August 28th 2003 - August 31st 2003
Sunday Headlining
Saturday Never married
Friday Browned off
Thursday Apologia
July 3rd to August 27th 2003
Absent without leave
July 2nd 2003
Wednesday My holiday
Sunday 31st August 2003
Headline helpline
Just before I vanished, I challenged you to come up with the now-traditional 30 character summary of a story about sniffer dogs who became diverted from their search for drugs by the scent of a hidden frankfurter: Hot dogs, not pot, dogs
Something I've not yet had a chance to use, but which could surely apply to almost any the latest controversies surrounding the Italian president: Hurlyburly Berlusconi
Something I did get to use, for the story about a family sailing trip's close encounter with a very big fish: Whale jumps ship
And for the story about how New Zealand prosecutors lost their dignity after being photographed wearing mock women's breasts and bright red wigs on their way to a trial on Pitcairn Island: Storm in a D-cup
Finally two headlines which I claim no credit for myself, but which were perpetrated in my presence, the first by mistake, for a story that was supposed to be about a major Holocaust memorial project: Berlin plans holocaust
And the second about how Lee Ryan, from Blue, has had his driving license suspended: Blue boy banned
Saturday 30th August 2003
Please don't think that I've lost my abiding interest in ironical obituaries; it's just that there seems to have been something of a dearth lately. Yesterday brought a corker, however, in the form of a Telegraph memorial to publisher Desmond Elliott:
A dapper, rather camp figure who affected tight-fitting velvet suits and pink shirts, he combined unpredictability with shrewd common sense. As a long-time resident of Mayfair who felt ill at ease out of W1, he was the most generous of hosts, enjoying nothing more than lunching at the Connaught, the Ritz or Fortnum & Mason, at which his table was a semi-permanent fixture.
Always active in promoting his authors on the other side of the Atlantic, Elliott spent at least four months a year in America, always flying by Concorde and dividing his time between his apartment on Park Avenue, Fire Island, and Key West.
Until his sudden death on August 2, he remained a boyish, youthful figure, both in looks and demeanour. He would never have dreamed of retiring, nor was he called upon to do so.
He never married.
Friday 29th August 2003
Farewell then, Alastair Campbell. I guess this means we won't get a chance to use that headline we've been hoarding: For Hoon the bell tolls.
What did you do in the power-out, daddy?
Unlike most people, I was actually on my way into work during yesterday's brown-out. The first hint I got was when I discovered a thin crowd of people milling around outside Wapping station. Nothing puzzling about that: it rains, they close the station; it's hot, they close the station; they need a tea-break, they close the station...
So I waited, in the pouring bloody rain, for the Little Red Bus that trammels along to Canary Wharf and got there only a quarter of an hour late. Things seemed a little bit busy for a Wednesday evening, slight feeling of spring-sales or late-night closing, a lot of frowning into mobile phones, and glancing up at the DLR announcements as I bustled by I noticed that Bank station was closed.
It was only then that I worked out that it might not just be me whose journey was delayed.
So I walked into the room demanding "Is there a Krisis?" rather than mumbling "SorryBitLateStation", and only then discovered that all over London people were being evacuated from tube trains stuck in tunnels.
(I didn't promise it would be a dramatic story, did I?)
I keep thinking today is Friday.No hang on, it is.
Amidst the sad pomp of the funeral of yet another British soldier killed during The Great Iraqi Misadventure, one phrase of tribute from his commanding officer rings an inharmonious note:
Captain Dai Jones was not just a dedicated, highly professional, warm-hearted officer, he was a fun-loving friend, a budding entrepreneur and a very genuine person.
Soldier-cum-entrepreneur? That's a mercenary, surely?
Thursday 28th August 2003
Like a child caught standing in a shattered pile of crockery, one's first reaction is entirely to deny responsibility: It Wasn't Me! But I guess I'm just a little too mature to get away with that these days.
It Was An Accident? Well, only in the broadest sense, inasmuch as it certainly wasn't the result of any pre-meditated plan on my part.
He Made Me Do It? The sudden absence of my closest colleague probably did remove some element of positive competition from the blogosphere. But that, too, is far from being a complete explanation.
Truly: It Just Happened: I took a day or two off from blogging to recover from my holiday, days stretched to weeks, weeks to months and, eventually, what with a dodgy computer and an ocean of spam, getting back in the saddle started to look like an obligation too far - especially in these sultry silly-season dog days, when news worth taking seriously (let alone worth pissing on) lies thin upon the ground.
(And yes, I include The Bloody Hutton Enquiry in that dismissal: a pointless sideshow that will conclude that - shock! horror! - the State does its best to put a good face on the information it presents. Let's get back to the substantive question, shall we - where are these sodding Weapons of Mass Destruction that we heard so much about?)
I admit that after I'd not blogged for quite a while, I began to wonder if anybody missed me. My hits certainly don't seem to have suffered (which may indicate a large number of people logging on to see if I was back yet, but more likely simply underlines the total inaccuracy of the paltry figures in the first place.)
And then the quiet enquiries began to trickle in, noting that I hadn't blogged for a while, and was I still alive?
I'd thought that my last glancing reference to slapping my brain back into shape might have been enough to cover a certain absence; others, it seemed, assumed there was a distinct possibility that I'd taken my shotgun to the stables.
Dream on. It's been a month or so of life lived fairly fully: a handful of excellent parties, a mixed brace of festivals, one mini-affairette and countless nights of debauch whose details are lost beyond recall. Ups. Downs. A sideways step or two. More of which in due course no doubt.
But let's not make a fuss. Just tell your friends: Blogadoon is back.
(And to the nice stranger who was kind enough to come up to me in Ver White Zwan last night politely enquiring Did I have a blog? and What happened to it? - this one's for you.)
3rd July to 27th August 2003
Absent without leave. Sue me.
Wednesday 2nd July 2003
Part of the purpose of a holiday, surely, is the chance to break out of stale behaviour patterns; given that I've spent most of the last ten days getting drunk and seeking out casual sex, I guess we have to say the trip was only a qualified success.
In truth, I'm not sure yet how good a time I had in Sitges: the whole experience has left me stranded in a strange place with a only a few sun-addled brain-cells left to sort out what has value and what has not.
I'll get back to you on that; in the meantime I leave you with a disordered aide-memoire of good bits and bad bits:
Lows:
Having a third of my (already sparse) wardrobe pilfered
The unrelenting bloody heat
The epic solo expedition to Dead Man's Cove
Intellectual stimulus, or lack thereof
The sauna in Sitges
Trying to eat well but eating too much and too often instead
Crazy fluctuations in body-image
Fretting about how much I fret about money
Being the only smoker
Whinging
Highs:
Old friendships recalibrated
New friendships forged
The Beach by day (and hundreds of men)
The Beach by night (and one man in particular)
The Nude Beach (and three men in particular)
Parrots (and two men in particular)
Gazing at the Eurogays
The epic solo expedition to Dead Man's Cove
The first Foam Party (and the second, too)
Shagging the proprietor at The Underwear Party
The paper-boy
My Holiday Romance (well, ok, my holiday shag)
The sauna in Barcelona
Saving almost £300 on cigarettes
My faaaaaabulous tan
L'Atlantida
More on each of these to come, once I slap my brain back into shape.
......previous week
