Pootling along, minding my own business on the train. Ok, pretending to be reading some Really Important Pamphlet, when my semantic reverie is broken by an earnest and unnecessarily long conversation (by mobile phone, because that makes all the difference) about a disciplinary matter involving various Johns, Wally, Charles — all of whom were on the board of an unspecified organisation, but it sounded like a social enterprise thing. One of the Johns had punched Wally, and the police had been called. She was trying to diffuse the situation and keep the media off the case. By talking about it, at length, mentioning their full names (not repeated here out of some bizarre sense of decency) on a crowded train. A train whose ‘customers’ where bored shitless by some pathetic air in the atmosphere type excuse as to why we arrived half an hour late.
Thirty minutes I would have enjoyed immensely, had I not spent half the night having a nightmare (my third in two sleeps, which is a bit worrying, although at least this time it didn’t feature Chucky eating my spinal column. Seriously. And I hadn’t eaten any cheese, acid, car battery acid or other stimulants. I blame CSI. Ok, ok. I blame CSI Miami. Again. Fucking Caruso and his sideways school of acting. And to think I liked NYPD Blue…)I digress. I was also trying hard to be Int.Elle.Eck.Shual by reading a collection of essays which are at best, repetitive. And at worst, written by Jemima Puddleduck-Bounty.
Now, consider this for a second. A duck that only eats coconut. Shirley proof, if proof be needed, that Beatrix Potter was talking out of her bloomers. As was Enid Blyton. In fact, the only credible children’s character of the last 117 years four months eight days and tea (except the kind of tea which is really brunch. I’m talking about children’s tea. Think of me as the Children’s Tea Tsar. And I’m particularly interested in the size of the measure s of the Wish Tea that modern youngsters (ooh, how 70s of me) are pouring themselves). Anyhoo. Children’s characters and realism = The Borrowers. But only because they form the basis for the Stepford Wives, Straw Dogs and The Rockford Files. You scoff? How could Jim Garner’s performance as ‘bow dow diddlum dow’ Rockford not be delivered except by several dozen thieving little people living in a mobile home? Yes, yes, a mobile home with a fixed land line for telelelelalacommunications jiggery japery.
While I’m at it. Kill Jimmy Carr. Now, I don’t mean that literally. But oh, to have that power. Minions! Do as I say. Oh, dear reader, if you could only hear the sigh. It has surely trumped the sigh (and no, it wasn’t that kind of sigh. Or trump.). But ooooooh. The joy of never having to see him again.
Although, as per usual. It’s really a signifier of how little I have achieved that I even have to mention Mr Carr, who I will endeavour never to meet (I shook Brigstocke’s hand, but it was an accident) in order to vent my spleen. And I don’t even dislike my spleen! HA! Take that Mr So-Called Jimmy of So-Called Carr.
Neil Diamond. The End.
[Edit] Bollocks. Any fule no I meant Jimmy Diamond. Although the crushing, nay soul-emptying irony of ‘I shoul d have known better’ has never been more apposite. I love that word. What the banjo does it mean? A. Poz. It. Hurrah!
