Catmachine

"In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in about 2:55, when you know you've taken all the baths that you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul."  Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything Sunday evenings are amongst the most unpleasant time spans it is possible to experience. Whilst both Tony Hancock and Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged may have had a problem with Sunday afternoons , it's only during the evening when things start to get really nasty and you become filled with a sense of disappointment and self loathing because once again you didn't get nearly enough done. This isn...

I don't have any wisdom teeth. I didn't have them taken out or anything, they're just not there and never were.  I am a mutant.  One of the first things some people say upon hearing about this unusual state of affairs is usually a hilarious variant on the " Why am I not surprised? " gag - the implication being that I'm a bit daft and lack wisdom. Of course that's all a bit arse over front and back to tit. As we all know very well they're called " wisdom " because they appear later in life when (presumably) one has accumulated some.  They're not called " wisdom " because their appearance imparts it, nor because their eruption makes you stagger about calling for Mr Grimsdale (unless that's your dentist's name). Age and wisdom used to be inextricably linked. Not so much nowadays. Anyone who hates Thugg the Caveman and his illuminating antics should skip to the end of the next bit. In Thugg's day reaching the rip...

"I don't have a drinking problem. I drink. I get drunk. I pass out. NO PROBLEM!" Sigh... "Also available in sober." For fuck's sake... "If found, please return to the pub." OH SHUT UP. I mean really. What on earth must go through someone's head when they buy an article of clothing with such a slogan on it? The kind of slogan that is only vaguely funny the first time you ever hear it when you're fifteen years old but loses all comedic value mere nanoseconds later? Woah... That's freaky! You know I have trouble controlling my drinking and often lose all memory of the end of the evening. It's as if the author of that t-shirt somehow could see into my life... I've got to buy it. It's fate. It's not enough that I'm suffering from a crippling addiction, I want to shout it to the world! To be fair these t-shirts are usually only available in souvenir shops in city centres so it's a fair guess that most of the time...

The good thing about social media is that you don't have to suffer in silence. I spent an evening of irritation at Gatwick Airport yesterday and its the kind of annoyance that just keeps on giving (quite apart from the fact that my plans for the festive period were royally stuffed). Still, at least I got a blog entry out of it. It started out OK - we got through security in record time, having been diverted via the spare suite on the upper level. It was when the gate for our flight to Edinburgh was due to open that the trouble started. At around 6.30pm, the information available for flight EZY713 went from Gate opens at 18:25 to Please wait . At this stage I wasn't that bothered - I was assuming that this was just the prelude to Boarding at Gate 6 . After all, I reasoned, surely at around half an hour before take off they'd know (and pass on the information) if it was going to be delayed or even cancelled. Please wait . Take off time came and went. At this point I was st...

It's that time of year and that time of decade when people start looking back at the previous ten years and start making lists. This is the third occasion I remember clearly; in theory of course I was old enough to remember the Seventies Retrospective, but perhaps there wasn't as big a deal made about it at the time; perhaps there were still enough new and exciting things around for the media of the day to be looking forward rather than back. And perhaps the media itself was still enthusiastic and experimental enough still to find getting caught up in nostalgia and retro a bit boring. Never mind what happened in 1971, look what's around now in 1979! The Clash . Independence for Zimbabwe . Kate Bush . The first Star Trek movie . Tubeway Army . Sheep Farming in Barnet . Blondie . Blake's Seven . The Police . City of Death . Joy Division . The list is endless, the future looked bright. That said, the current look back at the past decade seems a bit lacklustre this time....