who's listening?

i got quite excited last friday afternoon (not for any rude reasons i hasten to add)

the city view apartment complex where we are staying has an intranet which connects every apartment - having noticed when i first went into iTunes here that a number of other people were sharing their iTunes library on the local network, my ego took me over and i started sharing half of my library (i looked at the kind of music that was out there already and, being first and foremost an educator, decided that these poor people needed some further education)

unfortunately for the first week or two when i viewed the users list nobody was connected, much to k.'s relief as he thought it would slow our connection down - so after a while i forgot all about it - then on friday afternoon as i was about to reboot the computer, it indicated that 4 users were connected to my iTunes library - so somewhere around here there are people making use of the 10,524 tracks i chose to share - i got quite excited and phoned k. who responded in his usual way whenever i get worked up over inconsequentialities (is that actually a real word?) by asking what we were going to eat for dinner that evening

i think this eagerness to share my music with everyone stems from the fact that i was an amateur dj for eleven years - from january 1985 to december 1995 (a few days before i left my home for a 9 year stay in singapore) i did a regular friday night stint in a student bar which would start at about 8.30pm and would frequently go on until 3 or 4 am as the successive generations of student pissheads who ran the establishment weren't fussy about licencing hours, the bar being located in a field at the back of the college buildings out of view and earshot of any surburban dwellings - in the early nineties i expanded my range by buying my own equipment and getting more 'gigs', my last one being in december 1995 where i grooved at leeds united football club's bar at my friend s.'s aunt's birthday - thank goodness for s.'s camper van and the M1

for me dj-ing was a great social compromise - i liked going out to clubs and discos, and i have liked listening and dancing (and singing- but that's another story) to music ever since mid-seventies school discos, where along with all my flared-trousered classmates, i would bop up and down to the bay city rollers and the wombles - the problem is that i don't like socialising for too long - i go through phases when i do and longer ones when i'm an anti-social git - standing behind a turntable console was a way of having a night out where most of the mixing you had to do was between two pieces of seven-inch vinyl - you got to control the night by playing music, most of which you liked - you had the challenge of getting people up and dancing - you got drinks brought to you by the bar staff without having to queue up and pay - you could invite your friends up to talk to you for a while - you could put a long mix on from an segued lp and go off and have a dance when you felt like it - and, on a couple of memorable occasions, you could duck down and hide behind a bank of speakers, record boxes and turntables when there was a fight involving a number of drunken essex boys armed with beer glasses and fruit knives - you also had the privelege of doing birthday parties and wedding receptions for all your friends, which, i think, is a great gift and beats a set of cutlery or a magimix any day

of course, if i'd discovered vitamin pills in the early nineties, instead of playing loud pounding house music for others who already had, it might have been a very different story - as jarvis cocker observed in 'sorted for e's and wizz,' i might have been standing in a field in hampshire at six o'clock in the morning, losing an important part of my brain whilst waiting for a spaceship to land....

so i'm not quite sure if this desire to share my musical tastes, even in this networked iTunes anonymous fashion, with others is because i like the idea of pleasing people or whether i have to occasionally satiate a continuing egotistical streak that over the years has caused me to make a public spectacle of myself in a variety of ways...

if he does exist, he's presumably responsible for these things too

All things dull and ugly,
All creatures, short and squat,
All things rude and nasty,
The Lord God made the lot.

Each little snake that poisons,
Each little wasp that stings,
He made their brutish venom,
He made their horrid wings.

All things sick and cancerous,
All evil great and small,
All things foul and dangerous,
The Lord God made them all.

Each nasty little hornet,
Each beastly little squid,
Who made the spiky urchin?
Who made the sharks? He did!

All things scabbed and ulcerous,
All pox both great and small,
Putrid, foul and gangrenous,
The Lord God made them all.

Amen.

All Things Dull & Ugly - Monty Python
(Monty Python's Contractual Obligation Album: 1980)

jim beam, tequila & navel displays

it's that time of the year when you dress up as wonder woman or the invisible man (personally i can't see anything in that one) or long-dead cultural icons (like champion the wonder horse, the helicopter from the whirly birds or the millenium dome) and parade around the dark autumn streets with russet-coloured leaves swirling round your stockinged, high-heeled or platform-soled feet in the biting wind, wondering why you didn't have the foresight to bring a coat and trying to remember how many bloody parties you've been invited to, carrying with you the equivalent of a wheelbarrowful of boxes of dodgy cheap red wine and cardboard crates of miller light, thinking to yourself how much easier it was when you were a child and all you had to do was go trick or treating with only the threat of being sexually abused by seemingly normal surburban inhabitants, who were secretly running a child-porn and white slavery ring under the cover of a quilting bee, to worry about - and promising yourself that you won't get as drunk as you did last year and end up sitting in the middle of a fountain, half naked and giving a spirited rendition of 'how do you solve a problem like maria?' while you moon the policemen who are coming to take you for a little lie down at the local jailhouse

so with k. off in boston for the weekend, and with my crate of miller light grasped in my hand, i attended the first halloween party i'd been to for twenty years, minus fancy dress due to my current uninsured driver's status, which prevented me from driving out to a party shop in one of the many suburban strip malls surrounding us and renting my traditional big-hairy-monster-of-no-fixed-identity costume - a look, some might say, that i could pull off without the need of a costume...

myself and a lot of similar-looking large hairy people gathered in the home of d. and g., a couple of our kansas city friends we have had the pleasure of hanging out with since we arrived in america - d. told me that it would be more of a beer drinking evening, which didn't prepare me for the various bottles of tequila, vampire blood vodka and black-label extra-strong jim beam (a spirit very dear to me) which seemed to be placed strategically round the living room - and so it wasn't long before we were doing down-in-one tequila shots and loudly criticising the acting prowess of the various participants in 'scream 2' and bitching about courtney cox's extremely ill-advised hair-do and the rather inept attempts of the skeleton-masked killler to overcome obstacles of soft furnishings and various household objects in order to get to his screaming bimbotic victims who were obviously unaware that a swift kick in the balls is the most effective way of stopping any man in his tracks, serial killer or not

at some point i reached for the jim beam and a shot glass and from then on it was goodnight vienna to my sobriety (was there a twist in my sobriety? no just a twist of lemon in the whisky) - at some point i recall the room getting hotter and tequila shots being poured into various people's navels as they sprawled out over easy chairs while other enthusiastic people drank the said shots from the said navels - i remarked that the room seemed to be getting hotter and that it was probably a trick of the alcohol - although by this time the house had filled up with the arrival of superman, marilyn monroe, three very large, bearded and deep-voiced cheerleaders, with britney spears-style 'stronger' video pony tails, wonder woman, a vampire and buffy the vampire slayer dressed up in the little red riding-hood costume she wore in the halloween episode from the fourth season

later with a lot of the costumed party-goers having moved on to other parties and more tequila shots, more jim beam and, to slow down the advance of the alcohol, bottles of miller light having been consumed, the core members of the party were left sitting round the lounge having removed their shirts....

and so i will leave the story there - the hangover keeps coming at me in waves and for a much needed sugar-rush, i now have to eat a bag of chocolate covered gummi bears, which along with a lot of happy memories, is a souvenir from the party

one more for (decorating) the road (with a multi-coloured yawn)

i am hungover...

i have to admit it - i've been in denial since i woke up bright and breezy this morning with a slight pulsating feeling in my temples

it's strange how advancing age has altered the way my head seems to cope with excessive amounts of alcohol - i did most of my heavy drinking at college in my early twenties - i could drink ten pints of beer or real ale without a thought of becoming acquainted with the carpet or ending up on the great white telephone talking to god and shouting for hughie and i frequently won drinking contests with my ability to down a whole pint in under four seconds - apparently i have a good gag reflex (an attribute which has come in handy for other activities over the years...)

in those days my hangovers would be honest, upfront and immediate, often starting before i went to bed on the night i perpetrated the outrage against my unsuspecting brain cells, indulging in drinking sprees where my friends and i would spike each others' pints with a shot or two of vodka, resulting in the time-honoured tradition of throwing up on the rose bushes outside our college bar - vomiting was one way of ensuring that you'd be sober enough to walk home at three o'clock in the morning without attracting the attention of the local police - i was stopped by two policemen one night as i walked down the empty high street of brentwood - at the time i regarded this interference as an outrageous infringement of my civil liberties, but, looking back, i had been at a pyjama party and was walking down the road at two o'clock in the morning in my green pyjamas, blue dressing gown and moccasins - furthermore, we were in close proximity to the local mental hospital, with it's alarming amount of patient break-out incidents - so i think the two constables can be forgiven for showing a bit of social concern - fortunately, i was sober enough to answer their questions succinctly and without swaying about too much, so they left me to wend my solitary way back to my room to collapse onto my awaiting sick bed - thank goodness i had had the foresight to go round the back of a large bell tent (the student body was having a camp out that week to raise money for some charity or other) and force myself to throw up three times, as a way of partially sobering up, by sticking my fingers down my throat (not as easy as it sounds for me because of my aforementioned good gag reflex) - without this timely piece of self-intervention, i might have ended up spending the night in a cell with a fine to pay (not to be confused with the bald truth of a fine toupee)

throwing up was also a way of ensuring you could go back into the bar and drink even more - a spectacle no doubt reminiscent of a roman orgy where people would vomit so they could return to the feast and consume more food - one of my friends, now a respectable head teacher at a school somewhere in south east asia which i won't name, was a master of this - he didn't even need to force himself - at some point in the evening he would stagger outside and his body would carry out the necessary evacuation of his stomach contents without any helping hand (or finger) and he would walk back into the bar confident that he had added a couple more hours on to his evening - after one night of excess i staggered out of the bar to walk home and saw him in the rose bushes with vomit coming out of at least two orifices - he then went back in and ordered another pint of abbot ale - i was in awe of this man's obvious elephantine constitution

nowadays my hangovers don't leap out at me with sledehammer blows to my head and 'flu-like symptoms of nausea and shivering as soon as i wake up, gradually dissipating throughout the day - the passing years seem to have made my body sneaky and an expert in subterfuge, fooling me into thinking that i'm fine on regaining consciousness in the late morning - the light doesn't give me a pain in the back of my eyes, i can tolerate noises without them pounding through my skull and i can go out and eat a hearty breakfast - but as the day goes on, the slight throbbing in my temples, previously the only evidence that i did anything unwise the night before, slowly increases and then begins to spread until, by the middle of the afternoon, i'm sitting in a chair and holding my head back in a posture similar to that of uma thurman's after she o.d.'s in 'pulp fiction'

a story for halloween

Well, if you ever go back into Wooley Swamp, well, you better not go at night. There's things out there in the middle of them woods that make a strong man die from fright. Things that crawl and things that fly and things that creep around on the ground. And they say the ghost of Lucius Clay gets up and he walks around.

But I couldn't believe it. I just had to find out for myself. And I couldn't conceive it 'cause I never would have listened to nobody else. And I couldn't believe it. I just had to find out for myself there's some things in this world you just can't explain.

The old man lived in the Wooley Swamp way back in Booger Woods. He never did do a lot of harm in the world, but he never did do no good. People didn't think too much of him. They all thought he acted funny. The old man didn't care about people anyway. All he cared about was his money. He'd stuff it all down in mason jars and he'd bury it all around. And on certain nights if the moon was right he'd dig it up out of the ground. He'd pour it all out on the floor of his shack and run his fingers through it. Yeah, Lucius Clay was a greedy old man and that's all that there was to it.

But I couldn't believe it. I just had to find out for myself. And I couldn't conceive it 'cause I never would have listened to nobody else. And I couldn't believe it. I just had to find out for myself there's some things in this world you just can't explain.

The Cable boys was white trash. They lived over on Carver's Creek. They were mean as a snake and sneaky as a cat and belligerent when they'd speak. One night the oldest brother said, "Y'all meet me at the Wooley Swamp later. We'll take old Lucius's money and we'll feed him to the alligators." They found the old man out in the back with a shovel in his hand, thirteen rusty mason jars just dug up out of the sand. And they all went crazy and they beat the old man, and they picked him up off of the ground. Then they threw him in the swamp and stood there and laughed as the black water sucked him
down. Then they turned around and went back to the shack and picked up the money and ran. They hadn't gone nowhere when they realized they were running in quicksand. And they struggled and they screamed but they couldn't get away and just before they went under they could hear that old man laughing in a voice as loud as thunder.

And that's been fifty years ago and you can go by there yet. There's a spot in the yard in the back of that shack where the ground is always wet. And on summer nights, if the moon is right down by that dark footpath, you can hear three young men screaming. You can hear one old man laugh.

Well, if you ever go back into Wooley Swamp, well, you better not go at night. There's things out there in the middle of them woods that make a strong man die from fright. Things that crawl and things that fly and things that creep around on the ground. And they say the ghost of Lucius Clay gets up and he walks around.

But I couldn't believe it. I just had to find out for myself. And I couldn't conceive it 'cause I never would have listened to nobody else. And I couldn't believe it. I just had to find out for myself there's some things in this world you just can't explain.

There's some things in this world you just can't explain.

The Legend Of Wooley Swamp - The Charlie Daniel's Band
(Full Moon: 1980)

my october symphony

it always comes as a surprise when i find something new to do which then becomes an integral part of my day and gives me lots of opportunities to express myself in a psychological way - i wouldn't normally do this kind of thing as i don't have a great deal of confidence in my writing skills - but then a friend sent me an e-mail to say that it's alright to write down anything and now in private i'm blogging like a maniac - i guess that's the way life is (of course, if i were bilingual i could say 'se a vida e' and write in two very different languages)

i suppose i should consider it to have been a red letter day seventeen days ago when i wrote my first blog - being left to my own devices has made me quite introspective and i've actually written quite a lot and it hasn't been so hard to think of things to write, although i don't think that my efforts will ever pay the rent - some people reading the blogs might think i'm being boring and self-indulgent and say how can you expect to be taken seriously writing all that crap - but, sodom all, i say - i'm not scared of a bit of criticism - k. definitely thinks my blogs should be a bit more minimal as i tend to be a bit flamboyant with my language and this might leave some people feeling numb - when i've spent ages writing an entry he'll often ask me was it worth it - personally i think it's professional jealousy (perhaps i'll buy a t-shirt with 'i'm with stupid' on the front with an arrow pointing to him)

at the moment he's more interested about his tennant in robertson quay and whether he has the heart to ask whether he's going to step aside and release the property back to him - personally i think he's in denial - it's time to face the truth that our footsteps won't be making our way up those waterfalled condo steps for quite a while and we may well have to stay in surburbia for a few months - but like i keep telling him, it's not the end of the world and the guy doesn't have indefinite leave to remain so it won't be long until we're home and dry - and as i've often pointed out, it's better than living in london and doing that depressing drive past kings cross - that part of our journey to go shopping or immersing ourselves in the nightlife and dj culture of clubland with all the west end girls and boys, was always a lowe point - not like when we drove past st james' park with me dreaming of the queen

although i suppose i do miss the uk a bit - when i got on a plane at heathrow to fly to singapore for the first time i thought, this must be the place i waited years to leave - but i'm glad i gave it one more chance and went back there for two years - i suppose it's a sin really to feel that way about your home

i find it hard to believe that it's now been over seven years since k. asked why don't we live together and we moved into goldhill towers - it was a one in a million chance that we found such a nice place - in the past i always expected to remain single for my whole life - i suppose i was a fugitive from the emotional violence i saw in other people's relationships - i get along fine without it, i often thought to myself and the survivors of relationship break-ups always seemed so cynical - i never consciously said to myself, i want a lover, but when i met k., a strange metamorphosis happened to me - suddenly he was always on my mind and when he wasn't around i felt like casanova in hell - but i suppose it's true what they say that love comes quickly and when you least expect it - i often ask myself, what have i done to deserve this because for a lot of the people i've known in the past love is a catastrophe - i can't keep count of the number of people i've heard saying to their partners, you only tell me you love me when you're drunk, a few years down the line - usually during conversations like this i made my excuses and left - i'm hoping that the fundamental happiness i've found will, god willing, last until one of us moves closer to heaven

now i'll have to stop as sitting in front of this screen for so long is beginning to play tricks on my eyes and there's a domino dancing around my field of vision and i want to wake up a bit before i head out to tonight's halloween party, where, no doubt i'll be dancing to the latest hit music - i hope there'll be some guys from out of town there tonight as i can't remember the last time i danced with a new york city boy....

on the subject of comedians....

according to the channel 4 show, this is the list of the top 50 comedians' comedians counting backwards from number one...

Peter Cook



John Cleese
Woody Allen
Eric Morecambe
Groucho Marx
Tommy Cooper
Laurel and Hardy
Billy Connolly
Vic Reeves & Bob Mortimer
Richard Pryor
Chris Morris
Tony Hancock
Bill Hicks

Peter Sellers
Steve Martin
Ronnie Barker
Steve Coogan
Charlie Chaplin
Eddie Izzard
Paul Merton
Eric Idle
Peter Kay
Larry David
Rowan Atkinson
Bob Hope

Harry Hill
Victoria Wood
Spike Milligan
Christopher Guest
Michael Palin
French & Saunders
Eddie Murphy
Bob Monkhouse
Rik Mayall
Steven Wright
Ken Dodd
Les Dawson
Jeff Foxworthy

Stephen Fry
Joan Rivers
Joyce Grenfell
Phil Silvers
Jackie Mason
Eric Sykes
Robin Williams
Paul Whitehouse
Bill Cosby
Mike Myers
Ricky Gervais
Mel Brooks

let's be negative for a moment...

ten things i never want to do or ever do again before i die...

1. listen to dexy's 'come on eileen' again:

one of the most overplayed songs i've ever repeatedly heard - in 1982 i loved it, but after 11 years of playing it ad nauseum at discos with drunken punters barging violently into each other and bawling out 'too-rye-aye' in loud essex accents, it lost its appeal for me...

2. sit through another ballet or any other dance-only performance:

i like a lot of classical ballet music but ballet itself leaves me cold ever since i was made to sit through a performance of giselle at the tender age of nine - and i can only take dance if its part of a musical, a pop video, a film, a variety show, etc...

3. watch lee ang's 'hulk' movie all the way through:

i think he's one of the best film-makers ever - 'the ice storm' and 'run with the devil' are two of my favourite films of the last ten years - but having seen bits of hulk on tv the other night, i feel he's taking his famous eclecticism a bit too far for my liking - like the two spiderman movies, i felt i was watching live action sequences interspersed with bits of a computer game - the x-men special effects were far superior i think...

4. spend more than an hour at a gallery of modern art:

i have mixed feelings about modern art, being a sweeping landscape and light and shade kind of guy - some installations have really captured my imagination, while some exhibits i've seen at the tate modern over the years have both bemused and annoyed me - on a recent visit, k. and i had a very heated exchange over some mondrian paintings and got quite irate with each other (he liked them)

5. sleep in a tent, on a beach, on a railway station platform or in a dormitory of a youth hostel:

like most student backpackers, i've done all of these and hated every uncomfortable, sleepless moment - the lowest point was being stuck in a tent in a field under snowden (north wales) in the rain for two days in the freezing cold, with my friend and i getting more and more irritable with each other - the final nail in the coffin of my 'roughing' experiences happened in my first year of work when i was woken up at two am in the dorm of a youth hostel in bath by the arrival of the hull university snooker b team who preceded to discuss the contents of their porno mags in loud drunken voices - 'i'm earning a wage so why am i still doing this?' i asked myself...

6. share swimming space in an australian creek with freshwater crocodiles:

my guide in kakadu, northern australia suggested a dip in a creek where any remaining saltwater crocodiles left over from the rainy season had been removed - he assured me that the remaining freshwater ones would be more scared of me than i would be of them and that they only ate fish - i had visions of old johnny weissmuller tarzan films where he always seemed to be defending himself, jane and boy, who, unwisely, always seemed to pick the most questionable of bathing locations, by vertically jamming a log into the wide open mouth of an rko stunt croc - i declined to swim, there being no evidence of detachable vegetation around the pool

7. get a job as a car park attendant:

for four years in my teens i spent nearly every sunday afternoon as a car park attendant at my village's only tourist attraction - it was the most boring job i ever had, the endless monotony being only occasionally broken by infrequent collisions, animals runnning under the wheels of reversing vehicles and the odd person falling in the river (the tourist attraction was a water mill)

8. bungee jump:

anyone in the uk who watched saturday teatime tv in the early eighties and saw 'noel edmonds late late breakfast show' will remember the section of the show where a member of the audience was selected each week to train for and perform a dangerous stunt for the next week's show and how the guy selected for the bungee jump stunt was killed during training when he fell from a great height before anybody had attached the rope to the end of the pole - an accident that put me off this particular activity for life, although on the positive side it did prevent noel and his vomit-inducing jumpers from appearing on tv again for many years until he re-emerged with his crinkly-bottom house party - i would still like to give hang-gliding and para-sailing a go...

9. sit sober in a room full of stoned people:

all my friends did it at college - i always declined as the mix of pot and tobacco always gave me a headache - in the light of subsequent experience i can't understand why they never used a bong - its no fun being the only one in a room in a legal state of mind when everyone else is sitting around you bonding and giggling - a bit like childhood experiences when your friends told you that they didn't want you in their gang and you had to watch them having fun and feeling left out...

10. projectile vomit:

the last sydney mardi gras party i went to ended with me impressing a crowd of lesbians so much by the length and accuracy of my hurling that they cheered and applauded each of my five record-breaking attempts to reach the rose bushes outside the dome building at fox studios.....never again.....

11. read beyond 'the fellowship of the ring':

i like 'the hobbit' because it's humourous and easy to read - the first book of 'the lord of the rings' starts off in the same style and i've read it many times in an attempt to read through the whole story - but no matter how many times i've tried, i can't get beyond the first hundred or so pages of 'the two towers' because my boredom with the story increases as the writing begins to change into the portentious, pompous language of an epic saga - thank god for peter jackson...

12. make a list of ten items:

...because you either have more or less than ten, as i discovered when i started compiling my top ten bathtime gurgles iTunes playlists of tracks by my favourite artists...

rambles of questionable note-worthiness

contrary to the image i had of myself in my late-teens through to my mid-twenties, i now know that as well as being extremely self-involved, i'm not very deep or complicated and my world is shaped by the inconsequential and trivial - i wish i had a mind that could remember more than just facts about movies, music, tv and whatever fictional literature i happen to be reading at any given time - i might have done better at tests and exams if i could have applied the same amount of memory retention to the academic subjects i studied as i could to large tomes i read on horror films or comedy series or remembering the highest chart positions reached and number of weeks 45 inch singles from my youth spent in the charts or which cds from the penguin books of classical music and jazz were awarded a rosette and so merited my buying them in large amounts or lyrics to songs or quotes from witty people....

unfortunately academia passed me by as my learning ability peaked in my third year at secondary school when i was about 14 - things started going slowly downhill from then on - at this point by way of an explanation, the kate bush track, 'sat in your lap,' springs to mind, where the character in the song puts her lack of learning and acquisition of knowledge down to an unwillingness to expend energy - maybe that can be applied to me or maybe it's my inability to take life completely seriously

over the years i've shifted blame for my underachievements onto various parties - my family for basically letting me do exactly what i wanted when i was growing up - my teachers for either not being very engaging when presenting their subjects or just appearing downright vindictive and child-hating - my friends for distracting me by offering more enjoyable pursuits - bbc and itv for seducing me with a parade of visual images i could sit blankly in front of - the odeon and abc cinemas in norwich for showing a ridiculous amount of films at times when it was easy to watch them - and more recently, the internet for pumping music, movies and quite a considerable amount of pornography into my living space to distract me

i think, though, what it boils down to are two incontrovertible facts: 1. i'm not very clever... 2. i'm quite lazy when i have to do things in which i have no interest or enjoyment (thank god i chose a profession which, on the whole, i find interesting, very enjoyable and satisfying)

to illustrate the stream of inconsequential nonsense that constantly passes through my mind here are some thoughts i had during an hour or so of cardio-vascular activity in the gym yesterday as i jogged along on the treadmill and bounced up and down on the elliptical contraption, that's a bit like skiing, with the cable from my new earphones jiggling around, the colour of which can only be described as fluorescent green radioactive vomit - but it matches the colour of the number displays on the various machines and it's easily lit up by car headlamps if you happen to be jogging down a dark road in the middle of the night dressed in mourning...

i recall the only time i ever made one of my teachers shake with laughter when she asked my class where the andes were and i called out 'on the end of your wristies' - i was surprised that this comment affected her the way it did as it's such an ancient joke - and i've been telling them ever since

what happened to lord lucan?
according to craig brown in his book '1966 and all that', lord lucan didn't completely disappear in the early seventies - he re-emerged a few years later as the lead singer of queen

the gamekeeper saying to the poacher he has caught stuffing a rabbit under his jacket, 'is that your own hare or is it a wig?'

who did you think was better - tiffany or debbie gibson?
as i would quite happily have buried both of them up to their necks in sand...heads first...this question only serves to bring back painful memories

malapropism - the man was suffering from the dreaded 'venetian disease'...he had a touch of the 'gondoliers'

favourite spoonerisms:
- i'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
- the lord god is a shoving leopard
- whitbread tankard (the letters haven't been reversed on this one yet)

my friend keeps getting leaflets through her door inviting her for cervical cancer screening - she thinks she's the victim of a smear campaign

the judge in a divorce case found it difficult to decide who the couple's children should live with until the husband, out of sheer frustration, poured a large bowl of trifle over the wife's head and she got custardy

'sisters are doing it for themselves' - the song by eurythmics which has been subtitled 'the wanking sisters' by many people over the years

a dyslexic devil worshipper sold his soul to santa

coming out of the wardrobe (with apologies to cs lewis)

my final word on the subject

on remembering that cs lewis based the woodlands of narnia on hampstead, i couldn't get the image out of my head...

mr tumnus leaning back under the lamp-post with his umbrella hooked over his arm in a slightly effeminate way, cruising for young faun ass

my primary school teacher would turn in his grave (assuming he's actually dead yet)

hard-core driving mileage queens

we've done a trip out every weekend since we got here of at least 100 miles (except the second one when it was raining hard and we stayed in and watched 'the longest day' on tv) - unfortunately i'm not insured to drive so his lordship has been constantly behind the wheel and in true singaporean fashion lane hops with gay abandon whilst swearing in hokkien and cantonese at everyone else on the road - i should remind him that the words 'tear along the dotted line' on his licence are not driving instructions

he's very pleased with himself, as well he should be - he's not done much long distance driving, as i did most of the long haulage stuff in the uk, and he was a bit concerned about how well he'd cope - but this place is so sprawlingly big with suburban stripmalls peppering the outskirts of town that you have to drive great distances to get from one area of the city to the next - it is not a walkable place, but hell, this here's the mid-west and everyone owns a huge fuck-off four wheel drive - must be lots of guys with small dicks around here...and women too - fortunately we have a medium-sized saturn - avis gave us a big four wheel drive contraption but as it was unpleasantly like riding on a camel and it didn't have a socket for an mp3 player, we took it back

a month after we arrived he drove us over six hundred miles in eleven hours across three states to colorado - we stayed in boulder (not under one), where all the good people end up in steven king's book, the stand - i can quite believe this as it's one of the most laid back, tree-hugging places i've been to since glastonbury (but without the loud pounding music and smelly portaloos) - it's about a mile and a half above sea-level and we made the big mistake of going to the gym on our first morning in the hotel and learnt the hard way why aerobic exercise in a thinner oxygen atmosphere isn't a good idea before acclimatising to the altitude

over the following three days he drove us all over the state, up and down the rocky mountains, along rickety suspension bridges hanging high above deep gorges and through small 'salems lot-like mid-western towns with their surprising lack of people and empty streets, stopping at the roadside from time to time to take photos of large open spaces and sheltering skies with ripples of cloud spread across many different shades of blue

having driven such a long distance in under 11 hours, we now realise how a lot of people around here are able to do a 2 hour commute to work every morning - a 2 hour drive along an interstate highway is like a short trip to the local tesco superstore in england

so now we don't balk at the idea of driving 200 miles to get to a tall grass kansas prairie or a small amish town in north west missouri - we've become real mileage queens

autumn colours and brass monkeys

driving through the countryside of kansas and missouri i've been struck by the similarity of different landscapes to various areas of the uk (i have this annoying habit of comparing and contrasting every place i visit to my homeland) - a 100 mile round trip through the north eastern environs of kansas state when we first arrived yielded rural scenes comparable in turns to the cotswolds, the north and south downs, salisbury plain, the flat areas of lincolnshire, the west country moorlands.....the list goes on....

yesterday, however, as we drove west to the flint hills of mid-kansas, i found that i couldn't make such comparisons because of the intensity of the autumn colours in the foliage surrounding us - no autumn season i have ever experienced in england could have prepared me for the variety and richness of the fall colours i have seen this month

something else i hadn't been prepared for was the sudden climate change that has happened here over the past week - local people have told me that the temperature can change very suddenly, going up and down the scale quite dramatically in a matter of hours, but this is something that's difficult to conceive of until you actually go through it - my experience of autumn in the uk is that it gives way to winter very gradually during november, december and january, as the temperature generally goes down slowly - so i was taken unawares when the weather suddenly turned from a pleasant balmy autumn heat in the low 20s to an almost freezing 4 degrees celsius with a bitingly cold wind chill factor in just a few hours in the middle of last week

last night there was frost on the roof of our car and looking at the forecast for tonight i'm not surprised to see it will be minus 1 degree once the sun goes down - the prospect of sydney and its summer heat becomes more appealing with every shrinking ball on a brass monkey

language whoring for england

i'm beginning to realise how much i'm playing up my english accent since i've been in america - i love the flattery, of course

a number of people have, as i predicted, told me they love my accent and, as the weeks have flown by and we've explored many aspects of american consumerism, i find myself reserving tables, ordering food, phoning for pizza, buying underwear, etc in a voice which is gradually beginning to achieve julie andrews-like mary poppins proportions more with every encounter

yes - i'm a shameless attention-seeking hussy, i freely admit it - but compared to dressing up or working out to get noticed, it's so easy and effortless - some people over here even find it a turn-on

praise the lord for the gift of received pronunciation.....

words are no longer a metaphorical shield

over the last month or so there has been a string of shooting incidences in schools scattered throughout the mid-west - colorado, wisconsin, missouri and pennsylvania

the pennsylvania shooting attracted a lot of press attention as it happened in an amish school - a milk truck driver walked into the one room school building and took ten girls hostage, sending out the 15 boys and staff - he told his wife that he was taking revenge for something that had happened twenty years before when he had sexually molested two younger members of his family - he then killed five of the girls and wounded the other five before shooting and killing himself - later the amish community said that they had forgiven the gunman and that the death of the girls had been god's will - the school house was quickly razed to the ground and the school relocated

while skimming through articles which followed in the wake of this spate of shootings, i found this report which to myself, a teacher from the uk, seemed in turns bizarre, surreal, worrying and depressing - i was reminded of an old smith and jones sketch set in a secondary school staffroom at the start of the school day which played out like the opening scene of an episode of hill street blues, with the head teacher as the sergeant briefing his group of hardened, streetwise and fully armed teachers on the possible dangers awaiting them outside in those mean corridors - the following article made me wonder how many years into the future it would be over here before bullet proof jackets were a mandatory part of school uniforms and teacher training courses included new modules run by state police departments on how to deal with hostage situations and handle a variety of firearms....

OKLAHOMA CITY — A candidate for state superintendent of schools said Thursday he wants thick used textbooks placed under every student's desk so they can use them for self-defense during school shootings.

"People might think it's kind of weird, crazy," said Republican Bill Crozier of Union City, a teacher and former Air Force security officer. "It is a practical thing; it's something you can do. It might be a way to deflect those bullets until police go there."

Crozier and a group of aides produced a 10-minute video Tuesday in which they shoot math, language and telephone books with a variety of weapons, including an AK-47 assault rifle and a 9mm pistol. The rifle bullet penetrated two books, including a calculus textbook, but the pistol bullet was stopped by a single book.

Crozier said the demonstration shows that a student could effectively use a textbook as protection in a school shooting.

macca and heather

a friend of mine just sent me this text of extremely questionable taste and it really appealed to my sense of humour (the sick side):

"It's a very sad world we live in when Sir Paul McCartney and his wife are facing divorce and all anyone seems to want to do is make jokes about her false leg. Personally, I think it's prosthetic.

News reports have confirmed that Paul McCartney has separated from his wife Heather Mills-McCartney. Mrs Mills-McCartney is said to be distraught over the split. "He has been my crutch for so long!"

She said in an earlier interview, "I have no idea why this has happened, I'm really stumped"

"She's running around in circles", according to a close friend, "she will need all the support she can get. It's not like its easy to walk out on a relationship like this"

After his break up with Heather, Paul was asked if he would ever consider going down on one knee again. Paul said he would prefer it if we called her Heather.

It is not known whether a pre-nuptial agreement was signed prior to the marriage. Paul McCartney is one of the richest men in the world, and if an agreement has been signed it is believed that she won't have a leg to stand on.

Rumours abound over the split which have suggested that infidelity may have been the cause. "She's terrible" a source stated, "always trying to get her leg over"

Another source has suggested that her battle with alcoholism was the cause. "Macca couldn't handle it anymore," a friend said, "he would get home at night and find her legless". Many have attributed this to a problem which started with the gift that Paul bought her prior to the wedding He gave her a new prosthetic leg for Christmas, but that was just a stocking-filler."

idyll: george michael country

on various strolls through golden gate park recently i was struck by the similarity of some of its wooded areas to hampstead heath, complete with cruisey glances and shifty-looking men emerging from patches of bushes and undergrowth - i was reminded of the last occasion i visited that rural oasis to the northwest of central london

back in june a friend of ours was over from singapore and one weekday afternoon we decided it was the perfect day for a stroll on the heath which was a short drive from our pokey little baker street flat

so off we drove to spaniards drive, parked near kenwood house and ambled down a meadow towards a large duck pond, basking in the warm day, taking photos and watching the ducks and swans that were gliding around in the water - half an hour later we were crossing over the road at jack straw's castle and heading for the part of the heath that drew us to it like moths round a light - the 'you-know-where-and-what-goes-on-there-but-we-won't-mention-it-in-mixed-company' part

it was mid-afternoon so the post-work crowd hadn't started turning up yet and we wandered around going deeper into the woods with a growing feeling that we hadn't the faintest idea of where we were heading or how we would find our way back - a few stray men were making their own solitary circular routes around the criss-crossing dusty footpaths which cut through the long grass and trees, making sure that they didn't make eye contact with the three of us - as they passed out of view behind us, we exchanged meaningful glances with each other and smiled in that 'we know what he's up to' raised eyebrow kind of way

at length and to my great relief we emerged into the wide open space of golders green park where we had a late lunch surrounded by a large contingent of well-off jewish grannies who were enjoyng afternoon tea and a gossip in that accent which is as entertaining to listen to as the new york jewish accent

we headed back the way we had come - by this time the woods were getting a bit busier as people started drifting in after finishing work for a little light relief before going home for tea - a couple of times we witnessed that classic manoeuvre of one guy stepping out from behind a bush followed after a discreet minute or so by another emerging from the same patch of undergrowth and walking off in the opposite direction displaying the same sheepish expression as the first one - so obvious to anyone that it rendered the phrase 'who do you think you're kidding, honey' quite redundant

as we were walking back past these outdoor pleasure-seeking individuals i thought of how myself and my two companions amused each other by poking gentle fun at what we were seeing and that, given the right circumstances, ie. that any one of us were there on our own and had cruised the appropriate guy, we too would be heading excitedly towards the nearest convenient patch of cover with our hearts beating faster and our adrenaline pumping in that anticapatory way, when our bodies are preparing us for a charged sexual encounter - some time later, ourselves and our temporary partners would separately, and with an appropriate space of time between us, emerge and walk off in different directions, adjusting our belts and outer garments and hoping that nobody had noticed and was not amusing themselves at our expense

two outdoor pleasure-seeking individuals head off into the woods...

sf and s & v

KAILIK has told me that in this blog i shouldn't mention anybody by name - KAILIK said that i should refer to them by initials - contrary to what KAILIK said i thought i might give people amusing pseudonyms to match their characters as i see them - but then i thought that names such as nipple-bitch, butt rim-slicker and slap-meister might cause offence if the aformentioned people recognised themselves - so i've decided to stick to initials as KAILIK originally suggested - so from now on KAILIK will be referred to as k.a.i.l.i.k. (if i can remember to put in the the full stops)

this blog is actually to mention our friends in san francisco (sf), v. & s. (which sounds similar to an art gallery) or s. & v. (which sounds similar to a perverse sexual practice), and to thank them for graciously accommodating me in their lovely apartment which they recently moved into and which has stunning views of the twin peaks area (two hills which closely resemble madonna's eccentric pointed breast enhancements worn on her blonde ambition tour)

hanging out with s. is an experience which i always look forward to and always enjoy as, like the proverbial mushroom he's such a 'fungi' (i never claim to be original) to be around - we have similar liberal slightly left of centre views and i envy his ability to be able to verbally express them a lot better than i can - i have great memories of his stay in singapore when, on my afternoons and week days off we hung out eating at the hard rock cafe, drinking coffee at spinelli's at forum galleria, swimming in and sipping vodka and cranberry juice by the pool at treetops and shop-window-gazing down orchard road while taking in the views and expressing what we'd like to do with them if the views were in our respective bedrooms - s. always laughs at my pathetic jokes and iffy attempts at humour - whether he's doing this to be polite or genuinely finds them funny i don't know - it doesn't matter as it always makes me feel good

what can i say about v. - the catalyst for my current state of being - he was the one who introduced me to k.a.i.l.i.k. nine years ago ensuring that i would never have to feel lonely again when watching reality tv - he is my longest standing friend from singapore (although i'm sure we've spent an equal amount of time sitting down) - he was there on one my most memorable social experiences, my first visit to the sydney mardi gras party - he also nursed me through the worst period of the time i contracted glandular fever/e.b.v. - unfortunately on saturday afternoon he suffered a broken leg during a rugby match when two other players tried unsuccessfully to use one of his impressively large calves as a see-saw - so at the moment he's confined to barracks and shuffling round their apartment on crutches - i didn't make my usual suggestion as i often do in these situations that he should buy an inflatable parrot to wear on his shoulder as at the time i judged that he wouldn't have appreciated the literary reference

anyway, guys, it's always good to see you and, with any luck, we'll all get together again when you travel to singapore with, hopefully, all your lims intact (did i say lims? i meant limbs)

on leaving san francisco

highlights...

- eating a f******* excellent burrito on mission street
- the circular view of the city from the summit of buena vista park
- the expressions of incredulity and amusement that played across s.'s face when i made two of the most idiotic comments i've ever made, one about iTunes not having an easily searchable index as i sat at his mac searching iTunes and one about never having seen the pacific ocean before, knowing full well i'd swum in it in sydney many times
- driving back to san francisco over golden gate bridge with the sunlit view of the cityscape in the distance and the bay covered with white sails bobbing up and down on the choppy water
- standing in the dark looking at the dozens of patches of flickering orange light from the camp fires dotted along the sand of ocean beach
- eating a strawberry and whipped cream crepe in richmond
- dancing into the early hours of the morning with an excitable crowd who were up for a good time at the stud on harrison street
- walking up russian hill drinking a creamy strawberry shake from the original swenson's
- riding a cable car up knob hill and feeling very juvenile as i smiled at the innuendo-laden name
- enjoying mugs of strong tea made in a proper teapot - the best i've had since arriving in america
- the view of golden gate bridge from fort point - the classic view used in 'vertigo' and 'high anxiety'


lowlights...

- realising while driving down a less salubrious part of market street that san francisco has more scary street people per square mile than any other city i've visited
- arriving at the palace of the legion of honour on sunday and realising we didn't have time to go in as kailik had to get to san jose to get on his plane
- arriving at the palace of the legion of honour on monday and realising it was shut
- remembering as i stood outside the palace of the legion of honour that i had read many times in my lonely planet city guide that it's closed on monday
- v. breaking his leg in a rugby game
- walking along fisherman's wharf which was unpleasantly like a combination of blackpool, great yarmouth and southend


comparisons...

- for wooded footpaths in golden gate park read hampstead heath
- for ocean beach read bournemouth, skegness or any other english coastal town sea front or bondai beach
- for marin county sea cliffs read cornwall coast


and it was a pleasant surprise to find that the castro was more restrained than oxford street in sydney and not as in your face trendy-gay-lifestyle-like as old compton and canal streets in london and manchester

the news at nine

you would have been proud of me today - i did the ramble round the coastal path through lincoln park, looking down through the dark fir trees as the choppy waters of the bay dotted with white sails caught the sunlight as it finally emerged out of the mist and cloud and the pacific waves rolled onto the beaches as surfers ran out into the breakers to ride them - then from ocean beach i walked the length of golden gate park as hundreds of dried up pine needles fell from twisted branches onto the grass and lakes and were blown up the roads and paths by the strong autumn wind - and not once did i moan about having to walk up another bloody hill or swear i was about to have a heart attack

of course, i didn't say those things because you weren't there to hear them - because that's what we do when we go walking - i enjoy moaning and you enjoy scolding me for moaning, using your strongest, campest singaporean accent - and we enjoy bickering about trivialities, saying silly things, talking nonsense, sharing our catchphrases and laughing at our own predictableness

and for the last nine years we've rubbed along together in very much the same way

now we begin to share our tenth, and if it's anything like the last nine, i won't be complaining

a decade ago i couldn't have imagined that another person could mean as much to me - that i could be consistently happy and call home the place where you are - that i would spend most of every day thinking about you, as i still do every day - that i would miss your company when you're not around and get goosebumps thinking about you

any words i could use to describe my feelings for you would be cliched and trite because words are inadequate for this purpose and would just sound like all the cheesey love songs played by mr accentuated sibilants, the 'captain of your heart' on late night class 95 fm...

so happy anniversary, twot-face - and the lyrics of that mama cass song, 'it's getting better', i emailed to you in the long ago mists of katong park towers, still apply

music and heights

stewart dropped me off at the castro and with my obligatory and indispensible lonely planet city guide to san francisco nestled in my pocket, my ipod clipped to my belt and my new gaudy luminous green headphones trailing from my ears, i began my perambulations in earnest, stopping off for a late lunch at the baghdad cafe along the way

kailik said that after the first few hours i would tire of the steep hills - he was slightly out with his calculation - after three days of sightseeing mainly on foot, my feet finally sent a no-nonsense ultimatum to my head, as i was strolling through the american landscape paintings galleries of the de young museum in golden gate park, that they would file for divorce from the rest of my body if i didn't take the bus home - fortunately kailik was due to arrive the next day bringing with him a much longed-for rental car

having spent the last few weeks being a sad fucker and making up numerous itunes playlists during my hours of leeeeesure time in kansas city, i was well prepared for my visit

so i headed down the castro with my rainbow playlist pumping out a string of gay songs - tom robinson, bronski beat, rufus wainwright, etc which put me in the right frame of mind to wander around the book and dvd shops browsing among such imaginative titles as 'the da vinci load' and 'fill me up, sir'

then up to haight and ashbury, the centre of the various summers of love in the mid-sixties, as scott mackenzie warbled lyrics of beautiful people with flowers in their hair - i think i saw some of the original beautiful people wandering up and down haight street talking to themselves and searching the litter bins for discarded scraps of food - i detoured off to see the house where janis joplin lived in the late sixties (before she was evicted for keeping a cat), listening to her belting out 'me and bobby magee' and wondering what it would feel like to choke to death on your own vomit

as i wound my way to the summit of buena vista park to take in the excellent 360 degree view of the city, the bay and the ocean, i imagined old ladies using zimmer frames overtaking me and a surreal gay nun's chorus singing a strange medley of 'climb every mountain' and 'every day is a winding road'

by the time i'd got to the bottom of haight and crossed over to the edge of golden gate park, i'd turned off the music which enabled me to hear the offers of drugs at cheap prices being offered to me by young drop-outs with interesting facial piercings

so now i believe i've explored most of the places i set out to see - i've climbed russian hill, a gay pilgrimage site for all armistead maupin readers, ridden the cable cars (it's very difficult to see the views from inside one) and taken pictures of the rose window in the sacred heart cathedral, the setting, as every well-read gay man and fag-hag knows, for a quasi-religious, cannibalistic cult in 'more tales of the city' - i've admired the views of the golden gate bridge from fort point where kim novak threw herself into the bay in 'vertigo', wandered along the cliffs on the marin county coastline, eaten an awesome burrito in the mission district, viewed alcatraz from various positions whilst imagining the views of lots of manly sweaty imprisoned american guys from various positions and, of course, finally, after years of anticipation and much discussion, visited my 'spiritual home' , as kailik describes it, the lone star bar on harrison street