Ill thought through football post

While I was waking up this morning (I don't think I actually dream about football) I had a little brain wave (I think). This is it, without any polish.

I have no particular brief for English football and only a tangentially vested interest. In the same way I care about the state of English cricket I care about English football. After years and years and years of laughing at English cricket I got impatient and longed for a decent fight. I wanted to be engaged in the way my parents and their parents once were, with the outcome of test series in the balance sometimes until the last match and then not actually always going our way.

I didn't actually enjoy watching us lose the Ashes but I could point to a couple of mitigating factors and also that the thing was a close run series.

I was comforted though by the knowledge that nothing in the structure of the game in England or the quality of players made likely a sea-change; we remained likely winners in the return series at home and likely to continue for the foreseeable future to produce better quality players, playing better quality cricket with greater determination to win. And we would on balance continue to do that more often than not against all comers.

It was my misfortune some years ago to meet with the Chief Exec of a county cricket board and it confirmed that in English Cricket there exists an obdurate block to success at that level. The man's interest lies in his county, not county cricket let alone the game at national level. They have the game by the balls, as it were, and have no plans to shed their blazers and county ties.

In England the creation of the Premiership has created a similar situation and I think it time the FAE learned the rules of Billionaire Chicken, which is known in some households as Call My Bluff. Legislate in the interests of the national game and the national team. Politely invite the representatives of Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea [as well as anyone else for that matter with the temerity to object] to take shove off and play their football outside the English game and with their rich continental friends.

De register the clubs. Have nothing further to do with them. Simple. Of course it won't work. Even the FA doesn't bother to pretend that these clubs get anything from being affliliated with it they wouldn't get from throwing their lot in with their rich and glamorous continental friends. Their web site is nothing but a promotion of a mind-blinding whirl of insubstantial frentic activity.

Good riddance if they go, good behaviour if they stay.

Diary of Yoda

06:00 am oh, my god! oh, my God! We have no staff. I rush about and issue a series of instructions that put everyone else in a flap. Why is that infuriating foreign woman looking still looking calm? Perhaps I have a hair out of place. I go upstairs as we are about to open to check my hair, my lipstick and file a slightly ragged nail.

07:00 am we manage to open thanks to all enormous effort I put in. No one understands how hard I work. I'm sure that foreign woman is laughing at me. The Maltese one will be in later. She loves me. 'He' has left me with several deliveries to manage; I go out and stack kitchen roll to help clear out the warehouse.

07:30 my hiaitus (?) hernia is playing up. I abandon the store and go home to take a tablet.

08:00 some of the staff are cross with me. I think the foreign one is amongst them but she is smiling so I cannot be certain. I don't understand why they are upset with me. My instructions are always crystal clear. I haven't done nothing to upset anyone! I don't know what that kontradictory word I caught the foreign one using means. Perhaps the Fat One knows what she's talking about when she says she needs to bring a dickshunrary. What ever it is one of them seems to be something that makes working with the foreign one easier.

I haven't checked my hair for hours.

We don't have either of the Sue's in. One is falling a part and sucks up to me so that's ok. The other one is Trouble and gives me the shits. I bet she doesnt' really have them; she just wants to get out and do some Christmas shopping.

09:00 oh, my God! The Maltese one is in and I haven't raked over the latest developments in Strictly Come Salvage My Jungle Career yet. That should soak up half an hour; even longer if I attempt to probe her on the question of Secret Santa Presents. That should upset the smug foreign one.

09:30 I have remembered another way of upsetting the foreign one - I have started to enter an order on her computer. I have told her I will be back in a few minutes I just need to check something; I will leave her machine tied up for the rest of the morning. That will free her up to some of the thousand crappy jobs I like to torment her with.

10:30 I must pup upstairs and check my hair, lippy and nails. While I am up there I'll phone mum and have a cup of coffee.

11:30 I don't think that anyone understands how hard I work. That warehouseman is so rude and now he is saying that he will go home at two rather than help with the big lunch-time delivery. Who does he think he is? I'm not interested in his excuses about no longer being warehouseman but head of greengrocery; who does he think he is?

12:00 Victory is mine. I have succeeded in upsetting the foreign one. I don't know how, but I have. I can always tell. She stops smiling. She is so moody! What ever it was that upset her happened while I was discussing with Bolshie Book Worm how she and I operate our British Home Stores store cards and the discounts we receive and the sale they're having today and how long I've had the card and what I did when I didn't get my discount and what they gave me when I complained and what I'm planning to buy when we go shopping this evening and ... excuse me while I draw breath ... and how I use it there and also at loads of other wonderful shops and what I got last year and what I will be buying my gorgeous grand-daughter for her birthday and... oh, is that the time. I've just remembered something very important.

12:30 Only another one and a half hours until my shift finishes. I haven't done my shopping yet. What is it I planned to buy? A yes. Plenty of time to do my shopping before my shift ends and I stop being paid to be here.

13:30 my gorgeous little grand-daughter is in and being pushed about the store by my lovely daughter-in-law. She is the most beautiful baby in the store right now and if I go out and accompany them about the store then lots of people will come up to us and be really nice. We could make that drag out until two when BBW arrives to take over.

14:05 thankfully BBW has arrived on time and for some reason the foreign one has just shot out the office door and gone upstairs. Perhaps she has the shits? The Maltese one isn't back yet, but I'm sure the foreign one will come back down stairs and deal with customer service, the telephones and the inept check-out operators until she gets back from lunch.

What a hectic day I've had. In since 6 in the morning and having to deal with that rude, obstinate man. As BBW says since he's no longer the warehouseman, he's just a general assistant and he has no right to speak to us in that way. The kitchen roll section is looking well stocked which just shows what can be accomplished when you give a section to someone competent and hard working.

In my fantasy the couple who were left standing at the customer service window at ten minutes past two will write to the Manage and complain about service quality and I will be able to point out the Mr Big Swinging Dick that the Foreign One simply walked off without a by-your-leave or making sure someone else would be in the office to deal with such enquiries, clocked out and went home without even saying good-bye.

She really is getting too big for her boots and it is quite outrageous that she is paid as much as a third of the amount I receive for doing all the work what I do and which no one ever gives me credit for.

Trying very hard and failing badly

On Monday evening the money had been gifted to friends to do with as they saw fit and only accompanied by a 'suggestion' that the Labour Party might make a suitable destination. While openly giving charitably to other worth causes such as academic institutions the nation's Chicken-Shit of the Year award winner (by default) David Abrahams preferred not to make political donations in his own name in order to protect his privacy.

Confused? I was.

Mr Chicken-Shit is a property developer in the north-east which I now want desperately to believe is a euphemism for Slum Lord.

In the meantime Mr Chicken-Shit has been forced to clarify. The money was um, to be given to the Labour Party and that's why it was passed to friends and employees. His ruse was rumbled by the spouse of one of the 'donors' who obviously had only ever been given an early draft of the Hymn Sheet. Oops.

Mr Chicken-Shit is now aggrieved, not just because his privacy has been invaded but because the nasty media types coming at him from both right and left have made him 'feel like a criminal' which when you think about it Mr Bleating Chicken-Shit is precisely what you are for your tawdry little attempt to subvert Electoral Law and don't bother attempting to have it otherwise, for only someone who has spent the past decade with his head up his own arse could be unaware of the 'wrongness' in what you were attempting to do.

So which is it Mr Chicken-Shit? Crime or world-class Head Up My Own Arse Yoga?

While Mr Chicken-Shit stands head and shoulders above the rest of the field in his own class a special mention is deserved by Diane Hayter. Her championship quality obfuscations surely qualify her for something. The sack perhaps? Fat chance. You can't get her, she's part of the union and on the NEC to boot.

Diane went to barricades on Monday evening to shore things up when the news spilled over the parapets that these donations had not only been offered but accepted by the party. Diane wants you and me to believe that the only person who knew about the donations, knew and understood the source of them, was a young chap you've possibly not heard of called Peter Watts, but who happens to have been until very recently (that is to say until he resigned over this business) the General Secretary of the Labour Party.

Peter led himself to the chopping block and brought the axe down on his own neck. In his valedictory address from the scaffold to the nation he confessed to having accepted the donations in ignorance of the fact that they were made in breach of electoral law - though he had played a major part in assisting the party through the Cash for Honours debacle which is in fact Party Funding for a Specific Purpose. Party donations via a third party are illegal. Peter held positions involving legal and financial compliance before promotion to Gen-Sec.

The party clearly hopes that by this act of self-sacrifice the matter might be brought to a neat conclusion and its wish might yet be fulfilled. The party is relying on us being stupid or complaisant or both.

Diane Haytter's name does not appear in the paper at all this morning. The story itself is buried inside and the Tories are staying clear miles clear of it for fear of bringing their own funding arrangements under the spotlight.

Come the revolution only names will change.

Establishing ground rules, etc

How good am I at procrastination?

This morning I have cleared three loads of washing, scrubbed the kitchen floor, cleaned the bathroom, changed the beds vacuumed and sorted my knicker drawer. The ovens are drenched in some potent chemical combo that is cleaning them and the stripping the back of my throat.

That's how good.

That's that - I've done it

About three years ago I stumbled across National Novel Writing Month while taking a break from vacant staring into space and other forms of uber-passive procrastination. I toyed with the idea of taking part in 2005 and again last year only more so.

This year I gave myself a stern talking to and then when that had no effect I signed myself up anyway.

Then I told nobody about it this side of the ether-wall, though the temptation to be indiscreet was enormous and the suspicion existed that to remain silent was to leave myself safe ground to which I would retreat when the going got tough.

I also lacked resolution as the time approached to begin writing on the question of which story line from among those I've mentally sketched I would pick up and 'run' with. In the end as the last days passed all too rapidly I hit upon an unlikely genre and scenario and the thing clicked. The drawback of this approach is that writing has exposed all the flaws in the structure I set out with.

Partly as a consequence of this the quality of the output is patchy at best, though some passages probably will remain after all the re-writing now to be undertaken.

Having never considered gothic horror as a genre in which I might comfortably function the thing came together alarmingly naturally. The end is delightfully ambiguous.

I don't feel triumphant but I do feel a deliciously warm glow. In fact I might enjoy a quiet smirk or two over the course of day now. I think I have a 6:00am start tomorrow morning, so I shall be smirking on the other side of my face in twenty-four hours time.

What next?

To redraft, of course. I am bad at knuckling down, worse and really knuckling down to the tedium of taking my 'perfect' work and squaring up to the reality of all its flaws. I have too many first drafts under my belt and not nearly enough polished work. Therein my next big challenge.

I think I've been Bar-Wicked

Brian has a moustache that makes him look like a fool. Under that circumstance a wise man would take particular care not to supply the world with the conclusive proof. But the honourable thing isn't to deflect culpability in the fool-stakes.

While preparing the chook for the oven this evening I happened to express puzzlement that in the vast amount of time which has passed since the job of England manager became available the name of Gerard Houllier hasn't been bandied by anyone.

Hanson might choke on his Haggis at the mention of the man's name but is he really a less plausible candidate than the Handsome One's partner in punditry crime on MOTD? Does his track record not stand up to comparison with those of most if not virtually all the names on the fantasy future England manager list?

Now it turns out I was being foolish beyond belief and proving (if needed) that I am a girlie and therefore know absolutely nothing about football: Houllier's name is on the FAE's shortlist. After saying one more thing about football, and fantasy future England football managers, I am going to shut up on the subject - at least until there is something more I want to say.

If I was being all girlie on the subject of the England manager I would have a shortlist of one and a half and it would comprise Jose Mourinho and Big Phil and most definitely not M. Houllier or the neurotic Spaniard who took over from him at Anfield. Clear?

PS. When Jose arrived at Chelsea after the departure of that rather sweet little Italian the old Sports song Black Stockings for Chelsea acquired a new and very special resonance. I shall go off and listen to it again, now, I think.

Creepy Kev and the New Model Army

Just about the only good thing about Saturday was the fairly clinical and certainly emphatic removal of Little Jonny from power. He has been a disgrace and I'm still not convinced that he was given a sufficient hammering by the electorate.

The amusing departure of Peter Costello who ran like a yellow dog when faced with the prospect of being in charge in opposition hasn't enraged me or disappointed me as it did Jeff Kennett. Right now the Liberals need the catharsis of tearing themselves apart and in all probability the next Liberal Prime Minister is not yet a member of the federal parliament or in any way visible as a contender.

Turnbull is a smart-arse filthy rich merchant wanker who stinks of the glossy side of Sydney, Tony Abbott is insane and Brendon Nelson is deeply weird.

Quite how the leadership contest will play out is something I don't particularly care about, except that who ever wins will clearly be stupid and distasteful enough to deflect from Creepy Kev some of the intense scrutiny which is his due as Prime Minister, whether he likes it or not. At some point in the future The Creep will be pinned to the wall by a journaslist and made to explain himself. And that won't take long. Because the Creep exists in what otherwise is a vacuum. He doesn't represent much except a blander milder version of the outgoing Prime Minster.

Some prescient souls took one look at Tony Blair and thought yuk. We've been joined since by a lot of others who've come to appreciate that beneath the emollient surface lay a void. The fact that the emollient surface also served to disguise the nasty truth the truth at Fat Gordy is inept is quite beside the point.

Who's got my bank details Gordy?

There's an unpleasantly disappointing facet of this: the way Australians have been beguiled just as Brits have seen off the Oily Creep and his ferociously peculiar wife, to spend more of their time in the company of a geriatric german in a long frock in Rome. If it takes the good folk as long to despatch Creepy Kev, who spent his first day as PM-elect on his knees in a bet-hedging act of god-bothering at a Mass at an Anglican church, they'll have had a good few chances and failed the sense test.

Phut the Idiot

Today was marked down in the mental diary as Last Drafting day. In the time from tomorrow to submission I would fart about and generally tart things up in a very preliminary and superficial manner. Not to be.

The Idiot has been thinking for quite some time that an allotment would be a Splendid idea for a couple of obvious reasons. As anyone who has strolled past one on a balmy summer's evening could tell you they are obviously a bounteous source of the fruit of the land, and an Elysian corner where a man can put his feet up, lager can in one hand, fag in t'other and survey this miraculous bounty. And further more all the overflowing milk and honey surplus produce can be flogged for simply oodles of dosh (having labelled 'organic') at the local farmers' market.

Hm. This idea took root (sorry) about the time his best mate secured an allotment as an excuse to get out of the house and away from the missus for an hour or three per day between late spring and early autumn (which in these parts and in recent years has been a singularly Un-dull fortnight at the Start of September after the brats have all gone back to prison school).

I've pandered, since pandering is much less stressful on both of us than telling the truth and not as soul-destroying as barefaced lying. It is also the one of the three I'm now best practiced at. For example I suggested he tidy his room before Christmas, and he sulked for a good hour and a half, and refused to eat his breakfast. I feel like a single mother of two children. My novel feels neglected.

He put his name down on the waiting list with the Allotment Association which is a confederation of toothless and witless long serving and troublingly inbred dribblers. Yesterday the call came through; and so instead him taking the offspring or their regular fortnightly visit to his mother I had them under my feet. We treked to the allotments and inspected the vacant 10 rods. He wanted it so he handed over a bit of cash and it is now 'ours'.

Quite how he will turn 10 rods of weed infested swamp into a productive patch of ground is a mystery to me and, also I suspect, a mystery to him. Clearing the weeds won't instantly produce spectacular potato and onion crops. I don't think he understands this, or weeding or watering or seed beds or planting on or watering or fertilizer or tying up or digging up or netting or watering or crop rotation or weeding or watering or ... hard work.

He just knows he will be able to vie with his best mate for Badgers Ate My Corn Crop story of the year and he thinks no bugger will observe him with his feet up, lager can in one hand, fag in the other while the weeds reach for the sky and know better.

Non-ode to fallible technology

Truth is very few news stories however major lend themselves to the rolling-news style offered by a dedicated vehicle now provided by most big media organisations.

Elections are one notable exception though the Brits do manage to make a potentially fascinating evening achingly dull by gathering up all the votes in an electorate, transporting them to a central counting station and then counting them all before letting we the voters on our sofas at home know anything about how things are going - the first we know is the pompous middle aged bloke or woman who never could get on in local politics any other way but was rewarded for persistence with the job gets up on his or her hind legs, candidates ranged as a backdrop and ponderously declares the votes declared.

Also, the Brits do First Past The Post rather than Single Transferable Vote and their system might have some moral force but (a) politics is an odd and uncomfortable place for moral force or moral anything else and (b) it is a voting system that is no FUN!, even when the Raving Loonies are part of the electoral landscape.

The way things are done back home, with each station counting and transmitting the vote is inherently safe (what happens to all those votes in transit, remember what they did to all our bank details last week?), cost effective (security doesn't come cheap, when it is used at all - remember what happened last week!) and environmentally sound (how are those votes transported?).

But the most powerful arguments of all are the dull one - it adds a local interest to what is only meaningful when a local process, and the important one - it adds to the FUN!

Which polling did that absurd count come from? surely that's the sheep shearer vote counted just wait until some of the more metropolitan votes come in? that's a very high turn out for the greens suggesting we're getting returns from that pocket of middle-class neurotics who now live in a normally working class western suburb!

A glorious rolling maul of an election result, with running commentary supplied by a motley cast of political has-beens you mostly thought had died since the last election, and a token blonde to keep the blokes awake when during the turgid middle bit between the writing appearing on the wall and the concession speech.

Dutifully I fell out of bed this morning though it be only minus 2 outside and kicked the 'puter. Sadly in the half hour since then the ABCs streaming media have both collapsed under the weight of a zillion expats trying to listen in. Bugger. Things are lookin good in that Howard looks to be on his way in but bad in that Little Kev's missus is packing her bags and preparing to move into the Prime Minsterial Mansion.

Look at me

It is a very scary possibilty that the recent display of public disorder by a very small and probably excrutiatingly polite rabble of about 20 objectors to anyone debating the possibility of considering raising the question removing the requirement for priestly celibacy in the Roman Catholic set up is the most exciting thing to happen inside or round about the Camberwell Civic Centre since ... the year I did my HSC and had to dig my blazer out and put it on to attend one last long dreary Speech Night.

I can't remember a word anyone said at us last night, but such is the impact of the poisonous environment I can still, after all these years, murder the school anthem with great gusto, lyrical accuracy and all the tunelessness one would expect of the tone-deaf.

It isn't a very exciting part of the world.

I am peeved

I am peeved at spending an insufficiency of time in the company of Yoda and that is perverse. I practiced saying "I hereby ram my ticket to the Christmas Ball up your arse" yesterday evening and then no Yoda. By the time I finished my shift everyone else had put me in a totally vile mood; I could have taken the head from someone's shoulders, anyone's shoulders. Still no Yoda. I feel cheated.

I must write more words without crashing to a halt short of the tape. The temptation to write move directly to stop without passing through the tedious business of writing another 5,000 or so words is intoxicating. I have a piece of paper with those last words sketched out. I must not. I must not.

Long overdue

I haven't shared a Yoda Moment for some time because, by happy chance our paths have crossed only very infrequently recently.

Yesterday she was on fine form. She loves Christmas and she seems to derive particular enjoyment from running the Secret Santa rigmarole that is undertaken each 'festive season'. As a concept Secret Santa was unfamiliar until I worked in The City and there it was a thing done within teams. There was a £5 limit and the idea was to buy a token and therefore meaningful gift.

In this place the management and admin support are the team and the limit is £20, which is up £5 on last year. I refused to participate last year and I've refused to take part this year: knowing my luck I would draw Yoda.

Having spurned the chance to take part I'm now prey to mixed feelings. On the one hand I'm not bitter at having to spend that much money on someone I detest. On the other I've deprived myself of the joy of knowing I'd slipped a crisp £20 note in her envelope; something which she would hate because she loves presents while also leaving her unable to drop poisonous questions as to the value of her gift.

And if she just once more in my presence points out to everyone else there that I'm the one mean-spirited person who isn't getting involved I shall tell her to take my ticket to the staff Christmas dinner (which I'm already dreading in case I end up near her) and ram it up her arse.

I hate Christmas and I don't need help from Yoda to do it.

Exhaustion is my new best friend

The house is a tip. This is all too often the case but right now it is a tip on a scale that might under different circumstances be described as heroic. I get up, I write, I go to work, I come home, I write. That's it. But I'm galloping to the tape. Then begins the arduous task of setting everything to rights: the house, the laundry, the garden, Christmas, and last, but not least a first draft manuscript.

Bad Sex

An over-long, inept, messy business: much like an England football campaign and like many women up and down the country on most nights of the week I'm left thinking "Thank God that's over!"

And is often the case it is the men, responsible in the first place, making the noisiest complaints about what's happened.

That's gratitude for you

A mother is tonight spending her first night in prison after being sent down for failing to get her adolescent daughter to attend school regularly.

The girl had offered a wide variety of typically lame and generally hackneyed excuses (of the 'dog ate my PE kit' type) but one stood out: I don't like Mondays. She didn't like Monday's and all she didn't go to school. So her mother's in jail.

Some people don't know when they're well off.

Rules of engagement

The rules as they apply to the removal of a civil servant in the event of a catastrophic lapse (such as, for example losing a disk containing the personal and bank details of every child benefit claiming individual / couple in the country) are admirably clear: sack the most senior person the government can find who (a) isn't a mate of Fat Gordy and (b) is someone nobody cares about; then describe the sacrificial lamb as a 'junior' official.

So right now some middle ranking Muppet is taking delivering of a P45, a pistol and a bottle of scotch.

Darling's a contrite man with much to be contrite about and while Steve McLaren might be the luckiest Englishman, clearly the former chancellor - now prime minister - is the luckiest man in Britain.

When a heterosexual couple become parents through assisted conception involving sperm donation it is the father who will raise the child rather than the father who contributed the sperm who has his name on the birth certificate. Why?

Clearly the birth certificate reflects a social rather than a biological truth. It was ever thus. The guesstimated level of discrepancy between the social and biological paternity within families is almost alarming, and certainly surprisingly high. That's not taking account all the 'blended' families that exist, and always have.

Back to the cloisters boys, and keep your noses out of other people's lives.

Number crunching

The object of the exercise this month is runs on the board, and never mind how agricultural the shots.

Because of Senior Frustrate Novelist's resignation and departure during the first week and Paper-Shuffler-in-Chief's prolonged illness last week my window of writing opportunity has narrowed almost to the point of disappearing altogether. To be blut I looked at my schedule on Saturday and worked out I would have just three full clear writing days between then and the last submission date which obviously is 30 November.

Therefore it became critical that I knuckle down today and churn out some stuff. As it is and rather surprisingly given how bogged down I'd become I have now burned off over 7,000 words and I'd be prepared to wager something not entirely valueless that not all those words will have been deleted by the time the last draft has been polished off.

This is because I've got past the set-up and I'm pounding towards the really fun bit where the thing I'd envisaged at the outset will be unveiled from within the swirl of wordage.

If the other two remaining full days of writing are as productive as today I will be home comfortably and possibly with some initial re-writing under my belt too.

I am feeling so much better again. The fog has lifted and can see my way clearly. So now I'm opening a book on what disaster will next befall this venture.

Last orders

I went back over posts from last month to get the date and it is 21 October so that's a full four weeks. I'm feeling rather pleased with myself as well as generally rather well.

Another ghastly old duffer

One old duffer's been on the radio describing marriage as an act of faith and a statement of trust and a risk demanding 'quite a step' on the part of the two parties to said union. Given all that and the capacity of humans to make an error why then the problem with people having easy access to an escape route?

Another old duffer's about to go on air to lament the decline and fall of 'traditional marriage' if it is made easier for lesbians to create (with assistance) and raise babies.

During the long(ish) course of human history the 'traditional marriage' he harps upon has been a remote fairy tale for the overwhelming majority of people because for most of that time life has been nasty, brutish and short. Those who lived long enough to procreate were the exception rather than the rule, they then had a limited life expectancy and so surviving parents made do and mended.

We've survived that and we'll survive a few lesbians raising children.

One of the above mentioned old duffers is an archbishop. So is the other one.

At least one of them has some life experience to draw upon in pontificating (ahem) and presuming to comment on the normal flawed lives lived by ordinary people. The other is a decrepit celibate who doesn't have the faintest idea what he's talking about.

Back on track

What I will have in my hands at the end of the month is a very rough first draft but it should be complete. Anyone paying attention would notice that the word count has shot up because I was able to take a big chunk out of the cheese yesterday and I've taken another sizeable chunk out this morning already. That effort took me over the halfway mark and close to the point at which I'm on the home straight in the final third where I can unravel and re-ravel and do all the things I've been itching to do since the very start.

The polishing work might have to wait until the new year, but I will have a complete work to bring out and dust off as an alternative to the maths degree I was contemplating a couple of months ago, or even in addition to it. I just don't know how much I can take on, but I won't know unless I try so at least part of me is saying go for it, and to hell with housework. If the family don't care about clean and tidy, why should I?

Lemons

Being an Australian of significantly scottish ancestry I shall and indeed must say this twice: Cheating Bloody Fancy Dan Italian Footballers.

Cheating Bloody Italians...

And if that wasn't bad enough bloody Israel beat Russia and England are still in it which means we all have to endure more English chest beating and McLaren baiting and FA whipping and testosterone fuelled preposterousness.

And Christmas is coming.

This is all too horrible.

My favourite news story of the week

Yesterday the BBC was reporting that two elderly men in the state of Tobasco in Mexico, the last two speakers of their local indigenous language (one of 350 in Mexico) have had a falling out as a result of which they are no longer speaking to one another, thereby delivering the coup de grace to one more fine piece of of human creative output. It seemed funny in a rather tragic way, at the time.

The report included speculation that the origins of the argument were connected with the floods that recently devestated that part of Mexico.

Awkwardly today's BBC version is a refined version of the story, complete with input from an expert on Mexican indigenous languages, suggesting a more prosaic and less bathetic story. Turns out these two old codgers never were close and have little in common.

But congratulations to the BBC for (belatedly) injecting balance into the story.

Quickly

The reason for the relatively few posts this week should have been a consequence of serious word churning on my part; sadly that is not the case and after satisfactory first week progress things have almost ground to a halt right at the point when I should be enjoying myself most in a romp between the awkward business of setting things up and the tricky business of delivering the denouement.

I had budgeted for Senior Frustrated Novelist's departure, I hadn't banked on the Paper-Shuffler-in-Chief coming down with some bug and Being Away From The Office for the week. That's left me carrying the office, in the sense of getting done what normally takes the efforts of three people over a week of shifts running 6am to 9pm. These have been long and exhausting days of 4:30 wake up calls and drawn out evenings trying to persuade my exhausted body that I really should be going to bed at 9:00 to go to sleep.

It is too early to throw in the towel, next week might be a whole lot better, but at the moment I have quite literally lost the plot (and the character and motivation and tone and voice and ... ). Some time yesterday I hammered out enough words take me slightly over the 25,000 (half way) mark.

I'm not sure I'll be getting to 26k this side of Monday evening.

All the best reports have something in common

The thing they have in common is that you or I could essentially write them, without recourse to hours of tedious hearings or millions spent on research, junketing and the photocopying bill.

Australia's blessed National Audit Office has released such a report and its findings amount to the quite astounding non-news that the John Howard government's regional projects fund has been essentially nothing more or less than a means of ante-poll rewarding those who vote the Right Way.

For all their bucks invested in the investigatory process the Aussie Taxpayer has learned that there has been "political interference, disregard for rules and guidelines and a lack of transparency". Well gee, fancy that.

All the money spent on this exercise has produced the remarkable news that there was a "surge" in grant approvals just before the 2004 election date was announced. Would you have imagined it?

Emblematic of the general aura of maladministration exposed in the report is the behaviour of DeAnne Kelly, the then parliamentary secretary for regional services who, over a 51 minute period in the two hour period before the government assumed Pre-election caretaker status, displayed quite extraordinary and hitherto unheralded heroism in signing through sixteen grants to the total value of a rather nifty $3.5m. How awesome is that?

Bet it never crossed your mind that politicians could behave in such a manner. Thankfully though, we've got grossly overpaid, unelected relatively anonymous officials to junket about the country Club Class, stay in five star hotels and write hundreds of pages of drivel telling us all what we already knew and could have set out on the back of a fag packet in the room still left after all the health warnings are taken into account.

Road rage

The suspended sentence handed down to a bicyclist (with 'learning difficulties') who knocked over and killed another man while cycling at speed along a footpath has brought out the vituperative anti-cyclist lurking just beneath the skin of the average British non-cyclist.

According to the average enraged driver all bicyclists are law defying hooligans and a menace; which is rich coming from a bunch who seem to acquire a 'god'-complex the minute their little hands wrap themselves around a steering wheel and the foot begins to depress the accelerator pedal.

These are the people who think it perfectly normal and acceptable road behaviour to drive along the wrong side of a main road in order to park (facing the wrong way) on that side of the road. These are the people who don't properly confine their kids, dogs, fags, make-up, food, drink and most of all mobile phones while in control of a moving motor vehicle.

These are the people who dispense with the fine print of the rules of the road the minute the vital pass has been achieved. Thereafter they regard speeding a matter of honour and the great sin (and outrage) as being caught.

These are the people who treat road signs as advisories, use indicators and lights only haphazardly and as the mood takes them, and undertake, overtake and generally drive in an intimidating manner when it suits.

They run the local bookies and are perfectly prepared to run right up the back of a a mother cycling her child to school in their flash silver sports car and intimidate them to the point of getting off the road and dismounting (and waiting till she's had her way before resuming our own journey - on the road).

And if you do it again you cow I will put your registration number and other car details HERE. OK.

And then we'll all pay for her accommodation

Moira Ryan is a 69 year old woman who by her own admission is obese. On the other hand she has worked and paid the taxes that fund the National Health Service. That latter fact gives her the right to be an unhealthy weight and have the the hip replacement required by her paid for by everyone. Her local heath trust wouldn't take forward her case and operate until she'd lost a little of that unhealthy excess weight.

Did she diet and thereby save a few bob against a holiday she'd be better able to enjoy when lighter on her feet and with her hip duly replaced. No. She put her house at risk to pay to go to Malta to have the operation NOW! so she has a new hip that's better able to bear all that fat.

She's now pursuing the health service through the courts to recover the eight grand she forked out for her trip to the Med. and I rather hope she is successful as this on balance will be the lesser of two evils - the other being this fat woman next throwing herself on the mercy of the state for funded accommodation, her house having been repossessed.

Twist

Last week when I was in the first flow I was so in alt I was prepared to commit to turning around and in January and, all on my own, attempting the same thing with a second idea for a novel I've been kicking about for a while without ever getting serious about.

Now grim reality is setting in as I wade through the middle bit which has already exposed the false starting position and threatens to make the starting position unreachable. About four days after having my baby I was absolutely fired up and ready to go again. Then the happy hormones drained away and I was left wondering what the hell I'd gone and got myself into.

I can't wait for the end of the month so I can go back and weed out the crap which is a good 95% of what I am generating at the moment. And I can't hang about here all day moaning. I've got crap to write.

Local wild life

The cat has turned out to be a good mouser. Perhaps a local farm would be interested in him. I know cats catch things. I know they tend to catch things for the sake of it and have a nasty habit of not killing their catch quickly or bothering to eat what they catch when it eventually dies.
I object to the cat because he is mean spirited, which is mean spirited given the grim start he had in life. I can't help it, I can't like him.

Yet I accept him catching pigeons and littering the garden with their feathers, setting up camp on the neighbor's garden shed right above the nesting box they so kindly attached to it.

What I find difficult is coming downstairs and treading in entrails that are strewn across the carpet. I thought I had developed the knack of intercepting him as he brings these creatures in; I've succeeded numerous times in liberating field mice and birds he's brought home.

I failed last night; he came in with a mouse clamped between his jaws. I was at the far side of the room and he knew what I would attempt so he backed out through the cat flap. Bye bye mouse. I just wish you hadn't squealed so pitifully on the way out.

Now the nasty little rat faced interloper is curled up on My Bed, looking like butter wouldn't melt. Want a cat? Excellent mouser. Free to Good Home. Must be prepared to collect. [Neutered male, vaccinated.] Even his cute girlfriend can't save him. And if her arse gets any bigger she won't be fitting throught the catflap.

As if that wasn't enough we're heading for an almighty row over things. It is bad enough that he drinks himself legless every night. One night this week I came home to find the house wide open and the offspring fending for herself. He hasn't cooked her a proper evening meal all week, she hasn't had any help with her homework. He regards his parental responsibilities as being met when he escorts her from the gate back to the house in the afternoon.

Once he's settled her in front of the television with a microwaved meal on the table in front of her he is at liberty to return to his Ricard or his vodka, fags and book outside. I suspect that they don't exchange a word from one hour to the next, then he shuffles her off to bed without a wash and without brushing her teeth.

I suppose I would be castigated for giving up my job, flinging him out and throwing myself on the mercy of the state, when obviously this current arrangement of us being married and working creates a so much superior environment in which to raise a child.

I'm depressed and words are not flowing, or at least not useful ones. I'm going have to work myself up into a temper and get out of this.

Puddings

Senator Sprig of Holly has led the rank and file of the Christmas Pudding Party back into the fray with a plausibility-busting deal on preference distribution in the Queensland senate election that offers up a consequential prospect of a return to Australia's parliament of that reeky pantomime dame Pauline Hansen.

Just when this election had grown rather stale the floral decoration has been driven onto the back foot by this decision, and as a diversionary tactic he has launched a fairy tale economic policy platform centred around making petrol (gas) cheaper by delivering a substantial cut in petrol tax.

According to Senator Sprig "It is irresponsible not to cut petrol tax … it helps people make ends meet and … puts downward pressure on inflation." It is also obviously economic suicide not to chop down every last tree, dam every last river and dig up every last tonne of saleable mineral.

The Christmas Pudding party is locked in mortal combat with equally fringe and narrow interest parties such as the Fern Friendlies: according to the Puddings the tree huggers are 'extreme' and have 'extreme policies' and are possessed of a soft policy on drugs. It seems finally even on the lunatic fringes of public debate it is recognised as no longer astute politicking to grub for single digit volumes of votes by demonising single mothers and poofters, so the Green Party has been co-opted to fill the void.

Sadly with all the excitement of squeezing the Friendlies into frame the good Senator then went completely over the top.

His logic escapes me; the Fern Friendlies would have to be possessed of potent magic that, out of government and without influence, their proposed policy on drugs has yet created a culture of drug delinquency within the Australian Football League. Sadly I think it is Senator Sprig who is away with the Fairies.

Missed that one

Gratuitous rudeness alert. New Zealand's rugby league team turned up, sort of. England, and are now gone with tails between legs. Oops.

Hot on the heals of embarrassment in the world cup of the union version comes abject humiliation. In the third, final and quite completely pointless match in the three match series the England team required only a half to defeat the Kiwis; they chose to sit out the first half and watch the sheep shaggs prove that they do actually have a nodding acquaintance with the rudiments of the 'game'.

Stupid game though. Played by Sydney-types and therefore getting its first, last and only mention here.

The thing is insatiable. It demands and it demands and tonight I am too damn tired. I have to be up at some uncivilised hour, in order to be at work at 7:00. This is obscene. What possessed me to agree to this?

I shall be too tired tomorrow afternoon as well. That's two entire days of not wrestling with the lumpen creature. I have a clear run on Monday and Tuesday, but I thought that this time a week ago only for the offspring to be felled by one or other of the viral illness doing the rounds, it being that time of year.

That said the brief period at the keyboard this morning was sufficient to get me over the psychologically important 20k mark as it puts the half way stage in clear sight. The home stretch is likely to be a nightmare of reining in, but at least I shall be able to feel the thin buckle and submit to my will.

I'm too tired to have a proper moan. I'm off to bed.

I read other people's blogs, and the list I read is not confined to those for which links are provided. I browse other people's work out of curiosity. I return to those that challenge or reaassure, entertain or in some way touch me.

I write this one as a form of release, albeit well disguised a lot of the time. Things are less than absolutely wonderful, and it wouldn't be a good idea to put the less than wonderfulness of things on paper, for paper has a tendency to finish up in the wrong hands. I'm not well placed at present to allow things to get out of control. So I ditch the baggage on the ether and soldier on.

Well a couple of those who write and whose work I read have meditated very recently, each in their own way, on the morality and danger of blogging. So now I have something else to worry about.

It will be three weeks on Sunday. Some really good words, though not enough, have flown from my finger tips this morning. After this brief interlude I must return to that work; the weekend will be practically a wash out, so I must make an impression on my target today.

Not (yet) drowning, waving

Holy somewhere a long way from Toledo, Batman. The excitable man on the radio is talking about catastrophic flooding down the east coast, taking in Norfolk, Suffolk and Kent.

Have a good look at the map and see if you can spot the rather big and in parts quite heavily populated problem with this.

Hint? It is there, between Suffolk and Kent. It has three rather largish rivers either forming a boundary or passing through it.

We live on one of these flaming rivers. Some of the more vulnerable folk of Yarmouth are being evacuated, those left behind are fighting over the last few sandbags in town. Sandbags?

We haven't been evacuated. We haven't seen a delivery of sandbags. If I'm not here tomorrow you will know why - I'm a corpse bobbing up and down in the North Sea, tossed hither and thither at the whim of tide, current and wind.

Must do more words.

Change of heart

The London Assembly has passed a vote of confidence in Ian Blair. Oh dear. Now I'm having to reconsider my position. I have written No Words this evening, which is very naughty of me. Pollies are obviously suffering a hang over after the early week's excesses and are not saying anything stupidly interesting. They are being even less fun than usual. This is unreasonable behaviour, which is just typical of our elected representatives.

An incredibly stupid thing to do

In the pantheon of sports horse racing ranks slightly ahead of Petrol Head Nirvana and the length of the staight up on pugalism; that isn't saying much since they've all been lapped long since by curling, lawn bowls and, um, some other dreary 'sporting endeavour' in the Interest Me stakes.

I once had a stake in a racing horse that died from lack of interest on my part (the stake, rather than the horse, that is).

Any ho. The Race That Stops The Nation is over, thankfully, as now the politicians can go back to doing and saying interestingly stupid stuff. And I can stop trying to weave the names of the runners into my novel in anagram form. Which is possibly the most bizarre and stupid form of displacement endeavour ever undertaken by a frustrated novelist.

Catching up

In keeping with my long standing practice of not keeping track of matters already covered I ask this only in passing notwithstanding the fact that it is a matter from yesterday's fish'n'chip wrappings: did Lewis Hamilton really call for his new co-driver to be a Team Player.

I'm astonished. Truly. I hadn't seen anything this past year in Petrol Head Nirvana to suggest that this self absorbed little man-boy might be familiar with the expression. Hm. One does live and learn.

Can we all have our mid-life crisis together

Life's tough enough when your boss is a victim of domestic violence who is more scared of living alone than living with his drunkard violent wife, and has a conceived a not-so-secret obsession with his deputy's arse.

Perhaps the fact that she's about to start a two year course of steroids that will result in her quickly assuming the proportions of a half-deflated barrage balloon, or perhaps its just bloody Christmas.

One minute he's in a good mood, the next he's reducing the bakery staff to tears. If only he could be consistent and keep them in a state of trembling fear (and doing their job) but he can't keep it up for long at a stretch - sooner or later the Handmaiden will stroll by, his eyes will fall out of their sockets, his tongue will droop inelegantly, puddles of drool will gather at his feet.

Bless him.

Sorry

why is a person from a council flat less intelligent

Someone landed here after asking the above question. I haven't got the answer. Do you? Intriguing premise lies behind it and one I'd never considered which is, of course, not the only reason why I don't have the answer. I'm also not quite sure why I felt I needed to start with an apology for answering this rather distasteful little question. The search came from a Glasgow academic source. Which actually doesn't make the whole thing feel better, though perhaps that does give the entire situation a bleakly comic overtone.

Something scary

I think I've done well and then I take a better look. I realise that what feels like 'doing well' is taking a small chunk out of the cheese; even if I continue to eat at this rate I'll still barely get there. I feel daunted.

Brain not functioning, that isn't the reason

That's two whole entire weeks under my belt, which by the way I can now tighten a notch. Outstanding. If only Bloody Christmas and Effing New Year were not looming.

Callous off-hand post

On the matter of this young new mother who has died after refusing a blood transfusion that, in the view of the medical profession would have preserved her life and even enabled her to recover her full health there clearly many potential approaches to take.

Generally the tone of reaction has been outrage. Fellow Jehovas Witnesses aside almost everyone with an opinion has taken the view that this young mother was either deluded or grotesquely selfish (or both).

JWs interpret passages in the bible that warn against consuming blood (or imbibing or partaking or ...) as effectively not just precluding being a practicing vampire but also making it impossible to receive a blood transfusion when required for pressing medical reasons.

A young woman leaving behind a widower and new-born twins is being portrayed as the tragic denoument to a misguided life. Yup, and that's one less god-botherer too. Perhaps her husband will reconsider his beliefs before they're inflicted on the unsuspecting babies.

Creeping old age

I wrote a brilliant post this morning. It was the best thing I have ever written. By the time I had access to the keyboard the damn thing had flown the coop. I can't even remember what it was about.

My word count is improving, but all those words don't add up to a piece of the quality of the post what I lost.

Maybe this is connected with the Melbourne Cup. The gee-gees are off in under twenty four hours. This inevitably triggers all sorts of associations and brings to mind people who aren't always at the forefront of my thoughts.

Nope. That post had a one way ticket. Bye-bye.

Don't panic

The Conservative Party is this weekend indulging in a collective Corporal Jones moment suggesting they're far further from being ready for an election when it happens than they'd have the world believe.

The upside of this is the spectacularly entertaining sight of a group of the suited and booted, rather attached to the idea of running your life, my life and every other bugger's life as they are being wholly incapable of running their own lives. Oh, dear.

Shadow chancellor George Osborne's reaction included "Candidates of any party - Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat - have to exercise great caution in the language they use about immigration." but not "and the man's opinions are such as I cannot agree with.

And shadow home secretary David Davis described the comments as "very unwise" and advised that the constituency party should "think very hard" about how they expected their candidate to behave. But not that he disagrees with the views expressed by the would-be candidate. And he's added: "You cannot just stumble around throwing out comments which are insensitive or inflammatory," which is a bit rich coming from Davis.

So much for the Tory Party being a broad church. So much for the Tory Party having room for weirdos and racists. Perhaps next they'll slinging out the misogynists.

Wholly irrational crossness

I should be hammering away at the 50,000 word rock face.

I'm not because of Andrew McClintock, a 63 year old magistrate doesn't want to handle cases that might give rise to adoption placement with a same-sex couple and so has had to remove himself entirely from family court panels. He has made me a bit cross, because of this. He thinks it wrong, in conflict with his christian beliefs, to be a position where he might be required to place a child or children with an adoptive couple who happen to be of the same sex.

McClintock is using as a central plank of his claim for discrimination and unfair dismisal the work of an american academic who has produced a research paper suggesting that there is some if not conclusive evidence that placement with same sex couples is not absolutely always totally successful. Wow.

I can't find the identity of this particular academic in anything being published today on this case and McClintock's appeal, but it does occur to me that it cannot have been terribly difficult to find, among all the academics working in American in the field, one who had produced a paper containing data useful to anyone arguing the line against adoption by same-sex couples.

Whether McClintock is wrong or right to be opposed to such adoption is, however, a bit of a red herring. Since when have those sworn to uphold the law pick and choose which bits of the law are convenient to them and their conscience, and which are a trifle discomforting and therefore to be discarded? To wish for the freedom so to do is however in keeping with being a biblical fundamentalist, spouting Leviticus at the drop when convenient, but happily scoffing roast pork for Sunday lunch and keeping spare cash in an interest bearing bank account.

What I'm really cross about, however, is that this awful little man has got in the way of me doing other things this morning.

High School for Girls

We're considering our options. We now have almost exactly a year to make that crucial decision. I spent a bit of time this morning looking at the web site of one option. I wasn't overwhelmed. It looks just like a bloody comprehensive.

I'm was not inspired.

Then out of curiosity I had a look at the wikipedia entry for the same school. If the job the that's been done on it is the work of one or more members of the current or recent past student body then I rather like their spirit.

'In my day' we had fewer outlets for our creative energy. How lucky today's students are, having wikipedia entries to subvert in the manner done to this particular High School for Girls.

Bravo!

Word question

I'm busy trying to haul my arse over the 5,000 mark before heading out for an afternoon of conspicuous and entirely non-essential consumption. I haven't looked at a newspaper yet, today, and when we get in I shall be too busy looking at Richard Armitage (Guy of Gisborne) to blog (or write, to the extent that these are not the same occupations) so expect nothing more than this - unless something happens to infuriate during the course of the day (though I've had a thought deserving a second brief post even as I write this).

Apologies for the proliferation of parentheses.

Do you say dispute or dispute? Just curious.

I can feel a phut post coming on.

I know that I need, at this stage to be doing 2-3,000 per day. Only day two and I'm bogged down. Bugger.

In fact, phut.

There. That feels better.

Jean Charles

The circumstance in which he died, for he was denied due process and slaughtered in public in the middle of London, are so enormously dreadful they leave me with no capacity for flippancy or facetiousness.

He should not be dead, but he is. I don’t believe in and rarely hanker for an ‘afterlife’ or ‘something else’, but I felt an overwhelming longing for some part of him to be aware of yesterday’s judgement: that his death was unnecessary, senseless and illegal.

Ian Blair clings to his job in a truly despicable manner. A decent human being, with self-awareness and humanity would know the enormity of his failure in this matter and accept that he is unfitted for the position he currently holds. A truly honourable man would return the Honour bestowed upon him on the occasion of his promotion and retire from public life with as much grace and dignity as possible.

Today’s papers carry photographs taken within the train carriage, the remains of the young man still in an undignified heap on its floor, neat little placards indicating forensic remains on and about the seats. All for nothing, and no accountability for that either.

I can’t listen to the parade of supporters who demand even now that we consider the “what if he had been a terrorist?” scenario. He wasn’t.

Training wheels off?

The offspring's selection ordeal has begun in earnest. And we're not responsible either. The school itself has plucked her out from amongst the general population and put her into a very small group who will prepare to take their 11plus. Now we're all for it. I shall have to take the training wheels off my pushy parent act and get peddling.

And seriously, I'm chuffed to bits.

Sex, sex, sex, sex.

That's all you people think about.

Isn't it?

The Christmas Pudding Party's been at it again. In the extremes of extreme north Queensland the brain of the CPP challenger has seemingly melted. It can be quite warm and extremely humid in those parts.

I'm not writing another Christmas Pudding Party Post until tomorrow, by which time I might have recovered the will to delve into the latest exhibition of foolishness by one of their endorsed candidates.

How many more of these awful people will emerge to can-can across the political landscape before this election's done? Given the rate at which they've been turning up so far you wouldn't bet against there being a deal more to come.

The news hasn't been all bad, however. The Great Smirk's brother Tim has even 'sort of' backed Kev and that too is quite sweet.

Wow, can I procrastinate

There are many, many things at which I'm not good. Procrastination isn't one of them. I've wasted simply hours of perfectly good writing time on buggering around with settings and themes. I suspect I could do this for another twenty nine and a half days without raising a sweat.

If I ever have a word count to boast of I shall, er, confess.

In the mean time, news:

I've been promoted: as of Sunday week I shall be Senior Frustrated Novelist. The previous day will be the incumbent's swan-song. She's off to better remunerated pastures while she works on her first novel and awaits the verdict on her script draft submitted a few weeks ago and not yet outright rejected.

Apart from buggering around with themes this morning I stumbled across this sea of at least partially like minded souls, and was uplifted.

Electric blue is still the plan, but I'm also toying with Rita Hayworth-style RED. Not keen on Marilyn Blonde or Morticia Black. Any other suggestions?