There are dozens and dozens of other linguistic oddities I can quote at you but I couldn’t possibly do the subject justice. If you ever wanted to read a compelling and insightful study of the English language then read Bill Bryson’s book entitled ‘Mother Tongue’. He’s one of my favourite authors and, to me, this is probably his best work. Reading this I was staggered by the amazing complexibility, likeability and adaptability of our language. One of its quirkiest features is our ability to simply mispronounce words as they are spelt. It’s an unconscious thing but we do it all the time. For example take the word handbag. Unless you’re Brian Sewell the chances are you’ll pronounce it as ‘hambag’. And library tends to come out as ‘libree’. We just can’t help it. But here’s one of my least favourite recent adoptions; I notice that most people now talk transatlantically about ‘charidy’  rather than charity. And what’s got my real goat up is that ‘charidy’ shops are slowly taking over our high streets and squares. I wrote extensively how my old town centre in Buckingham was strangled to death by the effect of the mighty Tesco’s opening a superstore on the town’s ring road which decimated the town centre’s local retail business. Then the supermarket garroted the few remaining independents by installing a ‘Tesco Express’ in the town centre, which after a few months was left with some banks, an artist’s paint shop (note to Tesco’s product management), several hairdressers and not a lot else.

We were so glad to leave the place. And in SW London’s Teddington we found  a cosmopolitan and bustling main street  which is actually divided into a trendy High St and commercial Broad St. And it’s on my much admired Broad St that we witnessed the dawn of this latest shop this week….

It’s replaced a wine shop (two of my more favourite words). Now that’s a shame but it was inevitable. I popped in there just once and they stocked a lot of French labels (which I stopped drinking years ago) and hardly anything cheaper than £10 a bottle except crappy bin ends. In our local Tesco Metro just across the road I can buy some great new world wines at around half that price on special offer with a further 25% discount if I buy 6 bottles. Better quality, more accessible wine at a third of the price.  For anything other than really great (and prohibitively expensive) wines why would I shop at a specialist vintners? And here’s the thing; I don’t buy those wines and nobody I know now does either. So it came as no surprise when the shop closed. But it upset me because other people may like to buy stuff other than rugged pinot grigios. Bit by bit the big supermarkets are ruining our main streets. Many independent greengrocers, butchers, clothes shops, electrical shops, book stores, record shops even newsagents have already gone and a lot of local flavour has disappeared with them. And what’s replaced them? Bloody charidy shops. I’m not against what they achieve but to me they are like weeds in the garden – unwelcome, popping up all over the place, ugly and not very useful. On Teddington’s Broad St alone, which can only be 250 yards long, there  are 6 of the them supporting cancer research, the Princess Alice trust (whatever that is), Oxfam, Shooting Stars and two Fara shops.

I’m fearful that others may follow. We have a large Dreams bed store which is forever empty of customers. How often do people buy beds for goodness sake? Twice in their married lives and when the kids come along. To compound matters there’s a competing Bed City not 50 yards away. Here they are:

As you can see they’re both offering huge unrepeatable discounts, that is until next month when the offers will be even more dramatic. How do they stay in business? It mystifies me. But the most staggering survivor is the Carpetright store which I’ve mentioned before. I can hinestly say that in nearly 24 months living here, I’ve only ever seen two people in the store. Here’s a shot of the place I’m particularly pleased with because I’ve actually captured somebody peering inside!

Look at the sale offer 60% off. Unbelieveable. Is it any wonder I saw the company reporting profit warnings earlier this week. And as with the beds there’s a carpet competitor 50 yards up the road. For  a product that most people aren’t interested in buying any longer. A bit like those French wines. For now our main street remains varied and interesting and still worthy of a Grade A for shopping. But any more second hand clothes outlets and it’ll be a grey day for shopping in Teddington. See what I did there?

pp

No the pleasure comes from uncovering the crown jewels of crap within the tat mountain. Have a look at this classic; a decanter with 22 carat gold (decorated) glass galleon within a bowl etched with the world map….

I can’t see it troubling the guys on the Antiques Roadshow anytime soon, can you? Too classy? Well how about a gift for the man who has everything and who perhaps prefers a pint to a cheeky claret. I think I’ve found the very thing; an armchair dog organiser to hold his drink (albeit precarioulsy) and his collection of zappers….

A snip at £12 surely. What’s particularly interesting is the positioning of this piece of crud alongside some other classic items for the Ralph Lauren generation such as  Jim’ll Fix It and Homer Simpson mugs.  Ah iconic tableware. But then the publishers juxtapose something I wouldn’t expect to appeal to the ‘Shameless’ man, the new English dictionary . Now I suppose the thinking is that he can consult that whilst having a pint of Boddies watching his favourite tv show – Call My Bluff.

And what about the ladeez, well the brochure doesn’t fail to surprise. There’s a lot of Ratnersesque jewellery  of course but my fashion eye was taken with this rather fetching piece of headgear from master milliner Phillip Treacy I’m guessing…..

Yes an angora mix trilby for £14. Princess Beatrice would snap this up. And as with the men’s section there’s a seemingly haphazard collection of gifts for the modern gal on this single page ranging from cake stands, a clock photo-frame, a selection of Mrs Beeton cook books, some luggage, wraps and hood/scarves. Don’t believe me? Well have a look…

It’s entertainingly curated like this throughout the catalogue. The kids’ section is almost the most engaging. The page I couldn’t quite believe was this one….

Yes this is the page offering not just a luridly-painted resin figurine of the Last Supper for just £65 (surely on every kids’ Xmas wish list) but also a collection of those rather charming reminders of our less senstive past, some Gollywogs, here somewhat coyly described as ‘nostalgic fellows’ Ah of course, because today’s 4 year olds will be looking back fondly on those far-off days of Golden Shred and the Black & White Minstrel show no doubt.

If there were prizes for junk mail literature this catalogue would have already garnered a Pullitzer and the Booker and without any dissention in this case. But I musn’t get all superior about this; I’ve actually found a present that I’m thinking of treating C and I to this Xmas. I think every home should have this stylish two-some for when the odd guests come round who like the occasional smoke. Be impressed…

Xmas gifts….sorted!

pp

So far I’ve resisted the temptation to do any postings at all on Strictly CD; so much candidate material but the knighthood for the stumbling, bumbling old goat Forsyth has done it for me nor  for X Factor – I’ve just had too much of that highly-processed  sausage machine for talentless wannabees. But after 4 weeks still no blogs on the Rugby World Cup; the project I was brought back into BT to handle in 1999 and, in doing so,  had the best time of my career. I must have written more about the 2003 and 2007 tournaments than I ever did about my first love football but 12 years on what’s not grabbed me?

Well it’s not the lure of the event. I’m so looking forward to getting together with my RWC 1999 mates for an anniversary get-together on Wednesday. It seems incredible that it’s 12 years since we worked together on that project. And I’ve watched most of the matches live on ITV early each morning, even though the channel really struggles at doing sports coverage well. But it’s been a hugely disappointing tournament don’t you think? England were just a recurring train crash; Ireland flattered to deceive again, Scotland plucky losers as ever,  South Africa should have beaten the Aussies but somehow didn’t and Wales were a revelation who deserved to be in the final but were thwarted by that tackle and that ref’s decision to send off their inspirational captain.  And so the rampant  New Zealanders bully their way to the final – they are  far and away the real deal at the moment – where they will play France who have played just one decent match against the abject England team. Talk about disappointing results.

The  best match I ever witnessed in a World Cup was in the 1999 semi-finals when the enigmatic French team beat the over-whelming favourites New Zealand by 43 points to 31. It was truly epic not least because I thought the French employed the chubbiest no 8 I’ve ever seen in a RWC semi-final  in Christophe Juillet. Fat but fuc*ing effective. But I’d rate the chances of the French repeating their hoodoo success over the Kiwis as likely as Mike Tindall being named man of the tournament. It’s been a RWC brightened briefly by the Irish, the Tongans and especially by the Welsh but  ultimately it’s been tedious and predictable  to watch and the English performances on and off the field have been the most depressing aspect of all, closely followed by the sad and inexplicable progress of the French team.  I lost interest some time ago. If NZ don’t win by a margin of at least 30 points in the final I’ll be staggered.

I wanted to give you a view of how thrilling old school rugby could be at the RWC by showing the highlights from 1999 of  Les Bleus v the Kiwis but all the footage seems to be off-limits now. Ah well check out this shot of the chunky Juillet instead:

Happy lumpy  days

pp

Now you’d expect a place which is truly Tory affluent but with an unusually pricked social conscience to take a considered centrist approach to local politics and planning. It’s almost a recipe for the most enlightened  electorate. Well in many senses it is, except that it results in the local population voting for the  Lib Dems as the majority party and in we electors getting Vince Cable as local MP. Now Vinnie’s recently been voted as the least respected member of the coalition Cabinet after Geoff Huhne who is after all still trying to lumber his estranged and betrayed wife with a speeding fine for which he is universally believed to be guilty, if not yet proven. Class act these Lib Dems.

The attractiveness of politicians eh. Ah well it’s hardly news.  I get lots of direct mail through my letter-box from Vince’s printers imploring me to recognise him as an economics and business deity but I really don’t  think he can ‘emasculate the bankers’ as he promises. Not because the banks are more powerful and profitable than ever and the leading bankers are receiving bigger bonuses than at any time previously. I also suspect they probably don’t give two frigs worrying about Vince the Wince because he can’t even enforce something simple like getting some replacement windows installed.

More of that later. But for now do you remember, regular readers, the posting I did about the hideous building, Park House, dominating Teddington’s High St (see posting 22 April 2010 on Ugly Buildings  at http://pastapaulie.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/ugly-buildings/ ‎)? Well if Carlsberg did ugly buildings, they’d do this one. A hideous building set in a lovely historic setting. Its very name  is an oxymoron. It is as park-like as Clapham Junction.

Anyway things move on and the building has been purchased for re-development by Travel Lodge. Now bravo I say; I’d rather have a vibrant local inexpensive hotel than a hulking derelict shell. But I was intrigued to see that the big yellow pug ugly concrete extension seen in the earlier posting has been demolished and removed (hurrah) and its space is now destined to become the hotel’s trendy estuarant. Only we Brits could transform a torture chamber into a trattoria. Check out the computer-enhanced images on the site’s perimeter panelling to see what we Teddinistas are looking forward to:

Well that’s something to anticipate eh; Restaurant Lubianka. Let’s not be too judgemental, it’s gotta be better than a concrete box.  Now walking back from here I took a long-shot  from the nearby railway bridge of the real subject of this posting, the walkway over the railway at Teddington station.  Here it is lookingly pretty innocuous:

Now the thing is that I really love this station. Honestly. I travel into C London at least 2-3 times per week from here. It is on a loop system so that trains leave for Waterloo or Victoria (via Clapham junction) from either platform. Imagine that, it’s a perfect station. Even the street down to the station, incongrously called Station Rd, contains some of Teddington’s most attractive houses and these are two of my particular favourites:

If I won the Euro lottery that house on the right would be high on my list of targets. And the station building itself is truly handsome:

You’d be proud to buy your rail tickets from here wouldn’t you? The station staff are friendly and helpful, the newspaper stand is great and the on-platform cafe is super. So what’s my beef? Well take a look at these close-up shots of  the footbridge; it’s like walking over the sky walkways on some of the worst sink estates:

Look I’m not a snob but I hate this scene of damage and disrepair. It’s virtually 1 in 3 windows is missing and it’s been like this for the two years we’ve been here which probably means it’s been like this for many years. Why? Uniquely there doesn’t seem to be a hooligan problem at all in our town – I haven’t seen a Teddington hoodie since being here. And there’s no obvious major problem with graffiti.  I can only assume it’s down to long term decay. But this is one of London’s most affluent areas. Revenues from this station must be staggeringly good. So why the lack of investment and why is our local MP focused on chasing off-shore bankers rather than on-railtrack managers?  Get a grip Vince and get on to those nitwits at Railtrack or Southwest Railways or whoever owns the goddam station and get them to give us a walkway which looks fit for purpose and not like a set from Saving Private Ryan. Get a grip Vince; our local infrastructure’s falling apart. Have you stopped catching the train to work? You wouldn’t get this up north.

pp

I have been accused of being a bit of a professional northern, wearing my up north cloak when it suits, then reverting to urbane London-lifer/Italian medallion man the rest of the time. Well isn’t that what we all do if truth be told ie fit in as seemlessly as possible into your surroundings? It’s not like I bang on about how wonderful life is in Barnsley like Michael Parkinson or talk faux scouse like Cilla Black whilst both have spent the last 40 years living in leafy Surrey. I’m the first person to sing the praises of a place but also to point out its idiosyncracies and downsides. Look at my last posting if you want proof!

But I was genuinely raht delighted to see Lancashire win their first County Championship title outright in 77 years with an 8 wicket win against  Somerset last weekend. What made it doubley delightful was knowing that the title was achieved without superstars with a team mostly drawn from local blokes, albeit with a yorkie captain in Glen Chapple.  I watched Lancashire as a kid when they played a lot at Blackpool. Players like Clive Richards, Brian Statham and Farouk Engineer were the stars then and although they were recognised as the kings of the one day game, the Championship title always eluded them. The same was true in later years with the likes of Muralitharan and even Freddy Flintoff in the side. But with a bunch of honest well-coached troupers they’ve triumphed, which shows the  value of team spirit and great leadership. And don’t they look pleased above eh? Maybe it’s because they’ve also found out that the old enemy Yorkshire got relegated at the same time. Isn’t life amusingly ironic at times?

Now before I get accused of county triumphalism can I also draw your attention to an ad which makes me bloody cringe at its cheesey northernness. This must make the whole nation think that Lancashire is full of halfwits. It features Bolton’s very own Vernon Kay and his actual mum Gladys who is introducing him to the delights of Flora Cuisine’s healthy cooking oil which apparently contains 45% less saturated fat than olive oil. It’s not the product I have an issue with; it’s the ad’s setting – a married man with kids still popping round to his mam’s for tea coupled with the embarrassing baby talk. ‘Hi beauts’ she greets him with. Who calls their 30 odd year old son that? But it’s the punchline which sticks in my craw as Gladys reminds him that she’s just ‘looking after yer lickle ticker’.   How can he possibly walk the streets and not hold his head in shame?  I can’t watch this without gagging. 1 out of 10 is too generous…..

You big jessie.

pp
 

Well here it is, the arrival hall at Ancona airport, the most local to our place in Italy. And behind the gentleman with the bags you’ll notice the car rental offices. We almost always have a saga hiring a car when we arrive in Italy. Probably the  most memorable moment was arriving at the Avis desk in Rimini to find  they had simply run out of cars. Forget that we’d pre-ordered a car, they had none; nor were they particularly keen to refund the deposit. Very Italian.

Anyway we’d pre-booked a car for our recent trip with a small supplier because they offered such a good hire rate. That’s always a signal that there’s a probable catch of course. And the company had the word Sicily in the title, so I was anticipating a conversation with some guy who could have featured in Mickey Blue Eyes. And there was a problem. They wanted to charge a massive 1000€ deposit for hiring the car. I don’t know about you but we don’t always have that amount of cash in our account and we only use debit cards these days. Big drama at the desk – they could accommodate us on a different deal but the insurance costs pushed the overall charges to more than double the original quote. With my best Mickey Blue Eyes accent I told him to ‘forged abard id’.

We tried the Avis desk but they had no cars available (I think they should change their strapline from ‘we try harder’ to ‘we don’t even try any more’), the Hertz office had a sign up saying they didn’t even accept debit cards and so with a feeing of creeping unease I walked up to Europcar. You can see their desk in the background of the image above. They found me a Cinquecento at almost the same rate as the original deal and only charged a reasonable deposit. I signed up eagerly and when I asked about whether to fill up with unleaded or diesel he simply said ‘Signore, it’s an Abarth’. Ahhh I purred as if I knew what he was talking about. I felt like saying ‘Ok forged Abarth it then’ but resisted (the Italians like their humour slapstick rather than of the post-ironic variety ). The car turned out to be a sporty version – which took unleaded fuel and none of that diesel tractor shit; again very Italian – and it was tremendous fun. A bloody result snatched from the jaws of near despair. Mickey Blue Eyes would have been very proud of me.

Next stop the supermarket at Civvitanova. C did the shopping whilst I popped upstairs to the TIM (Telecom Italia Mobile) shop to get our Italian mobile SIM card for the iPad recharged. We’d taken this rather than the laptop because it’s so light (we were flying with Ryanair whose generous baggage allowance allows you to take on board a pair of socks, a toothbrush and not a lot else ). Now I like the guys in this TIM shop because they are all young, attractive and particularly helpful, usually. Young ‘Sandro took me through the options and suggested that their special promozione would suit my needs – 100 hours of broadband access for 19€ (or rather 25€ by the time I’d paid for all the admin stuff). Perfect; how could I possibly use more than 100 hours of online access inside 10 days simply by accessing hotmail?

That was Thursday afternoon and the activation wouldn’t begin before Friday morning. And it did just that. During Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday the service worked well. We were simply going in and out two or three times a day to check messages etc. I wasn’t even blogging. But Tuesday morning dawned and the online access was totally denied. Aw for frig’s sake.

Now the town of Civvitanova is around 30kms from where we live. It happens to be a great stopping/shopping point on the way down from Ancona airport but it’s not exactly local. So I decided to pop down to our nearest  TIM shop in Servigliano which is just the 7 kms away (and back). The shop was open and in my best Italglish I explained the situation and the fact that I couldn’t conceive how we’d used 100 hours of broadband access in just over 4 days; 10 hours tops would be closer.  Jeez we’d been spending 8 hours per day cleaning, repairing and decorating; 2-3 hours watching dvds; several hours in the evening socialising with our friends; 7 hours sleeping and a bit of time relaxing and having some fun. It simply wasn’t possible to have chewed through 100 hours of online accces already I explained in my most exasperated charades-cum-fractured Italian style to the young chap behind the counter wearing big white clown glasses. He empathised, I think, as he accessed TIM’s bloody computer and told me that the mobile BB limit had either been exceeded or that the simpletons in the Civvitanova shop hadn’t actually activated the 100 hours facility. On the basis that that the former wasn’t actually possible I asked him if he could tell the computer to activate the account. No! he replied, I could only do that from the original shop but he’d be happy to install a new 100 hours account for another  25€. But here was the thing, I explained to Franco, as I hadn’t received anything like my full entitlement, why on earth would I pay for the service again? It wasn’t the most eloquent Italian but I think the occasional injection of Anglo Saxon adjectives added a bit of much-needed emphasis. He shrugged and made clear that  that was it. Finito.

Well, I considered my position and informed him with as much disdain as I could muster on my face (I adopted an early Cliff Richard lip sneer) that in ‘Italia niente lavoro’ and flicked my fingers under my chin as if I was Sonny Corleone. It was almost certainly grammatically incorrect but in my pissed-off and  finger-expressive  way it was meant to convey that  ‘absolutely nothing in fuc*ing Italy fuc*ing works!’ I think I may have offended him because he responded pretty snappily that ‘No! Italia works well!’ I could easily have challenged him with a ‘well what about Berlusconi and the Euro’ counter but I realised he only had to mention Nick Clegg to trump me, so I stayed silent. However he did surprise by adding that ‘the problem for you signore is that we employ some poor people in TIM’s shops’. Well I might have been hacked off with his inability to help but I couldn’t fault his patriotism or his honesty.

Feeling slightly less antagonistic towards him I asked if he’d call his crap colleagues in the Civva shop for me to sort the problem out and he simply replied ‘No, they will not answer’. “But could you try ?’ I pleaded . ‘No (this was getting a bit boring now), he didn’t talk with idiots’. ‘I see’  I said, aware that this Dorothy Parker pistol wit was probably including me in this grouping. Muttering darkly I snatched up my receipts and  bits of technology and repeated that ‘niente lavoro’ with an f  expression inserted for effect and stormed out.

So we had no broadband access and I’d burned our bridges with the local TIM shop. Aw ffs.The reality was I’d popped down to our local town to get some some provisions and to sort out this little problem whilst C was still getting up and ready. My reputation as an unlikely hero at sorting out problems in Italy was under threat and anyway we needed online access. So, I took the decision to head off to Civvitanova again to sort this out.

I arrived at the shop 40 mins or so later. Sandro wasn’t there but in his place was Cinzia a very nice assistant who listened to my woes with great patience and not a little incomprehension I suspect. She checked into the TIM system and told me that the credit limit had been exceeded. She explained that TIM charged for access in 15 minute increments even if we’d been online for only a few seconds and she suggested that this was the reason why we’d probably churned through our entitlement so quickly. I still couldn’t see this. We would have had to have accessed the system hundreds of times to make this the reason for the expiration which was patently ridiculous.  It was just too difficult to explain and argue so I took a deep sigh and decided to purchase  a completely new package. Cinzia convinced me, with a delightful smile and without too much effort, that the 100 hours promotional offer wasn’t the best solution for our needs. You don’t say. She recommended the ‘Senza Limiti’ package  giving unlimited usage for the next 30 days for 24€. Or 30€ after admin charges. Although we weren’t going to be around for anything like a month I figured I should take it knowing it was without limits this time.  So I paid up and toddled off back to our home in the certain knowledge that now all would be fine once the activation had kicked in the next day. My reputation would be restored.

And so it came to pass that on the 5th day God created a TIM SIM that actually worked. Hurrah, we had BB access. For two days. Then it stopped working again. Sigh.

I headed off back to TIM’s shop at Civvitanova for a 3rd time. You could say I was in a pretty dark mood and of course Cinzia wasn’t there but Sandro was again. I tried to explain the circumstances but  it was very hard without knowing some decent Italian to explain the saga. Look how many words I’ve used up in this posting already. Sandro put me on to his telephone contact at TIM who spoke some English. I asked her how I could possibly have used up a month’s unlimited access inside 2 days. I was told I must have exceeded the bandwidth limit of 10 GB (what happened to unlimited access?). The most I’d downloaded was one radio podcast off iTunes because I couldn’t receive direct radio transmissions from the UK online (Apple don’t permit Flash on iPad, sigh). I couldn’t believe that this had exceeded 10GB of usage. Blimey that’s a pretty standard level of BT Broadband service in the UK.

Anyway to compound the difficulty, Sandro explained that I had had the temerity to exceed my paid-for BB limit and was actually in debit to TIM to the tune of 3.5 €. I owed them! By all accounts I could only resurrect the ‘without limits ‘ offer (or more accurately without limits provided you don’t exceed the in-built limits) by paying a further 5 € ‘unlocking’ charge. Sigh. What do you do? I paid it and was told that all would now be OK  although the access wouldn’t re-activate until the next day. We only had two days of our holiday left but our business is buoyant at the moment and I needed to have service to access my messages etc. So in the end I had paid 60€ for it (and almost as much in petrol costs) and had, I guess, at max 30 hours usage in 10 days. Welcome to Italy and its bloody soul-destroying approach to utility services.

And it’s not just me, you know. I’d been telling my good friend John who has a place just down the road from us about the benefits of the mobile BB dongle for months. His house sits about 50 metres lower down than ours but it’s just enough to put it in a coverage shadow on TIM. So John had gone to a telcomms shop over in Sarnano about 30kms away in the opposite direction to get a Vodafone mobile BB dongle and SIM.  He’d returned excitedly looking forward to having online access at last. But it simply wasn’t possible to activate the service, even after 24 hours. We even tried it at our place in case the shadow effect also impacted on Vodafone’s coverage. But signal strength was good at both our homes. John had no option but to return to the shop again. They’d only gone and failed to activate the SIM initially. It was easily rectified but John was without service for 3 days and had effectively lost a day of his holiday and third of  a tank of petrol traipsing back and forth to the shop. Italy’s a truly lovely country but this sort of stuff drives you crazy.

If that wasn’t enough we uncovered quite a degree of low-level damage  to our home from our guests this summer. A cracked double-glazed window, a patio table broken as if someone had stood on it, a bench seat broken and tied up with rope from our hammock, a double-sinked vanity unit in our bathroom just split in half etc. We’d spent our first morning cleaning and doing basic repairs etc when I heard C laughing in the kitchen. It had been a challenging morning doing damage assessment so what could possibly have been so amusing?  I’m not telling a word of a lie here but C showed me her discovery which she’d found whilst cleaning all the crockery. We were used to finding cups with broken handles placed at the back of cupboards but this took the biscuit. It was only an egg-cup, clearly broken but with the pieces re-assembled and held together crudely with cellotape. Not even glue! Did they presumably think that we wouldn’t notice? How much would it have cost our guests to replace it? Couldn’t they call or leave a message to say they’d accidentally broken an egg-cup? What’s the worst that we would have said?

Probably ‘Foregg abard id’.

pp

Regular readers will know how I take great delight in observing the  smallest personal quirks. I seem to have a peculiar radar for picking up slightly unusual mannerisms and inexplicable behaviour. I can’t help it. Earlier this week I was staring out of the window at my son-in-law’s office when I noticed an older couple peering through the railings of the Wellington barracks opposite. There’s just some garden space beyond so I wondered what they were looking at, perhaps a squirrel I thought. Then the guy reached inside and pulled something out. It was a discarded plastic bottle. He turned and handed it to his wife who popped it into the plastic bag she was carrying. I followed them for a good few minutes as they moved along the railings extracting bits of reachable paper and plastic detritus and re-depositing them in their collection bags. They were on a personal mission to clean up Buckingham Gate and the surrounding area. Did they see themselves as vigilante  refuse superheroes? Heaven only knows. They’re no doubt thoughtful and proud citizens but I couldn’t help thinking quite eccentric if not batty at the same time. Perhaps they spend all their days just clearing up the stuff that the regular street cleaners miss. Imagine their conversations at home …’not a bad tally this morning love; 26 coke bottles, 12 fag packets, 6 Walkers crisps packets (including the quite rare Salt n’ Lineker variety), a pair of non-matching flip flops and a slightly perished baby’s dummy. Ooh that’s a nice haul darling’. Decent folks but odd don’t you think?

Then this morning I was following a young woman as I headed to the train station in Teddington. Just before I crossed the busy street to take me down Station Rd the woman stopped at a bench where a young guy was seated and I couldn’t help but overhear her ask him if he could direct her to Teddington Police Station. He looked a little bemused. Not surprising really. Tonight I returned with my camera to the very scene which is shown below…

That’s the bench at which he was sat. Now I don’t want to sound like a smart-arse but I wonder if you can guess from the scene where the police station might be located?  Perhaps along the High St? If only there’d been a directional clue for her like a distinctive blue lamp or an above-door sign. I swear this is true. She was clearly English-speaking and there was no guide dog. It’s not like the building was small and hidden – here’s a shot of the place from a wider angle….

How could she not notice this brutal slab of a building? It virtually screams suburban police station. Do you ever wonder how some people get through life? I do worry about these things. In fact I was sat on the train 10 minutes later and still thinking to myself, what if she’s a stand-up comedienne who relies on observational humour to make a living. Could be a short career. It does make me wonder how some people make their way through life.

And then my eyes alighted on a small feature in this morning’s Metro newspaper which confirmed that thought….

I don’t know if you can read this but it’s basically about some acutely body-conscious Chinese bloke who sat in a bath full of eels (presumably baby ones) to allow them to nibble off bits of dead skin. Now I thought this was a technique used to remove that hardened skin from your feet. But he chose to expose his whole lower body to the curious nibblers and wouldn’t you know it one of them only swam up his urethra. His bloody willy hole! He apparently tried to pull it out but it was too slippery. Can you imagine seeing the little bugger slide up your piss passage? Oh my frigging lawd. The bloody thing was removed DEAD after a 3 hour operation. 3 HOURS!!  What were they doing all that time? The mind boggles. But who but a frigging loon would sit naked in a bath full of greasy slimey eels big or small? What was he thinking? I once went on a busines trip with BT to Madrid with my great boss Brian M and our host invited us to lunch, orderding some local specialities for us. The starter was a large vol-au-vent which looked so appetising until I cut into it and a slew of elvers (baby eels) piled out onto my plate. I swear they were still alive. I still feel ill at the thought of ingesting them but the thought of having them swim up the original tunnel of love makes me feel positively faint.

What is it with some folk?

pp

Look at this….a lovely bottle of Vimto, a cordial made from a secret blend of blackberries, grapes and raspberries and some special herbs and brewed oop north for t’last 100 years and more.  It’s like the northern equivalent of Coca Cola and, yes, there is a carbonated version now and a shiny new logo style too (which I don’t really like if truth be told).  It’s what we grew up drinking as kids and just recently we’ve  introduced it to our two grandsons. A bit of Lancs DNA in a bottle. And they love it, naturally. They aren’t exactly talking with flat vowels just yet but it was amusing to hear our eldest grandson asking for another glass of that really tasty stuff ‘Vomit’. Ah spoken like one or two Blackpool lads I used to know. Makes you raht proud. And as Paul Daniels might have said  if he’d spent less time in hospital and more time studying, ‘Now that’s Metathesis’ …….

Metathesis (English pronunciation: /məˈtæθəsɪs/; from Greek μετά-θε-σις, from μετα-τί-θη-μι “I put in a different order”: Latin trānspositiō) is the re-arranging of sounds or syllables in a word, or of words in a sentence. Most commonly it refers to the switching of two or more adjacent sounds.

Magic!

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Ah look at these two old mates. One’s a tiny little fellah with a rather shallow personality, squeaky voice,  a magic wand, and a fluffy partner who struggles to talk coherently. And the other’s Sooty. Boom boom.

Sadly that friendship was tested yesterday with the news that the diminutive magician Paul Daniels was hospitalised after being hit in the face by a pizza flung by kiddies favourite Sooty. You couldn’t make it up could you?  I’m not sure whether charming Paul’s going to press charges for GBH (Giardiniera Bothers Head no doubt) but don’t you think, whatever the supposed injury, this is one story that he shouldn’t have sought to publicise. I mean how hard does this make him look? Forced to seek medical care after being attacked by a doughy base with mozzarella topping flung by a glove puppet isn’t exactly acting like the Terminator is it? I can’t see HRH awarding him the George medal for conspicuous bravery in the face of Sweep’s little friend.

Regular readers will know that I have a special place in my heart for a growing little band of showbiz poisonalities like Bruce Forsyth, Kerry Katona, Richard Madeley, John Barrowman, Vanessa Feltz, Barbara Windsor  to name but a few, who I’d happily consign to a convict ship full of serial perverts, for crimes against humility, humour and even ham acting. But the little illusionist Daniels has just promoted himself to the undisputed leader of the twat pack for his bravura display of valour whilst threatenned by a quatro stagioni. What a frigging Marguerita.

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