January 20th 2003 - January 26th 2003
Sunday Top
Saturday Forget it
Friday Affirmative
Thursday Giga-Kenningtons
Wednesday Kazoo
Tuesday Trousered
Monday Hoo-hah
Sunday 26th January 2003
Top weekend crammed with unfamiliar faces: Dave, 'a fan' at Bar Code; Phillipe, new friend of Luca, at the Soft Cell gig at GAY; Uncle Hedgehog, briefly resurfacing from Down Under, at the RVT; Paul and Marie, friends of Marcus, at Dukes.Plus: an anonymous tall skinny Brazilian at an unspecified East London location.Yum.
Saturday 25th January 2003
As you may know, I'm notorious for not answering my phone(s).
Someone once pointed out how vulnerable we make ourselves to intrusions from who-knows-whom at who-knows-when, and the thought struck me so forcibly that I've set myself up never to answer an incoming call ever since.
And I admit the nature of my messages can be a little galling. But after I'd dragged myself out of bed this afternoon and nerved myself to replay what I somehow knew was bound to be bad news, I pressed the button and heard:
MAN (elderly, with an unmistakeable whiff of potting shed): "Oh bugger you then mate."
WOMAN: (offstage, presumably The Lady Wife): "Wha'?"
M: "A mans voice, he picked it up and said, 'I don't seem to be answering the phone right now.' He says, 'Leave a message and I'll probably get back to you.'"
W: "Oh, charming."
M: "Forget it mate." (-crash-)
Forget what, I wonder?
Friday 24th January 2003
You've heard of affirmative action. But how about affirmative casualties?
Thursday 23rd January 2003
Conversation at the office:A: Is it just me, or does that vending machine take an inordinately long time to sell a can of coke?
B: It's not just you. Sometimes it feels as if it's having to deliver the goods from another floor
A: It's a new unit of wasted time
B: The Vend. One vend equals...
C: Ten vends equal one Busy Bar Pint
D: Ten BBPs equals one Checkout
B: Ten Checkouts per Kennington
A: Ten giga-Kenningtons to one ChequeInThe Post
Wednesday 22nd January 2003
I wish I had a pair of desert boots for every headline that talks about the drums of war.
Whatrver happened to the sousaphone of war? The ukelele of war? (The kazoo?)
Tuesday 21st January 2003
On the off-chance that you found yourself warming to Mrs Queen after those pictures of her leaving hospital in a trouser suit, I offer you two salutary counter-thoughts.
One: What kind of paranoia lies behind the decision to order up a lady-in-waiting to travel halfway across London bearing an item of clothing that is going to be used simply to hide a bandage around a knee?
Two: Read this gloriously bitchy piece from the current LRB, in which Glen Newey reviews yet another annus horribilis:
For the Royal Family, 2002 went bad faster than an over-hung widgeon...In the background, of course, lay the fluff-ball Jacobinism of September 1997 which surfaced in the media after Diana's tryst with the underpass..In op-ed fable she presented the Windsor family's lone human face, Avon Lady to the House of Atreus.
And much, much more.
Monday 20th January 2003
Say what you like about the hoo-hah surrounding Matthew Kelly (and I have lots to say, see below) but it is of course proving a fertile ground for stand-up comedians and drag queens.
Dame Edna unloaded a pretty predictable tip-load of filth over Kelly's head at the RVT yesterday ("Tonight, Matthew, I shall be: raw") to general acclaim from an audience of middle-aged queens who split their attention between watching her act and, ahem, ogling the younger members of the audience.
I ought to have been disappointed to find myself working late on Friday, a night when I might otherwise have managed to get to The Swan in time to catch Dave Lynn's regular slot - were it not for the fact that earlier in the evening I'd come across a paragraph in The Star claiming that Kelly had upset his fans in the early 1990s by leaving his wife to move in with: Dave Lynn.
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