Can only do them one at a time.

You can hardly miss see the unobtrusive guitar in the background can you ?

The Mafia's favourite in-house folk band.

(AKA : Old Bastards In Shades ! )

Best Song Ever ?

Moon River...

By a country mile !

Andy Williams great....

Audry Hepburn Breakfast At Tiffany's even better !

('What are you doing..?' )

'Writing'!

(Class act !)

This is such a fantastic event !

It's for the childrens charity Jellybean, and is taking place on the Wirral on 16th March.

Last year there were 5000 bikers, and it just keeps growing.

Have a browse around the related sites and YouTube vids.

I shall be pillion on my mate's Harley-Davidson Fatboy ....

VvvvrrrrrrrroooOOOOOooooommmm!!!!!

I was awoken from slumber's sweet retreats this morning to a proffered cuppa (it's the only safe way) and the news that there had been an earthquake.

'Oh, was that what it was ?'

'You felt it ? What happened ?'

'Well at first I thought the dog was scratching his fleas under the table but he wasn't'...

Then I thought it might be a lorry outside, but it wasn't...'

'Then what ?'

'Well, then I thought it was more than likely something else and I made a cup of tea'.

Sorry, yes I've been aware of my Bloscar nomination for a couple of weeks and had a fire lit under me by e-mail yesterday. By someone.

I'm not being disingenuous ... .. surprised by and proud of the nomination as I was ( puffs up chest, dons tiara and rubs raw onions in eyes)... I have already got what I came here for.

People obviously blog for different reasons, diaries, social commentary, support...sometimes to take a poke at the world with a pointy stick .

It's all good.

Whether we're in light or shade or looking for some contention, fun or comfort : techno-tropism is good for us.

I first blogged about 5 months ago because I was interested in what other people were saying about me and I wanted to engage with them more.

At the Liverpool blog fest, I was lucky as a comlete newcomer to meet many of you. Usually gobby gregarious I was vulnerable and rocky at that time, (recent events had left me feeling like a rat in a pet-shop who's been put in the cage next to a python ), but that blogmeet allowed me to wear a little bit of my black n' gold heart on my sleeve and get some things off my (now puffed-up) chest.

What I was delighted to learn yesterday from lyndlj was that she sees a thread of happiness and warmth in what I have shared with you. (I was aiming for literate, ascerbic and witty : happy and warm is nesh better!)

So sincere and 'umble thanks for the nomination... indeed for everything.

All the best to you !

* throws cakes and ale ..... *
(and not, for once in a mop-and-bucket way).

.....real life.

My little neffy said today that when he gwows up his gonna have a 'polluter' just like his dad.

A what what ?

(Neffy takes deep breath and tries to communicate with the opposable-thumbers)

'A polluter to play games on n' stuff.... like dad'.

'An I got a got a bwow-up fuckadile'

A what what ?

'A big bwow-up fuckadile for when I'm women !'....

Oh ...

OK.......

Got you now ..........

He is sunshine !

To commerate the life of Bobby Moore, Captain of England in ' 66 who died 15 years ago tomorrow, I shall be mostly wearing black armbands.

To stretch a point.

I was sat as a teacher-trainer on a radiator behind the grizzled old ex-bomber pilot (who became a good friend, introducing me to Officer's Balls as he did later ) in a very, very hard comprehensive school.

(I still can't say that without going 'snnorff'.)

Anyway...

He said ...

'We have all the best equipment and the best teachers. Look, we have blah and blah...

and blah and blah....

but what I want you to know...

is that at the end of the day...

I am the biggest TOOL in this classroom !

Larrf ? ....

Oh joy!

(Surely we have all met at least one like this ) ??

Or was I just lucky on my first day ?

She is much too young and perty !

She stole that dress !

C'mon Row-eeeeen-

-aaaaaah !

xxxxxx

Kev asked this before, and by way of reply I would have to say ;

Impatience. It is easy to confuse with bad-temper or intolerance. The first I will put my hands up to, but I am actually a very tolerant person. What I can't deal with is deliberate idiocy for more than a fraction of a nano-second.

I suppose I'll have to say bad-temper now. Easily confused with anger or impatience but...

Angry and Hungry are the only words in English that end in gry

Look I'm going to throw this shovel away and climb out of this particular hole.

Pass me a new shovel please....

Ta !

Crying... I have cried during The Muppets and Futurama. I also shout 'ray !' at the end of every film with a happy ending (just before I burst into tears). Ditto films with sad endings minus the 'ray'.

I am a hopeless administrator. Truly, truly the worst. I assume that anybody who went into this line of work can sort out any mess that I make, otherwise what are they for. Conversely I am an excellent organiser.

I am crap with money. And numbers. (aren't they the same thing ?). I expect to be able to walk into a bank with a cheque and ask for a pizza or a tin of beans or a holiday. Invoices make me faint and I never open anything in a brown envelope. But I'm rather good at geometry and algebra.

I've qualified every statement so far with a 'but'

Not this one .

Art ...if a passion can be called a weakness. It fascinates me that this is an arena of human endeavour that exists for it's own sake. Outside of 'normal' emotional human experience, it's only art that can make me weep. That experience will never be found in the brown envelope..... maybe that's why I don't bother looking ?

But:

If If's and And's were pots and pans,
And all the sea was ink,
What would we do for food
And what would we do for drink ?

Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale primary care trust are to be applauded for rolling out the first phase of a £126,000 pilot scheme to alleviate demand for medical care outside traditional working hours.

A Sainsbury store at Heaton Park is to offer GP appointments from consultation rooms at the back (where the Quavers used to live).

That will be handy for the purchase of copious quantities of chilled natural yoghurt for those embarrassing southerly irritations, or whisky and paracetamol to go with the anti-depressants 'scrip.

It'll play havoc with the parking.

I sincerely hope that the scheme heralds improvements in community health.....

But it makes you wonder what goes on at preliminary meetings when they say

1. 'OK, think ouside the box here, guys'.

2. 'Where shall we stash the Quavers ? '

Off I goes again.

They usually administer four injections (some tenderness and background Bach would be nice, but not a snowball's chance in hell of that happening).

I make the journey home with a quarter of my face inexplicably comatoze on the Isle-of-Man, (why it doesn't choose to go to a beach in Mexico I do not know).

And this is because a dentist 'lost' a file whilst laying depth charges during routine canal dredging.

When I mentioned it ('eehalochafiimatoobashtd !')
,,,, they honesly said ' Oh, no.! Poor guy must have been so embarassed !'.

On the bright side it's a chance to lie back in a comfy chair and think happy thoughts and make mental lists for a whole hour....

Eehh...Luxury !

At the auction room today I managed to nab four gorgeous churchy oak spiral chairs, and a very lovely watercolour. The chairs are to replace the wrecked ones from a dining suite my mum got at auction about 40 years ago and the last painting I acquired was rescued from a skip where I heard it quietly mewling.

Almost all of my clothes come from charity shops : bags, shoes, evening dresses,...the lot.

Even when dressed to the nines in my glitzy best I take great satisfaction in knowing that the whole kit and kaboodle generally rings up at about a tenner. (Not undies though.....standards you know).

Sadly after a couple of snifters at posh dos I lose my haute couture hauteur and can be heard crowing 'Ho yish! a fiver from Oxfam...get-in !!'

I think it fulfils a deep-seated hunter-gatherer instinct as I also love foraging for hedgerow foods and subjecting the family to wild mushroom and nettle concoctions as they fast-dial Pizza Magic.

It really does give me a buzz.

I might be hard work but can never be accused of being high maintenance.

Cheap date or what ?

I used to be able to sleep on a clothes line.

(The phrase, along with 'I could sleep standing-up' comes from doss-houses where they put up ropes to save space for the poor to drape themselves on by their armpits ). Love, let thy name be charity, eh ?

I find myself in a 24-hours-off / 48-hours-on cycle.

Dammit...I do love my kip....!

Where has it gone ?

If you find Morpheus wandering about your neck of the woods, could you please send him back ?

You'll find the address on his pink rhinestone collar....

His owner is fretting.

There is a reward.

Lord Leverhulme was a grocer's son
He learnt to sell when he was young
And all the songs that he could play
Was 'advertising makes it pay',
Over the hills, across the skies,
By God, it pays to advertise !

We know that the mission of ads is to create desire in us proles to hand over our hard-earned spondoolies in exchange for utter shite. The bigger the corp the more utter the shite and the more money to burn on advertising convincing us that this is the shite we really want.

Job done. But....

Sadler's Wells and the Royal Academy were recently busted by corporate committee at CBS Outdoor HQ. What a busy little group of vetters they must be, having the very wide remit to protect the traveling public from any image which might possibly give offence .

Was it the nudity that was deemed to be 'contextually and overtly' sexual by the moral guardians at the gates of the London Underground ?

The only evident illegal or unlawful activity immediately apparent in either poster is the 'graffiti' style typeface on the poster for street dance 'Insane in the Brain'. (Clockwork Orange hip-hop)

Art is not less subject to the law than anything else.....fair enough. But we are not talking about the law of the land here, these are jobsworth gobshites who's wagging fingers are just begging to be bitten off .

Their idea of obscenity is a classic Cranach nude and a man hiding his dong behind a cuckoo clock, (both images publicising cultural events) because they 'might cause offence', while they gleefully install pics of burgers and other skanky garbage.

So we can consume crap, but never be subjected to art because that would be obscene ? .

And no amount of backtracking can negate the fact that they thought it once and they will think it again.

Oh you art-censoring-nannyish-guardians-of-our-morals...

What are you like !

(Cranach was a good mate of Martin Luther by the way).

Once, in the night of my youth, I walked out of a pub near Bray in Ireland.

It was going to be a long walk, but not one I'd regret.

I had grown tired the boyfriend (he had seemed so exotic with his juggling, fire-eating and earrings - but a bore is still a bore ) and I set off with only a belly-full of Guiness and my own hard head for company.

I walked in the dark 'til i couldn't walk any more, then I rolled into a ditch. But the ditch hurt me with brambles so I hopped over a wall and made comfy in a woodland section of somebody's garden. I had my ruck with some clothes in it and I dragged them out and covered myself with them and I think I fell asleep, but it was probably only moments before all the security lights came on and I heard dogs not barking but baying and I came to and there were three Rotties heading my way.

I got out quick and carried on walking. I saw the most beautiful sunrise I think has ever been seen. At about seven a family in an Estate offered me a lift, but by then I was beginning to enjoy myself , and even if I hadn't been I would not have subjected them to the whiff of me.

I approached Wicklow as the Spar was opening and bought a pastie (I still had my ruck but not most of the stuff that had been in it ) then I had to 'go' behind some trucks and the pigeons and seagulls had my crusts.

When I got to town I messed around the muddy harbour for a bit then came accross one old man sitting on the steps outside a pub. He asked me to have a drink with him and I did (and I swear that pub opened at 9).

About 10 I had to do something about my lack of passport (because I had left it with the juggler) and I only remembered that the night before we had looked at old photos of a stationmaster. So I phoned directory and got the nearest stationmaster, who asked his mates...and yes, they could tell me the address even though the man I was asking about had died a year ago and retired twenty years before that. And how was his daughter getting on... the one who'd gone to England ?

So I phoned and then spent another fine hour in the pub with the old man and they gave me a bag of crisps, and then I went and bought a book and read it dangling my legs over the harbour wall until the juggler arrived all spitty with indignation.

And then I came home.

By myself.

Thanks for all your happies - I had a really flufferly birthday due to largely doing sod all.
This time last year we had a party which was lots of fun but I really wanted P&Q tied in a bow this time around.

At 7 I was presented with a cup of tea in my pillowpit along with the illustrated Life of Pi. Fabulous pictures....oohed and ahhed.

Lolled and LOLed for an hour or so reading the paper.

Showered in new papaya body-shop goo 'til I melted.

Finished my Brookmyre book, then a friend called in with Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns which is a perfect scenario for me, the unbroken march of words.

I got a little hot under the terry-robe pootling about on the net looking up CBS Outdoor (of banning Sadler's Wells and Royal Academy posters on the London Underground fame )and art censorship precedents in general, (Re: Mrs F post ).

Then texted 'Happy Birthday to ME !' to the kids in their lairs.

They made it downstairs dragging their heels and knuckles and were a little sheepish (judging by the bleating ) handing over cards thinking that they hadn't got me anything, but fortunately I had anticipated this event and bought myself a mobile out of their pocket-money. Everybody happy !

My sister-in-law and lovely little neffy dropped by with Boots vouchers, so lots of toothpaste, AlkaSeltzer and false-nail mileage there.

Beloved and I took the hound for a long run in the woods in the lovely bitterly cold,gold afternoon, and then he (beloved, not the hound) cooked walnut chili with sour cream, guacamole,salad and tortilla chips, which he does very well. And chocolate ice-cream.

It being Sunday there was a game of 'hunt the uniforms, socks and knickers'....half the skiddies being found dangling from the light fittings where they had been joyfully slung at the start of half-term, but soon all was sprayed with fabreze and ready to live another day.

Including me !

So there you go...nowt happened and I've just loved it !

I'm now having a long tall one....

Cheers !

In todays Observer Music Monthly :

Flashback :

Donny Osmond remembers the start of Osmond mania fondly.

Talking about an early recording he says :

' We recorded it at Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
I don't recall much about it because I was only 13 at the time.
I had to stand on a box to sin. (sic) ,

What I meant to say,  if I hadn't been so rudely interrupted by the one I was going to say it about....

Is that I am blessed with love,  all  the time.....I breathe it in and breathe it out.

A rarified atmosphere .....

created by a man with sucked-maltezer eyes and silver lametta hair and  triangular black beetling brows...

you know.....

the one who is the calm (if sometimes loud ) eye in the middle of my storm.

We touched once,  goodness, it was nearly twenty-five years ago.......

and that was it..........

KABOOOMM !!!!...

It was undeniabe and wholehearteted

Love.

With big jangly bells on.
 

Dear reader.......I married him !

(Eventually...there were a few mountains to climb and forms to fill in).....

And never a cross word since !

(Bugger...I do skirt, but I'd rather eat my own toes than admit that....
Owch...eating my own toes really hurts !).

Lordy, how I love that man.

I have been accused of 'skirting' because I do not lay my black/gold/repulsively red heart entirely bare.

So , as I was going to write a love-poem anyway.....

Here it is......

I do not skirt
I do not blink
My little fucking
Humperdink.

We make our own luck.
Must be true
If mine was shop-bought I would sue.

She comes on strong,
And comes unstuck
But I've grown fond of.
Lady Luck !

Between the Courts and the Church and The Guv'ner just sucking it up I hereby pledge my allegiance to The King and Queen of Cheese.

Because apparently we live on the moon and I want first digs.

If anybody harms a hair on the heads of multiculturalism or feminism I would (and have been known to) be the first to take up battlestations.

This is why I want to be a lollipop lady......

1. They would give me a big lollipop

2. It would have 'STOP' writ large on it.

Bishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is an exraordinarily clever man who has just ( mistakenly in my opinion) trotted out the idea of cultural fedaralism.

Let's all snuggle up and have a big group hug while we think about that, shall we ?.

Oh, for chrissake !!

Now I'm cross !

Would the efficient running of a laptop be at all impaired by having a fat hairy moggy wedged into it's breathing-hole at the back ?

Further to the Friday Five the comment was made to me :

' How do you know when you've grown up? '.

I have hazarded the opinion that it's when you can eat blue cheese without pulling a face...

This would apply to many foodstuffs that taste medicinal or icky ... such as olives, ouzo or oysters (...basically anything that begins with an 'O' that isn't omega3-rich fish-fingers or orange jelly).

Taking responsibility might be a landmark, but not in a simplistic 'mia culpa' way, although admitting it's been a fair cop ( as opposed to ringing the doorbell and running away) probably brings us a step closer to grown-uppiness.

Is it developing the ability to be a parent, hold down a job, whistle-while-you-work, pay the bills or tread the fine line between being a guiding light and psychotic control-freak ?......

What makes us emotionally mature enough to say we are acually there, that we have arrived at this strange place in-between being able to eat solids and our teeth falling out ?

Is it in knowing, accepting or refusing to accept our limitations ?

Without recourse to St.Paul or Kipling, or saying 'I don't know, I haven't grown up yet'....

Unbelievably it has happened ......and what I often wonder is......

how on earth do we get from 'how to become' to 'how to be' without the instruction manual ?

Has anybody got a ball of wool I can play with ?

What would be the contents of your perfect pie ?

When you were little people asked 'what do you want to be when you grow up?' Does your answer then match what you do now ?

A paper-girl, a pirate and a lollipop-lady......I'm right with the mission.

This was a hard one to pull off by Icelandic company Vesturport .

Gisli Orn Gardasrson adapted Kafka's work primarily by showcasing his own tremendous physicality, which eliminated the risk of the audience giggling at a costume with coat-hanger antennae. As Gregor , the man-morph , he scuttled around the walls and ceiling of his perspectively challenged bedroom with consumate athleticism and admirable unadorned beetlyness.

Borkur Jonsson's set was the other show-stealer, with a cut-away upstairs/downstairs . Downstairs was the genteel-shabby living room , whilst Gregor's bedroom shifted through 90o to present an Escher-like bird's-eye view, What technical wizardry allowed Gregor to bounce off the trampoline floor one minute, and other players to walk solidly on it the next I don't know, but highly effective it was too.

Kafka's dark irony was well-served , many lines being bravely played for laughs .

I'm not entirely sure that the overriding impression I should have left with was
'....cor, that Gregor was fit '..... when he was meant to symbolize such a disabled, vulnerable and despised creature...but there you go !

Nick Cave's score was approp