December 26th - January 2nd 2005
Sunday Bywater
Saturday Flooded out
Friday Blogadoon was...
Thursday Camp Susan
Wednesday Swan for Christmas
Tuesday Anglos
Monday Creation day
Sunday 2nd January 2005
Saturday 1st January 2005
Faced with the obligation to go on record with some sort of acknowledgement of the watery armageddon in the Indian Ocean, better minds than mine have come up blank.
The conventional pieties exhausted, newspaper columnists whose late-week slot placed them towards the end of the condolence queue were visibly struggling to meet the challenge of saying something, anything, about the disaster.
In a stunning display of moral calisthenics, Janet Daley, the rabid right-wing voice of the Telegraph, used the disaster as a springboard to stick it to the "apathy and indifference" of the average British atheist. Which is a neat trick.
Andrew Marr, also writing in the Telegraph, seemed determined to leave God (and indeed everything else) well out of it, winningly admitting defeat with his statement that "Not everything big has a big meaning."
Matthew Parris, in the Times, chose to write about the 'Wow!' factor of the tragedy, a brave decision made all the more courageous by his sub-editor's choice of headline: "Imagine there were no cataclysms - what a dull world it would be".
Few people seem to have had much to say about the timing of the event, at one o'clock on Boxing Day morning our time; if God was at all involved in the event, I like to think of Him impatiently deciding to demonstrate that there are better ways to express your concern for humanity than spending your money buying socks or chutney for distant relatives...
Friday 31st December 2005
Last year, Blogadoon was: a dreadful blur / much loved (in many senses) / second-hand smalls / considerably older masculine chap / lost situational awareness / wardrobe malfunction / recherché / the hem of your skirt / recreational grief / the aura of election / suddenly last Sunday / motes and beams / my jaded lap / quivering in underpants / time passes / and your salami / too much detail / this time with incredulity / deviant sexual practises / several novels, or parts thereof / doorsy all day / intimately connected / echolalia / oft-bewildered / ageing Nancy / huzzah, the show's starting / relatively extravagant / shameful stories / oh horrible / moral character / slower, but more picturesque / dead ugly / through a hedge, backwards / things I regret saying / hated it / tangentially / self-serving bullshit / loss of concentration / something post-prandial / naming names / fustian / momentary bemusement / narcissistic void / evil and petty little homilies / unadulterated by bubbles / permanently stocked / nearly always / eloquent of pity / fits of resolution / a few more years / flégmatiquement british
Thursday 30th December 2005
The man who insists on high and serious pleasures is depriving himself of pleasure; he continually restricts what he can enjoy; in the constant exercise of his good taste he will eventually price himself out of the market, so to speak. Here Camp taste supervenes upon good taste as a daring and witty hedonism. It makes the man of good taste cheerful, where before he ran the risk of being chronically frustrated. It is good for the digestion.
Wednesday 29th December 2005
In keeping with the tradition of every other 364 days of the year, The Swan opted to celebrate a Christmas Eve with a stripper, the tragically-misnamed 'Collge Boy', who had, at least, made an effort to dress (as it were) in something festive - I forget quite what (it wasn't on for long).
My languid attempts to peer through the crowd and spectate the, ahem, high point of his act were thwarted by several over-excited audience members who rushed to the front to flash their mobile phone-cams mere inches from his (presumably) impressive appendage.
I guess you need to be drunk to descend to that level of behaviour (so drunk, I like to imagine, that their close-ups proved thoroughly alarming when recovered on the cold light of day) but be warned: in Australia, they arrest you for that kind of behaviour.
Tuesday 28th December 2005
I've been haunted all year by 'The Anglo-Saxon Test', an idea glimpsed only in passing, proposed originally, I think, by (gasp! spit!) Norman Tebbitt.
Next time you find yourself in a public space, glance around and ask yourself how many of your fellow citizens could claim to be of solid Anglo-Saxon stock.
The results, whilst not necessarily disconcerting, can be startling - at least for a vanilla white-bread Essex boi such as I: I'm often the only native-bred traveller in the tube carriage these days, regularly the only Briton in a round - a Dane, a Swede, a couple of South Africans, an American and me.
I wonder why it took us so long?
(That said, I'm not sure I was entirely happy to have my gas-meter read yesterday by a sweet boy with a distinctive East European accent - I'm familiar with the mysteries of Gazprom, but that seems a step too far.)
Monday 27th December 2005
One random religious thought spurred by the celebration of Nativity faintly discernable beneath the tinsel: how come there is no ecumenical feast-day dedicated to the Creation?
......previous week
