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Hmm. What would happen if you could really brew a storm in a tea-cup? Would you be able to send forth little bolts of lightning from your pinkie? Or make it rain on a sixpence? (That last one would be even more impressive if I knew what a sixpence looked like, and perhaps how I could turn on one….) I guess you’d have to sell the tea bags in an extra strong box. It would probably rumble and shake in the basket as you took it to the checkout and embarrass the kind of person who thinks other people think they are constantly breaking wind when in fact they simply have very squeaky shoes. Or storm-in-a-bag.

What else would they have in the range? Coco-stones. Kind of moccha-frappe-hail. Obviously. Make everything chocolatey. Although they’d give you a freezing tongue and one of those weird headaches you get from eating too much ice cream. And jelly-vision, for when you’re watching something really scary.

Sigh. Well. It’s a post isn’t it? Brain is currently addled by too much running on lemsip.

Any other products I’m missing?

With these words, John Bolton, ex-US ambassador to Chessington World of Stupidity, has gone up amazingly in my hard-to-be-amazed estimation. The fact that he turned his interviewee (sorry, her name escapes me but she’s Not Jeremy Paxman and Not Sophie Raworth) into David Caruso and she had to conduct the rest of the interview with her head tilted at a 60 degree angle just made the whole thing better. She better be asking decent questions or she be getting capped in the ass by the Mala Noche/BoJo for Majoris gang (Ed Sturton).

Not much to report to report on the novel – been concentrating on running and various domestic/professional matters that I cannot discuss. Not even on here. To myself. In a careless whisper. Not in that way though. Or a suggestive whisper. Or Wispas. Or any form of chocolate, Belgian or otherwise. Especially not any Brazilian chocolate which any fule no is covered’n’pubes. Tis true. It’s the law. Floss your tange. Anyhoo. One of these days I will be a proper little blogger and go and comment on other people’s blogs and do it all properly like whats I does for wuk and stufs. And then I will be having been popularz. Hai! I be your frenz! Make me your lolblog! Jelly! Cut me for I bleed satire.

Oh yes.

Sigh. So – in character driving news…. excellent potential two days ago in the man that was secretly reading the bible in a PSP case. (Seriously. I almost broke the cardinal rule and spoke to him. But like any good citizen journalist I sucked it up for blogging later. Interaction is overrated after all. And does nothing for your TechnoratiOfThePops). Who else? The women dismissed as ‘vacuous’ by an old couple who were forced to sit apart by virtue of turning up later than the former and so having to listen to two old friends catch up. Ok, so one of them explained she was playing korfball to ‘expand her social network’, which is a bit like saying you like to drink Swarfega. But never mind. There’s been a few too many fairweather Big Issue sellers around. And Jose Luis Hernandex – President of Polaris World. He’s my new special friend – Barry Scott isn’t returning my calls.

Who else? Umm – the guy at the gym whose job it is to marshall the equipment got his chance to be a PT today as people are on hols. But his reward was a spinning class with only one participant. And I’ve made a new friend at work. He’s called Brian and is a jiffy bag in Third Life. In Second Life he wants to be a coconut.

Always the coconuts. Bah. I was much funnier ten hours ago. It’s much harder without an audience.

Ask me a question….

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!

I’ve realised, a bit late in the day, that my random jottings are becoming perfect spam fodder. I should really run it through a spam filter one day to see how much gook I di gobble. But enough of that seriousness. On to verbiage.

A propos of nothing, I decided to write down everything I thought worthy of a story en route to my first appointment of the day. Here’s the list:

• Schoolgirl on the tube reading her neighbour’s Metro over the top of her library book. There were a number of ways this could have gone – perhaps she recognised a friend in a photo, or maybe she dreams of being an actress. Not much to work on, but it was really the repetition of the look, like an addiction, that made it interesting.
• I saluted a single magpie hopping on a garden wall as I walked past it, and in doing so saw a pair of ballet shoes discarded neatly in the front garden. You want niche? How about ballerina cat-burglars? Or better still, ballerina cats. Or perhaps mice living in the ballet shoes – kind of one-up-mouseship among the mice population.
• A man was reading Sharpe’s Drift on the tube. So far, so humdrum. And how! Anyhoo. I was somewhat surprised to discover when his phone went that he was actually Polish (the very idea of an English person speaking Polish never crossed my mind, which is another story in itself). Which leads me to wonder what on earth this man makes of Sean Bean. And why the bally hell is he not reading Harry Potter? Did he not read the code when he entered the country? You may not be able to pronounce ‘sugar’, but you know what side your Hogwarts’ buttered on. Or something. Anyway, weak, relies on crude stereotypes, plus culture clash is best served over ice. Diamonds, to be precise.
• Much more promising – the homeless man on Hungerford bridge (irony, thy name is a cup of tea) mewling softly into a harmonica as his two dogs slept doggedly by his side. In that they were big and fluffy and dog-like, and their bellies puffed as he huffed. His hands were covered in tattoos, which on first glance read ‘Jade’ and ‘Goody’, but on closer inspection were just the usual not-so-cryptic ‘fuck you’s to friends, family, god and the state. I felt bad about not giving him any money, but if he’s not going to have performing dogs, I don’t want to know. God knows I’m a sucker for anti-capitalist ventriloquism starring golden retrievers. To be honest, and serious for a moment, it seemed vaguely pointless to give him anything. He seemed beaten, even in his begging/busking. Sigh.
• Further along Hungerford bridge you pass by some supporting columns going into Charing Cross. The supports of these are covered in spikes, presumably to keep people from jumping on to them, and you know, having a party or something. It seemed a perfect perch for a human-gull nest. Which leads on to human gulls. Like harmonica man. Or that Gibson book where they all live in the supports of a bridge, if memory serves.
• On the South Bank there was a solitary workman breaking up the paving slabs. I’m always fascinated by men in yellow bibs who work on their own. It takes someone unusually bloody minded to do that. Or perhaps he had a vendetta against the National Film Theatre and was tunnelling his way in. You know. Slowly.
• And finally, the man set apart from his peers, juggling a coffee and salmon-encrusted bagel, looking hot and uncomfortable despite being one of the few men not in a shirt and tie. Waiting for an event to start that I didn’t really belong at. But that story is far too easy to tell.

So – there you have it, the insides of a story-teller’s head. The constant extrapolation of events, filling in backstory, weighing up the sheer unlikeliness of things. What works, what doesn’t. What’s believable, and then a sanity check of what’s believable by others. Like my response to the arrival of concrete blocks in front of various public buildings – surely this is a fantastic opportunity for public art or corporate sponsorship or similar.

Anyhoo. Not up to my usual standard. But sometimes you need to let the drain clear. Oh, and someone trumped me tonight – describing something as not ‘rocket salad’. Slightly spoiled by possibly being pre-meditated. Otherwise, comparable to ‘it’s all gone fruit dougal’ for describing my outlook on life. Little bit of philosophy there. I won’t let it spoil my dinner.

There are now enough Poles serving coffee in the land for the pronunciation of sugar to  be changed wholesale to shoe-gah.  Or perhaps we should simply accept that coffee is meant to taste of shoes.  Or it should be drunk from shoes.  Made from Italian leather.

I’ve never been clear about this – do the cows have to be Italian or is the skin cured in Italy or is it simply enough for the leather to have passed through Italy on its journey to becoming a shoe.  Gah!  Confusing. And if it’s an Italian cow, does that mean that they moo in Italian?

Speaking of which.  There is no sound more annoying than an Italian man speaking Italian.  In a falsetto.  Although on thinking about it, any number of Italian men where that number is greater than one and the number of men speaking in a falsetto are greater than one would be even more annoying.  Annoying +1 if you will.
Of course, I am now waiting for the BBC to confirm these, and other theories (there is no department for Wampum Physics, no matter how many times I say ‘heap big research institute need to be powered by buffalo mozzarella”).  I have arranged it with them (via my tinfoil hat) that they will introduce a slav character into The Archers that stands around all day asking people if they want shoe-gah and maybe cinammonnutmegchoklitontop?  I understand the Beeb pay by the word, so I think they should de-syllable that one.

Perhaps the character could save up to buy a cow.  An Italian cow with a special bell.  Like the Lindt cow.  But with a falsetto moo.

Hmm.  It may be time for lunch.  Burger with italian sauce, methinks.

The minister for trams. The clam of chowdertown. The big cheese. Chief Monkey of Golden Triangle. Elvis of our hearts. Princess of our jaffa cakes. The raisin of our dreams. King. Of. Cheese. A grin for all seasons.

Ok. So a long day being mildly tingled by politickery. And obnov, feeling a teensy bit old. I haven’t held political office for ooh, 16 years. My last campaign was based on Dirty Harry. And revolved around how little I wanted to do the job. Naturellement, this being England, I won. Ok, I didn’t win the last election, but I was elected on the same platform previously.

I got to play at being in the West Wing for approximately 3 nano-seconds this morning. Real politics is nothing like as fun as it is portrayed. It’s like looking at your feet through binoculars. Familiar, yet not as fun as spying on your neighbours. You know. If that’s the kind of thing you like to do. Perhaps Milliband could be made a minister for it. Ah yes, my mistake, Mssrs Straw and Long are already in charge of that.

Sigh. Politics. Poli-tics. Many mannerisms. Multiple parrots. Long day.

… it’s Salmon pink, marshmallow roasted, Essex blonde, new potato, Elvis in a dress, marsupials breeding with mammals effluent. Available from your local Marks and Spanks for just a nappy or two.

I’ve realised a bit late in the day that one of my own heroes (or herrors, as I just tipped) has already written J-Pod. So, once again, I am back to the drawing board, although frankly, by the very mention of the buggers, you would think that half of the middle classes would be Leonardos by now. Similarly, there must be a lot of escapologists working in agencies if they have to think outside the box so often. Which is a very tired joke. Unless there was a Box religion. In which case it would become immediately edgy (ON TOP of it being boxy, badda bing badda box) and you know, street.

Although a street box would invariably be some kind of food container, and therefore not very big. I have always assumed that this ‘box’ that I am meant to think outside of is quite large. Positively big. Although not as big as Elvis. Or indeed, Eavis. Oh Glasto, let me count the ways that I hate thee. Although it is not, as yet, sold in a box.

Of course, street boxes don’t figure as high on the american express scale as DHL cartons or Ikea packing cardboard. Which makes it fair game for experimentation. Many’s the gruesome image we are force fed via our telling visions of boxes covered in grafitti or dipped in canola oil. Boxes covered in oil AND/OR onions are a regular feature of my local paper and OH MY GOD the irony, my local paper will inevitably end up as something covered in fat. Or poop.

Which brings us back to FA-ti-doh. Etc. At ease gentlemen, your pupils are no longer required.

Like my good friend Mr Hassenscouser, I am partial to the odd advert starring ‘Tyrannoserious Alan’, a dinosaur with no sense of humour whatsoever. This is a particular problem for said reptile, as he spends most of his time talking to an imaginary volcano (possessed by the spirit of Brian Blessed, or Prince Charles, or possibly a Peking Duck – one can never be sure about these things). Anyhoo, this particular foam rubber apprentice is fond of flowcharts, which is just spiffing, because I had always thought that what the Pleiscene era was missing was a good old brainstorm. I mean sure, they had their ice age and their mass extinctions and their fancy Poole pottery, but what did the Beefeaters ever do for us, eh?

Beefeaters? What am I thinking of? Mr Darwin hadn’t invented lego yet, let alone the humble Cowius Parsleyius. No burgers for Stanley. I mean Alan. And let that be a lesson to you….

Two of them. Staking out their territory in the carriage like they would do at Glasters or Glynders or Class WarDers (just a little pun there, mes amis). Overnight bags stuffed full of cosmetics that have Never Knowingly Been Sold to Poor People. You can tell this by the pattern on the front of their bag. Both have bouffant Winehouse hair. Except it is blonde in both cases, and the effect is somewhat lost by them both being sober and indeed, not singing sewer-jazz.

They chit-chat, flick through style mags at a speed that suggests reading may make them incontinent and demolish a small landfill of Marks and Spanks best oral fixations. Or what is commonly known in the trade as Not Very Good Sushi. I am pretending to be a top person and Destined For Great Things. I do this by eating jelly while reading The Economist. In your face, Tory puds!

One of them has fat ankles. Well, in fact I have no idea what a fat ankle looks like. But they sound like a bad thing. And she deserves them. Unless she helps out at a puppy farm. An abandoned puppy farm. That is, the puppies are abandoned, not the farm. Although the farm could have been abandoned at some point in time. Yes, that would be allowed. Also, the puppies must not be experimented upon. Especially not for Fat Ankle Syndrome. Because they were abandoned. It would be all right if they were bred for it and were puppies in name only – in fact being bundles of fur that shit every 23 minutes, yelp and try and fetch a test tube. That would be all right. I think. Well, I don’t know really.

But I digress. Various small groups of men get on the train during the journey. All are magnetically, or perhaps pheronominally (or just plain nominally), drawn to sit in the next set of seats to the girls. Because, ya know, it’s too fetch to actually sit with them, or engage with them in any way but slobber.

I watch their eyes. Three distinct groups, from different ethnic and social backgrounds. And ther eyes betray all of them. Their pupils slide and slither from underneath sunglasses or stoned-lids. The sheer force of will by which they are trying to alter the path of lightwaves so that they Might See a Bt of Muff is incredible. It’s like Lynx for Physics. I begin to wonder if I am being drawn into a blonde continuum where men will lose their dignity for a hint of gusset.

I feel rather sad, and a little angry. I want the boys not to look. To show restraint. Despite the tuts and knowing looks to each other as each group departs, they clearly thrive on attention. And like a fly to a moth, I find myself storing little details away for future use. And slowly, surely, I fall into their whore-hoorah trap.

Fifty unrelenting minutes of the mindless tedium that is rural middle-age. It reminded me of a scenario from school, where on the first day of a new year, the sixth form would attempt to persuade innocent first years to write essays on the sex life of a ping pong ball, or the geography teacher would ask a particular numpty to fetch the black chalk from the store cupboard. What larks! There’s a lot to be said for an English education. Actually, on reflection, there isn’t. There’s a market out there for tweenie fiction and endless tales of boarding school hell, but nothing comparable to the entire genre or high school fic that there is in the UsofProm. That’s what having Grange Hill on the television does for you.

But I digress. Unlike this particular woman on her way to a training seminar or similar. If only. A little digression. Some gossip. Any kind of insight for me to squirrel away in a notebook and vainly claim to have made up thirty years later. But no. Satan could use her to set crosswords. Twenty whole minutes on the inner workings, settings and efficacy of her new boiler system. Stabbing with bent spoons was too good for her. Several hours later, I can still recite the temperature of her bungalow for any given point during the day. Her travelling companion, on offering advice (God help me but he had the SAME BOILER and thermostat. Wireless apparently. Naturally – that’s to save their respective spouses from strangling them with the wires) was rebuffed with the simple yet deadly, ‘oh yes the man who installed it said that too’.

Hells’ teeth! What connivance was this? Not only is this woman killing me softly with her dial settings , but she’s also not taking the advice of a qualified engineer. All male particles in a three metre radius were beginning to oscillate. ‘I suppose I should have read the instructions….’ Now. I’ve read enough Dilbert and seen enough Scots mechanics in black and white WWII films to know that this is Never A Good Idea. Although I did just assume that the installer was qualifed. And we should never assume things. Assuming makes appointments with disappointments. Or is that cheese?