement! After months of growing anticipation, it’s almost upon us. I had to snigger today though – we did the traditional office sweepstake and poor Amy got Micklehurst Youth Band. Unlucky! Yep, come Friday evening and I’ll be dashing off from work to see the start of the Whit Friday Brass Band Contest.

What did you think I was talking about?

PS
And not a single 'Black Dyke' joke in sight!

Vorsprung durch technik

Pretty ingenious, I think you’ll agree! The camera sits in the punnet, facing the window. The lead on the left connects to the laptop.

But did it work? Well, yes.... eventually.

I was awake early, eagerly awaiting the sound of activity outside the window. But nothing. Not a peep. I was pretty confused – previously they couldn’t get enough of the window food action, but now nothing. It was mid-afternoon that I realised that maybe the sun was reflecting off the camera and the glare would be putting off any hungry birds. I removed the camera and began to ponder how I could somehow camouflage it… Within 20 minutes though, the birds were back. This time a couple of blue tits had joined the fray. I also realised that the sun wasn’t pointing directly at the window any longer and so maybe the camera could go back into position…

Success!

If you can mow a lawn, you’ll be a man, my son

With the first dry spell in several weeks, I decided to try and mow the lawn. I have grand visions of summer soirees in our little garden and that can’t happen with the grass looking like this:

Fortunately, in the cellar is a weapon of grass destruction. Come all without, come all within, you ain’t seen nothing like the Mighty Ginge:

Should have this done in no time, the garden is diddy.

Nope. All that happened is that instead of cutting the grass, I just ended up flattening it. Look at that photo of the Ginge again. Which way would you expect to push it?

This way?

Or this way?

If you chose the latter, well done, Titchmarsh. But the other way looks right surely?? I hope that none of my neighbours were watching my clumsy attempts with the mower. I kept determinedly pushing in what I thought was the right direction, even though the blades would only turn when I pulled it backwards ('what kind of crazy mower is this?'). Eventually, the proverbial lightbulb came on and I tried turning it around. I was reminded of those Psychology videos of giving chimps a load of crates and waiting for them to work out how to reach some bananas suspended out of reach. When it is pushed in the right direction, it makes a lovely, old-style ‘whirring’ sound.

However, even when being used correctly the long grass appeared to be beyond the capabilities of the Ginge. While the odd strand did get chopped, loads more ended up wrapped and snagged around the inner workings of the mower. As this accumulates around the mechanism, the mower stops moving completely and ends up just yanking grass out of the ground. What followed were scenes that would not have looked out of place in the opening 10 minutes of an episode of ‘Casualty’: me poking my fingers around between the blades to try and remove the clogged up grass.

I may not have mowed my grass (we now have some sort of crop circle type effects) but I did realise that the term 'green fingers' probably originated from the way that grass turns your fingers green. So at least something was gained from the whole sorry affair.

The birds in your garden, they told me the words to this song

June 3rd, 2006
Saturday night in Brixton. It’s a warm evening, the pubs are full. BBQs have been in full-swing. Me, I’m at home and VERY excited. I’ve just spent an hour constructing a sling device for my camera, using equipment I found around the house: an empty strawberry punnet, masking tape, scissors, the pink cord from a jD woman carrier bag. I feel like MacGyver! To colour in the background, we need to go back in time….

January 2006
From the day I moved in here I’ve been keen to attract wildlife to the garden. I know that rose-ringed parakeets are fairly common in South London and they are my no. 1 target. Unfortunately, there are several cats that roam around the gardens and all possible sites for a bird feeder in the garden would be within easy reach of a feline paw. The only solution would be to get a feeder that can attach to my bedroom window. Tesco sells bird food and I bought a big bag, in anticipation of the avifauna that would soon be flocking to my window.

March 2006
The bag of food remained glumly unopened in my cupboard. After weeks of fruitless searching for a window feeder (Natural History museum, Science museum, Brixton Woolworths, B&Q and ASDA on Old Kent Road), the internet came up trumps and I received delivery of my bird feeder, complete with window-attaching suckers. I eagerly attached it to the window, securing the safety string to the window handle (to prevent breakage in the event of sucker failure) and filled it with an appetising mix of seeds. The separate water compartment was also filled, to provide all the refreshment my feathered friends could possibly need. I sat back and awaited a display of nature from the comfort of my room…

Later, March 2006
No sign of any activity yet. The seeds look untouched. The water has gone down but evaporation would explain that. Oh well, they probably just need time to get used to it.

April 2006
Still nothing. Plenty of birds coming to the garden, and even on the washing line near to the feeder, but there is no evidence that the food has been touched. Give them more time. If I built it, they will come.

Later, April 2006
Perhaps I need some different food. Maybe the South London bird fraternity aren’t too keen on my ‘Field Fayre All Seasons Mix’. The fact that it has been ‘prepared by British farmers’ obviously doesn’t interest them. While on a visit back up north, I consult a man selling bird tables in Lower Peover. He recommends sunflower seeds. With renewed enthusiasm, I ditch the old mixture and replace it with the new seeds.

May 2006
For god’s sake! I’m now thoroughly disheartened and thinking of removing the feeder.

Thursday June 1st, 2006
0730: alarm goes. Ignore it.
0810: Shit, should have been up ages ago. Just rest the eyes a bit longer…hang on, what’s that? I can hear a strange mixture of taps and tweets. Where’s it coming from? I’m wide awake now. It sounds like there’s something knocking my window. Can it be? Although I often sleep with the curtains open (form a queue, voyeurs), this morning I can’t see out of the window because I’ve used the curtain rail as a rudimentary clothes dryer. If I get up and move the shirts, I’ll surely scare anything away. So I end up crawling slowly across the floor until I can get a view of the feeder………YES! There’s a bird there! A real live goddam bird! AT LAST! For anyone who is interested and still reading this far, the first bird to be sighted on my feeder is a Great Tit. I watch from my vantage point until it leaves (peeping Tom) and then take the shirt down so that I can see it properly. This is a bit rash though: it soon returns and instantly spots that it can now see into my room, after a couple of seconds it decides that it doesn’t like this, possibly because I am semi-naked, and flies off. The shirt goes back up.

Friday June 2rd, 2006
The great tit is back again and I’m still excited about it. I’ve now manoeuvred the shirt so that I can see the feeder while still blocking most of the interior view. I decide to provide a mix of sunflower seeds and the original ‘All season mix’. I learn from ‘Birds Britannica’ that the Great Tit’s latin name is Parus Major. Which is interesting, as the latin name for Useless Tit is Parus Hilton.

Saturday June 3rd, 2006
0545: I’m glad you’re enjoying the food on offer birds, but please, try not to be so noisy about it.
What feels like every 20 minutes until 1030: still hungry Mr Great Tit? Good for you, now please just shush.

Which brings us back to the present. I’ve been planning to write something about this topic since the major development on Thursday. I decided that I needed a picture of the feeder in action though and that’s where my craft skills came in. I need some way of positioning my camera in front of the feeder while triggering it remotely. Fortunately my laptop possesses just such a function, but I still need to somehow get the camera into position. The nearest shelf won’t work and I realise that if I could somehow suspend it from the curtain rail I should have a perfect view. My plans of work are cast aside in favour of some DIY using the items mentioned above. Eventually, I suspend an empty punnet from the curtain rail using the cord from the carrier bag. Because of the weight of the camera this has the habit of spinning away from the window, so I end up fastening the punnet to the wall using masking tape. I take some practice shots and it seems to be working well.



Tomorrow morning I’ll need to turn on the camera (when the birds are not there) and the laptop, and then just sit and wait…

I wake up with a hard on, but not because I have to go to work

...is what I replied when someone asked about my job.

And that, dear reader, is possibly one of the wisest things I have ever said.


PS
Parents, if you're reading this (or, heaven forbid, my boss), I like my job

I wander lonely streets, behind where the lonely Thames does flow

Right, I’m on a roll with this now. My next record attempt (ahem) is a bit more ambitious: I’m trying to construct an A-Z using song lyrics. This has come from listening to ‘Kick off’ by Blak Twang and deciphering the following:

‘I never miss when body blows start to rain,
Wholehearted like hardened Yardies on Coldharbour Lane’

Add that to Eddy Grant’s ‘Electric Avenue’ and my map is starting to take shape. Even better, these are both only a couple of minutes from my house. If I can just add a few more, I could go on a walk, colour them in on a map and I’ve got myself a piece of Richard Long style artwork.

Anyone know of a song that mentions ‘Probert Road’? This game will likely be much easier living in London than in Stalybridge.

Ooh – ‘London Bridge is falling down’. Come on!

We are family

A bit Rockin’ Vicar this one. Tonight I’ve been trying to build myself a family using song titles (the hours fly by here in Brixton, they really do). The idea came to me when hearing ‘Stacey’s mom’ by Fountains of Wayne earlier this evening (I was initially reminded of this entry from Munch's blog).

Here’s my family:

Grandad
There’s no one quite like grandma
Stacey’s mom
Father and son
Song for my sister
Oh brother

Your funny uncle (obscure Pet Shop Boys B-side)


They, naturally, live in ‘Our house’.


I await Munch’s response….


Also, an unrelated point: how rubbish is ‘Babe’ by Take That? I had the misfortune of listening to the whole song the other day. I could remember Mark’s lispy vocals (“Babe, I’m he-wagain”) and the video with the nipper peeping out from behind the legs of his former beau, but I’d never noticed just how truly crap the whole song was.

You know what I did last Sunday

Jive aside (which is nearly a fruit drink pun), this place has been pretty quiet of late. So how better to get the ball rolling again than to report from something I did over a week ago?

Sunday May 21st was Kennington village fete. The fete was to be opened by Kate Hoey, MP, and the poster promised much: Punch & Judy, tug of war, stocks, human fruit machine, Eugene’s DJ Masterclass [careful with that wax, Eugene], antiques, live magic, face painting, egg & spoon races. Clearly, with tiki-theme bars and now this, Kennington is the place to be.

Sadly, it was pouring down and so the fete was moved into the church hall. Which unfortunately meant the lack of a tug of war and the egg & spoon races. Punch and Judy did go ahead though, as did the Human Fruit Machine. This was very impressive – I’m mentally storing that idea for some future day when I end up assisting at village/school/church fetes. Next we checked out the magic show. The performer may have had a lot of the Chuckle brother about him but he was pretty good and his patience was commendable. Conjurors have always had to negotiate noisy, bratty kids attempting to reveal the secrets behind their tricks, but having to politely deal with kids answering mobile phones while they are assisting with a trick must surely be a new and unwanted hurdle for the modern entertainer.

Back into the main hall and who should we spot checking out the book stall, but Charles Kennedy, with his young son in a pushchair. One of them was ruddy cheeked, ginger and sucking on a bottle… and the punchline writes itself.

Always on the lookout for clever self-reference, there was no way that I was missing the tombola. 3 tickets for a pound – yes sir! …322 – nope…237…dammit…one left, come on…155! YES! And so here in celebration is a picture of what I won on the game.

Or, if you will, Tombola’s tombola booty:



Special World Cup edition too! Woo! Jules Rimet still gleaming!

EDIT:
Even if you think this entry is rubbish and equivalent to a ticket ending in, for instance, '7' in the tombolablog lottery, it's ABOUT winning on the tombola. Which automatically makes it good.