We're Living in the Future!

According to the Guardian, doctors no longer need to carry a stethoscope as they can now use an iphone app !

I'm impressed, but I do have reservations.

"OK, Mrs Jones, if I can just check your breathing"

ERR, ERR, ERRR; ERR, ERR, ERR-ERR, ERR, ERR, ERRR, ERR-ERR! (Smoke on the Water)

"Oh, I'm so sorry, I have to take this, my brother-in-law's getting me tickets for the Rugby!"

Underworlds

Another mention of TfL's ability to get it right on the artwork front, as the tube map gets to interface with it's art-world tribute, where the tube map gets to feature Barbarah Kruger's Untitled (Tube Map).

I think this synthesis of reality meeting its conceptual reflection may even represent a work of art in itself. Or not. I'm sure there's someone working in a gallery somewhere with a independant income and expensive yet impractical spectacles who could tell us in multi-syllabic verbiage what it all means, but life is too short.

And let us not forget that Simon Patterson got there first with The Great Bear

Dead Spook News Sparks Digression

It probably says much about my own small-town chippy judgementalism, but my first reaction to the news of the mysterious death of an MI6 operative in Pimlico was not "Whoa! Conspiracy Theory!". Rather, my first response was to wonder just how much MI6 operatives get paid if they can afford to live in Pimlico! (Although I appreciate it is only two minutes away from work across the bridge, just in case Mr Bond needs immediate back-up).

A Tale:

One evening twenty years ago, having successfully pursued and arrested the man who had just stabbed me* around the plush streets of Pimlico, I stood there panting away watching the police load my assailant into the car. Running around whilst haemorrhaging blood gives one a cruel thirst, and so I asked the nearest officer if she had any water.

Using her initiative, she called up to one of the audience members on the balcony above, and asked if they could bring water down to me. (That the homes in that neighbourhood have balconies overlooking the streets tells it's own tale).

When the water arrived, a woman conveyed it to me on a delicate little tray and contained within a beautiful crystal glass tumbler, I thanked her, and with my good hand (the other was stemming the Niagara of blood emitting from my face) emptied the contents in one draught.

I then turned to the policewoman and quipped: "You know you're in Pimlico; that was Perrier!"

Although the two events could not possibly be linked, I think it is becoming apparent that Pimlico's sophisticated facade conceals a heart of darkness which requires independent investigation.

I think we should be told.

*The perpetrator believed that the world was being controlled by gasses eminating from vegetables.

Did You Know....

....

That Wyatt Earp was teased at school for having a stupid name?

That nurses in Accidents & Emergency wards ALWAYS check the condition of a new patient's underpants on arrival?

That fish have no appreciation of celebrity culture?

The Ambassador of Death!

Apparently, those crazy funsters in Iran have reinvented the doodle-bug!

Parrot Fashion

A masterpiece from London Transport.

And you just know that when they finished, they stood back and said "Classic!"

See The Scars On My Hand

Olfactory Attack!

I believe that the following transaction took place at some point in last few days:

Fishmonger: Good Morning madam, how can I help?

Customer: Hello, do you have any particularly smelly fish please?

Fishmonger: Yes, but smelly cold, or smelly hot?

Customer: Oh, hot!

Fishmonger: I've got just the thing! Have a whiff of that!

Customer: Blimey! That's the one!

Fishmonger: Excellent. How do you intend to cook it?

Customer: In a microwave. I'm going to put it in a microwave at work!

Fishmonger: At work? Is that a good idea?

Customer: Oh, it'll be fine, it's open plan!

Fishmonger: Open plan? But surely...er,

Customer: Yes?

Fishmonger: Oh nothing. That'll be £3.50 please. Can I interest you in some Winkles?

I make this assumption, because a repeat offender has just GASSED out our floor YET AGAIN!

A disciplinary offence, surely?

The Drink / Drive Interface

Exciting environmental news!

Scottish scientists are running cars on whisky by-products!

And no expensive engine adjustments!

Tan Your Hide!

Not a 70s Movie title, but an actual company working in the Midlands, meet: Wildman & Bugby

Apparently, they are 3rd generation family leather specialists!

Blimey.

Note: In the fiction of Ian Fleming, John LeCarré etc, British intelligence ran a number of bogus businesses around Great Portland Street as a front for their covert activities.

When I worked locally, opposite the tube there, there was an unassuming doorway with a brass plaque purporting to be "The British Rawhide Co." Now THAT is a front if I ever saw one.

My Life In Her Hands

I believe there are some readers of this site that share my partner's dereliction of common sense when it comes to sell-by-dates on food stuffs.

When one considers that she is actually a trained caterer, I find her frankly cavalier attitude to expiration-date russian-roulette somewhat, er, cavalier!

There has been some debate in our household recently re; the capacity of our fridge, and whether we should spend real money on buying a larger receptical.

I am of the argument that we could first consider whether everything in the fridge should be there, and whether she may want to finish one bottle of wine before opening another.

Anyway the opportunity presented itself yesterday to execute a fridge audit, where I examined the contents unit by unit to establish each items validity in the precious cold-space.

I admit that I only found seven items beyond their date stamp, and that I was unable to convince her that one of these items, the most recent, a jar of mayonnaise dated June 2010, should be thrown. It has since returned to the fridge.

Now, as I consider mayonnaise as salmonella in a jar anyway, I won't be going near it. However, there in lies the irony, neither will she, due to her belief that a salad is a worthy but pointless exercise.

I will therefore need to wait another year before I get to eject the toxic hazard from our midst.

As for the remaining six items, the top three were:

In third place: Anchovies; Feb 2008

In second place: Discover Salsa dip: December 2004

And finally in first place, from the twentieth century:

Safeway Red Onion Jelly: March 2000.

Yes, it's been out of date for a decade now, and she's brought it from her old flat, via my old flat to the house we moved into six years ago!

This is what I have to live with.

Baby Beavers!

As I awoke this morning with the steady drone of the Today programme, and it's blah, blah, Pakistan Floods, blah, blah, Double-Dip recession, blah, blah, Torture, blah...I suddenly heard the phrase "Baby Beavers"!

Yes !Baby Beavers! Born in Scotland for the first time since the Hibernians slaughtered them all 400 years ago. How can anyone not like the thought of Beaver Babies? You would to be some kind of drug-pushing paedo-sympathising terrorist, or Highland farmer, not to be heartened at the news of Baby Beavers!

However, don't get too carried away. A Beaver Kit is actually just a Baby Beaver, and not an opportunity to build your own Beaver. Apparently that's God's job.

So congratulations to Mr & Mrs Beaver, and good luck to your Baby Beavers

Blind Man's Bluff

As regular listeners know, I am not an angry man.

However, there are certain circumstances when I am driven to feeling peeved.

Yesterday evening, after a long frustrating day on my way home from work, and having waited four minutes, a train EVENTUALLY arrived, and fortunately a sufficient number of passengers alighted the carriage to provide a choice of seating.

One of those leaving the train was a tall skinny young blind man with a Hoxton Muff, white wayfarer shades and stupid jeans. Like most young men of his age he looked like an idiot, but at least with the visual impairment there were extenuating circumstances.

As I boarded the train, I was looking at the choice of seats when I heard the sartorially challenged blind man on the platform ask "is there a member of staff available?". I turned and noticed that he was being ignored as he asked for a second time.

As the doors bleeped in advance of shutting, I sighed a resigned sigh, stepped back off the train and asked if I could help.

"Yes," he replied, "Can you fetch a member of staff?"

I admit, I felt perfectly qualified to steer the unsighted tramp-boy to the exit, but I dutifully agreed to seek out assistance, and set of on my task.

There was no-one available on that platform, or the other, so I scaled the escalator to the main concourse where the staff like to hang out by the gates. No-one.

I looked across to the new office, where they live. SHUT DOWN! And they've only just OPENED IT!

I swiped myself through the gates and walked around the ticket hall where I finally found the one member of staff working during the rush hour at Kings Cross.

As expected, he was completely indifferent, but at least mumbled into an intercom in response. Whether he was talking to anyone was not my business, and I swiped myself back in.

After berating some tourists for standing on the left of the descending escalator, I eventually made my way back to the platform to inform my ward that help was on its way.

Nowhere to be seen! The pikey little chav had FUCKED OFF out of it! GONE! He didn't even leave a message with the hordes now awaiting the next train, with whom I would now have to compete for my rightful seat!

No doubt some fat ugly tart with a husky voice exploited his impairment and lured him away on a promise, which is frankly unethical and the sort of thing that should be outlawed. They were probably standing on the left of some other escalator at the very moment that I discovered the treachery!

I hereby vow that they haven't heard the end of this!

In Drogba We Trust

Yesterday I was intending to link to this article by Richard Williams in the Guardian, summing up much of what is wrong with the over-blown status of our under-performing Premier League performers. There is a trend, started in France, of reigning in the attitude displayed by the aristocracy of the modern game, starting with the banning of headphones when on club business:

"But in England as much as in France, those headphones are a signal of the increasing distance between the players and the people who, through match tickets and satellite TV subscriptions, pay their grotesquely inflated salaries."

Having looked at the article online, I was drawn to the imbecilic comments made by the readers, in FAVOUR of the players. Nothing unusual there, but it did indicate that Rupert Murdoch's faithful have bought into the programme hook line and sinker.

They have seen the adverts, and our new icons are beyond fault, because the adverts say so, and the game itself is a mere sideshow to the dream being sold.

I wanted to write an enormous tract using phrases like "false conciousness" and "Stockholm Syndrome", but I lack the time.

Behind The Green Door

On walking to the tube this morning, I was hailed across the street by an unkempt working man in a dirty white van. He egressed from his vehicle and asked;

"Is this the only Cumberland Road around here?"*

"Yes" I replied, confidently, although unsure if this was true, as we had not defined the terms of the discussion, particularly in regard to the volume of area regarded within the term "around here".

On hearing this he confided: "I can't find a number three".**

I looked at the house numbers, which were consecutive along the one side of the road. He was parked outside number one, which was next to number two. Number two sat next to an unnumbered house, which sat between number two and number four. Number four was next to number five. There was a clear pattern emerging.

"Number three is the green one!" I deduced, with a Holmesian authority, and pointed at the green house between number two and number four.

The fellow looked at me, looked at the green house, and back at me again. He clearly believed me, but he couldn't quite figure out how I could tell with so little available information.

The words arse and elbow came to mind.


Note: what he actually said was:

*"Ziss sonly Cumbland Row 'rand 'ere?"

**"Ah carn finda numba free!"

"My Neighbour's Girl Is Good At Art!"

Long before clip art deluded computer users into thinking they were creative, there was "talented relative" art.

You know; "don't spend all that money on a commercial artist; our Eileen can do that for a fraction of the price!"

The cheaper press, and budget company brochures tended to sport the poorly executed, and suspiciously remedial depictions that could only feature on Tony Hart's wall if they were doing a mental health special.

Yet here we are in the brave new improved and informed future, yet it still raises its mediocre head. This monstrosity appeared online, for an insurance company that certainly isn't wasting your premium on advertising. (I think the message is; pay up and we'll keep this thing away!)

I'm not a fascist, but there should be a law against this sort of thing. It's the Britain's Got Talent approach to design, and it's wrong.