July 3rd - July 9th 2006
Sunday Wapping
Saturday Prostrate with Baghdaditis
Friday Pathologically late
Thursday Fisting Kim Jong-il
Wednesday Divas
Tuesday Europride 2006
Monday Another five things
Sunday 9th July
Wapping, Summer 2006
(click for pix)
Saturday 8th July
What with all the renewed terror-scare nonsense out there, I think I can be forgiven for misreading a recent sports headline as Murray falls victim to Baghdaditis; less forgivable is the vivid mental picture that sprang to mind when I read that Pomegranates may slow prostate cancer
Friday 7th July
When he finally saunters into the Beverly Hills hotel suite, Johnny Depp is in good spirits, self-effacing and friendly.
'Sorry I'm late - yet again,' he beams, with a mock sigh and a flash of gold pirate teeth, which do nothing to detract from his mercurial good looks and chiselled features.
'It's pathological,' he says, with a raised eyebrow and a shrug, looking and sounding quite cheerful, not in the least bit guilty.
I so aspire to that.
Correction.
I so aspire to getting away with that.
Thursday 6th July
Much as one appreciates The Daily Telegraph's attempts to keep itself up to date, not least with regard to current sexual practice, one has to ask oneself, when confronted with cartoonist Garland's riff on the Rooney/Carvalho imbroglio: just what, exactly, is George Bush doing to Kim Jong-il in today's cartoon?
Wednesday 5th July
So then, France v Italy for the final.
Neither team has an exactly spotless record when it comes to taking a dive at the first faintest whiff of a foul.
There'll be more bodies than the last act of Hamlet.
Tuesday 4th July
Europride, Summer 2006
Monday 3rd July
Another five things I dimly remember
(and you probably don't):
News cinemas These bijou picture houses, often tucked into the basement of existing buildings, used to show a revolving repertoire of newsreels and short films with a programme lasting an hour: when your dad leant over and whispered "We've seen this one," it was time to leave. There were news cinemas at Victoria and Waterloo (handy for commuters with time to kill) and also at Piccadilly Circus - which I vividly remember visiting (without my dad) as a teenager in the late sixties, because a man put my hand on his cock.
Ovaltine tablets Since I have no shame, I'm happy to admit there have been times in my life when I've enjoyed the malty goodness of Ovaltine, sometimes straight from the tin. At some stage in my life, I'm guessing my early teens, I suddenly discovered you could buy Ovaltine in tablet form - I assume they were orginally designed for Arctic explorers or some such. They started off crunchy and then went very very gooey...
Whitehall farce Not the hackneyed metaphor that characterises contemporary British political coverage, but the genuine original: a long-running season of broad trouser-dropping comedies, produced by Brian Rix at the Whitehall Theatre. My dad took me to several of these, presumably only too happy to have discovered something we could both enjoy.
Clickety clack Seamless rail is prevalent now, and trains no longer provide the background track beloved of nursery rhyme. Twenty years ago, when we moved out to Norfolk, the train journey back to civilisation used to take an age, an experience made considerably more agreeable by opting to partake of the full English breakfast, silver-served by humble white-coated stewards while you sank back into a deep comfort of brown moquette. Nowadays the trip takes 100 smoke-free brutal minutes.
Robbie Hall and Jimmie McGregor The Tonight show provided my first experience of topical news programming. It was a much gentler age, typified by the avuncular presence of Cliff Michelmore, and the (bizarre!) idea that the news agenda could happily accommodate musical interludes from two folk-singers sitting on stools with guitars. (But even then, I thought Robin Hall was quite cute.)
......previous week
